Ifltffftft '4^^^4^-', -4 ^^. >4-^,^4 S,a/^<:.,e/^'i^. c^' -. , , ^ »a ■niiTuii i^^L.^UL. ^Tiia;a^^i!^it:^ -^ i- -i- -£. -£^ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. TSTTTa^ ©l^p, iujoirig]^ !f a* S]ielf„.GL.L7- UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. '^^'mi v^ THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. BY 2 THOS. E. GARRETT. ST. LOUIS: THE ST. LOUIS NEWS COMPANY. 1885. .Q17 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 18S5, by THOMAS ELLWOOD GARRETT, In the Office of the Librarian cf Congress at Washington. Si. Louis, Mo.: St. Louis, Mo,: Press of Nixon-yoncs Printing Co. Becktold b' Co., Binders. CONTKNTS, PAGE Proem 3 PROLOGUES — The Masque of the Muses 4 Time and Tide 9 Home Again ^ . 14 MEMORIALS — Adelaide Neilson 18 The Neilson Mulberry 32 Matilda Heron 35 Nathaniel Paschall 40 George Knapp 42 THREE STAGES — Pioneer 44 Merchant 49 Statesman 53 LITTLE PEOPLE'S POEMS — Willie Clark 60 Mary Who had the Little Lamb .... 69 Blooming Christmas Tree 73 Baby Brown-Eyes 75 Cherry Cheeks 77 Little Girl Lida 78 Tiny Tina 79 SONGS AND BALLADS — Belle Brandon 80 Lady Beauty 82 Thine and Mine 83 Cithern Song . 85 Among the Daisies 88 Ballad 90 Scotia 91 Guard of Land and]_Sea . . . . . .94 Bond and Shield . ...:... 96 CONTENTS. SONGS AND '&M.LXV)S— Contimied. PAGE Arabel Knitting 97 Susie in the Lane 99 Tree and Vine 102 Our Roof Tree . 104 Muster Day 106 MISCELLANEOUS — Our Mary 112 The Old Post Road 114 Dinner in the Street ,..,... 126 Coronation — Yorktown Centennial Ode . . . 135 Vagged 142 Nero — From the German 147 Disenthralled ........ 152 Raking Hay 162 The Old Clerk 167 Shoshone 172 Zelda 177 Songs of the Dawn . 183 Sallie Brown 189 The Legend of a Leaf 194 Endowment 199 The Shoreless Sea 204 Chimney Ghost — An Idyl 0/ the South . . . 207 Our Best Room 221 The Winding Road in the Wood .... 229 Twice a Child 231 OCCASIONAL — The Giants — Press Association Poem .... 238 Field and Work — Press Association Address . . 252 The Drama — A Response 269 EDUCATIONAL — Normal School, Dedication 1 279 Normal School, Dedication II 29-t SKETCHES FROM LIFE — Ukel-Zam 303 Man and Monkey 314 Half-Pasj Five in the Morning .... 325 Poor Old Horse 341 Lillian, whoe' er thou art. Of 7i2y life the dearest part. Ever sought, and never fotmd In my weary work-day round — Let me call thee Lillian. Dear one, dreamed of, never seen ; Something lost that might have been- Could the fleeting fond ideal Find fit lodgment in the real Blooming beauty Lillian. Lillian, where' er thou art, 'Biding with thee is my heart. In thy day dream list to me Dedicate this verse to thee — "Airy, fairy Lillian.''^ PROLOGUES. THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. SPOKEN BY EMMA STOCKMAN NORTON. ^HE world is topped with temples; 'neath fll w ^^^'' ^""^^^ '' JJLr Ideas build and fashion people's homes, Their social fabric, habits, customs, speech. And all that living learns and art may teach. A temple of the Muses here behold (The guardian vestals of the arts of old), Endowed with treasures costlier than the gems That blaze in crumbling, brow-worn diadems ; The stored rewards of thought, and toil, and strife To make the best and most of human life — The gold of genius and the pearls of worth. That sum the total riches of the earth. PROLOGUES. The muses' temple, and the hallowed shrine Of worship, when the Ideal was Divine; Sweet ministers of thought, its feehng, sight, Its inspiration and its wings of flight. Come, tuneful Nine — from old Olympus come Abide with us, and make our house your home. Hark! epic strains — heroic minstrelsy — A song of valor's deeds, and victory — All welcome, silver-toned Calliope. Terpsichore trips, smiling, graceful, fair. Bounding away from load of cast-off care, And flinging blooms of beauty in the air. Thalia laughs at follies she indites. And lengthens hfe, and heightens its delights, Bright'ning its days and sweetening its nights. In tragic passion rapt, Melpomene stands. With dewy eyes and nervous, wringing hands, And pleading voice that sympathy commands. Euterpe — Queen of Song — or grave or gay. As Music's spell inspires the lyric lay ; Where is the heart that yields not to thy sway? Laborious Clio lights the scenic stage With History's wide, illuminated page. And makes the world the heir of every age. THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Erato sings her ditties soft and low In nooks where pairs of blushing lovers go To double joy, and share each other's w^oe. Polymnia, of meditative song, Cheering the weak, and strengthening the strong ; The hymn sublime still helps the world along. Urania — goddess of the star-bright train ! Shower heaven's light down on this earthy fane, Where "stars" are symbols of thy lustrous reign. The Nine are come — harmonious aid to lend, The Arts to honor, and our rites commend ; Each with her precious gift, and all combined — They bear the harvest yield of human kind. 'Tis garnered here — the wealth of every clime ; 'Ti^ here dispensed — the heritage of Time, Dispensed to all, in wholesome mental food For hungry souls who crave a sovereign good. Grandly beneath the Drama's liberal reign The people meet on Common Nature's plane. The rich, the poor, in one commingled throng Where all by right of kindred tastes belong. The most that learning, all that wealth can give Is, Life's best uses, and the Art to live. The Art Dramatic is the living Art To sound the depths and motives of the heart, PROLOGUES. And lengthen for its vot'ries life's short span By teaching man to know his fellow-man ; To live himself — obeying duty's call, And through his own true life to live in all. Who enters here lives in two worlds — the Real We leave without ; within we find th' Ideal. In this safe refuge of the tempest-riven We stand with feet on Earth, and head in Heaven, The magic of the Mimic Scene transforms To summer sunshine sorrows' clouds and storms. Escaped from turmoil, and unchained from care, Free fancy soars in intellect's upper air Among the masters — wise in every tongue That e'er was lisped in since the world was young, Or thundered from high places to resound Forever clear in time's eternal round. Such are the blessings that the muses bring Treasured in golden words the poets sing. The heritage is ours, we prize its worth Above the dust and grosser ores of earth ; We hoard it not as misers clutch their gold, Which drags them groaning to their mother mould ; But would therewith transmute the world's increase Into sweet concord and a golden peace. THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. When every man shall serve the general good, And love enfold the human brotherhood ; When all earth's nations harmonize as one, Then, not till then, the drama's work is done. TIME AND TIDE. SPOKEN BY ANNIE MOORE SCOTT. f/^f^f/HE time is the theme — and the taste of our JL P day As it tends to amusement and flows into play. Let's lay by our work ; we're too busy by half — Forget our vexations and honestly laugh ! The world that we live in is gloomy or bright, As the lens of the mind is that colors the light By which it is seen ; rub your glasses, and look At the pages and pictures -of life's open book. Day and night — light and shade — joy, grief, peace and strife, And the blending of tints is the science of life. There are manifold views and effects of the scene, As the colors of culture are — yellow or green. The white ray of intellect's crystalline light Is sunshine, and can not bewilder the sight. 10 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Good and evil are rivals, as at the beginning, When knowledge was culprit, and set the world sin- ning. How to choose? That's a point on which tastes disagree ; What is wholesome for you may be poison to me. But common sense humanly pleads for our good, As appetite does in the matter of food, If the bill of fare's not to our liking, at least We can't be compelled to sit down to the feast. Empty benches will soon bring a change of the bills. As dieting doctors some bodily ills. The play's in your hands — or to make or to mar As you sit here in judgment on author and star. Now, what do you want? Will you laugh? Will you weep ? Are you ranged there in rows to go sweetly to sleep? Or would you have passion to harrow your hearts ? Or pretty spectacular nudity arts ? Is it dresses from Paris, or talents inbred ? Is it rags on the back, or brains in the head ? We've heard it asserted and claimed as a fact That Beauty's not genius, and clothes can not act. Dress never so fine, the attractions of face Are stronger than satin, and velvet, and lace ; PROLOGUES. I I How much more mentality's jewels outshine All gold-measured millions, and gems of the mine ! There's something to live for beside the mere soil, The dust, and the dirt, and the pain, and the toil. And life ought to furnish its own compensations After climbing so many improved generations ; And it does, if we use our five senses aright. And steadily keep our eyes turned to the light. There's nature, and art-works, and multiform beauty, And all to enjoy in the straight line of duty; They've kept the world moving from age unto age. And where do we love them best ? Here, on the stage. The time is the theme, and the tide, running high, Leaves hollow pretensions and other drift dry. Froth and foam — phosphorescent — when cast on the shore. Fall darkling, and make the beach barren the more. A sign of the times is a juvenile rage To make up as players, and act on the stage — As, who pounds piano, or scrapes violin, Unknowing a note, but producing a din. O ! the racket and jargon of drumming and voice ; Nor music, nor acting — just nothing but noise. Like the night-winds and waves in tumultuous roar, And daylight discloses the trash on the shore. 12 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Skipping over the time when the Drama was young, We come to the age of our own Enghsh tongue. Good, merry old England, we reverence thee As the mother of freedom and mould of the free. We love the good matron who gave us a start In life and in morals, in speech and in art ; And — flesh of her flesh, and bone of her bone — She taught us to build up a home of our own. But chiefly the old country's dear to the young Because Shakespeare's language is ourmother tongue. The bard for all time, of no country or age. Is the growth, the flower, and the fruit of the stage, The figure ideal, passed reverently down. Combines in its presence both brow and the crown. Who cries down the theater, strikes at the heart Of popular consciousness, culture and art ; Who scoffs at the stage's imperial throne Had best let the world-seated sovereign alone. Nor quote him, nor know him, nor mention his name, And see to whose lot falls the folly and shame ; They've no right to steal from him even a line, Since his theme is human and theirs is divine. The world builds him temples, which have their high priests And service of homage, and incense, and feasts ; All we ask is charity, peace and good will — Long taught, but whose mission remains to fulfill. PROLOGUES. 13 As time gallops onward, the world goes ahead — No retrograde movement can ever be led. What grand scenes were played on the stage of the West By manager actors — now gone to their rest ! Sol Smith, Bateman, Field and DeBar in the cast, And Ludlow still linking the present and past. The record of changes that every year brings Makes plain that improvement's the order of things. This house, that is built in the room of the last. Is proof of the present o'ertopping the past ; A conquest of Time ; and the height of the tide The floodgates of enterprise ever decide. With brain-power and culture, and muscle and bone, The world moves along with a force of its own. HOME AGAIN. OPERA HOUSE OPENING ADDRESS. ^^c^^^EE'RE here again, happy, and hopeful and V j) Ip i A lU And favored by Fortune we've come back to stay. 'Tis almost a year since ! Friends how do you do ? You're glad to see us ? Shake ! We're glad to see you ! Let's have a good time, and forget the dark days Of clouds in the skies, and gloom in our ways; — Remembering only the joyous, and bright. While living as much as we may in the light. This house that is builded where other ones stood We dedicate now to the service of Good : And here, to the shrine of the Muses we come To welcome Will Shakespeare's return to his home. A royal reception and greeting we give him. Assured that no monarch or man will outlive him — The soul of his age, and the beacon of ages, The greatest of poets, the wisest of sages. PROLOGUES. And this is his dwelhng place — right here among A people whose language is his mother-tongue. And we are his household — the actors, and you, Who give us your smiles, and kind friendliness, too. Exalt him as master, and love him as friend And worship his genius — world without end — Amen ! By the way, — this has no church relation. Though no church could have a more fit congregation. O ! magical Memory, turn the lorgnette On some scenes, and figures that linger here yet. There's Field, who first broke village barriers down. And built a grand play-house — away out of town. The place that was called the " Varieties " then Was fenced in and white washed for our " Upper Ten." Where boys were not wanted, the boys didn't go, And soon came disaster to " Gentleman Joe." Then " Crooks " and " Mazeppas " like Goths and the Vandals Rushed into the Drama's socks, buskins and sandals ; And shapely spectacular went it full tilt, And revelled in nudity, tinsel and gilt : But these orgies ended in surfeit, and then With face like the full moon rose merry old Ben The genial, and jolly, and jocund DeBar — A round lump of earth, yet he shone as a star. l6 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Here halt we a moment in Memory's glow, And dream back " De Bar's " but a short while ago ; With old things around and the old rafters o'er us, And Toodles, the Mock Duke, and Falstaff before us ; The royal old times, when the actors were on — A few are still left, but a many are gone ; — He whom we most miss in this retrospect scene Is honored with Shakespeare in Tower Grove green. New people have come ; — here are only a few Who thronged the new house in Eighteen Fifty-two ; But 'tween you and me — (only four years have flown) All warmed the new house of Eighteen Eighty- one — You — friends who stood by us, by night, and by day, In storm, and in sunshine, and made our work play ; Now, are you not — every one — glad you're alive To see the new house of Eighteen Eighty-five ? Ups and downs are events in all human careers, And change after change is the outcome of years. While new things supply the demand of the stage. Our friends, like good wine, are the better for age. Amid new surroundings you give us good cheer ; — As old friends we welcome you heartily here ; And, all in a bunch, we take you by the hand, — And say: — we do business still at the old stand. PROLOGUES. 17 Our aim is to please, and amuse you when toil Might even the sweetest of sweet tempers spoil, To lift off of Life the dull load that it bears. And light up your pathways, and drive away cares — But just for a night of Elysian dreams That bring to the coming day unclouded beams; The bent of our efforts is true pleasure-giving To add to life's relish, and make it worth living. What more can we do, in the nature of things Than that, which in doing, most happiness brings To you, and to us, — and in far largest measure To those whose condition gives small means of pleasure ? On our part, we promise to give you the best That the market affords — North, South, East and West ; The bill of fare's tempting for good appetite ; Good cheer, good digestion, and happy good-night ! September, 1885. MEMORIALS. ADELAIDE NEILSON. \l!5lfirf/HE actress is dead ! The obituaries have all been written, and, regardless of their varied color and tone, readers have formed their 'W own estimate of the life and work and worth of Adelaide Neilson. It is safe to say that the ver- dict is one of universal admiration. The sentiment is respect, and the feeling sincere grief. A life of honest, earnest, conscientious endeavor can safely- trust to post-mortem criticism. The truth has already been recorded in the work done, and falsehood, when the subject is forever beyond its reach and can not reply, is its own sufficient commentary upon the author or disseminator. For many years no death in the dramatic profes- sion has awakened so deep and general a feeling of regret and sadness as the final exit of Lilian Ade- laide Neilson. It was unexpected and strange as the sudden blotting from the sky of a bright star upon which all eyes were at that moment turned. She had just bade us a professional farewell, in view of her return to England and early and perma- nent retirement from public life, but all who listened MEMORIALS. 1 9 to her last words still cherished the hope of seeing her again. The death of this rare and radiant woman in the very noonday of her power and the harvest time of her fame is one of those events which people can not realize until they feel the cold blank for years, and strain their eyes to recover a vision which comes no more before them. But a few days after she left our shores the peerless Neilson was dead in Paris. She had scarcely time to recover her breath after a long season's hard work before she was snatched away to rest, and nothing remains of her brilliancy but the memory of her fair outlines and those magnetic tones in which the souls of the greatest creations of the human intellect lived and breathed. The actor's art-work has no niche but actual presence on the scene ; no frame but the proscenium, and no page but memory. In a moment the voice and figure are gone, and leave neither echo nor shadow. The painter transmits his pictures, the sculptor his figures, the architect his monumental columns and domes, the poet his living, breathing words, and the musician his scores, which ring on forever, but the actor leaves nothing with the stamp of his genius upon it to exemplify and perpetuate the character of his methods or the masterpieces of his art. The annals of the stage are but skeleton etchings to those who never heard or saw the van- ished artist in whom the most beautiful dreams of poetry and forms of thought lived and charmed ; kindly memories transferred to the printed page are the only enduring recompense. Such feelings of friendliness and a desire to render justice prompt 20 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. the writer to pen his impressions of Adelaide Neil- son. It is a matter of no moment whence she sprung, who were her ancestors, or what was her early train- ing and condition. She came from obscurity and rose to power, and this record is an honor. It mat- ters not whether the mingled blood of Spain and England coursed in her veins and developed a per- son of singular and original beauty ; she entranced all eyes and ears that came within her influence, and became the world's citizen. She got a great public hearing, spoke, convinced and triumphed. For many thousands she made the world more beautiful and happy than it would have been if she had not lived in it, and her lips added a sweeter tone to the Eng- lish tongue. This audience naturally feels that a part of earth's beauty has passed away and that there is less to live for since she is gone. Thus she attained a position in which she contributed largely to the world of beauty and the store of human happiness. She was one of Art's cosmopolitans. It would be interesting to trace step by step her way to the height and breadth of public presence and power, but her beginnings, like most of the first- lings of genius, are obscure. The way up into the light was doubtless thorny and rugged and steep, for her countenance bore the lines and shadows of suf- ferinsf, which the sunshine and warmth of her nature had moulded into features of sparkling expressive- ness and facial eloquence. Her whole history of toil and pain was written on the many pages of her face, which she turned over and over in every hour of MEMORIALS. 21 mental activity during professional work, or in social intercourse with friends. It was a story of ever- changing color and interest in which glimpses of the unprinted page of girlhood could occasionally be caught. Whatever Neilson's early surroundings and oppor- tunities may have been, there was evidently a time in her young life when she seized upon the gifts with which nature had lavishly endowed her, turned them to the best account, and developed herself into a woman of rare culture. She was conversant with French, as most educated English people are, a good Latin scholar, and a writer of elegant English, as her friendly correspondence abundantly testifies. She was also well versed in polite and general literature, kept the run of politics and the sciences and con- versed critically and entertainingly of both ancient and modern authors, among whom Shakespeare was the idol at whose shrine she worshiped. She was poor and felt the need of a career aside from the possible promptings of ambition. In cast- ing about for means of honorable livelihood she seems to have drifted upon the stage, and her first work there was doubtless the beginning of that cul- ture by which she subsequently achieved distinction and renown. Her predominant qualities and natural tastes may have led her into the drama ; or her ap- pearance on the stage may have been a fortuitous accident; but she found the right place, as events proved. Such a strong and happy union of both mental and physical qualities as she possessed for her adopted profession occurs certainly not more THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. than once in an age, and this combination of fitnesses is the key which unlocks the secret of her power and phenomenal success. Her self-culture gave her an intimate and thorough knowledge of herself, the materials she had at com- mand and her capacity to use them. She knew what she had and its value so well that she never wasted time or strength in attempts to do anything which she could not master. By this common-sense econ- omy her efforts were always well directed and crowned with the logical compensation. She put her faculties to work by rule, and instinctively fol- lowed art principles, yet in the whirlwind of action she was often caught up, lifted to a region above law and reached results by inspiration. She did every- thing she set out to do, and in her own way, which could not have been taught her and which she could not have taught another. She absorbed a character until it became built up and compact in her being, and she breathed into it a living soul. Often her readings would not bear the criticism of elocution, but they nevertheless produced the true artistic ef- fects ; and she had tricks of voice and intonation which flashed the sentiment and struck the key of awakened sympathy with harmonious touch. Thus her accompaniments to the lines, in tone, movement, business and general expression, were never out of tune. Her volume of voice was limited; she never committed the offense of overstraining it, but adopted the intense expression of suppression, which was her method of producing effects she could not reach by declamation. Her treatment grew naturally out of MEMORIALS. 23 her own physical and mental materials, and so devel- oping she could never have become the slave of an- other's method, or an imitator of mere personality or mannerism. Her mannerisms — neither emphasized nor obstrusive — were her own, and tinted her work with a mellow individual coloring. She was a great artist — first, because she knew Neilson, and re- spected the acquaintance enough to be true to her- self; and again because, led by true dramatic instinct and feeling, she never swerved from the path and purpose of art. With instinctive certitude she seized upon a line of characters for which, in person, she seemed to have been specially created, and held them with such a grasp that none of her competitors could wrest them from her. She appropriated them by the right of conquest, and held them by the might of both body and mind. They were Shake- speare's women — the noblest ideal types of woman- hood — Juliet, Rosalind, Viola, Imogen and Isabella. She looked into Shakespeare's page as into a mirror wherein she viewed in reflected transfiguration the characters as they would appear in her embodiment. She became incandescent of the character and arose from her studies — not a superficial reflection of Juliet and the others, but the living ideal, glowing with the bard's poetic fire in a figure fitly framed to embody his dreams of beauty. She filled the eye first as the ideal form ; she moved and spoke and the illusion was perfect. She felt, rejoiced and suffered with the character, and actually passed through every pas- sion and emotion implied by the dramatic situation. She did not simulate either smiles or tears — they 24 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. came unbidden and were beyond her control when she and the character were moulded into one under the poetic spell. The woman was oblivious of the world around her while she ministered as high priest- ess in the consecrated temple of art. Neilson's first love and most renowned character was Juliet, though it is doubtful if Juliet were her most excellent work. Still, it is beyond question she was the great Juliet of her time, if not the great- est of all time. The annals and traditions of the English stage have no previous records of a mind and physique combining such poetic and personal fitness for that opening bud of maiden's love, as they harmoniously blended and bloomed in the Juliet of Adelaide Neilson. Could he have seen her, the great bard himself would have been cheated into believing the reality of his own beauty dream. But it was in comedy that Neilson felt especially at home and was essentially great. Among the heroines of Shake- spearian comedy she reigned supreme, rose to heights of excellence never before attained and left no one in sight worthy to take up and wear her toppled crown. Suddenly dashed from her brow, it lies as it fell — its gems enshrouded in mourning wreaths, sacred to the memory of Rosalind, Viola and Imogen, and Juliet from the balcony can not say as once she did: — "Stay but a little, I will come again." Juliet will be long coming. Neilson's industry was untiring, her energy in- domitable and her study severe and perpetual. When MEMORIALS. - :> speaking of her characters she dropped into them trance-Hke and seemed to think their thoughts and utter their souls. Juhet was her training companion until the fierce heat of young and disastrous love melted actress and character into one. From this plastic congeniality, heated by the fire of genius and ever in action, other characters were rounded and forms moulded as life dashed on. There was no stopping place, no rest. After years of toil devoted to each, Rosalind and Viola and Imogen successively came in her person and were indissolubly mingled in her being. In these noble female characters who don the masculine garb, the actress was singularly graceful under the disguise and conscientiously true to the dramatic purpose. The dramatist's delicate poetic tracery of feminine purity and modesty in the masculine mask never received finer touch and color- ing than at the hands of this greatest Shakespearian comedienne. She especially loved Imogen as Shake- speare's paragon woman — combining in her charac- ter the true love and young passion of Juliet, the romantic devotion of Rosalind, and the pathetic constancy and fidelity of Viola. And with Imogen Neilson's work was crowned. Adelaide Neilson was one of the few dramatic artists who stood faithfully and lovingly by the legiti- m.ate English drama during its years of peril from the vicious French invasion and the pernicious un- dressed and unwashed camp followers ; and be it said to her lasting honor that she earned her triumphs in making lovable models of virtue presented in the highest types of her sex. This was the aim and 26 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. the grand result of her life-work in the field of dramatic art, and no actress, living or dead, has per- formed her mission more thoroughly or deserves a dearer place in English memory. Her public career stamped her as a woman of the world by the same law that would in private sur- roundings have made her a darling of society. Her lot was cast in the light of public gaze constantly beating upon her, and this pervading publicity always throws personal character upon the defensive. She had but few intimate friends, and even among the few, some crawled into her confidence who proved unworthy of trust. Those whose friendship she re- jected confirmed her judgment by the character of their retaliation. She was grossly abused ; she suf- fered intensely, and she was capable of supreme happiness. She had corresponding depressions — dark moments — but her spirit was elastic and soon rebounded into the light. The soul of summer sun- shine streamed gleeful and golden around her little social circle, when worldly reserve gave place to natural impulse. She forgot herself in her friends, and lived every one's enjoyment, which so much mag- nified her own. She was a fluent conversationalist, natural in manner, spontaneous in matter, overflowing with good humor and quick at repartee. Her humor was kindly and her topics were all womanly. She had no heartless jests or hard words for her friends or foes, and no harsh criticisms for her professional sis- ters and brothers. If she had nothing good to say, she said nothing. As a member she honored her profession. Her manners and speech were singularly MEMORIALS. 27 refined, her impulses were all generous and noble, and her friendships sincere. Her heart sprang to the surface at a tale of distress, and her hand obeyed the finest instincts of human nature in the practice of charity, her many acts of which were strictly private and never paraded in print. She had a just estimate of the commercial value of her work and was a strict woman of business. Her rigid principles and habits of business sometimes subjected her to the charge of grasping parsimony, which did her heart wrong and misprized her generous nature. If those with whom she had business transactions would consult their books and compare her figures with other sim- ilar profits, they will write down "justice" to her credit at the close of their last accounts. No one could have been in the company of Ade- laide Neilson five minutes without receiving the im- pression that she was a woman of rich mental resources, wide cultivation, great experience of the world and extraordinary force of character. Her presence was magnetic and filled the room with its quiet luminousness. There was nothing exaggerated or emphasized or loud or stagy in her demeanor — quite the reverse. While an entertaining talker, she was an attentive listener. She never spoke of her profession or her own work unless the subject was introduced by another, and then she was charmingly communicative on matters pertaining to the stage. But she talked more of the general principles of art and the development of dramatic characters than of what she herself did or aimed to do. She had strong opinions upon these subjects, which showed the 28 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. character of her studies, the thoroughness of her art- culture, and that she knew every step of the way to her results and position. There was also in the Neilson presence a strange, indescribable something, which, notwithstanding her artless openness, hinted of untold trials and unwrit- ten history. To those who made her a study she was an enigma constantly giving her own solution — yet still an enigma. She apparently laid herself de- fenseless, yet she was still armed. The luminous impression she photographed of herself yesterday was not exactly her picture of to-day. She was al- ways the same, yet ever new, and she seemed to have a reserved mentality like a shield, always at com- mand. This attitude of intellectual defense may have been taken and maintained in consequence of domestic troubles, which were supposed to be known to all, but which could not be openly discussed. She was married young and unhappily; there was no congeniality of temperament or tastes in the life partnership, and there were other causes which im- pelled her to seek divorce, and enabled her to obtain it. The decree was granted in New York, after she had been legally enrolled in the court records as a citizen of the United States. These proceedings made rumor busy with her name, but she continued her work with ever culminating success. Before her last visit to this country, in performance of that series of engagements which was her last, she had engaged herself to marry an English gentleman of rank and high social position, which contract in- cluded her final retirement from public life. This MEMORIALS. matrimonial engagement has been the theme of much discussion by correspondents and comment by edi- tors, altogether placing her in a false light. When she was last in St. Louis she distinctly stated to the writer that she was compelled to leave the stage to save her life, and that she was to marry a gentleman — twenty years her senior — connected with the British Court, who had been long a suitor for her hand. She did not mention the name, but certain references and statements since her death leave little doubt that her betrothed was Rear Admiral Hon. Henry Carr Glyn, C. B., C. S. I., whose name has been mentioned in connection with her death and funeral. Physicians had already admonished her that her work was killing her, and she often had warnings that this was true. She worked with every faculty of her mind and every nerve and fiber of her body, and from such severe tension, after her acts she often fell, fainting. She used to say that after the potion scene of JuHet her heart seemed to "shut up " suddenly and cease its functions. During her seasons of work many of her day-times were racks of pain, in the tortures of which she would have given the whole profits of her engagement for "just one day off, " as she quaintly expressed it. Thus she became a martyr to her art, and too early died the martyr's death. In person Adelaide Neilson was a woman of won- derful fascination and charm. Her figure was slender and lithe; her complexion brunette, and her hair golden brown. Separately her features were not regularly handsome, excepting the great lustrous 30 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. eyes, of wondrous depth, yet in action her face was music, and poetry, and painting incarnate — a beauty-trinity. The make-up for character, of stage usage, and necessity, did not heighten her personal charm, for she was even more dazzHng off the stage than on. Her social friends were favored with the best of her, and saw her in her richest beauty's light and life. Her popularity and profes- sional success were by some placed to the credit of her personal attractions, but she grandly triumphed over this slighting imputation. The best proof of the victory of the intellectual over the merely factitious in her composition is the fact that the large majority of her audiences and admirers were of her own sex. The ladies everywhere outbid and outdid the gen- tlemen in yielding her their incense of admiration. The source of this attraction was Neilson's own large humanity and broad womanhood, which compelled responsive homage. The diamond is never eclipsed by its setting, and Neilson's chiefest jewel was her true feminine mentality. During her last visit to St. Louis some friends took her to see the bronze Shakespeare in Tower Grove Park, with which she was greatly pleased, and which she regarded as more eloquent of power than any Shakespeare she had ever seen. She looked at the statue and the embellishments of its pedestal from all points of view, and became desirous of contribut- ing something to the Shakespeare surroundings. She promised to visit Stratford at her earliest conven- ience, obtain a slip of the Shakespeare mulberry and send it over to be planted in her name. She stepped MEMORIALS. off the ground at the back of the statue and marked the spot where she would Hke the tree to grow. She was not permitted to fulfill her promise. In the death of Adelaide Neilson the English stage was robbed of one of its chiefest adornments, and the drama of one of its potent exponents. Each individual of her great audience feels her "taking off" as a personal loss, a sad bereavement of the eye and heart, and many Americans who may hereafter visit England will make pilgrimages of love and memory to a grave at Brompton. THE NEILSON MULBERRY. |NE windy afternoon in March, 1880, Adelaide Neilson went with friends to Tower Grove fii Park, St. Louis, to see the Shakespeare bronze, ^'^ descriptions of which had awakened her in- terest. To one of the friends she had written from a distant city : — "A little strolling player will soon visit dear St. Louis, alas ! for the last time ! Thinking of it I weep tears of sorrow ! " As she had resolved to retire from her profession and live at home, in England, she felt it her duty to see the Tower Grove statues. Neilson was in her happiest mood, and yet she seemed to chat and laugh under a shadow. She had frequent warnings. The doctors had told her to quit work, she said, but the sudden summons would come. She was sure of that, and the certainty gave her life a new zest. The drive in the park was exhilarating, and she was briUiant as nature's budding green. The " Hum- boldt" was soon passed, for " Shakespeare," in sight, attracted her with a magnet's charm. She stood before the figure for a time in reverence. She viewed it from all sides, in the changing lights and shadows of a mottled sky, and talked while she ivalked. The " Shakespeare " lived to her, and she was familiar yet solemn in the presence. MEMORIALS. 33 " Old fellow, you have done a great deal for me, a great deal for me," she repeated, slowly weighing her words and nodding her head. She finally came to a stand and said : " Here it has the greatest power of expression and pose." The point of view was quartering to the north, about forty feet from the base. The inspection over, she was asked what she thought of it, and she replied : " I think that among all the Shakespeare memo- rials, public and private, this is the best I have seen." One of the friends suggested that she might furnish a memento of her visit to the statue by sending a Shakespeare mulberry to be planted near. Her face lighted up as she replied : — " I shall be too happy ! It will be a pleasure, and I feel honored in the privilege." She then stepped off several paces from the base at the back of the statue, until the distance seemed right, and turning her dainty boot-heel in the sod, she said : — " Soon as I return to England, I shall go to Strat- ford first, before London, and I promise to send a Shakespeare mulberry slip to be planted here." And when the carriage moved away her face was turned to the " Shakespeare " as long as it was in sight. She never saw Stratford again, and only her dust ever reached England, The promised mulberry " shp " never came, but Mr. Henry Shaw furnished a mulberry tree from his gardens, and he and Mr. N. M. Ludlow, the oldest actor and dramatic manager living, Mr. Thomas Dimmock, one of the " friends," and Thomas E. 34 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Garrett, planted the tree at the spot designated, in memory of the great JuHet, Rosalind, Viola, and Imogene, — Adelaide Neilson, whose art and person created and embodied the most perfect verisimili- tudes of these lovely women of Shakespeare prob- ably that the world ever saw. Mr. Shaw supplemented this act with a marble tablet bearing the inscription : " Mulberry tree, planted on the spot marked by Adelaide Neilson March 25, 1880." And the " Neilson mulberry," in the place of the " Shakespeare slip," buds, blossoms and bears, and will keep the " little strolling player's " memory green in the years to come. IN MEMORIAM. The spirit of Nature, robed in leafy green, Finds here her favorite pleasure-ground retreat ; Where toilsome Art has set the sylvan scene. And strewn rich tributes at her mistress' feet. Humboldt and Shakespeare in one vista rise — Explorers of untrodden ways — untaught! The one, by conquest, made the earth man's prize. The other crystallized the world of thought. In Shakespeare's presence Neilson bowed the knee — Here later pilgrims come to honor her, And here the poet's own memorial tree Recalls sweet Juliet's best interpreter. O Mother Nature ! these lived near to thee — Thy chosen children — born to tell thy truth ; And here they keep thy loving company. And share the bloom of thine eternal youth. MATILDA HERON. 4^m»^ATILDA HERON had been an invalid ■^WnWw ^'°'' some years, living in close retirement. j|vi_lwVl During this period of seclusion she was also ~^:^^H0T^^^ the recipient of public and private benefits from her professional friends, who never forgot or de- serted her, but attentively ministered to her comforts. Matilda Heron had a daughter whom she trained for professional life. The reciprocal idolatry between the mother and daughter was beautiful. The mother seemed to be sensible of an incomplete career, and she gathered up the wrecks of her hopes and filled the girl with their spirit that the daughter might complete what the mother left unfinished. The daughter was blind to the raggedness of these wrecks and regarded her mother as crowned with a rosy fame which could never fade. This intercourse and confidence was a peculiarly sweet association of the invalid's darkened chamber in her latter years. Bijou was a bright spark struck out of Matilda Heron's being by the flint and steel of circumstances, and her life closed in the radiance of its light. Matilda Heron was of Irish extraction, and her family took up their residence in Philadelphia during her early years. She received a seminary education 36 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. and at an upper window of the seminary Matilda Heron dreamed her first dream of fame. The stormy applause of the theater shot across the street on summer nights and found an echo in the school girl's heart. She resolved to become an actress, and without the knowledge of her family she placed her- self under the instruction of Mr. Peter Richings. She proved an apt pupil, and made her debut as Bianca in the tragedy of " Fazio." She had already mastered the words of five or six of the leading heroines of the drama. But she was not qualified for a leading lady in a company, and had not the prestige to command attention as a star. She was, therefore, obliged to come down the ladder and go to work at the bottom of it. After years of patient toil she set sail for Europe, alone. She went to see the world and study her art, and drifted to Paris. Here, at the theater one night an incident occurred which opened to her a world of hope and promise. She was sitting at the play " Camille " absorbed in the scenes when some one familiarly tapped her on the shoulder, and said, "Tilly, that's a play that would make your fortune, if you would trans- late it for America." It was Alexander Heron — her brother — whom she had not seen or spoken to for years, who had given himself this novel re-intro- duction. The brother and sister were thus recon- ciled, after a long estrangement, and saw Paris together. Matilda Heron translated and adapted the play for American presentation, and brought it home with her. It proved the realization of the school girl's dream of fame. MEMORIALS. 3/ She played Camille, in all, nearly two thousand times. The latter part of Matilda Heron's pubhc life was somewhat clouded by unfortunate domestic relations, but it was still illuminated with brilliant memories. She was married in New York to a Mr. Robert Stoepel, a musician, and the fruits of this union were domestic discontent and two or three children, of whom Bijou Heron (Stoepel) is the only survivor, and the custodian of her mother's name. Matilda Heron's life was one of the most romantic of stage careers, and towards the last she was pos- sessed with an idea of writing it, or having it written. The following is an extract from a letter on this sub- ject. It is dated San Francisco, October 20, 1872 — while she was there attending to the " Heron-Byrne case." " Possibly you have seen accounts of the ordeal I am passing through here, and if so you have learned a part of what I have lately suffered. But the great Ruler above knows the burning suffering of my crushed heart during the past seven years. To Him alone I confided my great woe, and still know He who doeth all things well will not desert me. I am tormented past endurance with the heart sores and mental turbulence which the fates have visited upon me, for I can not believe that the Healing One has had a hand in my most lamentable and pathetic his- tory. Religion alone has kept my soul ahve; my darling child has preserved my heart. As for my body, were it not for those other two divine strengths it would have been mouldering long ago. 38 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES, " Now I desire to tell you that I am writing my life from the time I was a child seven years old in Ireland. When once I spoke to you of writing my life, little did I dream then of the clouded chapters destined to be added to it. The Heron-Byrne case is the most intricate to adjudge that has ever come up. In fact it is puzzling every head concerned in it except my own — Matilda Heron, plaintiff ; Henry Byrne, her husband ; Robert Stoepel, husband No. 2 ; Edward Carpenter, defendant. We are all a pretty set in a pretty mess. The only joke about it is that it is poor Camille who has got them into a scrape. But to my life. It will be too voluminous, I fear. I am now only up to my eighteenth year, and I am told by experts that I have written a vol- ume already. It will include all that has passed in my eventful years, comic, humorous, serious and tragic." Another letter on the same subject is dated New York, September 22, 1873 : — " My life sketches are almost completed. My aim, indeed my sole purpose, has been to show a faithful picture of the struggles, hopes, disappointments, fail- ures, successes, clouds and sunshine through which an artist may be tempest-tossed upon the sea of am- bition and yet triumph in the end. But a holier pur- pose far, also, has urged me to this little history, namely : To give strength to toiling, struggling youth and virtue ; to show that even after daisies, thorns, laurels, darkness and failure — with a pure record in the past, and faith in heaven at all times, the heart, however scarred ; the mind, however racked ; the MEMORIALS. 39 spirit, however broken ; the scorpion sting of ingrati- tude, the wreck of our shattered household gods — all this, and more and worse, may be and can be made well — all soothed, all healed by the glad sun- shine of blameless memories, a pure heart, holy pur- pose, a determined will and God on our side. There's where the heart's-ease comes in." These extracts are introduced to show how the woman thought of the troubles that beset her, and how she derived consolation in the further thought that her life history might be of benefit to others. Matilda Heron was an erratic genius — in this respect not unlike some others who have adorned the stage. She was impulsive in the extreme, which trait made friends as a magnet picks up needles, and sometimes these friends injured her, but she soon forgave their stabs. Her impulses were all good. There have been longer careers than Matilda Heron's, but none more brilliant on the American stage. She came out of darkness, like a meteor, swept the skies with a wonderful light, and has now faded from sight, but her course is still luminous with the glory of her art. GEORGE KNAPP. MAN of the people, he came l/|\\f Among humble toilers to toil — ^JllppX Unfearing his hands to soil, And zealous to earn a good name. A man 'mid his fellows he rose, Of strong and resolute will, A mission to follow and fill — Admired of his friends and his foes. A hero of action and deeds — He loved and strove for the right, And error was foiled in the fight Of popular measures and needs. A fast friend of all friends forever; The ties he made lasted thro' life. Unloosed by fortune or strife — Strong bonds that Death only could sever. A bulwark of Honor he stood — Unsullied as when life began — The full years allotted to man, And died — beloved, honored and good. MEMORIALS. 4 1 His plodding tracks are evermore defined In empire's progress and the march of mind. The people's champion — worthy of their trust, His pen was mighty, as his cause was just. Sincere of purpose, conscious of his sway, He raised his hand, and pointed out the way. The Nestor of the Press, his name alone Outlasts the crumbling monumental stone. NATHANIEL PASCHALL. VACANT place is here, a soul has flown To the dim regions of the vast unknown ; :J'W\ A friend we knew and loved, a man of might. Has burst his bonds of clay, and joined his kindred light. In every walk of varied life's career A good man is a monarch in his sphere. Ambition's farthest goal may be denied — A master's mind exults in master-pride ; Creates its solace for misfortune's stings. And rises grand — above all little things. Despite ancestral pomp, and strain of blood. The truly great are still the purely good. Such was the man we mourn ; in him we knew How much of life to one's own self is due. His bright example of achieved success. Conferring blessings, taught the way to bless. Ambitious only for the general weal. He felt his mission, and made others feel. MEMORIALS. 43 A man of the Future he stands, Assured by his work in the Past ; He still lives and labors — while last The monuments reared by his hands. A man of the People he came — Their champion, raised to command ; He grew up — a power in the land, And history honors his name. THREE STAGES. DELIVERED AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE TWENTY-FIFTH ANNI- VERSARY OF THE MERCANTILE LIBRARY, ST. LOUIS, MO. THE PIONEER. HI HE time and place: No matter when or where — Suffice it that our ancestors were there, Who, with the headstrong passions we pos- sess. In uncurbed force, subdued a wilderness. 'Twas somewhere in a broad and sunbright land, Ice-walled and seagirt ; one from strand to strand. In places where men grew too thick to thrive. Like bees they swarmed and formed another hive. The hardiest types of industry thus went Singing to voluntary banishment, Leaving the drones and others well to do — Plenty for one, yet not enough for two ; THREE STAGES. 45 But whither bound none knew ; none seemed to care, 'Twas toward the sunset ; luck go with them there ! The gossip said : They bundled up their goods And ran a wild-goose chase to some backwoods. They'll come to grief and be sold out for debt; They're such a roving, dreamy, thriftless set. The emigrant was thus consigned to doom For worthlessness and morbid want of room. At first none know the movers as they wind Along the highway, leaving home behind ; Far on the way their tattered canvas grows Familiar to each blustering wind that blows. The toilsome route as by enchantment teems With friendly huts and cheery log-fire gleams. The sun-browned settlers, from their open door, Behold the scene they acted years before. The burly wagon leaves no room for doubt ; They know the flax-haired children peering out. The patient oxen laboring at the tongue, The oozy tar-can 'neath the axle swung. The dog, fatigued with fruitless range for game. Called up, is first made known to them by name. The careful wife, who 'mid her household sits Enthroned, and gaily singing while she knits; The man who urges on his jaded team — They know them all in some remembered dream. 46 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. They know the country — every foot of ground, And rock, and tree, and stream for leagues around. They know the pressing need that sometimes sends A man from home to find his truest friends. They know full well he can not reach that day Their next door neighbor, twenty miles away ; They know the stranger, offer him good cheer, And thus they speed the hardy pioneer. Though strange at first, the truth he soon must own — The further gone, the better he is known. Where men are few and far, their fates control A nearer, dearer sympathy of soul. Which robs the distance of its lonesome length And gives the friendly hand-shake mystic strength. He trusts the inspiration of that grip. Which seals the bond of Man's relationship. The daring spirit which disturbed his rest Sways all the wide expansion of the West, And brings his heart where every man can feel Its throbbing pulse ; its deepest depths unseal. He breathes the prairie air ; his mind responds To every breath, and bursts its narrow bonds. The common cause makes every man his friend, And dreams of power with all his future blend. His journey ends — by no blind fall of chance; He owes to progress one firm step's advance ; THREE STAGES. 4/ With hopeful heart, and faith in his strong hand, He builds his home beyond the Border-Land, The frontier circle strengthens its defense — By him extends its vast circumference. He wields the forces of new growth and skill ; New forms spring up directed by his will. He tills the soil, or hammers at his trade. And deep foundations of his life are laid. He plants — with all its good and evil rife — The tree of knowledge by the fount of life; The fruit it bears in blest abundance grows. And now the desert blossoms as the rose. Where no law rules with penalties and pains, 'Tis held that absolute perfectioh reigns ; We find perfection free from blot or flaw — The wilds of earth without the need of law — Creation's perfect form. Why uncreate. That cruder means may build th' imperfect state ? Perforce : Since first the roll of dates began 'Twas said and sung the world was made for man. And if for man, 'twas needful, as 'twas due. That something still was left for him to do ; And since the primal world began to move. Progress implied the margin to improve. All through this region of the rose and vine Are pilgrims plodding toward some mountain shrine, 48 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. The belt of thrift extending o'er their track, With hand to plough, and never looking back ; The wild herds driving from their lessening range, And yielding fruits to nature's law of change ; Benign crusaders, innocent of fame, Who Holy Lands from barren sloth reclaim. And draw from labor's almoner bright coin Of honest ring, which greed can not purloin. The pioneer, cast out, has found a clime Beyond the range of twin-born law and crime. The civic law that cramped his means for bread, The social crime of begging to be fed ; Escaped from bondage, he a freeman grew. And from the waste he moulds the world anew. He grasps the hills — they to his sinews yield ; He treads the plain, and springs the fallow field. For battle primed, he ploughs and sows and reaps ; His armor guards his pillow while he sleeps. All nature is at war with him ; his foes Poison the air, taint every brook that flows ; His cabin is besieged from hill and glen By savage beasts and still more savage men. His rifle is his law, and none can blame Its sentence rendered with unerring aim. Full triumph crowns the prowess of his hand. And brings his home within the Border-Land. From such a shoot springs many a family tree, And who would scorn such noble ancestry? THREE STAGES. 49 THE MERCHANT. The scene is changed. No more the howling waste. Queen Beauty reigns with nature's jewels graced, Where gloomed the woodland, wave the flags of corn, And roses bloom where spread the prickly thorn. Where deep in woods one shadowy hut was seen, Bright groups of dwellings nestle on the green. The savage beasts and savage men are gone Together, with their hunter following on. Their tracks of fire and blood are overgrown ; The monumental mounds remain alone. The pioneer has ripened in renown ; His cabin is the oldest house in town. And he the oldest citizen, whose tongue Is rich in marvels for the old a^nd young. He tells them what his rash adventures cost ; How one dark night his youngest child was lost; And how another bright and manly boy — A father's hope, a mother's darling joy — Pursuing hostile bands — a tearful tale — Fell at his side upon the Indian trail. And how the savage yells then rent the air. And war-paint brightened with its demon glare, When flashing shots revealed the ambuscade. And shot for shot death-dealing havoc made. 50 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Heroic deeds forever past and gone — Dim memory's pension old age lives upon ! The shining links of sturdy manhood cast, Which bind the present to the lusty past. The backwoodsman, one day, in loath surprise. Saw curling smoke from other chimneys rise ; One, two, three, four; andsoon they closed him round. It seemed they left him scarce an inch of ground. The scattering town became a trading mart — A halting place to gather strength and heart. For danger's front on plains unknown before. Which swept in grandeur toward the golden shore. Before the plateau where the village stood, A wide majestic river poured his flood, Far southward dashing on his heaving breast The gathered waters of the great Northwest. Down from the frozen cloud-land of the North This genius of the valley wanders forth, Distilling snows beneath his vapory wings To strew his southern course with cooling springs. He touches with his watery wand the hills. And dancing down their sides come laughing rills, Which mingle colors as they onward glide And paint the landscape spread on every side. Flushed by the river-god's engaging wiles, The country's face breaks forth in joyous smiles. THREE STAGES. 5 I Upon the upland plain he lays his hand, And marvellous cities rise at his command — Endowed with all that nature's stores can give, The magic of his spirit bids them live. Unbarred he rolls upon his wheeling throne From endless snow to endless summer's zone, ^ And pours out treasures for the people's needs. Who call him " Father " for his generous deeds. The frontier city, fed with such supplies, Becomes the object of its own surprise. From barbarous tribes against its growth arrayed It draws its life by alchemy of trade. The traders move their post to mountains far Where trappers roam and wage their savage war ; The forts are razed, block houses disappear, And merchants count their thousands year by year. The mighty river bears upon his breast The teeming products of the great Northwest. Still one reproach ! The bane of envy's breast — Some one pronounced it good — but like the West. The merchant, heaping riches year by year, A grain of truth discerned beneath the sneer. He saw it was not progress to sit down And let the river cultivate the town. So gathered up his wits to put at rest The noisy humdrum rattled at the West. 52 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. He planned, with hope of good results to flow, A trade, and traffic, and industrial show ; Where each should bring the thing to demonstrate How men could make a city grandly great, They came — the merchants with their stuffs and wares. They came — the farmers with their shining shares ; They came — the builders with design and draft ; They came — mechanics with their handicraft. Huge stacks appeared of various stuffs for bread ; Of Indian weed, and iron ore, and lead : Of furs and clothing there was many a pack, And precious stones — for building; diamonds — black. And hemp and cotton products — bale and coil — And all the wealth of corn, and wine, and oil. But one, a deep-brow'd man of studious looks. Came bending with a cumbrous load of books. Some others laughed at him, but some there were Who praised the impulse that had led him there. He thus addressed them : In these honored tomes We find the surest pledge of happy homes; The rest is trash, if culture be denied — More rich than all our treasure-house beside. With giant strength impelled by youthful fire, We swamp the wheels of progress in the mire. THREE STAGES. $3 When education lags so far behind The pride of fortune and the need of mind. The age demands another class of books Than balanced ledgers, or the running brooks. It asks for libraries, and mental tools, And learned colleges, and public schools — In them the spirits of the world's great men Forever dwell, and live with us again. Invite them here : accept their helping hand To move our city from the Border Land ; And found a central mart round which may roll North, South, East, West — a true commercial pole. Let us the law of equity obey. And render sterling justice, come what may : We're now in court to try our people's cause. And plead revival of high social laws : I've brought these text-books for our empty shelves ; They read the law of justice to ourselves — That solid basis upon which shall stand Our wealth, our power, our station in the land. They heard his words: they gave one ringing cheer; The first result: we may behold it here. THE STATESMAN. Tne purer springs of being sweetly swell As from the depths of life's artesian well. Through digging deep the crystal waters flow To quench the thirst contracted long ago. 5-1- THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. The new life dawns 'mid novel sights and sounds, And routine wanders from its beaten rounds. The solemn slumber of the good old times Awoke one morning roused by merrier chimes : Dear slow coach customs bred of by-gone days Were jostled from the track by iron ways : The lightning's wing was summoned from the sun To do earth's errands, post boy's feet had run. High arches lightly springing over streams. Had realized in form our spirit-dreams — Clothed in the penciled bows prismatic sheen. Born of two worlds, with just a span between. Both space and time had yielded to the sway Of subtle forces mixed with human clay : Distance dissolved ; and in the lives of men One year contained the former breadth of ten. What more can come as earth's increasing dower ? What more can magnify man's realm of power? The soul of art — restoring by its grace The lost ideal of a perfect race. The forms of art — by which the struggling poor May own a world of beauty at their door. The moulds in which their better selves they see, And learn that labor is nobility. The blocks rough-hewn of which our temple stands Were squared and laid by wisdom's loving hands : THREE STAGES. 55 Expanding zeal has not its strength outgrown, And plastic beauty dwells within the stone. Of highest endeavor in our times of strife, The statesman wears the crown of civil life. He grasps the meaning of the moving scene — His country's honor towering in his mien ; He breathes the blast, or lulls the storms of state A part of every storm that makes him great ; He stamps the laws of nations with his name ; Among their archives lives his ripened fame. His life is one great prayer to recreate A perfect world within a perfect state : The greater in the less — so progress tends, And so forever fails to reach its ends : Save in the charming semblance which it draws Of peace, beyond the changing sphere of laws. Happy the land whose sons supremely great Pronounced the people sovereign in the state ; Who, by the West the way of Empire planned To reach again their Eastern Fatherland, Whose beacons flash far o'er the circling seas, And light the rear of darkened centuries. Honor to him whose prescient sight begun To look for India toward the setting sun. Whose mind far-piercing saw the coming day, When passless heights would bear the iron way. 56 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Crags yielded to his voice that never bent Before the storms that shook the firmament. He spoke : the truth was Hving on his tongue, And with his words the world's horizon rung : There is the East. Beyond the mountains where The sun sank down, we went, and found it there. Bright, burning words — fit crown for his career; Star of the West ! The brightest in our sphere. Until the world in swallowing darkness drops His light will linger on the mountain tops. We, with the daring which his presence lent Should hew a mountain for his monument ! High on its peak, in characters of flame Among the stars should glitter Benton's name. The human stream long stagnant at its source. In dashing westward gained in breadth and force. The mantling pool with face unruffled lies Still, staring sphinx-like at the Indian skies. The living waters rolled with freshening sweep And man became a boisterous, billowy deep. The mass contained fierce elements of war. And lashed by storms, the clouds were borne afar. Until they fell 'mid peaceful rainbow gleams, And other fountains nourished other streams. The desert, laughing, woke with glad surprise. And other gardens bloomed 'neath other skies. Beneath the sky-emblazoned banner bright. THREE STAGES. 57 The currents sparkle with a living light, And carry to the sunset's crimson bars The glow of all our galaxy of stars : Resistless foams and pours the surging host Adown the mountains of the golden coast : Impetuous, free and scorning tranquil ease They leap the west-gate of the Indian seas. As from the clouds they seek their place of birth And draw a living girdle 'round the earth. The light which fades from evening's closing eyes Bursts through the opening lids of morning skies. The setting beam by tall Sierras hid Awakes the dawn on mosque and pyramid : The East and West merge worlds across the main. And guard their compact with a golden chain. Our country : When in song we speak thy name. We give thee his whose 'twas by rightful claim, Columbia — daughter of a virgin clime — Thou grandest figure in the halls of Time : Exalted, thou canst view on either hand Thy kindred peoples drawn from every land, Far as thy vision bears, deep waving shades Surround savannas green and blooming glades. The fairest types of every product known, In rich abundance cluster in thy zone. Around thy waist a dazzling armor gleams With spreading lakes and rippling silver streams. 5S THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Thy delicate hands the trenchant blade can wield In danger's hour, or till the peaceful field. Thy bosom swells with pride for labor done, And hope for greater things yet scarce begun. Beneath thy feet expands the gulf's deep stream, Warmed by the fervid equatorial beam. Thy face is bright with youth's eternal glow ; Alaska wreathes thy brow with pearls of snow. Our country calls : her sons obey the voice Which summons to her side her men of choice ; An old tradition — which is told to teach, Preserves in words like these her rnaiden speech : I am the people — in their name addressed; I am the people — by their will expressed. The people's difference, and their will are one Their verdict makes each man a sovereign ; Through me he speaks, oh may his mandate be An utterance worthy him, and worthy me. Then elevate the people to that height Which sweeps the scope of every human right ; In universal culture thrives the tree Which bears the ripened fruit of Liberty. 'Tis education lifts high over all Your fair ideal on its pedestal ; Uphold it there, while Time his cycle runs. By all the love your fathers bore their sons ; THREE STAGES. $9 To Freedom sacred, and the feared of wrong, The boast of story, and the loved of song. Columbia — daughter of a virgin clime. Reaps for the world the richest fruits of Time. Of humble strain, and yet of royal mien ; A subject born — in majesty a queen. She serves and reigns, on deeds of glory bent To lead in freedom's van a continent. Aloft, her ensigns' noble breadth unfurled Proclaims glad tidings all around the world. The stately monarch of the Flo wry Land Upon his walls accepts her friendly hand ; There dawns on earth a new creation's morn ; The oldest empire greets the youngest born — Whose mighty mission, thus begun, will end, When all the nations as one people blend. LITTLE PEOPLE'S POEMS. WILLIE CLARK. ^OTHER, move a little nearer — I'm so lonely in the dark — :!fe^^LL Tell me over, please, that story of poor ^ "" little Willie Clark. How I cried when I first heard it, yet it drove away the pain; Doctor says my fever's better — mother, make me cry again. There — I hold thy hand, my darling — I remember it quite well ; If 'twill smooth thy painful pillow I will Willie's story tell. Willie's name is in the court-books, blotted with a fearful crime ; All is true as Bible-reading, though I tell it thee in rhyme. Willie's mother was a widow, all alone but for her boy; She had neither friend nor fortune — Willie was her only joy. LITTLE people's POEMS. 6l In an old abandoned shanty, buil't by workmen long before, She had lived by thread and needle — no one ever passed her door. Willie's home was near the railway, where his cries and cradle-strains Mingled with the engine's shrieking and the rumble of the trains. All went whirling, roaring 'round him, and his mind received a scare That confined it to the cradle, and his mother watched it there. P'ifteen springs had nursed and reared him, and his form grew tall and strong. While in thought he crawled an infant — groping creeping, slow along, In his home he shone a sunbeam — innocent of earth's alloy, And a mother's double-darling was her feeble-minded boy. Still she went on singing to him all her string of baby strains, 'Mid the shrieking of the engines and the roaring of the trains ; 62 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Striving with a great heart-yearning in her every look and tone, To arouse the sleeping sense and teach the mind to stand alone. All in vain ; he would not waken when 'twas time to go to school. Playmates, when he spoiled their playing, called him simpleton and fool. Willie never minded mocking, though it grieved his * mother sore, And for all the jeers and joking mother loved him more and more; Talked to him of hope and fortune, as a mother only can ; Pictured him a happy future — when he grew to be a man ; Worked for him with busy fingers ; at his baby prattle smiled ; She had many a mother's wish — her son would always be a child. Willie's life was not all barren, Nature is not so unkind. For she gave him heart, to fill the stinted measure of his mind. LITTLE people's POEMS. 63 Being's currents stayed and rippled 'round the fount of motherhood : Mother loved him, he loved her, and these two things he understood. Though he never wandered from her very far in way of harm. Wonder drew him to the railway, where the danger seemed to charm : Wonder what the rails were laid for ; wonder what the travel meant ; Wonder where the railway started ; wonder where the railway went ; Wonder why grown up men play with engines on a bridge's span ; Wonder if he'd have such playthings when he grew to be a man. Once a horror came while he was looking on in wondering vein ; 'Twas the dashing of an engine, and the crashing of a train. Willie, frightened, hurried homeward — in his terror looking back, For there was a railroad horror, and a ruin — off the track. 64 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. He was caught and put in prison. Why ? The boy could never tell; Jailers and detectives only saw him crouching in his cell. Prison — at a railroad station, in an old-time country town, With its lock-up in the basement, for the house was tumbling down. There he fed on sick'ning vapors, and his life was wasted far When they brought him up for trial and arraigned him at the bar. Lawyers pleaded in the court-room, turning over their big books, All the while the pallid prisoner gazed around with wond'ring looks. Judge and jury sat to try him in the law's unerring light; There was death in that disaster, and the court was clothed with might. Engine driver said that cordwood on the rails had been the snare. Chief detective said the culprit had confessed he put it there ; LITTLE people's POEMS. 6$ Said the boy was playing idiot, feigning weakness in the brain. Verdict: "Guilty" — killing, wounding men and women on the train. Verdict, guilty ! Mother heard it ; she had been a witness too ; Tried with simple truth to shield him, but her story would not do. Agonized, she sprang to greet him with a woful, pleading wail. Then she got the court's permission to be with him in the jail. Oh ! the shadows of a dungeon — underground and dark and chill. How that mother watched beside her darling, stricken deathly ill. Hoping vainly for a pardon, she beguiled the dark to-day, Telling him : " To-morrow, Willie, maybe you can go and play." Pitying angels came to try him in the highest court of all. Of that Judge who keeps a record of the smallest sparrow's fall ; 66 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Weeks and months the angels pleaded, and the mother pressed her right, And the little convict wondered why the time was always night. " What's the matter, dearest mother, is it never, never day? I am tired, — so tired of resting; when may I go out to play ? Hark ! it thunders up above us ; there, I hear the rumbling plain." " Yes, dear ; 'tis the rushing engine, and the roaring of a train." " O ! I thought it was the anger of our Father in the skies." " No, child ; He is Love and Mercy, and our every good supplies. Wait ! to-morrow, if you're better — who knows ? you may go and play." " Mother, here is no to-morrow — never comes an- other day." On his face a glow of reason, like the flush of dawn appears ; Mother marks the stunted mind grow to the stature of its years. LITTLE people's POEMS. 6/ " Tell me, Willie, that's a darling, tell me all — keep nothing hid ; Did you, never meaning mischief, do the thing they said you did ? " Willie rises on his pillow : " Mother, some man came to me, Saying: 'If you'll say you did it, I have come to set you free. Willie, want to see your mother?' 'Oh! dear — yes, indeed I do ; Take me to her, and there's nothing that I will not do for you.' * Say you did it, that's a good boy ; ' and he opened wide that door; ' Say you didn't, and you'll never see the sunshine any more.' I said ' yes ; ' " and Willie's face beamed bright as morn, and saintly fair; " Mother, he told me to say so — but I never put it there." Innocent ! She knew it always. Now his mind has come to light. Son and mother cleave together through the long hours of the night. 6S THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Morning comes ; a troop of angels find a new and shining joy, While the mother in that darkness clasps the form of her dead boy. MARY, WHO HAD THE LITTLE LAMB. " Mary had a little lamb, Its fleece was white as snow, And everywhere that Mary went The lamb was sure to go." ^j^UT that was when our Mary romped In garden, field and lawn ; A rosy child, with cherry lips, And bright-eyed as the dawn ; When she was fairer than the spring, And trusting, loving, good. And sweeter than the summer rose — A bud of maidenhood. She was the sunlight of her home, And made it springtime there. When all the birds and flowers were gone, And trees and fields were bare. She had her little playmates then, And pets and toys — a host ; But of the things she liked the best, She loved her lamb the most. 70 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. She grew. The years went ghding by The tender bud has blown, A lamb is still at Mary's side — A lamb she calls her own. A change had come — another love Had been her proudest boast, And of the things that she liked best. She loved her husband most. With maiden beauty's magic spell She drew him to her side. And where the lamb had been before. He stood with manly pride. But he was gone ; and tearful eyes Had dewed the cold, gray stone. He left her in a sorrowing world But left her not alone. For Mary has a little lamb. With soul as white as snow. And every place where Mary goes The lamb is sure to go. She does not skip as once she did — Her life is clouded now — And yet the old smile lingers there Upon a sadder brow ; Enough of youth and hope remain To cheer the thoughtful calm ; LITTLE PEOPLE S POEMS. And Still we have the picture sweet Of Mary and her lamb. A world has bloomed and passed away And left no murmuring ghost ; Of all the things she ever loved She loves her lamb the most. The golden cord by which 'tis led Links her to all the past, And an unbroken chain of love May lead her home at last. Another change, the cord is snapped On which her hopes relied, The purest lamb of all has joined The other lambs that died. They lead her now by memory's cord Where fadeless roses blow. And night and morn, to where they rest, Is Mary sure to go. A simple emblem o'er their dust Doth Mary's love embalm. She kneels upon their tomb and clasps The image of a lamb. As when the summer sun has sunk In early evening rest, A flood of bright, reflected beams Still gilds the rosy west, 72 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. So, at the tomb of early love, Is Mary's heart made whole By memory's sweet and holy calm The twilight of the soul. BLOOMING CHRISTMAS TREE. A CHILDREN'S HOLIDAY GLEE. "*#'^E'LL sing a song in happy tune, / V/||- About our sunny blossom-time — ■^^ l|2-i/ Not spanned by April, May and June, But all year round in every clime. Tho' Christmas comes in winter drear When earth and sky are hung with gloom, It glows — the blossom of the year — And keeps our little lives in bloom. For fruit and flower hang together, And all the air is full of glee ; And all the year is shining weather Around our blooming Christmas tree. Now old and young are children all. And every heart and face is gay ; We wake to " Merry Christmas " call, And Christmas is the children's day. Then let us laugh, and romp, and sing, Rejoicing in our blossom-time, Which makes the season always spring, And brings the flow'rs in every clime. 74 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. For all the world is bright before us, And heart and face are full of glee ; And happy voices ring in chorus Around our blooming Christmas tree. Good Santa Claus we honor thee — Saint Nich'las and Kris Kringle, too - And be you one, or be you three, We all agree in loving you ; We only know the time is bright, And that your spirit beams above ; We only know that Love is Light, And Christmas light is perfect love. For here are loving father, mother, To join us in our ringing glee ; And here are darling sister, brother Around our blooming Christmas tree. BABY BROWN-EYES. ^t.-mABY — with brown, flowing hair i^x,j^ RippHng over forehead fair, Like a brook from springs of air ; Baby — with brown lustrous eyes — Jewels dropped by bounteous skies — Souvenirs of Paradise. Innocence, and peace, and calm Of the morning breathing balm, When the silence is a psalm. Beautiful ! Her wondering gaze At the world in rapt amaze. Through the curtained golden haze. Shrinking from the touch of earth. Clutching the sweet rose of birth. Glowing with dumb dimpled mirth. Looking down from Life's white brink, Helpless, thought and tongue to link. How and what does Baby think ? "](> THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Puzzled by a shadowy doubt, As her glances cast about, Whether to look in or out. Does she hear close whisperings ? Does she see the shapes and things Of a former time of wings? Little prisoned spirit, bright — Incandescent holy light. Shining in a realm of night. Thou wilt beautify thy clay — Turning darkness into day — Cheering others on their way. Baby Brown-eyes — Life is pain; Every touch of earth a stain, Till thy lost wings come again. CHERRY CHEEKS. ^1*1 CHILD with all the budding good )flf\(. That ripens rich in womanhood ; i^^ A little lump of moulded clay — Vivacious, beautiful and gay, Just lighted up with dawn's first streaks. And that is little Cherry Cheeks. Her pattering feet go everywhere ; Her breath is incense in the air ; Her pretty presence in our room Drives out the lurking ghosts of gloom ; The music in the words she speaks Is printed plain in Cherry Cheeks. She plays with spring-time's frolic hours, And catches colors from the flowers — The sweetest, fairest rays of light — And shines with them all day and night; A sprite of merry romps and freaks Is cheery little Cherry Cheeks. LITTLE GIRL, LIDA. WHO "HAD AS LIEF BE IN HEAVEN. REAR LIDA, I heard of thy illness with pain, /jn) And now I'm so glad thou art right well again. We have to be sick some, the wise people tell, To know just how goody it feels to be well. I'm all over happy to have thy nice letter. So pretty and loving, — it could not be better; — Surprised me too, really ; and 'most made me cry With joy, that our Lida did not go and die. Though Heaven, they say, is a very good place. We want Earth made brighter, with youth, love and grace. Thy staying among us for yet a good while Will light all our faces, with many a smile. Don't think any more, dear, of going above — Not yet — while so many are down here to love, Be good and be gentle, be brave and love-giving, And all will be well, and thy life be worth living. That's all I need say in this rhyme, Lida, dear; I wish thee good health and a Happy New Year. January i, 1885. TINY TINA. ^INY CHRISTINA — that's Tina Elfin-like frolicsome child ; Nobody lives who has seen a Being more charmingly wild. Wild as the wind, and as airy ; Bounding from touch of the earth ; Light as the form of a fairy, Full of the genius of mirth. Born by the brightest of waters ; — Fresher than face of the stream ; Fairer than Fancy's own daughters, — Worshipped in many a dream, — Tina is wiser and quainter. Mentally standing alone ; Artist nor poet can paint her — Sweet little girl of her own. SONGS AND BALLADS. BELLE BRANDON. Y^ IWHERE'S a tree by the margin of a woodland ; \^ Where spreading leafy boughs sweep the ground ; There's a path leading thither o'er the prairie, To a silence and solitude profound. There often have I rambled in the evening When the breezes came rose-laden o'er the lea ; There I found the little beauty Belle Brandon, And we met 'neath the old arbor tree. Belle Brandon was the daughter of a woodman Whose brawn made the forest copses ring ; Indian blood of a red roving chieftain Tinged her veins from a far mountain spring. Barefoot she bounded o'er the prairie. True, keeping her trysting time with me ; For I loved the little beauty Belle Brandon, And we both loved the old arbor tree. SONGS AND BALLADS. 8l On the trunk of the arbor tree, remaining, Are two names with mossy fringe o'ergrown ; Mated there in the bond of young devotion — Belle Brandon — the other is my own. Now I wend to the woodside lonely dreaming Of the Beautiful I never more shall see ; For I've lost the little beauty Belle Brandon, And she sleeps 'neath the old arbor tree. LADY BEAUTY. ADY BEAUTY, 'tis the merry Spring Time, '•^ And the bees are coquetting with the bloom ; But the roses and the flowers, now in prime, Fade and fall in an early autumn tomb. Lady Beauty, you are blooming as the Spring, And the loves are coquetting with your heart ; Oh, listen to the symphony they sing 'Ere the dying tones falter and depart. Lady Beauty, now your mirrored face, bright As the wild rose reflected from the stream. Tells of happy, happy days of delight All enwrapped in the glamour of a dream. Ponder, darling, on the ebbing of the tide, To the sea those untiring waters move ; They murmur yet they sparkle as they glide, For they haste to the ocean of their love. Lady Beauty, prize the merry Spring Time, While the flowers along your pathway are bright ; Spring and winter both come in every clime. And the morning dawns — harbinger of night. Lady Beauty, I have loved you true and long, Can I not your heart's dearest passion move? Oh, listen to the pleading of my song — Come in joy to the ocean of my love. THINE AND MINE. DUET. She- AY I sit-down, and dream with thee, Beneath the blooming greenwood tree, And hold that hand of thine ? While every fluttering leaf above Is whispering its tale of love Oh, I would whisper mine ! Then let me sit and dream with thee Beneath the blooming greenwood tree. To shield from harm My circling arm Around thee I'll entwine ; A bird of weary wing I'll rest and sing A song of thine and mine. Come sit thee down and dream with me Beneath the softly whispering tree ; Thou'rt weary wandering far, And while the twinkling eyes of night Are looking down in calm delight. We'll choose our dwelling star. 84 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Yes, sit thee down and dream with me Beneath the blooming greenwood tree. To guide from harm My circHng arm Around thee I'll entwine ; Two birds of weary wing We'll rest and sing A song of thine and mine. Both — We're sitting here in rapture dear, And there is none to make us fear ; Our hands are clasped in bliss. I shall be true the wide world through, And now there's nothing left to do But seal the bond with, — this ! Sweet dreaming o'er the joy to be Beneath the blooming greenwood tree. To ward off harm My circling arm Around thee I'll entwine; Our souls of daring wing Will soar and sing This song of thine and mine. M ^ ffl P^f> jra^i^Ir^l ^ 1 B^ s ^ •^kW b>: )Pf|iWW^j ^Si^^bfe SI CITHERN SONG. OME to our concert hall, Listen to the ringing Chorus of minstrels all Sweetening the air. Come to the leafy land Where the voices singing Tune with the organ grand Nature builded there. Chorus : Listen to the cithern Twit-ter-ing — twit-ter-ing, Chirping like birdling All the summer long, Ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling, Ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling. Listen to the cithern's All summer song. List to the music swell — Mingled song and string band, Meadow and flowery dell Warbling in the grove ; 86 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Drink at the fountain head Bubbhng in the springland — Wine of the passion red Blushing flame of love. C/io. : Listen to the cithern, etc. Stand 'neath the open sky, Listen to the choristers Chanting an anthem high. Sounding far and wide. See they are circling some Beauty of the foresters : All to the wedding come. Singing for the bride. C/io. : Listen to the cithern, etc. Bask in the sunny sweet. Golden haze of dreaming Where tiny tinkling feet Trip the elfin air. Float in the tiding sound Toward Elysium streaming, Wake at the mating ground ; All of life is there. SONGS AND BALLADS. 8/ Chorus : Listen to the cithern, Twit-ter-ing — twit-ter-ing, Merrily ting — ding-a-dong, Ting-a-Hng — ting-a-hng, Twit-ter-ing — twit-ter-ing, Twit-twit — twit-ter-ing, Hark to the cithern song. AMONG THE DAISIES. Y^^WjLARABEL lived among the daisies, Hid from the gaze of men. Thrush and robin carolled her praises — Sweet in the copse and glen. Mirror had she — none but the water Clear as a crystal ray ; Gay as a lark, — the gardener's daughter Chanted the livelong day. Suitors a plenty sought to woo her Coming from far and near ; Talking of love and nonsense to her — Clarabel would not hear. Clarabel loved among the daisies — Loved as purely as they ; Farmer William adored her graces — Vowed to love her for aye ! While he wooed her, the flowers shone brighter Under her lightsome tread. When she loved him her heart grew lighter, Fairer the skies o'erhead. Speak ! Oh ! will you be mine forever ? Breathed his heart with a thrill ! Sweeter music was warbled never — Clarabel smiled — I v/ill. SONGS AND BALLADS. 89 Clarabel wed among the daisies Which she had loved so well, Thrush and robin joined in her praises, So did the old church bell. Tidy and sweet her cot is smiling Close by the village green ; Family joys her hours beguiling — Clarabel reigns a queen. Daisies are {)lentier there than ever — Grown in the soil of Love, Thrush and robin had warbled never — Sweet as the peaceful dove. BALLAD. ffMh, PAINTER, who half was a poet, r// V ¥ ^^^ visions of Art and her might ; 4^4^ She dazzled his spirit with beauty, And flooded his soul with her light. Then grasping his palette and pencil, He strolled in the meadows with Spring ; She sported her favorite vesture, And prayed bim to paint her or sing. He sat 'neath the arch of a rainbow Which garnished the skirts of a shower. And smiled through the tears of the springtime At evening's contemplative hour. His pencil he dipped in wild roses. And from them the colors he drew: Fair lady, behold his ideal ! — A mem'ry-drawn picture of you. The memory — brightest reflector Of beauty which beams on its face — Will cherish the image forever, And ne'er lose a feature of grace. Oh, spurn not the work as unworthy — The tracing may fail to be true, Yet in the pure colors of nature There must be a likeness of you ! SCOTIA. ST. ANDREW'S DAY GLEE. ^[^t/HE Nor' wind blows, The thistle grows O'er Bruce and Wallace' dust, We'll sing a rhyme O' Scotland's prime; Her wild harp shall not rust. Thou land o' song, To thee belong The brightest bays of yore ; Thy chiels revere Thy mem'ry dear, And, dreaming, haunt thy shore. Chorus: The Nor' wind blows, The thistle grows O'er Bruce and Wallace' dust. We'll sing a rhyme O' Scotland's prime ; Her wild harp shall not rust. 92 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. There Burn's sweet muse The Highland strews Wi' flowers and heathery bloom ; The gowans gleam By Afton's stream To deck thy minstrel's tomb. Scott's wondrous lyre Still thrills wi' fire The longing plowman swain ; The brightest rays O' genius blaze In Allan Ramsey's strain. Cho. : The Nor' wind blows, etc. We sing wi' pride Our mither — bride, Our sister — a' that's dear; And bright beams shine For auld lang syne In mem'ry's gilded tear. Wi' ivy crowned, The bowl goes round For Caledonia's boast. High Fame's award — The peasant bard — The Ayrshire plowman toast ! Cho.: The Nor' wind blows, etc. SONGS AND BALLADS. 93 The lasses fair Shall claim our prayer, And each fond feeling move. Where breathes the Scot Whose soul does not Our " Highland Mary " love ? Bright woven wreaths Of ivy leaves Have cheered our festive seene, And as we gang Thro' life alang We'll wear them ever green. Cho. : The Nor' wind blows, etc. GUARD OF LAND AND SEA. ^ANNER proudly floating ^^ Over land and sea, i^dJ' Full of starry splendor — Emblem of the free ! Blood upon its border. White unspotted too ! Still as true as heaven Gleams the radiant Blue ! Chorus : Banner proudly floating Over land and sea, Full of starry splendor — Emblem of the free. Lo ! the olden army — Freedom's matchless band — 'Mid the roar of battle 'Round that banner stand. O'er them soars the eagle, Guard of land and sea, Bathed in golden sunlight. Brooding victory. Cho. : Banner proudly floating, etc. SONGS AND BALLADS. 95 O ye sons and daughters Of the brave who fell, Prize the badge of glory, Guard their banner well. 'Neath its folds a nation Spreads from East to West, Circled by the oceans — Every climate blest ! Cho. : Banner proudly floating, etc. Banner of our country. Proud in peace or war. Let them not be blotted. Not a single star ! Ever and forever Peaceful may they be. Bound in happy union — All, from sea to sea. Cho.: Banner proudly floating, etc BOND AND SHIELD. HEN Freedom triumphant came out of the strife 'J) J Which justice and valor had won ; She cast off her armor in fulness of life, And held her bright shield to the sun. Upon it was pictured her future domain — Great cities her empire would found ; And mountain, and valley, and forest, and plain. And ocean encircled it round. The goddess disbanded her warrior host ; Her conquering mission was done; Divided — the cause of mankind had been lost — United — the struggle was won. She gave them her shield, with the broad sunny land. The half of the earth to control ; She gave them her armor, and badge of command, And took their sworn bond for the whole. Tl)e people who battled, were strong in the might. Which won them a realm and a name ; A nation united, was strong in the right. Which yielded it glory and fame. B^^ (l?iTlWHm^'^^^^^ ^^^^E i^HB^f ^^H ARABEL KNITTING. ^AIR Arabel sitting By bright chimney side, L!^ Knits fast at her knitting, She'll soon be a bride. But man's a deceiver, And woman is caught. And lovers oft leave her — A word may be naught. The world, it rolls over, The world, it runs wide. But Arabel's lover Will claim her as bride. Her lover had told her When leaving her there, That spring would behold her A bride, blooming fair ; And she has been sitting From others apart, With net-work a-knitting Around her true heart. The world, it rolled over. The world, it ran wide, But brought not her lover To Arabel's side. 98 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. All lonely and grieving, The past she recalls, While spiders are weaving Their webs on the walls. All passionless sitting Like death in the house ; The shadows are knitting Their webs o'er her brows. The world, it rolls over, The world, it runs wide ; And never a lover Makes Arabel bride. O ! man's a deceiver. And woman is caught, And gold's the world's lever. But love can't be bought. O ! woman befitting Thy holier part. Sit fast by thy knitting. The web of the heart. The world, it rolls over. The world, it runs wide ; And falsehood's the lover, And truth is the bride. lEi^^lM SUSIE IN THE LANE. BETWEEN two rows of hawthorn m i^k That made an arch above, —^^ There ran a wagon roadway That hid an early love. And gleams a flash of mem'ry Though gloomy years of pain, That lightens up the hedge-rows, And Susie in the lane. It never chanced by moonlight I met the rustic fair ; 'Twas in the rosy morning, When music filled the air. And dew was on the hedges Where Robin Redbreast sung. And all was merry morning, And everything was young. Ah! well do I remember How chance had made a rule To walk between the hedge-rows When Susie went to school! 100 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. To meet her was a glory, And oh ! a nameless pain ! My boyish heart was fearful Of Susie in the lane. 'Twas just to say " good morning ; ' 'Twas just to see blue eyes Peer out from deep sun-bonnet, And twinkle arch surprise. They seemed so artless playing Their game of hide and seek ; I never failed to see them, They never failed to speak. She lived just o'er the hill-top, Where waved the flags of corn : Afar I saw her coming. And then I knew 'twas morn. I always chanced to meet her, In sun, or wind, or rain; She made the darkest weather All sunshine in the lane. And I was but a plow-boy. And she a little miss, I never ventured near her Enough to steal a kiss. SONGS AND BALLADS. lOI I left the plow team standing Across the furrowed land, To meet her 'neath the hawthorn, Yet never touched her hand. And Time has plowed some furrows Across the plow-boy's brow, The wearied team is standing Anear the hedge-rows now. 'Tis growing dusky evening, I feel the fluttering pain Which stirred my heart this morning With Susie in the lane. TREE AND VINE. \^0i EE the tree all lonely standing, °f^^ Sways its sturdy form in air ; 5[^^ Lofty, lordly, and commanding — Yet of fruitful honors bare. With the tempest bravely battling ; — Still, in calm it doth repine ! And with voice of leafy prattling, Woos the tender clasping vine. See the vine so deftly tending Towards the strong arm of the tree. Filled with sweet desire of blending Strength and grace in harmony. Joined: — the world may war around them. And the clouds may lower and roar; Bonds that turn the storms have bound them, Crowned them one forevermore. Twain in one they stand together. One in form, and two in bloom. Giving to the sun-bright weather Sparkling beauty, sweet perfume ; SONGS AND BALLADS. IO3 Like a mated man and woman In their youngest love caress, Tree and vine are more than human In their growing tenderness. See the tree and vine forever Wedded — blossom, branch and root; Who could dare the tendrils sever ? Who would blast their promised fruit ? More than sister is to brother, More than mother is to son — They are all to one another, Always twain, and ever one. Picture wecided pair so tender. Clinging like the tree and vine; Living for autumnal splendor, Golden fruit and rosy wine — Wine that flows with gentle pressing, When the leaves are falling sear ; Crowning with the harvest blessing All the sunshine of the year. OUR ROOF-TREE. ^^^UR roof-tree protects with its arm ifl^rl '^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^°^^ 'round it clinging ; ]^A And far from the roar of alarm Our birds 'mid the branches are singing; They drop from the sky's airy blue That arches so tenderly o'er us ; They build and sing all the day through, And join in our happy home-chorus. We bar the world out in the night, To howl its wild wail of repining ; We lock in a world full of light. For Love is the sun ever shining. We shut out a world full of gloom, And shut in a world full of beauty; Perfumed with the roses that bloom So bright in the pathway of duty. Content is our treasure untold. Which grows with the taking and giving ; Its metal is dearer than gold. And pays the rich bounty of living. We bar the world out in the night, To howl its wild wail of repining ; SONGS AND BALLADS. IO5 We lock in a world full of light, For Love is the sun ever shining. O pilgrim ! a shrine is at hand ; Behold, where our garden is gleaming. All green in the desert of sand; Come drink of the clear fountain streaming. Abide with us all the day long, To rest from the turmoil of roaming ; And join in our festival song When fire-light's the bride of the gloaming. We bar the world out in the night. To howl its wild wail of repining; We lock in a world full of light, For Love is the sun ever shining. Renown may be bartered and sold. And Fame is a blood-chilling story, When Honor stands shivering with cold, While shining in garments of glory. The heart has a realm of its own. And Love is its holy defender ; With Virtue a queen on the throne, What monarch can vie with her splendor ? We bar the world out in the night. To howl its wild wail of repining; We lock in a world full of light. For Love is the sun ever shining. MUSTER DAY. llAhLM Wake, boys ! Rouse to work and pleasure — This is muster day. Colonel Baldwin passed the window, Plumed, and mounted fleet — Sword and sash and gilded trappings. Ringing down the street. Every house must wave its colors For our martial show ; We must feel how strong the arm is. Trained to strike a blow. Playing with the bare, bright weapon Nerves the hand for need. Peace wears scars of bloody battle, And again may bleed. Sunrise ! What a tide of people Streaming up and down ! Old and young in rippling currents. Country flows to town ! SONGS AND BALLADS. lO/ All the Streets and roads are swarming, All the land is gay, Rallying round a grand old banner. Keeping muster day. Men and boys are playing soldier, Up in arms at once ; Some with harmless, rusty fire-locks ; Some with cornstalk guns. Underneath a brand new banner, As a rainbow fair, Fife and drum, and columns tramping, Move to Court-house Square. Giddy girls and jolly matrons Mingle in our joys ; How their eyes, with pleasure brimming, Glory in their boys. Every face, each throbbing bosom, Glows with tension strung. Youth is ripe and age is youthful — All are fair and young. See our "old man" in his wagon. Bending 'neath his years. Honored by the hearty "huzza ! " Three right ringing cheers. I08 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Relic of the Revolution, Wrestling with his quid, Blinking, nodding fond approval : — " Just the way we did." Wagons stud the yards and sideways ; Horses, dogs, and cattle Seem to feel the merry-making Of the mimic battle. Servants for the day are masters, Even Afric's Tan Shines forgetful of its colors' Branding social ban. Cider-press and still of Bourbon Flow in plenteous store. All drink quite enough for pleasure — Some a trifle more. Oratory's plumed spread-eagle Makes its rocket flight ; Thus the day ; then all the muster Dance the livelong night. Wake, boys ! There's a glooming shadow Hides the morning star, Spreads and blacks the whole horizon — This is threatening war. SONGS AND BALLADS. IO9 Men, awake ! We're boys no longer, Toys we cast away ; Comes a contest worthy manhood — This is muster day. Every man must prove his mettle When his country calls ; Past the time for playing soldier When the old flag falls. Earnest faces flash for action, Troops march up and down ; Pouring from the lanes and highways, Soldiers fill the town ! Clanging swords and tramping columns Sound a war-like din. While the struggle of the ranks is, Who can first get in. Trembling maids and anxious matrons At the front again, Kiss adieus and sob their good-byes : Baldwin leads his men! Underneath the bright new banner. As the rainbow fair, Fife and drum, and columns tramping March from Court-house Square. no THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Husbands, fathers, sons and brothers Marshalled to a man ! And, as in the days of muster, There is Afric's Tan. Comes the muffled battle's thunder Rolling up from far. While the fitful lightning flashes Show where storms the war. Fields are plowed with shares of earthquakes. Gorged with hasty graves, And a pall falls over hearthstones — But the old flag waves. Wake ! The ruddy day is dawning Cloudless now as when Rosy flush aroused to muster Baldwin and his men. Underneath a storm-rent banner. Borne through many a fray, Tramp the thinned ranks home to glory. This is muster day. Maids and matrons from their windows Bend and count the cost; Peace is won, but eyes are straining, Looking for their lost. SONGS AND BALLADS. Ill Still the skyey, radiant standard, As a rainbow fair, Shines above the war-scarred veterans Home, in Court-house Square. MISCELLANEOUS. OUR MARY. WjlEM of purest cosmic mould — Crystal birth ; ^-i Too precious to be bought or sold- Priceless worth. Lily sprung from lucent soil, Fair as light; Of earth, that earth can never spoil — Spotless white. Mary, maid of regal mien — Royal line ; A lady, born to be a queen — Right divine. Daughter, dutiful and dear — Blooming May; In Home's unclouded hemisphere, Star of Day. MISCELLANEOUS. II3 Woman — self-contained, complete, Grandly staid Of sentient being's sweetest sweet, Nature-made. Young Aurora of the West — All a-flame; Our Mary, beautiful and blest — Saintly name. Genius crowned with glory's bright Halo beam ; Illuming earth with heavenly light — Fulfilled dream. THE OLD POST ROAD. ^K|T HOME ! I'm off the railway ! )/ V I Returned from distant lands ; <=^^i Not far across the woods and fields An old-time farm house stands. Around the hills and meadows There winds a shady way — My bare feet pattered down the path In memory's yesterday. I'll walk in cool of morning, With staff and travelling pack, And give them all a glad surprise To see the wanderer back, But things look strangely distant — Review them as I may ; The landscape's playing hide-and-seek, Or I have lost my way. No trees arch o'er the by-path, — Some blackened stumps remain ; A pulseless hush is on the earth — Like holding breath, in pain. MISCELLANEOUS. II5 Hello! — no echo answers, In pert reply to noise ; — I'm not a tramp. I've just come home To see the girls and boys. No cattle on the hillsides, No warbling in the glen ; No living thing appears to meet, And know me home again. The old Post Road — like vagrant — Creeps slow up-hill and down, And leads no throng of life, between The country and the town. The blinking wayside tavern Is crumbling, stone by stone : The wheezy landlord smokes, and yawns, And nods, and dreams, alone. He rouses when I greet him, And makes a distant nod ; So, — I'm a stranger pilgrim here — An alien to the sod. What means this dumb appealing — This blank and stony glare ? Oh for a thunder-bolt to burst The muteness of the air ! Il6 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Now comes one sound familiar — The falling waters' sigh ; I stand upon the mill stream's brink ; Its depths are draining dry. O memory ! necromancer, I feel thy loving spell, And I am walking in a dream ! What hinders me to tell How childhood slept one evening, And magic changes came — Transforming scenes, concealing things, Yet leaving sight the same ? If this be Chester Valley — Its every nook I know ! A haunting something whispers me ; — That's forty years ago. So long ? And yet I wonder Where 'bide the solemn men Whose plowshares conquered and defend The colony of Penn. Their hills' smooth, rounded shoulders Were clad in waving corn ; Adown the vale the whetting scythe Rang in the harvest morn. MISCELLANEOUS. 117 I smell the mowing season — Aroma of sweet hay ; Tall timothy and clover blooms — The farmers' prized bouquet. I see them, and I know them, With all their quiet, quaint ways, — The pauses, and the silences That punctuate their days. They meet the storm's encounters With introspective calm ; Their faith and savory deeds distil For every wound a balm. And here's the old home humble — Our family abode ; Its eyes are dim with looking long Upon the dusty road. The porch that sheltered nestlings Is broken, worn, and thin ; The shrubs and twining vines are gone, And sohtude's within. Where, where are all the children Who watched the travel pass. And pressed a round and rosy face On every pane of glass ? Il8 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Gone ! scattered o'er the wide world By tempests roughly blown ; The seed, so richly garnered here, 'Mong rocks and thorns is sown. And comes again that whisper — Like wind-wail soft and low ; The dwellers in this vale have moved Since forty years ago ! But I am here — a child still ; — And looking for lost toys: Don't hide from me ; I've just come home To see the girls and boys. I know the dear old faces. And while I gaze they seem So friendly near — so faintly far — Dim wakings in a dream. 'Tis memory's fond enchantment ; The whisper 's true I know ; Yet I am anchored in that deep Of forty years ago. At young affection's altar, Forever decked in green, I summon from the depth of years Some forms that filled the scene ! MISCELLANEOUS. I IQ When I, — a child with children — Believed the world began Just where the "big road " started out, And ended where it ran. John Connor was the driver Of dashing four-in-hand — A very lord — the greatest man That lived in all the land. He brought the Village Record, And strewed the news along The wayside, chatting, filling in The pauses of his song. Afar his horn resounded — With echo-winding toot, And summoned old and young to see The wonders in the boot. He sat so proud and grandly On throne of blue and gold ; — It can't be told how big he looked To little eight-year-old In watching for the stage-coach With craving child-like trust. To round the cove of yonder hill In billowy rolling dust. 120 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. 'Tis past its time of morning : The trumpet voice is dumb ; At noon-day sounds the dinner horn, And still it does not come. I hear the ringing concert That charmed these hills and dells, When teamsters came with caravans — Came down with tingling bells. The horses pranced to music, Nor seemed to feel their load ; They hauled fine things from Wonderland Along the old Post Road. White-hooded market wagons, Like nuns in solemn line, Marched on, and on, forever on As seeking some far shrine. Their faces — drooping downward Concealed their inward cheer With dairy, farm, and garden fruits. They circled round the year. Came droves of broad-horned cattle — Their lowing still I hear ; They breathed the sweet of clover-fields And begged their evening cheer ; MISCELLANEOUS. 121 And plunging deep in pasture, They chased their hunger down ; At morning's dawn in shadowy Hne They moved to market town. The tramp ! I knew his plodding, And turning in the lane ; He looked so tired and hungry-like - And crooked as his cane. Low bending 'neath his bundle — His pleading piteous " yarn " Insured a slice of meat and bread, And lodging in the barn. I stand here like a wind-harp Played on by breezy June ; And voices of the shadow-land Have pitched a tender tune. And memory — weird minstrel Sweeps o'er the sobbing strings : The strong man is in bondage held, While happy childhood sings. The ringing chimes of childworld Are echo's faint refrain — The glimmer of the golden days That never come again. 122 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. The pulsing warmth of childheart Is cooled with frosty rime ; The breath of early roses comes With pungent hints of thyme. There's shadow in the sunshine — A touching tinge of gloom ; The valley sits in beauty still But bears no human bloom ; No children romping gleeful ; No lambs within the fold ; The flocks and herds are lost, or strayed Away from shepherds old. The place, there's no mistaking, — For there's the Barren Ridge, And this is babbling Riddley Creek — And arching it the bridge. Oh ! for one word of welcome To lay that goblin wail, There sure must be some relic left Of this once teeming vale. Hark ! 'tis the old mill humming. The same dull, drowsy tune — A song of life, yet not in tune With bright and breezy June. MISCELLANEOUS. 1 23 Of all the folks familiar, Is there no living one ? The aged miller must be left ; No, 'tis his aged son ! I'll speak to him : " Friend, tell me What keeps the stage ? " He said : " The stage has not been running since The travel has been dead. The Post Road's just a wrinkle — No passengers, nor mail ; 'Twas ruined by yon iron horse That steams across the vale." The stage is stopped ! No wonder All things are old and slow ; Since nothing wheels along the days That drowsing come and go. The mill alone is moving To make a funeral meal, • With scarcely water-power enough To turn the droninsr wheel. " John Connor — do you know him ? He used to drive the stage ? " " Aye — he was made Assemblyman When railroads 'came the rage. 124 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. He's dead : his son did badly — And went to rack by rail ; He drives an engine on yon bridge And frightens all the vale. " I'm looking for some young folks. And playmates whom I know; I ran away, but still 'tis not So very long ago. " Lo ! many years the youngsters Have left these parts by rail, — Last seen upon yon railroad bridge, A rushing o'er the vale." No school is kept at Edgmont — Behind yon hillock hid ? " No school is kept — the teacher quit Before the children did ; And then the few odd leavings Went off to school by rail — Went off in smoke o'er yonder bridge That sweeps across the vale. " Farewell, sweet dream of Eden ! Dispelled by hunger-pain ; Since all the boys and girls are gone, I take the evening train. MISCELLANEOUS. 125 Adieu ! these haunts of childhood, They're e'en an old man's tale ; A last look from the railway bridge. That leaps across the vale. DINNER IN THE STREET. |(jp;^^ALF the city sleeps ; r^^ The other half is waking: — 'tM) // The one in downy deeps, The other — shivering, shaking. A winter day is breaking, And Frosty Morning creeps Slow down the steeple-steeps. Then, like a beast of prey, Sly, foraging for Day, Leaps into lanes and alleys — The town's ravines and valleys — Where, cramped, and sore, and aching, The poor are piled in heaps. So, half and half, divided By penury and pelf. The world is grown blind-sided, And does not know itself. Where darkness latest lingers In drowsy Twilight's lap, Grim Labor's bony fingers, With savage rap-tap-tap ! MISCELLANEOUS. 12/ First break the morning nap ; And out from unknown deeps, In night-fall snow and sleet, The early plodding feet Their devious ways are taking — Brave foot-prints new paths making, While half the city sleeps. Among the thousand others. Hard-working men and brothers, There's one with burdened back Stops timidly before A silver-plated door. And drops his tiresome pack — A saw and wooden rack — And rigs with supple skill His muscle to a mill Beside a cordwood stack; And straight applies the power. This early work-day hour. Along the Avenue The morning nap is broken, Without a sign or token Of daylight creeping through The heavy-curtained rooms Of Fashion bred in tombs. 128 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Soon stony fronts are giving Some hints and wi> THE MYSTIC. MYSTIC being I call to mind, // V Who wanders o'er earth alone ; £!t/l\ Amongst the millions of human kind He mingles and works — unknown. Who is the stranger ? What is his name ? His rank, his mission, his sphere ? The passing wonder is whence he came, And what is he doing here ? He comes where masses of people meet. In every clime and land ; None hear the tread of his slippered feet, Yet many have grasped his hand. I see him now ! He is smiling — there — With features of genial mould ; He's young, and more than a mortal fair, Yet flourished in days of old. Start not — his manners are human — see, He breathes in a healthful calm ; His manhood is gentle, his spirit free. His heart is pure as the lamb. 156 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. How strange his being — so old, yet young ! Was ever such mortal before ? He hves — the type of lineage, sprung From mystical sages of yore. He burst from a dim Olympian height When first the races began ; He bears the Orient's banner of light Adown the ages of man. 'Mid Spring's early blooms — before the flood. When nature was blithe and young, He tilled the green earth where Babel stood, And spoke the primeval tongue. In Shinar he saw the human tide, Which swelled with a tumult grand, In billowy cohorts surging wide — Dash on to the Promised Land. Around him peoples lay wrecked and tossed, •The sport of the Storm-King's breath ; He saved some fragments, where all seemed lost And conquered the phantom Death ! He saw the Old World wonders gleam, As they rose in shadowy light — Like golden domes that shine in a dream. On the dark back-ground of night. MISCELLANEOUS. 15/ Another morn -•- the vision had fled ; He walked amid ruins alone ; And nothing toid of the vanished dead Save histories carved in stone. He knew their story, and wandered on — One lingering look he cast ; Then rose in the sphere of a brighter dawn, And shed the light of the past. The springs of ages renewed his youth With blossoms and change sublime ; He found the gold of eternal truth. And coined the ingots for Time. He drank at the Chaldean fount of thought, Ere yet it was stained with guile; And, deep in mysterious knowledge, taught The dusky priests of the Nile. By sea and by land, — from coast to coast Did the wondrous Chaldean roam ; Where Israel's Kings led the Judean host He built for the Tribes a home. He passed the dread ordeal of strife, And glows — a symbol of Truth; He quaffed the soul's elixir of Life, And blooms in immortal youth. 158 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. A mystic ! — come from the ancient days With wisdom, and craft, and lore ; Whose daily walks are the humble ways Where virtue ennobles the poor. He tempers the heat of passions strong By language of tender tone ; His voice has a deeper charm than song. And every tongue is his own. He meets the scourge of the desert, grim, And reeking with spoils and gore ; He speaks — the barbarian yields to him, And revels in blood no more. I see him go on an errand of love For a brother oppressed with care ; In secret he kneels to the Throne above For a brother's soul, in prayer. He locks in his bosom the sacred breath Of confidence held most dear; The erring he guides from the vale of death. And whispers a word of cheer. The guard of Beauty, he stands by her side, Between her weakness and harm. And mother, sister, daughter, or bride, Is safe at his good right arm. MISCELLANEOUS. 1 59 He draws a magic circle around Th' ideal that charms his mind ; None dare intrude on the sacred ground Where love and virtue are shrined. Where daylight glooms and the air is defiled, And worth is by penury tried, A widow gasps — dying — "My child ! my child!' The stranger stands at her side. His magic revives her fading sight With joy's most exquisite thrill ; The soul of the m.other is crowned with light, The child has a guardian still. From drooping age's tottering form He lifts a cumbersome load; He shields the shelterless head from storm, And smooths life's rugged road. With Death he enters his presence grand To brighten the closing scene ; And in the grave with fraternal hand He plants the evergreen. I see him gleam through the battle's smoke In glorious prowess revealed ; He turns the edge of the hostile stroke. And foes part friends on the field. i6o THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. The mystic plies his wonderful art ; — His temples adorn all lands ; In secret he builds, and moulds the heart For " the house not made with hands." And when the wrongs of humanity plead For a hero to lead the van, The power is rife in the loins of need, And the Times bring forth the Tnan. The heart of mankind conceived : — he came, The child of Faith and Desire ; His life is the spirit of earthly flame — Baptized with Heavenly fire. Whence comes the magical charm he bears ? His purpose is great and good ! His mother inspired the smile he wears, And named him — Brotherhood ! He honors the parent that gave him birth With love that never will cease, And hence his days are long on the earth ; — His mission is crowned with peace. An artisan ; yet he wears no sign That might his calling declare ; Within and not on his bosom shine The trowel, compass and square. MISCELLANEOUS. l6l A mystic ? Yes, if power for good Be proof of the mystic's art ! A stranger? Ah! no, for Brotherhood Reigns over the realm of Heart. RAKING HAY. \w^r?/WAS in the days of mowing %ir IM With honest arm and scythe ; ''' jLLf When neighbors helped in neighbors' fields, And harvest hands were blythe. And I was then a stripling — They called me half a hand — Among the stalwart, sunbrowned men Who tilled the_^clover-land. The lines of mowers mowing With swinging pace along ; The cadence of the rhythmic strokes Set heart a-beating song. Sweet music of the whetstones. Like morning bells in chime. Tuned mellow, through some harsher sounds — My heart's still beating time. Right onward marched the mowers Knee deep in flowering grass ; They ranged according to their skill Like school-boys in a class. MISCELLANEOUS. 163 And strength was brought to trial. And strove with wrestler's wroth — Who could the smoothest stubble cut. And who the widest swath ? How proudly strove the leader — The swiftest and the best ! He held his place a cut or two Ahead of all the rest ; Allowed no one to lead him The breadth of brawny hand : — A master of the mowing-craft, He ruled the clover-land. The morning beams came glancing The fluttering tree-tops thro', Like golden bills of birds that bent To sip the sparkling dew. And then in mild mid-morning, Began the harvest day, And all hands — girls and boys and men- Were merry making hay. Then came a choice of partners Who could the best agree. And lots were drawn by glances quick — Kate always fell to me ! 164 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Now turn thy glass, O mem'ry, Upon that harvest-day, Which poured its sunshine over me And Katie making hay. The morning call of luncheon To grassy table laid, Assembled all the haymakers Beneath a lone tree's shade ; A bliss of rest and breathing By leafy fingers fanned — And then another haying-heat Raced o'er the clover land. We spread the swaths commingling In beds of rustling brown, And rich field-odors floated up On wings of feathery down. Then rolled the ridgy windrows — The triumphs of the day : I dreamed o'er triumphs of a life With Katie raking hay. She looked all over bonnet — Of gingham, blue and white — Her face's roses in the shade Glanced out their own sweet light. MISCELLANEOUS. 1 65 Her rake would get entangled Sometimes, by locking mine, And when she said : " Provoking thing ! " E'en quarreling was divine ! A spring of bubbling waters Welled up in woodside cool, And ever at the field's end hedge Both thirsted for the pool. She drank from out a goblet I made her of my hands, And, kneeling at her feet, I quaffed From cup of golden sands. The last load in the twilight Dragged slowly towards the stack — Just like a great brown burly beast With children on its back ; And flecky clouds hung over, Of softest creamy hue. Like handfuls plucked from cotton bales And dashed against the blue. I'm dreaming now of haytime. The fields and skies are bright ; I see among the harvesters A bonnet — blue and white — 1 66 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. And Katie's face is in it, A shade, it may be, tanned ; But 'tis the fairest face of all That grace the clover land. The clover crop was gathered In harvests long ago ; Another partner Katie chose For life's uphill windrow. But oh, of all the sunshine That ever blessed a day — The crown still shimmers over me And Katie raking hay. THE OLD CLERK. 1 ft 'fHK old clerk climbed on his counting- '" room stool, ^' Prompt as the early sun ; His day-book and ledger, rubber and rule Were brought forth one by one. He seemed to shrink From the spots of ink That frowned on him there alone ; And sometimes grimly smiled to think That his hands were not his own. Through shadows thick falling around him, No light can dim vision descry ; In the fetters by which fate has bound him There's nothing for him but to die. The old clerk sat on his high-top stool All bowed with toil and woe ; And dreamed of a boy who romped at school A many a year ago. l68 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. His heart beat light, No shade of bhght Had crossed his sunny face ; His being was all golden bright — A type of youthful grace. No stains were on his delicate hands ; His face beamed health and joy ; Time turned his glass ! — the glowing sands Ran golden towards the boy. Lost voices swelled with silver ring, His clouded sense grew clear, Bleak Winter melted into Spring — The springtime of the year. Life's morning dawned with ruddy flame, Arrayed in vernal sheen The frost of seventy years became The dew of seventeen. The dream soon passed — Dreams never last ; That youth is worn and old ; A cheerless life Of toil and strife Hath left him grim and cold. The ghosts of all his drudging years Before his vision rise ; The shrouded form of Hope appears, And mocks his sunken eyes. MISCELLANEOUS. 1 69 This was no dream ; he raised his face O'er fancy's flattering mask ; He then resumed his lowly place, And plied his daily task. On the verge of the world he lingers, And croons a moaning refrain. While drumming with trembling fingers To the plaintively dolorous strain. Look at his dreary prison cell — Excluding air and light ; The prisoned eye alone can tell If it be day or night. Spiders of olden-time had spread Their gossamer net-work there ; But even they, aflrighted, fled From the dank, unwholesome air. The shrinking tracks of the old clerk's life All center in this dark room ; His little ones and his patient wife Were hidden in deeper gloom. They cowered in the cold, deep city, In rags, and squalor, and dread — ■ Too proud for the guerdon of pity, While starving for daily bread. To his hapless fortune they clung With the feverish gripe of despair ; I/O THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. When they perished, each death-knell rung "Amen " to a wailing prayer. These ties of a home and the hearth Were sundered, one by one ; They fell to the pitying earth. And left him alone — alone ! Like a tree in a wide desert plain — A figure of mute despair, That never can blossom again, All branchless, leafless and bare. You would say he never was young, But always sombre and cold : From Winter and Ruin sprung — A child born hoary and old. Not a flower of his springtime lingers ; He sits at his desk resigned, With the rust of ink on his fingers — The mould of age in his mind. His ledgers are ranged on a shelf. In a musty, regular row. As so many parts of himself Abandoned under the snow. A mournful history trace On every faded page ; From the flourish of youthful grace. To signs of trembling age. MISCELLANEOUS. 17I Not a flower of his springtime lingers; He sits at his desk resigned. With the rust of ink on his fingers — The mould of age in his mind. The old clerk climbed down his ladder-like stool ; His long day's work was done, — Ledger and pen, rubber and rule Were laid by, one by one. He locked once more The office door, And blessed the setting sun He'd blessed it many a time before, His work day being done. The daylight flashed o'er dale and hill, And gilt the city's spires : — One form was cold, one heart was still, Unwarmed by morning's fires. The stool whereon the clerk grew gray Stood vacant, grim, and lone ; His spirit spurned the urn of clay, His last day's work was done. No green for his memory lingers ; He lived and died resigned, With the rust of ink on his fingers — The mould of age in his mind. SHOSHONE. ft MHIS song is of the West. " The orient beam That gilds the dewy gateway of the morn Discovers only fierce barbarian hordes Crouching amid decay : — dark sentinels Who stand the night-watch of the ancient world. The living torrent left some stagnant pools Around the fountain, while the swelling tide Swept on resistless — following the day. Thus civilization leads her noisy train Westward, and ploughs a fertile belt of earth, For sustenance ; and builds up mountain high Her monuments, to crumble in their turn. And still beyond are wide, untrodden fields, Unfathomed solitudes, and desert wilds. And more barbarians ; dusky forest kings Of narrowing realms ; and villages that flit Before the plough, the anvil, and the loom. They leave the earth unbroken by their tread. And nature's face, untarnished by their touch, And heaven's clear air untainted by their breath These untamed wanderers. God's work remains As moulded by the great creative Hand — Of all His world the purest in the West. MISCELLANEOUS. 1/3 Now let us venture past the scattered van Of Empire's army ; past the pioneer Who guards the border ; past old hunting grounds Deserted by both hunter and his game ; Beyond the hills that gird the Mormon valley; To the far, trackless wilds of Idaho, Where the sun shines the brightest on our land. And burnishes the earth with sands of gold. Pause, and view Nature in her morning robes — As fresh and fair as when she put them on To welcome life around these mountain shrines Here, a sweet river wanders to the West — Its current dimpled, deep and crystal clear, Glides calmly, smoothly in its dreamless rest Wrapped in the glossy mantle of the sky. Behold a change ! — as when an avalanche Leaps down the highest Alps, and drowns the vale. The sleeping waters startled from their bed Rush o'er a chasm's brink with wail and crash , What time the trumpet Canon's echoing horn The deafening blast prolongs. Listening afar, Old Druid mountains nod their snowy heads With grave applause. Near, eagles nurse their young Rocked by the surges, — dripping with the spray. 174 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. From nature's loom descends the silver sheet Endless, inwove with every sunlight tint And fringed with feathery foam. The maddened tide, Full fifty fathoms, thunders down th' abyss, Then steepy shores the angry waters guide — A rapid river dashing towards the sea. We call the marvellous cataract Shoshone — Wild as its savage name. The jewelled queen Of torrents, throned in misty solitude. Reigns not alone in grandeur. Kindred springs Mould kindred features in the veins of earth. Thrice do the foaming waters surge and plunge : They hang 'mid folds of shadowy clouds on high ; Then dash in clouds of diamond mist below, And rainbows arch them in the middle sky. The cloistered genius of the wilderness Holds converse with the spirit of the flood — Endowed with life, and language eloquent. I, too, would speak with thee, whose playful hand Pours streaming silver down the mountain side, From earth's exhaustless urn ; whose deep voice rang For prayer in Nature's high cathedral dome, To glorify the young creation's birth. MISCELLANEOUS. I75 Who art thou, Shoshone ? Dread solitudes Appalled thine infancy and nurse thy age. The roving spirit of an Indian King Disturbed thy bosom and impelled thy steps Towards shining peaks that lured thee from afar To that fell plunge ; and thy untrammelled youth With pride and daring sought the sunset clime. And fields of glory in the unlocked wilds Reveal thy mystery ! Come forth and speak Of periods that have flown like shadows o'er thee. One word would fall a plummet in the void Of circling cycles, and unpeopled realms. All, all is silent, save the ceaseless wail Of headlong torrents on the desert air. That wail was silence through long ages past. Where no ear is, the hollow waves of sound Float meaningless, on seas of nothingness. So Time is not, but in recorded hours Struck from the vacuum of Eternity. Since men have sought the desert for its sands Thy regal pomp has fallen. Thy retinue Affrighted fled : Thou'rt sitting in the sun. Thy white beard streaming, and thy shaggy locks All misty with the gray of centuries — Abandoned monarch on a liquid throne. The crown of sunbeams wreathed upon thy brow Conceals the furrowed scars of rifting time. 176 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Thine eyes with starry lustre glow. Thy breast Heaves with the joy of immortality. Thy mantle of ethereal fabric glows, With change eternal, studded o'er with gems. And like a live cloud rolls around thy form In skyey convolutions : such thy state — And such thy home impaled by frosty peaks. Thy flood, Shoshone, typifies a race Peaceful and tranquil, till its fall and flight — Yet still unconquered — ever roving free, And never chained to toil. The white man's face Warns thee of bridges, cities, throngs of men To ravage thy domain. Thine age untamed — Transfixed upon that dire Promethean rock — Is not exempt from chains. Thy pride may bend To millions that will swarm to mock thy power, — His fate who carried Gaza's gates of old. ZELDA. ?if^\ER lone heart mused, her sad face smiled : Iri^l She seemed a frail, fond, earnest child.' 4J=^)// Her eyes were large and strange and deep — Eyes one would think could never sleep — Wild orbs that flashed an inner light ! Which pierced the film of outward sight, As lightning rends the veil of night. A power of vision some inherit To see at once both form and spirit, And rapturous visions oft beguiled The spirit of the artist child, And lured her where old temples stand In some far distant sunny land. An infant wonder Zelda grew To all who saw her — all who knew. She left her young companions' games For higher walks and nobler aims. They missed her answers in the class. And sought her 'mid the flowers and grass, Or where the streamlet softly purled, And sang of nature's inner world ; 1/8 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES, Half conscious only — half in dream Her fancy floated down the stream. And soon the ocean rolled in view — That mystery of arching blue ! She saw the heavens darkly frown O'er deeps where stately ships go down ; Beyond the gulf of rocks and gales She marked the gently wafted sails, And still beyond she traced the strand That girt around the sunny land. Sweet Zelda bloomed as wild flower blows, Bright as the rarest mountain rose. The wise reproved, the thoughtless smiled, And passed the idle, dreaming child, While lessons taught by mighty Art Were bursting then her burdened heart. She scorned the curb of form's control. And nursed the spirit in her soul ; Till fair upon the canvas grew The outlines of the truths she knew. Soon deepening touches there revealed That she had Nature's book unsealed — And read! Her trembling pencil traced Studies and themes, as oft effaced ; Then bolder flashed the living light. And truth, the charmer, filled the sight. MISCELLANEOUS. 1 79 So Zelda painted. Art to her Was God's most sinless worshipper ; Sainted and stainless from its birth, A type of all that's pure on earth ; Interpreter of language, given To smooth the rugged path to heaven. High Art ! Holy God-like power To live an age in one short hour. Thus Zelda lived from all apart. She toiled, and toiled alone with art ; Neglect and ruin in its wake Bruised her young heart, but could not break ; Her faith was strong, though hope's dim star Could barely cast its beams so far To light her yet unheeded name From dark obscurity to fame ; The dim star glimmered o'er the strand That poets sing — the sunny land. And soon the happy west winds blow And Zelda sails in morning glow. When bounding o'er the billows free, She knew her young dream of the sea; Wherein she seemed a child no more, And courted breakers, waves and roar. The prescient vision told her life — Her heart was armed for nobler strife. l80 . THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. The light shone brighter o'er her home Among the masters of old Rome. The great of earth, who stand sublime, Defiant of the storms of time, As brothers loved, as masters taught, Supreme in highest realms of thought. Their stone and canvas breathe for aye ! They live — true art can never die. 'Mid fortune's frowns, and pain, and strife The brave young girl toiled on for life ; Not life which fades with fleeting breath, But vital power which conquers death. Where cottages are scattered thin, Beyond the city's dust and din, Fair Zelda plied her busy hand. And fairer grew the sunny land. Within her studio rapt she stood. Her great ambition at its flood ; Palette and pencil laid aside, She viewed a recent touch with pride ; Ecstatic hope wore no disguise. She struggled for a nation's prize : A royal tribute, set apart To grace the roll of modern art. Her wild emotions who can know? What art can paint her features' glow, MISCELLANEOUS. 151 As thoughts tumultuous ebb and flow? With genius flashing from the walls, Hope crowned her queen in stately halls ; The central mark of wondering eyes — The artist girl who won the prize. A throng besieged the palace gates Where artists, trembling, wooed the Fates. Zelda stood there — unnoticed, lone. Great in herself, but still unknown. A rush — a thousand voices' din Hummed like a distant storm within. "The prize ! " rang out above the roar , Zelda beheld and heard no more ! Her name was voiced from ground to dome, And borne aloft to Mother Rome. Her picture won ; the crowd around Trod softly, as on hallowed ground. Now came a painful, breathless pause — Then burst the thunders of applause. So Zelda triumphed — alien born — 'Gainst rival plots and petty scorn. None questioned age, or sex, or birth — Such art belongs to all the earth. Where'er she moved she heard her name In tones of love — and this was fame. A whispered hush ? The boisterous glee Grew tranquil as a summer sea. 102 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. The throng moved wide on either hand, Awed by the symbol of command. A lady of the land stood there, Whose stately mien and queenly air Proclaimed an empress, pure and good, A type of noble womanhood. " Zelda ! " she called — that magic name Rang through the hall ; the artist came. And Zelda knew her royal guest, And sobbed aloud upon her breast. The artist and the queen were bound By nature's bond on equal ground ; The might of genius towered elate, Nor bowed before the regal state ; The trusting girl dismissed her fears. The Queen dissolved in Woman's tears. The tender greeting o'er — behold On Zelda's neck a cross of gold. SONGS OF THE DA^A/'N. IS morning, and the rising day I Has donned his frosty robe of gray ; The stars — bright sentries of the skies Blink at the dawn with drowsy eyes, Then one by one their exit make. And vanish when the world's awake. Awake ! yet midnight's deepest gloom Still hovers in the darkened room. Ye sleepers ! hear the vocal swells Sung to the chime of matin bells ; They come from Labor's gleeful band, The native minstrels of the land, Birds, in their songs, from hedge and tree. Chant Nature's wild excess of glee ; In turn, their merry notes tune man, And then he sings — because he can. The earth's a business place ; its throngs Beguile their toil with cheerful songs. The World's reflector is the Press, Which gleams like day in morning dress. And casts its radiance in the gloom Of many a darkly curtained room. 184 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. The slothful, while supine they lie, Shut in from light, and air, and sky, May gather from the newsboy's song How fast Time's current sweeps along. "We come like heralds of the morn. Nor value praise, nor care for scorn ! We come from many a tottering shed, With scarce a blanket for a bed. Our chinky roofs admit the light, By which we count the hours of night, As star-beams through the rafters stray, Until we hail the break of day. Soon cries of ' Morning Papers ' pour An earnest plaint at every door; And upper windows, here and there. Are raised, admitting light and air. And thus we wander up and down Until we 'rouse the sleeping town." The farm-yard minstrel chanticleer — Lord of the roost for many a year — Rings out. the morning's loud alarm. And wakens up the drowsy farm. The plow-boy bounds upon the lawn. And yokes his team at early dawn ; He plows and sows the fallow field, Expectant of the harvest's yield ; MISCELLANEOUS. 1 85 While furrow deep he plods along, He sings his happy morning song : " We sturdy sons of honest toil, Who guide the plow and till the soil, Secure the brightest bloom of health, And open all the springs of wealth. " The stream which turns the busy mill First ripples in a mountain rill; We trace the current to its birth. And find it trickling from the earth. " From earth we draw the golden store Of fruit, and grain, and shining ore; Ours are the springs ; we drink our fill And thrive beside the sparkling rill. " And as the stream, meandering free. Pays tribute to the swallowing sea, So we to hungry cities yield The riches of the mine and field. " No treasure of the earth is found By lofty flights above the ground ; Star-gazing swains their fortunes mar Who do not court the Morning Star." 1 86 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. At early dawn, upon the glade Trips forth the rosy dairy-maid. Her form is lithe, her face is bright. Revealed in mellow, misty light. Aurora's self is not more sweet. With dew-beads on her naked feet. Than is the simple country girl With eyes of blue and teeth of pearl, And cherry lips, whence issue wreaths Of perfumed mist, that morning breathes; Which, curling 'mong her tresses brown, Half veil her homespun rustic gown. The marble whiteness of her arms Suggests a wealth of hidden charms Brighter than painters' art e'er taught. Rounder than ever chisel wrought. Now hear the maiden, fresh and hale, Sweet warbling o'er her milking pail : "A country girl I'm proud to be; The country is the home for me ! A reigning belle I would not live For all the power the world can give. Oh, tell me not of masques and balls. The paint and glare of gilded halls ! But give me slumber's boon at night. And let me rise with mornine lisfht. MISCELLANEOUS. 1 8/ A country girl I'm proud to be ; The country is the home for me ! " Give me the strains of morning birds ; The bugle notes of lowing herds ; And let me quaff the sparkling wine Drawn foaming from the generous kine. I would not waste my life away, To crown the night, by robbing day. For all the gold and all the gems Of monarchs and their diadems. A country girl I'm proud to be ; The country is the home for me ! " The city sounds and songs float o'er us. In deep and never ending chorus; The human maelstrom never sleeps, But ebbs and flows as ocean's deeps. The night of pleasure drowses on Till startled by the rising dawn ; Its sickly lights fade one by one, As stars go out before the sun. Lone Riot sinks, and hears its knell In huckster's horn and milkman's bell — The echoes of those voices warm Which float in from the far-off farm. How little do ye know who sleep Of vigils that the lowly keep. i8S THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Who rise betimes each working day To drive starvation's wolf away. Ye view existence through the haze That curtains all your yesterdays ; Ye shine with night's reflected beams, And languish in a land of dreams. SALLIE BROWN, ^■^v^E live at home — plain, homely folks - Ji 4 / \ i| And let the world run riot. '\±MnLM Our family jars o'erflow with jokes — Our quarrels e'en are quiet. We have an infant band of three, All innocent and sweet ; Who chatter all in harmony With little pattering feet. This stream of twilight music fills Our measure of desire, When pouring forth its artless trills Around the evening fire. We've trouble, too, o'er which we muse, But do not tell the town ; Our kitchen teems with broils and stews — Dished up by Sallie Brown. Without more preface to begin ; — Who may be Sallie Brown ? A servant girl, we took her in, And soon she took us down. 190 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. She entered by the alley gate One night at nine or later ; We did not find until too late We'd caught an alligator, 'Twas winter time, and bitter cold ; We hired her as we thought ; We felt so cheap when we were sold And she so dearly bought. She did not suit — we missed some spoons, And other pantry ware : I lost my only pantaloons, Which left my wardrobe bare, I let them go without a fuss. And played philosopher : Our girl no more belonged to us, But we belonged to her. Beneath her spreading crinoline — No matter what she wore ; Those pantaloons so fitly mine — I never saw them more. We paid her off — yet still she stayed — Staid girl — from heel to crown : An all-time-serving servant maid Was our dear Sallie Brown. MISCELLANEOUS. I9I The kitchen claimed her sex and age And other quahfications ; But woman's rights were now the rage, And manly aspirations. Stuffed in among the pots and pans Were yellow covered novels — All mouldy with the stale romance Of ladies born in hovels. We had one hungry Christmas day, — Her last of kitchen duty, Before she threw herself away, To find herself a beauty. That day her conduct raised our ire ; The sky was dark and murky : Her lovers gossiped 'round the fire. And gobbled up our turkey. They drank our wine — with thirst increased By pastry, sweets and jam : They had no scruples o'er the feast, But closed it with a dram. I raved as mildly as I could I'm not a family snarler ; But hinted in a tone subdued, " She'd better take the parlor." 192 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. She took it — I could not object 'Tis rude to be uncivil : I bowed her in with mock respect, And wished her to the devil. I did not moan, nor sigh, nor curse, I did not even frown ; For many a home bears foibles worse Than those of Sallie Brown. A joke's a joke, while all agree To bear its point with patience; Our servant gave it out that we Were only poor relations. This cruel thrust, we passed it by — 'Tis so unkind to quarrel; The steel that flashes in a lie Will also point a moral. In time we e'en enjoyed the joke. So truthful was its ring ; It might be true of other folk, And laughter healed the sting. Our servant rules, and holds the keys. To all our household store; She'll fit the station by degrees, As some have done before. MISCELLANEOUS. 193 I took a city car one day, Used up and tired down ; But soon I gave my seat away — To whom ? Why, SalHe Brown. The people's servants, clerks and clowns Who rule the present hour Are just so many " Salhe Browns " Usurping place and power. We grieve to see their shameless tricks In days so dark and murky ; They wait the people's cuffs and kicks For eating up the turkey. The moral of the story's told ; The world is running riot; And better far than power or gold, Is plain domestic quiet. THE LEGEND OF A LEAF. ^S^^^E sat and talked together where "^ifWrfiw Magnolias were in bloom ; S±Jt/2JLi She had their blossoms in her hair. But in her features gloom. For I would start for other lands Before to-morrow's shine ; At parting I held both her hands And asked her to be mine. She took a bright magnolia leaf Which flowers were nestling in, And on it, while she hid her grief, She wrote with golden pin. Then handing me the leaf, she said : " Preserve this page with care. And meet me living, mourn me dead. My answer's written there. " 'Tis said such writing as I've done Upon the leaf's smooth green Will, after weeks or months have gone, Unfold its filmy sheen, MISCELLANEOUS. I95 And when the leaf is brown and sere, And pictures woe and blight, The letter tracings will appear In lines of living light." The pin upon her bosom glowed When last I held her hand ; The blank green leaf no message showed My heart could understand. Yet, handing me the leaf, she said : " Preserve this page with care, And meet me living, mourn me dead, My answer's written there." I journeyed far to other lands. But met no change of scene. For all the world was desert sands. With one far spot of green. And weeks and weary months had gone ; The treasured leaf each day I questioned, dreamed and mused upon, But it had naught to say. It was a trick by woman planned To soothe the parting grief. And now I know her lily hand Wrote nothing on the leaf. 196 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. I did not have her word to thank For deahng me this blow, Yet on the fading page's blank Was plainly written " No ! " And then I hid it from my sight, And journeyed on and on. Until I plunged in polar night, And all the green was gone. And once I dreamed she came and said : " Preserve the page with care. And meet me living, mourn me dead, My answer's written there." I saw her plain as ever stood A thing of mortal mould. While throbbed on breathing flesh and blood Her bosom's star of gold. I grasped the faded leaf and read — The letters seemed divine — " Shouldst meet me living, mourn me dead Forever I am thine." I hastened through the northern night, I crossed the desert's sand. And bright one morning dawned the light Of dear Magnolia Land. MISCELLANEOUS. I97 There had been pestilence and war, And ruin seemed to be. I saw a httle golden star On our magnolia tree. With trembling hand and loving care, And troubled thought within, I took a paper folded there And pinned with golden pin. And 'neath the whispering leaves I read The same words line for line : " Shouldst meet me living, mourn me dead, Forever I am thine." And still another word was there, For constancy alone. Which raised my heart from low despair When every hope had flown. My southern bird had taken flight Before the storm that fell ; Had winged her passage through the night And left that note to tell. And then I felt a sweet relief, While fiercer longings burned. I sent her my magnolia leaf To tell I had returned, 198 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. But followed it with fluttering haste No more from her I'll roam, For we are building in the waste The old magnolia home. ENDOWMENT. ^HERE was a meeting, late one summer night, Among the clouds on dim Olympus' height — A gathering of the Gods of Grecian story, In moonshine shimmer of their olden glory. Celestial types of Hellenic renown ; And all were present, from the Thunderer down. Grave matter, doubtless — war or want or wrong; Whatever's up — fit subject for a song. Where's a reporter with a classic head To take it down ? The Ancients are all dead. Time was when poets only could report Olympian councils of this sacred sort. But circumvent or circumscribe who can A nineteenth century newspaper man. In Protean brain and adamantine cheek Our bold Bohemian beats the ancient Greek. To head off dead-heads, squeeze out sponging bores. This secret conclave sat with guarded doors ; Yet, with their eyes alert and wits about. They could not keep "our correspondent" out. 230 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. A rising wind is told by drifting straws, And frowning brows portend a stormy cause. But here came bright eyes — beauties wreathed with smiles — The fair immortals, sweet with woman's wiles. It was not battle's victories or defeats, For Mars and stern Minerva took back seats. No first-class deity appeared to know The reason why they were assembled so. Nymphs, Naiads, Fauns of hill and stream and grove All marveled much why they were called — by Jove ! They sat like audience in a theatre Awaiting some new wonder to appear. Transfer the scene to more familiar light ; Suppose a play-house on that mountain height; And here we are — gods, goddesses and all — In due obedience to some sovereign call ; And dead-heads too — d'eny it if you can. And that ubiquitous newspaper man. The scene is changed. The people here decree, And their one voice is law of Deity. Who speaks ? The tones come thrilling from the crowd — The speaker hidden as behind a cloud : " 'Tis rumored here, these modern pigmy clods MISCELLANEOUS. 201 Imagine they can do without the gods. Deluded mortals, we befriend them still, And make our favorites great against their will. Say Barbarism's past ! Arc we despised ? Our care be now to keep men civilized. Say War is over ! Shall our counsel cease ? They need it more to foster arts of peace. And Peace it is; and joy now fills our hearts In place of jealous rage and wrangling smarts; Come forth and reign, ye guardians of the arts." Who's this replies ? Melpomene, tearful muse ! What god or mortal could her plaint refuse ? " We feel a want to fill the mimic scene, A young, endowed, star-shining, tragic queen ; One who can weather Life's tempestuous flood — Embodiment of Passion's flesh and blood ; A woman who can feel all mortal pains — A harp attuned to Nature's waiHng strains — This is our want — to show how brief the bloom, And that the world is modeled for a tomb." Thalia claims a hearing next in order, And trusts the crowd an audience will accord her. Accorded : thus the merry muse replies : " Now let our weeping sister dry her eyes; Wet spoils her beauty — keep an onion near — Good to distil the sympathetic tear. 202 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Life has enough sad sorrows of its own, Without grief's masquerade and mimic moan ; Why should mankind their noble powers enslave, And mope by moonlight round an open grave ? Let's show them how to live in shining day, And not in shadows drone their lives away. Why not bring down the house with mirth and laughter, And shake its lazy sides from floor to rafter? Present to men the funny face of Folly, And over their pet foibles make them jolly. We wani a. change of bill — a happier scene — For Horror's head, a radiant, laughing Queen. " Professional spite ! " The deep-toned voice replies ; "Ladies, you're jealous; come now, harmonize." They stand together, beaming rival graces. With just a shade of anger on their faces. Each plays her queenly part with flashing eyes. While round the circle murmurs "harmonize." " We take our stand for classic art," says one ; Rejoins the other: "We go in for fun. We think it our high mission to amuse — Not play on keen emotions to abuse ; High Tragedy, we grant, is art's devotional ; But what's that tragic palsy, the emotional, By which youth's bloom gets hopelessly stage- struck. And in the quicksands of perdition stuck ? MISCELLANEOUS. 20- Why, every school-girl Juliet's heart is set On early death and tomb of Capulet. If suicide goes on at such a pace, Your tragedy will stop the human race." Again that voice : " To have these quarrels done, A miracle shall blend you both in one. We want a woman of impassioned soul And body joined to play your dual role ; We shall endow her with a force and mind For tragic power and comic grace combined ; A Siddons, Rachel, Cushman — artists true, And what we lost in lovely Neilson, too. Of all our good gifts, we bestow our best On the fresh genius of the New World West. The name precise is not selected yet, Perhaps 'tis Mary — maybe Margaret. ' What's in a name ? ' And really, what's the odds, Since prophecy is guess-work of the gods ? " And bursting in the ferment of the crowd. As from the billowy bosom of a cloud. Comes like a peal of thunder: "She's endowed ! " Some say with genius ; inspiration, some; Many are called, but few there be who come. All start upon life's race-course fresh and gay ; Those run ahead who hardest work their way. THE SHORELESS SEA. fBOVE the world, beneath, around. Forever rolls a shoreless sea ; , , Unknown, save by the low, profound, Weird murmur of infinity. Reason is blind ! Amid the gloom Which shrouds the silent, heaving deep, Her feeble light can ne'er illume The chambers of eternal sleep. Wouldst thou the mystic veil withdraw. Which screens the Living Throne from man ; And trace the cause beyond the law. Which was before the world began ? The earth and all it holds is thine ; The growth on valley, plain, and hill, Thou hast the air, the sea, the mine, And fire to mould them to thy will. Trace if thou canst, the fountain's source ; The drops which swell the sparkling tide. Slow trickling in their mid-earth course, Bewilder, while they seem to guide. MISCELLANEOUS. 20$ Explore the heavens with eye intent, Catch every golden gleam from far ; And search the arching firmament, From sun to telescopic star. Allay thy thirst at Learning's fount : Examine strata — break the clod ; Then let thy soaring vision mount, And view the shining tracks of God. Thou canst not sound the Shoreless Sea ; Unfathomed by the plummet, Time : Where life, through all eternity Has circled round its source sublime. Day gleams beyond thy straining look ; Thy soul in blinding darkness grieves : God closes his Eternal book, And thought lies crushed between the leaves. Vain mortal ! Turn within thyself — Thou fountain of mysterious force, Which springs for honor, power or pelf; And trace the drops which shape thy course ! 'Tis easy : life is born of Life, As fountains spring from mist and rain ; It journeys through its term of strife, And circles to its source again. 206 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. From Oceans' depths the mists arise : They fall, and sink in Mother Earth : Then seek again the parent skies, And spring renewed in second birth. Through Nature's mazy crypts profound, Thy search for light will fruitless be : Life's stream is thine above the ground, While dashing towards the Shoreless Sea. Thou soul akin to heavenly light. Whom blazing orbs impelled to soar : Thy thoughts like stars aflame by night, In darkness spend their borrowed store. If, from the highest peak of fame, Immortal genius sound thy worth ; Soon, men will read an unknown name Upon thy little mound of earth. Time's torrent dashes, swift and strong, And ever towards the Shoreless Sea : And in its drift we sweep along — The sailors of Eternity. CHIMNEY GHOST. AN IDYL OF THE SOUTH. CHIMNEY by the roadside stands WU With bhghted creepers hung; lltuA. Around it whirl the sifted sands From traveled highway flung, It towers, and glooms, and Aus/i commands ; And speaks with stony arms and hands, In lieu of tongue. A figure dumb, yet eloquent ; And carved by no man's hand, It frowns, a sombre monument By demon builders planned. To give some fiendish purpose vent And keep a brow of horror bent Upon the land. And poisonous vines around it cling To guard its mystery ; From lurking thorn, and nettle's sting Barefooted children flee ; 208 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. To every living, breathing thing Its shadow makes a baneful ring — Like Upas tree. No foliage in the circle waves And prattles laughing tones ; Yet near by, while it wails or raves, A pine tree drops its cones — Like tears upon forgotten graves For which some soul remembrance craves, And sighs and moans. A choked and barren orchard sheds Some fruitless blossoms near : The vagrant wild-flowers hide their heads, And shrink in fluttering fear; A broken arbor, vines in shreds. And weed-invaded flower-beds Lie waste and sear. A home which neither roof nor hall. Nor heart, nor fireside owns ; — No chamber, but this chimney tall With stairs of crumbling stones. Charred tracings make a funeral pall, And beams and rubbish round, are all Unburied bones. MISCELLANEOUS. 2O9 A chimney stark; no wreath of smoke Ascends in breath-like cloud. The stately pillared porch is broke, — The walls in dust are bowed ; And idle gazers come and croak About the house's palsy stroke — Above its shroud. There's nothing strikes such sickening dread As blight without a frost ; And here's a home so stricken dead : What clinging lives it cost, And how it loved, and strove, and bled, And stained the fountains where it fed, — All this is lost. A desert picture girt all round With frame of waving green ; A void of life without a sound ; A landscape dead in scene ; — As though the lightning imps had found And made the place a training ground To sport their sheen. 'Tis in the flowery South-Land, where The sweet Magnolia blows ; And music fills the scented air With passion of repose ; 2IO THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES, And dusky forms in gardens fair Are planting here ; — and training there The musky rose. Some charge this ruin on a war Which laid the country low ; And others blame Fate's evil star Which blasts with ashen glow, And hovers near, and follows far, Like vengeance driving fiery car O'er fallen foe. The tattered fire-place seems to kneel — A suppliant, choked and dumb — Some sudden anguish to reveal In words that will not come. Yet, silenced by eternal seal, It makes the rapt beholder_/>^/ This zvas a home. Enough : — the home has lived and died, Nor record left nor tone ; It locks one secret deep beside The darkness of its own. I come, with lingering love for guide To find a Memory — petrified — Its own eravestone. MISCELLANEOUS. 211 The country gossips who delight In marvels, gravely tell That often travelers in the night Are bound here by a spell, The while, a woman, fluttering white Who seems a most unhappy sprite, Sings how she fell. The crescent moon, like broken ring Tossed on the foamy crest Of some dark wave of sorrowing Is dropping down the West ; Now shrouded by the billows' wing It fades, and seems a dying thing, And sinks to rest. I stand upon the old fire-place Amid the dust of blight, Am thinking of a vanished Grace, In this all-swallowing night. And on the background dark I trace The shadowy outlines of her face In lines of light. And goodness in her features glows As radiant as a star ; Her heart is pure as whitest rose, And sweet as roses are. 212 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. And now, within my bosom flows A current, as of melted snows From peaks afar. A glimmer ? — Like a wandering light ! It moves with human pace ; The tongue of Gossip once is right, I see a dim, pale face. There's nothing in it to affright, And yet 'tis strange to see at night — In such lone place. I feel a life that touched and stirred My own with hope and fear ; I feel the magic of a word Unspoken many a year : And like a far chant faintly heard, Or cadence of a singing-bird, It soothes my ear. She speaks, as though awake the dead To tell forbidden things Of down below, or overhead, Or ghostly wanderings. Where feet of mortals never tread. And while I hold the story's thread, She says, and sings: — MISCELLANEOUS. 2I3 I come — the wraith that haunts the vale, 'Tis said from chimney-flue ; I've laughed to hear the ghostly tale ; And be it false or true, I bid you at my hearth-stone, hail ! I sing again my nightly wail. And all for you. They say — here dwells a haunting woe; They call me Chimney Ghost ; — In very truth I come and go But twice a year at most ! — And then I walk in dusky eve To hide my face, but not deceive A dolt, or post. I've longed for many a day and year To tell my shuddering tale. How laughter once resounded here Where now sobs ruin's wail. How, where you stand, beamed light and cheer- A happy world without a tear — All bright and hale. The master was a lord o' the land — And high on honor's roll; Like prince he lived in mansion grand, And gave no stinted dole ; 214 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. But with good fortune at command He reached to all a welcoming hand With open soul. A prince of Nature's royal blood With culture's polished mien, He ruled the peaceful neighborhood, Was Discord's go-between. His wife beside him queenly stood, And daughter, bright, and pure, and good. And seventeen. O ! how they loved their only child ! And you do not forget How every one who knew her, smiled On little Margaret. The Valley-Lily she was styled ; — All blooming, dancing, free, and wild. In sunshine set. And many called her passing fair — Of that I should not speak. But for the sting that poisons where Most women are most weak. Of beauty's gloss she had her share In form, and brow, and eye, and hair, And rosy cheek. « MISCELLANEOUS, 215 She won admirers — honest men, Who followed her with sighs ; Who never spoke with tongue or pen Yet ever with their eyes. They talked with her, and now and then They walked with her in wood and glen, 'Neath starry skies. You may have been such follower — May now recall the scene ; She had one ardent worshipper — Yov know the one I mean ; She could have loved him — he loved her- I did not think your heart to stir — So long 't has been. But she was vain, and he was proud, And themes arose to jar ; And discontent with mutterings loud, Joined forces near and far. And thunder-toned, and lightning browed Rolled up a direful tempest cloud ; He rode to war. And then a suitor came to woo, Who drove his span from town ; At first, whene'er he near her drew. She choked her anger down. 2l6 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES, She hated him ; yet thought of you At war with her. Revenge was due ; She ceased to frown. And chidings warned her lovingly Of false lights — golden-beamed; But one vow-pledged reality Shone brighter than she'd dreamed ; A palace home, a queen to be; A summer cottage by the sea Bewildering gleamed. She did not love — she did not hate ; Of wounded pride she bled ; He seemed so frank, of good estate — A life of leisure led; A vengeful will controlled her fate. She had no heart with him to mate, Yet vowed to wed. She disappeared one summer day, But whither none could tell. 'Twas whispered : " Maggie's run away," All up and down the dell ; And old and young, and grave and gay With look of sadness seemed to say: — " Poor Marearet fell," MISCELLANEOUS. 21/ The dashing span returned no more ; Its ominous absence meant — Such things had often been before — Behind the span she went. Against the sympathy in store Her father closed and barred his door In banishment. He could not suffer Pity's dole Like alms, though kindly given ; His life had reached its bitter goal By dire misfortune riven. He burrowed darkly like the mole Beneath the shadow on his soul, To madness driven. The mother ! Where may language find Fit words to speak her woe ? 'Twas said, she wandered, — low in mind, The neighbors called it so — To yon deep thicket, dark and blind And gave her spirit to the wind There moaning low. Her corpse was by a woodman found Upon the spring-brook side ; And stains were yet upon the ground Which drank the crimson tide ; 2l8 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. By other symptoms strewn around, Her own hand made the ghastly wound Of which she died. And soon, one midnight's awful hour A storm of horrors fell; — Around this tottering chimney-tower A blaze lit up the dell. The red cloud rained a fiery shower, And where the master went, no power On earth could tell. I guess his fate. Entombed he calls From out death's dismal cave ; I know he fled the flaming halls He vainly strove to save. The thought my very soul appalls ! In yon well, 'neath the fallen walls, — There is his grave. On that dread night in terror's thrall Stood Margaret at the door — Stood there to hear her father call To see him — nevermore. . She had returned to tell him all ; Too late, — and he believed her fall — The old talis o'er. MISCELLANEOUS. 2I9 Her heart was famished for the food Of love she'd cast away ; Repentant at the door she stood Forgiveness' boon to pray ; — Ashamed of blot on face of good, And from the fold of maidenhood Not gone astray. Twice lost — she darted from this place Away — regardless where : The blood-red tempest stained her face, And lashed her streaming hair. The maddened fire-fiend gave her chase, Still on — she ran the dreadful race — With gaunt despair. And no one saw her come and go. Or seeing no one knew; None heard how Pride became her foe And how she triumphed too ; — And how the war did round her throw As army nurse, a cloak for woe — None know but you. She moves, — and how my heart beats fast; A white robe shimmers there ; A sobbing something flutters past With tread too firm for air. 220 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Could fancy such a semblance cast Of Maggie as I saw her last? But riper fair. The crescent hangs against the sky In rift broad, blue and clear, The figure casts its shadow nigh ; 'Tis not a shape to fear; — 'Tis flesh and blood — can laugh and cry, 'Tis Margaret's self: — not gliding by; I hold her here. We meet again, — what each hoped most ; From stormy sea's alarm ; We land upon a shining coast. Beyond the billows' harm. With many future plans engrossed, I, and the charming Chimney Ghost Walk arm in arm. The war is past, and peace is here Rejoicing in its room ; And 'round the whole horizon clear The sky is swept of gloom : Our broken homes unite with cheer, And gardens trodden, waste and sear, Renew their bloom. E^KT^^^^P !^V|| ■^^ ^gp^^''»^;jM^a kV^^x^^JSSm^^sS F^^^ jiit^ ^^v ^^^^if^^^BH ii«2^ li^ ^SKts^SI OUR BEST ROOM. lM^[OME to our house in the country, Out among the birds and bees, Building nests, and honey gathering In the early garden trees. Peach and apple are in blossom. And the lilacs laugh with bloom ; Come to our house, and we'll open To thy footstep our best room. 'Tis the only shadow 'round us Never pierced by sunny ray — Striking where the child is romping, Casting gloom upon its play. I have seen the roses cluster On the blank and barren wall — On the dead, unyielding shutter ; Seen them bloom, and fade, and fall. Never came a friendly visit, With its greeting, stir, and din ; All the summer long no strangers Came to let the rose leaves in. 222 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Come to our house in the country, Drive away our shade of gloom ; Wide we'll open to thy knocking All the blinds of our best room. Come, before the ripened harvest Waves its flags of yellow gold ; Come, and see the sowers' promise Increase of an hundredfold, While the fluttering corn-blades prattle Of the gems their husks enclose. And the stalks embrace each other. Lapping arms across the rows. Now the country waves a welcome, Banners float in field and tree ; Hidden minstrels vie in singing: — " Here is beauty — come and see ! " Come and see the vernal glory. Come and feel the bliss of pride, When the Sun, an ardent bridegroom. Leads the blushing Earth, as bride. Come and hear the choral anthems Floating on the singing breeze ; Where the grand old hills are organs Growing pipes of singing trees. MISCELLANEOUS. 223 Incense from the swinging censers Sweetens every wind that blows — Come and breathe the mingled odors At the fountains of the rose. Come ! Taste all the sweets of being At the summer founts of rest ; Come, and bathe in crystal beauty Where the waters all are blest ; Greet the rosy cheeks of morning With a zest that never cloys ; Dally on the couch of evening, Dappled 'round with golden joys. Here, within an Eden blooming, Love was blest and children grew ; Years and years the springs returning Crowned themselves with blossoms new. Years and years one shadow deepened In the midst of sun and bloom, 'Till it seems — we dread to breathe it — There's a ghost in our best room. Work is tuned to merry marches ; Hear its accents jocund ring In the highway, field, and woodland, Timed to measures of the spring. 224 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Life is cast of earnest labor ; If its metal's ring be true, Give the bell the tongue of pastime, Toning all we have to do. Rosa's up and in the dairy, Humming o'er her milking pail, While her pan-and-kettle music Tinkle through a misty veil. In the foggy front of morning, Every day — or foul, or fair — In the evening twilight shadows — Always cheery, she is there. Anna's busy, neat and careful, With a dash of playful art ; Tidy graces sweep around her While she gives the house her heart Baking, bare-armed, in the kitchen, Then, with handy brush and broom, Sweeping over flecks of sunshine — * Dusting 'round our spot of gloom. Rosa has her pets and playthings — Things that fortune frowns upon ; Anna's pride, when work is over, . Bursts in beauty on the lawn. MISCELLANEOUS. 225 You would never think them kindred — Not when side by side they stand — Rosa's brown from wind and weather ! Anna's fair, with dainty hand. « Yet they're sisters, sweet and loving, Each in life's allotted part Finds the motive of her being, Rules the Empire of the Heart. Each, dividing cares of household, Stands confessed the house's head ; Rosa stores the milk and butter, Anna kneads the milk-white bread. Both are loved, and both are lovely. Modest daughters of the farm ; One is plain and one is pretty — Equal worth gives equal charm. Anna loves the forms of beauty. Even in her nut-brown loaves ; Slighted things abused by others Are the pets that Rosa loves. All year 'round the nights and mornings On these sisters set and rise, 'Mid the thousand cares, that challenge Patient hands and watchful eyes. !26 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES, Midday brings their paths together. Shows the contrast of their bloom, Sitting, chatting, sewing, knitting — Keeping guard on our best room. Here are strangers ! Open windows ! Every room must welcome make ! Light and air have raised the eyelids, All the house is wide awake ; From the murky room come odors Dank and musk and varnish blent ; Timid children peer around it. Wondering where the darkness went. Hark 1 The tall clock in its corner Wakes and strikes with sudden start, As the streams of air and sunshine Pour around its shrunken heart. Heir-loom of our generations, Passing to the oldest boy ; We can hear its peals of laughter, We can feel its throbbing joy. Strangers ! — friends and city people — Gentle, easy and refined ! Out of town to spend the season. Seeking sport and rest of mind. MISCELLANEOUS. 22/ They have come with shining presence, Chased our shadows from the door, Here at our house in the country — Now we ask for nothing more. All the day our home is making Music of the gladsome heart ; In the merry concert ringing, Children play their little part. Early walks to sunrise hill-tops Meet the glow of blushing day ; " Good night " sighs in twilight rambles, Where the moonshine glints the way. Bounties of a father's table Are with lavish plenty spread : — Rosa's prints of yellow butter ! Anna's loaves of matchless bread ! O'er the tea-urn beams our mother, Radiant as a full-orbed star — Fountain of a love that leads us Where the world's best offerings are. Rounds of pleasure speed the summer On its flowery-margined way; And the brightest banks of roses Bloom for Anna's wedding day, 228 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. In the holy calm of rapture, Lovely bride and happy groom Join their hands for aye and ever — Seal their vows in our best room. THE WINDING ROAD IN THE WOOD. 1i'¥fH\0M.'E by the winding road in the wood lOr Which girdles the mountain slope, ^^^\ And follows the dashing, silver flood, As life is guided by Hope. It curves and rambles with wilful pride, Where brightest the wild flowers blow ; 'Mong rocks and brambles on every side, With th' green above and below. Oh ! let us turn from the highway wide, And follow the silver flood. Where roses are lining on every side The winding road in the wood. The balmy morning is dripping through The fringes of vine-clad trees, And crystal drops of diamond dew Perfume the wings of the breeze. Moist with the breath of the waterfall. We pause, and list to the din Of the clattering mill, and the quiet call To fare at the wayside inn. So life may dawn on a shady slope, In view of the silver flood. And rest in the calm of a cherished hope, By the winding road in the wood. 230 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Despite the glare of the noontide ray, Our path is pleasant and cool — We picnic all in the heat of the day, And lunch by the fountain pool. The wood-sprites chatter and disappear Within their mossy domain ; Birds hop around without tremor of fear, And gather the crumbs that remain. So, at the mid-day of life we repast On memories happy and good, And thoughts for the hungry world we cast On the winding road in the wood. Now daylight fades and evening descends — And soon it will be dark night; Our coming is cheered by welcoming friends Whose dwellings appear in sight — The city is near, serene and blest; Above it, the red, round moon; And lighted and guided we'll sink to rest At the end of our journey soon. We rest where no fiery passions goad At the source of the silver flood ; How happy is life by the shady road — The winding road in the wood. -»' »« " ■»■ *» '1 i^ «»™.t ir m n !■ rt TWICE A CHILD. HAD a song to sing at morning-tide Of sweet young spring as first she came to me, And we as lovers met with mutual glee ; But as I grew, endearments multiplied, And crowded song and many things beside, Quite out of sight, and out of memory. Life's fragments left, seem hardly worth a song, And would not be, but for some younger men Who dream and think and feel as I did then ; Or in their passion-torrent sweeping strong, May sometimes for their childish playthings long, As I do now, — at Life's three score and ten. And now I sing it ere the visions fly : It may be with a feeble piping voice — Here in the evening cool — away from noise ; No matter if it make me laugh or cry I still would sing my song before I die, Among the shades of dim remembered joys. 232 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. I do not know just how it came to be, But I remember me — a child at play- In mellow sunshine — that was yesterday ; And then there came a blank — a syncope, And all the sense of life died out of me, And Thought grew dark, and Memory lost its way. So many tuneful voices came with spring, That filled my heart with rhapsodies of song; I hstened often, and I pondered long, And sometimes did I even try to sing But could not give my fancies soaring wing, To hold their courses regular and strong. I nursed a voiceless poem in my heart Which beat and swelled with tide of impulse high. Yet yielded nothing for the ear or eye. And little solace for life's toiling part. Except the thought that shot like golden dart To sing my song of spring before I die. Something has happened ; what, I can not tell ; There must have been a painful period long ; I had a fever and my head was wrong. And then methought I heard a dreadful knell ! It seemed I died, yet here alive and well, I'm singing now my childhood's cheery song. MISCELLANEOUS. 233 I have it : Something whispered I was old. It was a false voice sent to torture me ; For I am merry and from sorrow free, And still the bursting blooms of Spring behold Through sunshine's melting spray of yellow gold, — And all is blissful as it used to be. The other children like me, and we run With wayward feet all o'er a flowery land ; But one of them forever holds my hand, And leads me to the spots of brightest sun, And there we have the rarest freaks of fun ; But why I'm led I scarcely understand. I know : My mother told me how it fell. I have been ill — too ill to know or speak, And in the fields the breath of health I seek. 'Twas then I thought I heard that dreadful knell But now I feel myself completely well And only, maybe, just a little weak. The breath of spring days rank with flowers and grass Will bring me through and give me strength again ; It was a dream, that I had walked with men Among a selfish, hardened, wrangling mass Where I was roughly handled, crushed. Alas ! Three score ? I'm only lately turned of ten. 234 1"HE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. And here I am with romping girls and boys, Enjoying all their thoughts and moods and play, And laughing merry as the bird-song day : We have our little griefs ; but boundless joys, A feast of childishness that never cloys ; This old brown pipe I picked up by the way. Now let me smoke it for the day is done ; Where did I learn to smoke ? No matter where ; I like the fumes, nor further know, nor care, The cloud will vanish in to-morrow's sun, When noisy play-time calls'us, every one. And with rejoicing fills the joyful air. I seem to think the things I've thought before, And speak the old words too, from day to day ; As though they had been said, and laid away ; I fear I sing the same song o'er and o'er And then the music marches slower, and slower. And words drop in I did not mean to say. My clothes are all so loose I have to laugh At such a botch : I wonder who's to blame ? And nothing seems to fit me but my name. This cane ! How comes it that I need a staff! 'Tis just as useless as an epitaph To living man, and very much the same. MISCELLANEOUS. 23$ The other day I heard my darling Rose Say to a playmate : " Grandpa's such a child ; " And then I looked the other way and smiled ; Of course I am as everybody knows ; But why tell of it so mysterious, close. As if I w^re not right or reconciled ? Sweet Rose ! That name when e'er I hear it spoke, Of still another Rose it seems to tell; And then I hear again that dreadful knell Ring through my life with slow and muffled stroke To call me back where once my heart was broke, O ! would I could forget that tolling bell. Why does it murmur with a mournful tongue. Afar and hidden in the midway gloom And strike the ghostly watches of the tomb For me alone, — while I am yet so young, And with my maiden song of Spring unsung, Which should be full of life and joy and bloom ? And when it sounds I smell the fresh-turned mould. With grasses mingled, and with wild thyme trod ; And then I feel the shock of falling clod Whose rattle makes my very blood run cold ; I've seen that place before, and young or old, I know the walled field, and uneven sod. 236 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Should I be old and childish? Be it so; 'Tis no misfortune, nor disgrace I ween ; Two childhoods, with no middle life between ? I'm not so childish but I right well know The time of day, night-fall, and morning's glow, And drifts of snow, and budding springtime's green. It must be so ; it is, now dawns the light, Beneath the cloud it shoots with level ray ; But 'tis the evening sun — reversing day. And shows my scattered hair all silver white Like star beams falling o'er the brow of night ; And I am shrunken, weak, and old and gray. Sweet Rose, come here ! did'st thou live long ago In some place where I lost myself with thee ; And where we followed a sweet melody Until it breathed so far away and low It seemed into another life to flow ? And here it comes again for Rose and me ! This is the fragrant harvest-time of heart, When all the years their treasured sweets enclose And love is garnered 'neath the winter's snows. And fortune's hurt, and sorrow's stinging smart That come to all, have played their painful part ; The thorn haunts not the essence of the rose. MISCELLANEOUS. 23/ Don't think me foolish, child ; I have my fears That things are not the very things they seem ; And that I'm waking from a troubled dream — The lingering nightmare of my working years ; There's nothing in it calling for thy tears, But tell me, laughing, with thy blue eyes' beam ; Nay, do not speak ; look, what I'd have thee tell I feel the truth thy prattle would disclose : My path of Hfe the full round circuit shows, The childhood's meet, embrace, and all is well. I hear the toning of that bhssful bell. For her and me. Thy grandmother is my Rose. OCCASIONAL. THE GIANTS. PRESS ASSOCIATION POEM. [IM. legends tell of giants fierce and bold — The scourge of men in warlike days of old ; In stature monsters, terrible and grim. Whose vaunted power was massive strength of limb. One so created in the mould of wrath Strode forth to battle for the hosts of Gath. Like other monster-growths, they passed away. And left their impress deep in plastic clay. Creative forces — formless, undefined — Enfold the deep mysterious germs of mind. The world is ever building — never done, With every change creation's work goes on ; And giants build it — from the central fires Up to the highest peaks of mountain spires ; — Giants of earth and fire, and sea, and air. Below, around, above and everywhere. OCCASIONAL. 239 'Tis told in story's page, and voiced in song How other giants helped the world along — The stately beacon-towers of humankind That bore the first immortal sparks of mind. They rose above the all-surrounding night And flashed the earliest gleam of morning light Ere full-plumed day with lustrous breezy wings Had brushed the darkness from the face of things. These columns stand adown the misty steep, Where deed-embalmed the mummied ages sleep. They fill each living epoch's wondering sight. For still they flash the early morning light. We climb the steep ; these beacons point the way Ascending towards the crystal dome of Day. Inspired by hopes, 'mid clouds of doubts and fears, We mount the tottering stairway of the years ; System succeeds to system — clod to clod — Building rude earthworks to the heights of God. Within a temple pillared mountain high. With bed rock floor, and roof of arching sky. Where science makes all nature's empire hers. And Physics trains her young philosophers, A virgin queen exalts a royal seat, With ardent wooers thronging at her feet. Her robe is plain ; one solitary gem Lights up the crescent of her diadem. 240 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Her purpose pure is pledged by vestal vow, And Truth's auroras dawn upon her brow. Her thoughts are out upon that solemn sea Which glistens star-gemmed to Infinity. Intent she bends her telescopic eyes As questioning some new marvel in the skies. Her voice proclaims the triumph of her sight, And shouts : "Another star has come to light ! " Rapt millions catch her words, and near and far All hail with joy the advent of a star. Not all — shut up in self with folded hands, The universal croaker sneering stands. His wisdom brooding emulates the owl, And thus he hoots displeasure v/ith a scowl : "A fresh arrival from yon boundless sea ; Another sail from dim infinity ! A new-born star has floated in your ken : A spark supernal ! What is that to men ? A little glow worm is of vaster worth, For it, at least, is useful to the earth ! Your star, with me, no spark of favor finds ; The light you boast of is the light that blinds ! While searching out some far and barren sphere. You overlook earth's riches that are near. We have examples of the good you've done : Some ugly spots you found upon the sun : You have dispelled the magic of the bow That casts athwart the storm its peaceful glow ; OCCASIONAL. 241 Deluged the flood with explanations dark ; Destroyed the grand old safety of the ark ; Uprooted Eden ; given its bridal bower To charms more subtle than the serpent's power ; Created an obscure creation, when Brisk monkeys were the ancestors of men. And crowning bad, with sacrilege still worse You've made a plaything of the Universe. Tell me, vain Dreamer, since your reign began, What real blessing have you brought to man ? " The queenly Presence, stern and dignified, Surveyed the vastness of her realm with pride. And then she spoke : " The world is getting old, But not like men whose sickly hearts grow cold : Change is her law — a mournful change of late Is that her men are not by far so great. Observe her progeny when she was young, 'Twas lusty soil from which those giants sprung. Each towering form would make — 'tis no great praise — A hundred little men of modern days. They fought for life unaided, and they won With Nature's armor buckled loosely on ; They had no need of battlements and swords ; Their arms were truth, and wisely spoken words, They live — immortal by their sovereign might, Forever crowned with wreaths of morning light ! 242 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. And ye — the magnates of a later day — With all their light see not so far as they ! By them upraised Hope nerves you to aspire, And build your systems higher, and still higher ; And this lone virtue called me to your aid To guide the progress that the world has made. " I came to build amid the ruin wrought By Superstition — cowering fiend of thought ; That ogre of the night with croaking mind, And owly vision — to the noonday blind. Since man had fall'n from that high mental sphere Where rose his young perception wide and clear, I'd court for him what outward wealth supplies — Such aid as glasses give to aged eyes. The greatest monarchs to my feet I'd bring, And who so powerful as the Iron King ? Related to our race by ties of blood, He wears the attributes of humanhood To sympathize with wants, and cares and pains Through his own atoms coursing in our veins. What mission-labor could my thoughts engage To yield such glory as an Iron Age ? For in its coming, man his strength regains, A physical and moral savior reigns. Lamenting deeply your degenerate birth, I sought for champions in the air and earth. That might compensate for the loss you bear OCCASIONAL. 243 By ages dark, would they their bounty share. Could I but conquer these, the deed would be A crown of joy, and lasting victory ! A race of giants born amid the strife Of lawless atoms wakening into life ! They walked abroad when nothing seemed to be But sea and sun — the blazing sun, and sea. The circling orb impregned the idle stream With fruitful dalliance of his living beam. Dark, wavy slime, snail-like began to creep. Then monster reptiles ploughed along the deep, Dread sounds ne'er heard by man awoke in forms. That perished battling with primeval storms — Commingled thunders, hisses, wails and groans Which antedate the age of Mastodons. Mixed land and water surged, and parted wide. Till lofty summits nodded o'er the tide. And happy valleys teemed with roving herds. And tameless beasts, and choirs of singing birds. 'Twas thus the first organic life began, Which found at last its perfect type in man. In after times the eldest Mother Earth Through peril passed the mighty throes of birth. The sea made hostile effort to regain The right of empire o'er his old domain. The land 'mid battlements of mountains stood : A world was in the ruin of the Flood. Then spoke those giants whose bright words adorn 244 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. The dawning page of Mankind's second morn. Then came deep darkness, thick, portentous gloom, And all the world was shouded for the tomb. Could I endure a withering, green decay ? Could I behold young glory fade away ? I digged as one who digs for shining dross To patch his fortunes, worn by worldly loss ; I soared as souls might soar to realms of day, From blight and darkness in the ^prisoned clay; No nook or corner of the visual round, But I was there, and vagrant forces found ; Yet how to link them to the human car Was quite as puzzling as to reach a star. I journeyed o'er the desert reach between The things that are, and things that once had been I stood upon the shores of farthest seas Where naught disturbed the tracks of centuries. I saw the giants' footprints in the rocks — Heard their deep thundering — and felt the shocks. Then terror reigned ; and people hurrying fled From roofs and timbers crumbling overhead, To brave the threatening chasm underneath. Where every step disclosed a yawning death. Sheer in the gulf I plunged with mad desire To sound the sea of subterranean fire. The lurid blaze revealed gigantic forms With sooty features, and great brawny arms ; They wrought in metals hissing in the flume, OCCASIONAL. 245 And sparkling fitful twilight though the gloom. The sulphurous fumes, by roaring bellows whirled Though mountain chimneys, terrify the world. In darkened corners sounding anvils rang, And hammers fell with measured clink, clank, clang. They forged the wares Vulcanic skill invents. And moulded ribs and bones of continents. Far o'er the level, answering blasts of flame, The quickening surge of shadowy pistons came ; Huge coaches rushed before the lagging gales Across a monster spider's web of rails ; Long, rumbling trains, with deafening crash, sped nigher. Like hissing serpents armed with fangs of fire. Then 'neath the mountains dashed with thundering sweep Through grinning gateways to the darker deep. Aloft in murky air, from fields of smoke, At intervals the vivid lightnings spoke. Without an oar, or sail-propelling breeze, Great iron barges plough the fiery seas ; Their dripping cargoes unseen power obey. Till landed in the deep hills far away. Returning, on the tide's subsiding swell. They caught some sinking islands as they fell .* And all the while the jolly bargemen sang In chorus to the anvil's clink, clank, clang, 246 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Could timid men these stubborn powers o'erwhelm — These rugged moulders of the Iron Realm? Before the dauntless Iron King I stood, Resolved to praise his honest hardihood. The softest words the deepest feelings reach. And thus I plied the old king with my speech ! ' O sturdy monarch of this wide domain, Hard featured, yet of purest royal strain, I come to save a labor-struggling race, And look upon their benefactor's face. I care not for the shine of sordid gold. Whose shallow favors all are bought and sold — A peddling vagabond with empty pack Who tramps around the same hard beaten track. Give me old Iron Honesty and worth, And I will garner all the fruits of Earth.' The Iron King exultingly replied : * My realm is yours and countless wealth beside ; All that I have I give — the unpolished ore And smelting fire-pools, in exhaustless store, To win my artisans, you first must catch, And having caught them find the man to match. They've served me well, and with me they remain Till you can lead them with an iron chain ; Else they would hide, and sport in sea and air, And ramble here and there and everywhere.' I sought the upper world with solemn vow To sound the secrets of the deep; but how? OCCASIONAL. 247 I first awoke deep passion for my cause To read and comprehend eternal laws. I studied men, the soul's abode to scan And light the inmost dwelling of the man. Great nature in her grandest moods and scenes Works wonders by the simplest modes and means. A great truth, homeless, ever seeks and finds Fond recognition in the plainest minds. One wastes a life pursuing shadows fleet To find a treasure lying at his feet ; The open, artless man of truth in quest Proves by results that nearest things are best; To great work great simplicity he brings, He waves his wand, and forth a giant springs. A touch of flame — that spirit fibre bright That made the candle — must be there to light. "A vessel sails beyond the guardian coast. And sorrowing friends mourn all her seamen lost Around, above them, nothing seems to be But sea and sun — the circling sun and sea. The sun by day ; by night a friendly star Directs their course, and guides them from afar. That vessel has a Giant at the helm — The trusty Magnet of the Iron-realm. "An apple falls — 'tis worthless, and may rot, Yet gives the world a live, majestic thought — 248 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. The bell-tongue struck clear metal of the mind And ringing thoughts went out to all mankind. "A storm is marching up with banners high, And trooping clouds are rattling in the sky ; An old man flies a fragile, feathery kite ; His key suspended drops a spark of light. Most noble thought, and strangely potent key To ope the bolted door of mystery ; A message from the skies the plaything brought ; The cloud-throned Giant Lightning has been caught. A sailless ship stands proudly on the wave, Nor wanders lost when winds and waters rave ; But, driving onward, keeps her destined way. Behind her mingle cloud and seething spray. A magic movement urged by subtle power, With iron harnessed to the day and hour Ever and everywhere at man's command. His course resistless conquers sea and land. In empires' march he leaves no living foes. Sprinkling the earth with cities as he goes To win of Progress' self the brightest crown ; O'erturning hills and digging mountains down. Sowing his path with bountiful increase, And training nations in the arts of peace. Vapor — pure essence of the wave and beam — Another giant thou — all-conquering Steam ! OCCASIONAL. 249 A fleeter step is yet upon the sea Than Ariel or wing-footed Mercury. Beneath the billows' stormy roll and rack. Secure it speeds along its winding track. The plunging diver swims the ocean now, The lightning's halo misty round his brow — Not so of old he made his prowess known When wheeled by tempests on a cloud-girt throne — He whispers instant words from shore to shore. And continents embrace forever more. " The Thunderer is subdued, who ruled alone And hurled his mandates from Olympus' throne. The Greeks succumb ; and while their Argus nods. We sack the temples of their chosen gods. Oh foreign to their mythologic plan That Jove should fall — an errand boy to man ! All hail ! electric, universal spark, Thou torch of dayhght in our being's dark ; Pervading all things with transcendent might, Pure type of the eternal essence — Light ! " Review my record to the present ; know My triumphs are the surer that they're slow. The systems are my studies — worlds my prize; My telescopes are only giant eyes. Unnumbered volumes open to your sight Tell how each starry orb has come to light. 250 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. My empire comprehends both star and clod ; I show you nature from the hand of God." So Science spoke. Her court approval bow, And all salute the truth-illumined brow. From every quarter come the tidings glad, Mankind is saved ; the world is iron-clad. The Iron Realm was not a hope deferred — The Iron King has nobly kept his word. All round as erst the giant's anvils rang. Now hear the hammer's music, clink, clank, clang Arabian tales — wild fancies dreamed of old — Were innocent of lurking truths they told. To Haroun, spell-bound on his Orient throne, The alphabet of wonder was unknown. Aladdin's magic story's marvellous dower Stands shamed before a mightier wizard's power. A hammer strikes ! The Genii catch the sound, And ringing echoes girdle earth around ; The Western Magi sacred charms employ. And tuneful belfries sing their psalms of joy. Great day to grace the records of renown, That crowned our progress with an iron crown. The prize is won ; our happiest fortune smiles ; Our path is open to the Indian isles. The triumph latest, greatest, grandest, best, Performed the nuptials of the East and West. OCCASIONAL. 251 What have we gained ? What prestige have we more Than worlds of people that have gone before ? 'Twere worthless riches won with years of cost, If in a day the treasure might be lost. Our progress still this confidence imparts — In losing, we shall mourn no more lost arts. Among our conquests, be they great or small, The Art Preservative o'ertops them all. FIELD AND WORK. PRESS ASSOCIATION ADDRESS. f\} ET us look a little over the field and inspect -;^ some of the work done, in view of the best economy and possible improvement in what is ^"^ still to do. The field — wide as the world — lies open before all eyes ; yet there are people who spend their lives and energies hunting for it, and never find it. The work is everywhere, bearing the impress of human toil and pain, teaching its lessonsof development and progress by history and monumental piles, yet there are earnest students who never understand it. They feel that they are capable of something ; they desire to act some part; they see plenty of room ; they dream of possibilities, yet they never resolve where to go, or what to do. They fail to find the field that lies spread before them, and they can not par- ticipate in work which they do not comprehend. They are so many barren lives. In treating our theme — wide as it is — we can only hope to drop a few scattered hints and suggestions for those who would be productive toilers if they could, and save, if possible, some of the human OCCASIONAL, 253 waste, the evidences of which we see around us every day. When we contemplate the diversity of thought- systems, and the variety of civiHzations they have built, it is no great marvel that even trained minds are often confused and bewildered in regard to the special work for which they are best fitted by nature and education. They feel an undefined desire to go somewhere, and power to do something, but are puz- zled as to the where and what ? School culture has given them at best only the alphabet of education — the key to open the door of a career. It is still a question whether they ever learn to read life, or find the way of their true future and best fortune. In the multiplicity and confusion of aims and efforts, motives and methods, systems and opinions, doctrines and dogmas, creeds and beliefs, fretting and foaming like a whirlpool, they may be dashed into the right channel by accident, or they may drift far away from hope, A few exceptionally strong natures battle with the surging tides and force their way to an objective point as directly as the needle seeks the magnetic pole. They are polarized with the aspirations and activity of the people from whom they spring and become the instruments of the general thought and purpose. They are the inventors, the discoverers, the philosophers, the poets, the workers — in a word which comprehends all endeavor and achievement — they are the world-builders. The various great civilizations which girdle the globe have carved their lines, engraved their features, 254 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. and set their types upon the sohd earth, from which, if there were no other records, it would be possible to print their several histories. They are so posi- tively distinct in feature, language and character that it is evident upon their faces each developed itself independently. The best example of independent race develop- ment that can be given we find at home in a branch of the Aryan race — our own — and a type of the Semitic — the Hebrew — living side by side and natural aliens. Origin indelibly stamps the Jewish clay, and there is no root relationship whatever be- tween the Hebrew and any Aryan tongue. The Jew is adamant, or he would have been long ago crushed and ground to powder between the upper and the nether millstones of action and immovability. He is primitive rock eternal beneath the strata of ages. The Hebrews gave Christendom its religion, which must not be confounded with civilization. The mass of our culture, and the general character of all Indo- Germanic civilization, descended to us from the Aryans through the channel of Greece and Rome, The literature and art of Athens and Rome are our own race products and treasures, while we drew none of our aesthetic culture from Jerusalem. Neither our civilization nor refinement is higher at this age than that of Greece two thousand years ago, which owed nothing to a then unborn religion of Semitic origin. The Hebrew language, an alien, has had no effect whatever upon any of the Indo-Germanic family of tongues, and a religion descended from the Jews has barely marked or modified a civilization descended OCCASIONAL. 255 from the Aryans. Each race preserves its own physical, mental and moral features, and does its own world's work. Whether or not the several races of men came from a common stock, they are widely separated now, as if each great continent and the outlying islands had been man-producing, certainly as they were plant-producing. The general result, as we behold it in the peopled belt of the world, is not affected by the question whether the human kind, and every other animal after his kind, sprang from one pair or many sources — wherever the natural conditions stimulated their production. One race of men taken as a whole has no family fraternity or human sympathy with another and the lesson of history is that, when the necessity arises or occasion comes, the stronger race always hunts down and finally exterminates the weaker. Take, for ex- ample, the former Indian owners of this wide land. What has become of them and their domain ? Our civilization killed the savage simply because it had use for his home. It was necessary that a New World should be discovered and opened as a refuge for the teeming populations and the oppressed classes of the Old, and our structure of civil and rehgious liberty was founded in blood of human sacrifices and cost the life of a whole race of men. The few descendants of the patriarchal Powhatans that remain are penned up in the sunset wilds, in process of slow but sure extinction. And in deference to a certain compunctious sentimentality this linger- ing death to which the last Indian is irrevocably 256 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. doomed is called humanitarian policy. It is needless to instance other conflicts of the stronger with the weaker races, as the fate of the aboriginal American brings the subject and proof directly home. Yet our own boasted enlightenment, which has replaced one form of barbarism and savagery, has bred and reared as a natural product more cannibals than ever swarmed in the terrible islands of the South Sea. The rich and powerful financial juggler sits in his enchanted chair and manipulates stocks with marvel- ous sleight-of-hand, disclosing exhaustless golden treasure. Charmed by the treacherous glitter the beholder is caught. It is a short battle of spider and fly, and the cannibalistic Mammon feeds. The desti- tution, misery and death that follow are laid to the charge of other causes, but the South Sea Islander of good society has had his human feast. Even merchants of great respectability and high standing are not averse to " getting up corners " on honest produce, coaxing their friends in and " squeez- ing them out," as it is called in commercial parlance. But they swallow them as easily and innocently as they would an oyster. A fish that devours its kind may get enough of it, but the appetite of the human shark is never sated. There are laws against petty gambling and small swindling schemes, but what law can ever reach the princely speculator, who plays his own cards to win, when commercial courtesy calls it a legitimate game ? So the strong, both as nations and individuals, prey upon the weak — Jew and Gentile, Christian and pa- OCCASIONAL. 257 gan, civilized and savage — the whole world over. The methods simply vary according to the different constitutions and appetites of the people. Might is made right in fact and effect, if not so held in theory. Mankind are but men — no matter how much, or how little civilization they have taken on, or what the character of the culture. No matter how smooth and fair the outside may be, the savage lurks under a very thin crust of veneer and shine of varnish, and is quickly reached and roused when pierced by provo- cation. Thus crude human nature sticks to the most modern improvements in humanity, and if anybody doubts it let him look into himself and see. Even the judiciary — the highest expression of civil enlightenment, and, in theory, exempt from the warp of passion, prejudice or interest — has in many lands laid itself open to suspicion upon great ques- tions involving possessions, aggrandizement and power. There is an old reproach that every man has his price, and abundant past experience has gone to prove it true. It may not be always in coin or emolument, but there is some way to that weakness which, when touched and wakened, is uncontrollable strength and asserts the supremacy of human nature in human affairs. Judges can not be debarred from having hu- man passions, holding political opinions, and belong- ing to party; yet the office which weighs evidence and administers law should be held forever free from the taint of party and color of partisanship. But judges make history, and when parties and condi- 258 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. tions have passed away their record stands for the criticism and judgment of the future. We have been speaking of a human nature as fundamental and paramount, above moral and intel- lectual culture and all the cultivated sentiments, when brought to bay and driven to the test, and thisbrings us to the consideration of the natural man as ever the predominant element in the human being. Let us look the facts squarely in the face and judge things simply as we see and know them. Man deserves more credit than he has ever got, or is ever likely to get, for what he has made of himself from the raw material. In his mighty work of im- provement which has not merely remodelled and re- plenished, but re-created the earth, he is saddled with, and patiently bears, all the blame of wickedness and evil, and receives no credit for good. The model balance-sheet of life, as held up before him from in- fancy, does not look like a fair estimate and account. He is nothing, he can know nothing, he can do nothing. Life is nothing ; yet he is charged with duties and burdened with debts which he can not pay, and then a balance is struck with the unknown quantity of a hereafter. It is a most pathetic page — that balance- sheet of life — all ciphers, except the great debt, and how far man has been responsible for this one- sided computation of accounts against himself can never be known. The accident of clo-thes and the physical results of their unnatural condition ; the faculty of speech — not the gift of language, which is as clearly a human invention as a steam engine ; the capacity to transmit OCCASIONAL. 259 knowledge, and the power of self-improvement, doubtlessly caused him to make a wide distinction between himself and other orders of the animal kingdom. He tried to cut himself loose from the harmonious system of animated nature, ignored or destroyed, as the stronger rival annihilates the weaker, his nearest brute conditions or rela- tions, if you will, and the " missing link " is hard to find. After having done so much and isolated his type unconsciously, came the very natural desire to ac- count for himself, fathom his origin and solve the problem of his destiny. The mute inquiry of the Egyptian Sphinx is the riddle of the world — still unanswered — while the enigmatical appealing face looks over desert sands and thunders stony silence down the centuries. What are termed the inspired writings deal with this problem, but there are many " holy books " of antiquity widely differing in matter and statement, each one of which satisfies only small fractions of mankind with its solution. Among them are the Buddha gospels of Sakamuni, the Moral Philosophy of Confucius, the Vedas of the Indian Brahma, the Zend Avesta of the Fire Wor- shippers, the Laws of Moses, the historical and de- votional epics of the Hebrew Prophets, the Songs of David, the Wisdom of Solomon, the words of Jesus, the epistles of Paul and the Koran of Mahomet. These furnish the ground-work for a multitude of moral codes and religions, and are the special heri- tage of theology. They gave rise to various systems of human worship of superior beings and symbols 260 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. of power conceived to be above, before and after the world. Theology has its formulated dogmas, principles and creeds, colleges, students and professors; is taught like a science and held up as eternal truth. It embraces and promulgates the doctrines of the spiritual and supernatural. Its field is the unseen. Many regard it as the unknown — beyond the bounds of space and time. Its work is not of the world and its product, the revealed religion of one people or sect, is rank superstition to another; theology or mythology according to creed. Physical science digs in the earth for its treasures of truth and explores the heavens for the key to unlock the mysteries of infinitude. It reads the records on the rocks, resurrects buried worlds, breathes the warmth of life into prehistoric bones, and soars to the sun for light on the problem of the evolution, magnitude, composition and constitution of the systems. Thus physical science has dragged out of the earth and drawn from the stars masses of facts upon which it has built its theories of the age, beginning and development of things. It is found that theology and geology, for instance, do not agree either upon facts or deductions, and their ancient variance has espe- cially stimulated the best mental efforts of this won- derfully working and coldly critical age. The conflict between physical science and spiritual theology is the absorbing business and theme of thought and persistent topic of our time, and most of us have taken sides. The antagonism is often OCCASIONAL. 261 styled Science vs. Religion, which is not a correct statement of the contest, because man is a worship- ing animal, and all men have a religion. The religious sentiment is universal, and man must worship something. If he has no revelation of a God, he makes one of gold or brass, or stone, or wood, or himself. The professors of theology and geology are free to settle their incongruities and differences among themselves. They are equally able to sift and take care of truth, and that is what both sets of professors profess to desire, and we of the secular press have only to record the results as they come. The great controversy in one shape and another is already a four or five thousand years' war, has slain its millions upon millions of men, and the probability is we shall not see the covenant of peace on earth signed and sealed. Meanwhile the mingled shouts of the devotee, the wails of woe and the shrieks of torture fly upward as sparks and smoke from beneath the wheels of Juggernaut as they roll and rumble round all the world. These mysteries of cause and consequence and human responsibility to supernal power, while they chiefly involve matters not of this world, have wielded more influence in the affairs of man than all the demonstrated facts with which humanity has had to deal. If man believes in gods above him, he is sure to frame laws above him, that is, laws which are su- perior to the moral sense of the people they are meant to govern. Such laws, though made by rep- resentatives, are not representative. They are there- fore inoperative shams of a moral standard that 262 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. does not exist. They were enacted in fear, and from a superficial sentiment of duty — a yoke which has made a large portion of mankind voluntary slaves. All acts ought to be works of love, warm with heart devotion, and then duty would have nothing to do. The language of the highest culture that it may be possible to build would have no use for the word duty in its vocabulary. All its work would be done for love, because the workers could not help the doing of it. Duty in such a state of society would appear like a cripple hobbling along at the tail of a vast procession begging alms. The moralists some- times begin at the wrong end of the lesson to teach. We owe no duty of thanks for the good things that grow for us to eat. Human food was before the human race, and without it in its natural shape the type would have been impossible. It is physically responsible for the human being and must take care of him. He grows up by it and it builds his body what it is. Rivers are not made to run past cities for the benefits of necessary commerce. The city was founded because the river was there ready run- ning, and the water power aided its growth. But the masses of men have bowed their necks to a few tyrants, and the tyrants are inexorable in enforcing a moral obligation of duty, which makes every con- scientious man a coward — afraid his neighbor will discover that he is not good as he pretends to be. This is the situation that the sentiment of duty, with no quality or impulse of love in it, has forced upon society. Let any man examine his own moral OCCASIONAL. 26' condition and his relations to a circle of friends, under the laws made to govern him, and he will be satisfied of the fact. Make Duty the loyal hand- maid of Love, and not the imperious, exacting mas- ter, and all will be well. By examination of what are called " holy books " of all the races it will be found that, at least so far as this earth is concerned, they reveal nothing be- yond the bounds of the human knowledge of the times that gave them birth, or above the intelligence and enlightenment of the people. They are the crystallized wisdom of the mental and moral systems whence they sprang. Man has had to fight his way up the craggy steps of Time and make his points and stages of progress by hard knocks. He has waged a constant warfare with the savage within himself, and the barbarian often got the better of him. He has built, torn down, and rebuilt systems innumerable. He has demolished gods and demons of his own imagination that inter- cepted every step of his onward course. In his ig- norance he has slain his own prophets. He has been driven back to new beginnings. His accepted deities armed with conservative traditions and guarded by sacred battahons have ever opposed his progress, and against all these barriers, disadvantages and disasters he has gone on conquering and to conquer the legions and domains of savage nature. " Inspired writings " never taught him how to build a house, sail a ship, or make a telescope. They treat of higher and unseen things, and solely promote spirit- ual elevation — set above the plane of the mere 264 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. mental and moral, which latter have to do chiefly with physical facts. Now all that man positively knows of himself is that he is a physical fact. All his progress has been iconoclastic. Whenever he has diverged from the beaten track of his times he has found a god, or the representative of a god, in the way to forbid his ad- vance, and the course of Reason's empire is thickly strewn with broken idols. After they are demol- ished and passed we look back with sympathetic pity on so many once regarded and respected deities de- throned and shattered. Their lingering, mourning worshippers have at least won the glory of persecut- ing to death the philosophers and reformers who pointed out the new ways and the new life to the world. They lived and died for men ; their graves are on their battle-fields and their creations are their monuments. The truths they discovered and for which they suffered are adopted and taught in the schools that condemned them as heretical, and this records their everlasting triumph. To us now the hovering gods of Olympus, direct- ing the battles of the ancient Greeks, and the pious praying a threatening comet out of modern Europe are all the same. The Greeks won their victories and transmitted the benefits, and the comet disap- peared without fiery collision with Christendom. All men are believers in the efficacy of prayer of some kind and in some way. There is at least one form of prayer in which all nations and kindreds and peoples and tongues can join — work, — the work of world-building, the work of charity and brother- OCCASIONAL. 265 hood, the work of man for man. This universal prayer of the human race, notwithstanding all the impediments in its utterance, has been abundantly answered. The electric telegraph is the answer of the prayer for speed ; the steam engine is the answer of the prayer for power ; our great republic is the answer of the prayer for freedom ; the printing press and free school are answers to solemn prayers for light and universal education. Work is prayer — work of hands, brains, and heart ; work for love of work, and not simply to supply the necessities of life ; the ants and the beavers and the bees do as much. What shall we do ? First, cultivate the general principle of individual human responsibility and ele- vate man to a truer estimate of himself, his work and his mission on earth. The human mind is micro- scopic rather than telescopic. More positive and exact knowledge, and more practical discoveries have been gained under the microscope than through the telescope. The micro- scope is a dissector and an analyzer. The telescope is in some sense a speculator and dreamer. The former essentially belongs to earth, the latter to the illimitable, unfathomable and incomprehen- sible heavens. The discovery of the law of gravita- tion was microscopic in its nature, and will serve to illustrate the general principle. The discoverer was looking down, then, not up, and the instrument is said to have been so common a thing as an apple. With our mortal eyes we never find a jewel except by looking at the earth and things earthy. To feel 266 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. our way safely in the dark we naturally grasp what is nearest to us, and so strive to reach the light. That method is the way to all discoveries, and the rule of successful lives. Many people despise familiar things as small or common, forgetting that it is only through intelligent observation and attention to little things that great works are done. They look up and far away where there is no landing-place for the eye — lost in cloud- lands — and neglect things near at hand, and possible treasures at their feet. They wait for the inspiration of genius, which never comes, for genius itself is a worker, and produces nothing except by toil and suffering. Every birth involves agony. Let the young seize opportunity at once, wherever there is a vacant place to lay hold of honest work, and soon a career will seize them and labor will be transfigured into interest and crowned by achieve- ment. The true starting point is not what one had best do, but what one can do best. A man knows whether he can write a good hand ; whether he is quick at figures ; whether he has the knack of mechanism, or the feehng of art, or whether he has wealth of ideas and a flow of language to make a torrent of eloquence. A little thought in this direction at the beginning might save many a life-mistake and greatly reduce if not entirely pre- vent what we have termed human waste. Two stumbhng-blocks are often fatal at the very start — shame of confessing ignorance by asking informa- tion, and throwing away one's own talents and power to be somebody by misusing them to develop OCCASIONAL. 267 one's self into somebody else. Thus a burden of ignorance is taken up for life, and men are not themselves. People, good for something, get into the wrong places, and are good for nothing. They do no part of the world's work. Journalism is well acquainted with these good people in the wrong places, for it is the province of the Argus-eyed press to note incompetency and other public abuses wherever they appear, while it has also its own burdens of this character to bear. To get into the other professions, some sort of special schooling and training, and a proof of fitness are prerequisite ; but it seems every one thinks that he is a born journalist, and can write for the papers. He fails as a lawyer, or a doctor, or a cler- gyman, or in any other profession or calling, and, as a forlorn hope, it occurs to him that he must be a newspaper man. The peculiar institutions and rapid development of this country have made it possible for a great many people to get into the wrong places, but experiments — both successes and failures — have made equally valuable discoveries. In the Old World men are born and bred in the stations and professions of their fathers, and it is very difficult for them to get cut out of the ancestral grooves. In the New they may rise from the slums to the highest places, which possibility offers a stand- ing premium for men to do their best. Time was when man carved his records on stone and built towers for the preservation of the knowl- edge he had gained and the civilization he had 268 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. wrought. The writing was rubbed out, and the towers crumbled and fell. When books came, the accumulated knowledge was stored in one great library, and the torch that fired it burned the world, which was long crawling out of its own ashes, and suffered loss irreparable. The printing-press has made such another destruc- tion and loss impossible, for it pours its treasures of thought into thousands of libraries and millions of homes. The printing-press stands in the breach of danger, a mighty power — a creator — creating a new world every day and every hour in the day, while the sun — its celestial symbol — makes his all- beholding rounds. Let us maintain and strive to elevate the dignity of our profession and truly appreciate our responsi- bilities, both as builders and defenders, using facts instead of misrepresentation, and argument and logic instead of abuse and invective, to fight our battles for human rights and liberties and the disenthral- ment of mankind. Of this let all be sure : The greatest fortune a man can inherit or win is the ability to find the proper field for his energies and talents ; and there is nothing permanently valuable in this world that we live in but the work we do. THE DRAMA — A RESPONSE. SHALL endeavor to speak for the drama, to which work your generous partiality has called me. "^^ When you say that the drama is " the heart of literature and the concentration of all literary thought," you utter a sentiment which is peculiarly comprehensive and just. You hit the nail of fact squarely on the head and drive it home, and there seems to be nothing further to say, and no use in making any more noise about it. But every fact holds its inherent reasons, and the action of this great literary heart — the drama — must have its philosophy. We shall see. When a system, or a science, or a branch of liter- ature is accredited by the whole civilized world, the universal recognition implies a harmony, or a truth, or a well-spring of thought congenital with humanity itself. Let us consider the drama as such a branch of literature, and penetrate, if we can, the secret of its power over people. For our present purpose, the stages of intellectual advance from the starting- point of social communion may be ranked, first, oratory ; next, the drama ; then the epic song which bears historic fruit; and, last and highest, philosophy. 2/0 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. The drama had its origin among the very roots of language and spread its growth through all tongues. Children's plays were the first plays, and the children are playing them still. It is natural that the early tricklings of thought, after long wind- ing through the mazes of tradition, and taking the character of accumulated knowedge on the way, should first find permanent expression in recorded conversations. This suggested the drama. The clash of mind against mind, heart against heart, soul against soul, in living dialogue strikes passion's fire for the crucible of truth. The antagonisms of sentiments and opinions and interests in the dramatic situation are the flint and steel of that Promethian spark which lights and warms the world. This is the drama — a crystallization of knowledge gained and wisdom attained, and its structure preserves the elements of oratory which preceded it. So the drama has seized upon and fashioned to its purpose the treasures of legendary lore, epic heroics, historic fields and figures, philosophic, so- cial, moral and even sacred themes; in fact, many of the holy books themselves are written in the dramatic style. It has thus linked itself to all the uses of language in the communication and trans- mission of thought, pervading all with its essence and its life. So it has grown up through all the stages and phases of human aspiration, and effort, and inquiry, and discovery, winding its sinewy coils through and around the vast riches of mentality with a proprietary right. OCCASIONAL. 271 Its hunger for subjects is insatiable, and its ca- pacity to digest and mould them into its own art- forms is illimitable, embracing as it does in its scope of forces and effects all grades of intelligence, from brutish instinct to godlike reason. It gathers its materials all along the pathway of man, and trans- mutes all metals of motive and grains of thought into its own gold. It stoops to the lullabies of Mother Goose, and it rises to the songs of the prophets. It plays every strain of human passion, in every condition of human life ; and it soars among the stars and grasps the loftier themes of science, philosophy and religion. Its dominion is universal and its daring is sublime. Say what may be said — and there is a great deal of empty talk about the decline of the drama — it never has failed or faltered in strength of grasp, nor has it retrograded a single step. It is fully abreast with Time, and leads the van in the march of mind. Its very nature is development, and its movement progress. We have the proof of this imbedded in our own language — solid rock. For example, the epic is accounted the higher form of expression. The absence of the Iliad would certainly make a greater blank than the blotting out of the Pro- metheus, but the world of to-day could better spare Paradise Lost than Hamlet. The one is read by a few scattered students, the other is recited by a grand chorus of civilized man that rings 'round the globe. Here, then, in our own tongue, in modern days, the drama has foiight the battle for precedence with the epic, and has won. 2/2 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Strongly seated as it is in the thought, the move- ment and affection of mankind, it is easy to discover the secret of the drama's power. It is the human ingredient in it that gives it the full height, breadth and depth of humanity itself. Man ivill sympathize with human nature, and not all the theories and philosophies ever invented can lead him from his kind, or cure him of human habits. Where his inter- ests and sympathies are, there he will be in the majesty and supremacy of heart. Lying close to the heart are liberty, enlightenment and progress — involving in their development and fruition suffering and happiness, vice and virtue, error and truth, de- feat and victory; the drama comprehends them all, and arrays an*d wields their forces in the manly struggle for greater good. Look at the drama as a universal educator. It has had the richest wealth of time and toil and mind of all ages poured into it to bear interest forever. Shakespeare, its grandest exemplar — all nature's heart and brain — still at the end of three hundred years tops the intellect of the world. From such a height, his view of the drama and the actor's art will be accepted as clear and sound. He did not say, as many suppose he did, that the office of acting is to hold the mirror up to nature, but "to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature ; " apparently a very small distinction, which makes a very great difference. Severe nature, a bald copy, would be tiresomely stupid \v\. presentation. It has been tried, and the flat reahsm failed. It is the ideal and not the real that is the true in art. It is the type and not the OCCASIONAL. 273 individual — humanity and not men that the drama personifies. The dramatist does not pick up the common man and woman, but selects the excep- tional growth and development of man out of the masses for models of character, and they are true in the art perspective of the stage — just as the statue of heroic proportions is toned to nature at the height of its pedestal. These figures pass into the conscious- ness of the people as models of virtue and heroism to imitate, or monsters of vice to shun. Such concep- tions and embodiments become electrified with the life of real historic persons, and live and act with the force of historical figures. The realest and livest man in Switzerland is William Tell, and yet he was conceived in the brain of Goethe, who delivered the embyro hero over to Schiller, who brought him among men for their admiration and advancement. And Tell is the towering Alpine type. So of other dramatic heroes. Thus the drama gives us the higher models for the general education. They are always above the class from which they spring, and to which they appeal, inviting to a higher plane of intellectual culture and aesthetic enjoyment. The vicious man, sitting at the worst play, can not see or hear anything so rank as his own vice. He is first caught when nothing else could catch him, and then led up and educated ; and, taking even this low grade of entertainment, he is in better company and surroundings than he would have been if he had not gone to the playhouse, and he will come away so much the better man. He is lured through his own low instincts, if you will, but he is imme- 2/4 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. diately elevated in thought and sympathy to the higher level of the mimic scene, and awakening reason's transformation makes him man. The man who can not read goes to the play, and sees pictures of beauty and hears lessons of history, heroism, morality, virtue — life. And he is educated. Into the same company come the cultured student, the man of letters, the learned professor and the sage philosopher, and they are educated too, for the magic of the drama discloses to their higher under- standing a still higher ideal of possible being. Thus, the drama educates the ignorant^ educates the edu- cated and educates the educator in that vast temple where the dramatic trinity, Melpomene, Thalia and Euterpe, minister at their high altar of rational entertain.ment and universal enlightenment. With this spectacle of man at his congenial, intellectual pastime and happiest mood, in plain view the world over, who shall say that the drama is not a uni- versal educator ? Of what is known as the modern society sensation, which we all know so well, little need be said par- ticularly. Much of it is not legitimate, either in subject or treatment, and does not come properly within our scope, except so far as its grade and range of benefits have already been indicated. It comes from the hunger of the genius of the drama, and is another proof of its unbounded capacity to grasp all subjects, compass and comprehend all thought and take the great round world in its arms. The drama speaks all tongues and is equally at home in all. Its English is the crowning triumph OCCASIONAL. 275 of human utterance, and brings all the kingdoms of thought under the universal reign of Shakespeare. The beautiful green island, first in the hearts of all her sons wherever dispersed, yielded a joyful allegi- ance to the Enghsh monarch of mind, and strength- ened and glorified his eternal empire with a Sheridan and a Knowles and a Shiel — proud names in the annals of literature and bright gems in Ireland's crown. To bring the subject home, the American drama is an unsolved problem. The first American drama worthy of the designation has yet to be written. Many American subjects have been treated in the dramatic style, but the results have not risen to the dignity of a distinct American type in dramatic literature. American harvesters have been busy in this field, but their scanty gleanings have been swallowed up by current consumption. They have established no world's granary and have saved no grain for seed. Our artists, both authors and actors, have found and portrayed the excrescences of American character, but they have no frames or places for their pictures because they have constructed no drama. American authors have done nobly with foreign subjects, but the tone and treatment have been purely Enghsh. They have drunk inspiration at the fountain of Shakespeare, which exhausts all the English springs. They feel the dramatic impulse, but they have not learned the secret of conception or struck the key of expression. There is somewhere a new way to an undiscovered mine. The conditions in the New 2/6 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. World are so different from those of the Old that they will not permit the same treatment. Premising a correspondence here that does not exist, is just where a long succession of errors and failures be- gins. Dramas are built of the bones and sinews and all the tangible materials and productive forces of human society, and breathed full of its living soul. The friction of the classes — always at war with each other — coming in sharp contact and col- lision, yet never mixing, generates the heat of dra- matic action. Where the classes are in rough-shod antagonism, the conflicting elements and interests point the dramatic way. Now, there is only one grade of society in republican America which is no society at all in the sense of class. No man is anchored to the condition of caste. Any man may rise from the lowest condition to the highest posi- tion. The old society lines are therefore broken, and the promiscuous mingling of masses makes no sufficient fermentation for the wine of dramatic frenzy. In such conditions the drama becomes a lost art. Who shall discover the way to the Amer- ican mine and develop its riches ? Who shall find the true secret of conception and strike the key of expression ? Who shall build the American drama ? A few words about the moral and religious oppo- sition to the drama, which now and then breaks out with turbulence. It is for the high moralists, the clergy and the churches to consider and ponder well how they can be of the most benefit to man, for whose good they work. Would they be leaders or drivers? kind counsellors or inexorable judges? OCCASIONAL. 277 Men are led better than they are driven — much better* — and they take more kindly to sweet coun- sel than to dogmatic judgment. They must have amusement and recreation to compensate for the grind of toil, and rebuild exhausted energy. The need is imperious. Where are they to get this life compensation ? The stage is everywhere, and the drama is a mighty mother with arms for all. She only can meet the universal demand. An enlight- ened English clergyman has nobly said : " The stage is the apotheosis of our nature, and the trans- figuration of our daily life." This is spoken of it in its purity, and in view of its grandest purpose, and it is true. We have it. Shall we make the best of it ? An institution that will bear this encomium is worthy of the best influence and best work of the best men. It has stimulated and yielded, and it holds in its everlasting and exclusive possession the richest and most abundant coinage of the human brain. Its thought is woven in the very fabric and organism of mind. No one can speak a cultivated tongue without quoting its master's dramas. Shall we guard the dramatic treasure with the strongest fortress of our civilization, or abandon it to unbridled license and plunder? Shall we cherish and cultivate it as a garden of the richest flowers and fruits, or permit it to grow up with rank weeds? For it can not be trodden down and stamped out — deep-rooted as it is and strong in luxurious growth. Then it is for the teachers to determine whether they can better exercise their high office and perform the greater good by thundering the artillery of their 2/8 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. opposition against the drama's temples, or by recog- nizing and encouraging their legitimate uses, and giving their influence to make the stage most worthy its mission of ministering to man. One thing is certain, the drama began with man, and it is going to see him through to the end. The heart out, life is done. While it beats — "Fame, heaven and hell are its exalted theme, And visions such as Jove himself might dream." EDUCATIONAL. NORMAL SCHOOL DEDICATION. I. ET us contemplate the magnitude of this work ^ and the responsibilities it involves. Let us en- deavor to appreciate its full meaning and pur- pose ; let us invoke to our aid its mighty spirit now hovering over us with brooding wings and gracing our assemblage with its life-giving presence. The work of a teacher is at the foundation of all the professions, and in the highest sphere of its mis- sion the profession of a teacher stands at the head of them all. It is the first in order, the first in importance, and the grandest in its ultimate ex- pression. It lays the base and crowns the column with the capital in all the orders of mental architec- ture. To use another figure, it is the true husband- man of culture. It prepares the soil, sows the seed, gathers the harvest, and garners the golden grain. We have formally laid the corner-stone of an edu- cational edifice, and the edifice itself is the corner- stone of a vast educational system. This view, and it is the true one, a hundredfold magnifies the impor- 280 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. tance of the work here begun. A school is founded for the culture and training of teachers, whose high office is to mould the characters of the young men and young women of the State, upon whom the State's weighty responsibilities are soon to fall. It is one thing to know ; another to teach. A scholar may be graduated by any of the celebrated chartered and endowed institutions of learning with the highest honors and yet not know the alphabet of teaching. Teaching is a science in itself and is so recognized and treated by our pubhc school system. Graduates of universities generally enter what are termed the " learned professions " or drift into afflu- ence, ease and obscurity ; but comparatively few of them ever become school teachers. Whence, then, are the teachers to come to meet the pressing throngs of humanity on the threshold of active life ? They must be made. Teaching must be taught. The province of a normal school is to teach to teach. From the nature of its work, its course and method must be peculiarly its own. High schools, seminaries and colleges educate men and women for the general business of life. The normal school qualifies them for the profession of an instructor. It is the indispensable ground- work of the whole superstructure of the public school system, as it is extending itself over our broad land, and is of the first necessity to its efficacy and con- tinued prosperity. Great genius and great learning are cosmopolitan. Wherever they appear they are the common prop- erty of man ; but the system of education in one EDUCATIONAL. 28 1 country is not entirely adapted to the needs of an- other. Neither does the method of one age chime with the activity of another. The world now moves with railroad speed, and is electrified by the tele- graph. Stage coaches and post-boys have passed away. Education must still lead, not follow the busy throngs of life. Every people must discover for themselves the most congenial means for their development, and those who find the natural sphere of their activity quickest and move within it strongest and bravest, achieve the highest stage of civilization. Civilization works by laws almost as immutable as those of nature herself. The desperadoes and outcasts of society, if they escape its vengeance, finally throw themselves into the wilderness and find their level battling with wild beasts and savage men. This warfare results in a benefi- cial mutual extermination. Then the frontiersman comes with his wagon and his axe, and his plow, and his gun, and his dog, perhaps his wife, and smooths the more rugged features of nature, and dresses her in her work-day clothes. His labor is improved by little communities that follow in his track. They become fast settlers, and culti- vate fruits and flowers and embellish their homes with various signs an^ hints of beauty. Lastly comes education, and builds school-houses, and founds libraries, and finishes the work ; thus crown- ing with mental culture the labors of all who have been before. We are in this interesting stage of civilization, and are now engaged not in crown- 282 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. ing the king, but in laying the foundation of an expanding kingdom. Knowledge is essentially aggressive. It is always at war with something opposed to its dissemination. It fearlessly attacks error and pretension wherever it can find them. It does not wait for its natural ene- mies to stumble against it; but it goes forth armed to meet or chase its foes. There is never any doubt which will finally be the victor. In many countries of the Old World education has been chiefly directed to the maintenance and expan- sion of nationality, the development of war power, and the aggrandizement of empire. Its principal stimulant, and at the same time its worst enemy, was jealousy of neighbors. It was thus often turned into a channel in which the obstructions it met impeded the solution of its own destiny. But it never ceased striving for the cause which its votaries had most at heart, and it never failed to triumph. In America we have a far different field to culti- vate, and widely divergent objects to accomplish by education. We have to construct a harmonious nationality out of apparently discordant materials. We have all the territory we could ask, or can want : our prime object should be to settle and develop it ; and we have no quarrelsome neighbors with whom to fight, or of whom to be jealous. Among modern nations our position is in many respects anomalous, and our leading activity must spring directly from our instincts, and grow out of the necessities of the situation. America is the lap into which are continually pour- EDUCATIONAL. 283 ing all the treasures of the earth, both in products and peoples. Numerous nationalities which for ages have cherished little animosities, strong antipathies, even rank hatred against each other at home, land on our shores to mingle into one, and that one a sovereign. It is the province of our system of education to take hold of these heterogeneous elements and in- herited antagonisms and mould them into one homo- geneous and symmetrical whole. The education of America has still to contend against its foes, not with the sword, but under its more congenial banner of peace, and with the sharper brand of reason. It has to fight prejudice — that corroding rust which eats up the substance of the best material — and keep the machinery of society lubricated and bright. It has to make bosom friends of natural enemies by placing them side by side on the same elevation of culture and economy, stimu- lating their aspirations and providing a common work for their hands and brains to do. There are also among us " native and to the manner born " prejudices against foreign immigra- tion. These must be overcome and eradicated. Education can and will do the work, and no means can be devised which promises such lasting results in this direction as a system of public instruction where the young of all nationalities are taught and trained together. The plastic characters of children become fitted and attached to each other by a community of pursuits in the school-room. It is a species of Freemasonry sacred to the fairy-land of childhood — 284 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. illumined by the sunshine of innocence and joy, and eloquent with the merry voice of laughter, the memory of which will last as long as they live. Last of all, we have lingering prejudices to fight at home. There is no more North and South. That geographical barrier was swept away in blood. But there is, in the sense of sectional rivalry, an East and a West, as different in character as if an ocean rolled between. However much we may laugh at or denounce what we are pleased to call " Yankee notions " — and we of the West generally have strong feelings against them — we are compelled to acknowledge the broad fact that New England has educated and is still educating America. "Knowledge is power" — it is the only republican aristocrat — it is an imperial autocrat wherever it has its seat, and it sways the American mind from the rock-built throne of the Pilgrims. The spirit of the Mayflower yet walks the waters, and is around guiding the direction of almost every movement on land. Its characteristic instincts were sharpened by persecution and penury, and the corresponding intellect was whetted by necessity. This class of mind is sure to cut wherever it strikes, and it strikes everywhere, making deep incisions for its intended cures. Let us forgive its foibles, whatever they may be. It is a strong character. It is at heart a good spirit and worthy of being acclimated to the West. It will lead us to the " green pastures " of knowledge and by the "still waters" of wisdom — amid such EDUCATIONAL. 285 pastures and such waters as can be found nowhere else in the world, and they are all our own. The keen edge of Eastern culture welded to the broad growth of the West forms a wedge which will split wide open the toughest problematical knot under the sun. The " Yankees," as they are proud to be called, early seized upon the idea, or the idea seized upon them, that education was the corner-stone of a great nation, and they laid it — the principal element in the development of a country, and the best weapon for its defence — and they tried it. Having resolved upon the means, they went to work with all their might. Their method, so far as tested, has been proved effective, and their ability to pursue it is unquestioned. We are simply adapting their patent to the wants of the West, and ought to give them due credit for the invention. In the mode of applying it and in the results to be attained we hope in time to be able to give les- sons to our New England schoolmasters. It is but natural that a little ill-temper should be mingled with a great deal of reverence for the master of a school, if he be a good one, but when the scholars turn the tables — multiplication tables — as we expect to do when we get hold of the balance of power, and there is no help for it, our severe old Dominie will be the first to elevate his familiar spectacles and congratulate us on our astonishing progress, and the wonderfully beneficial effects of the castigations he had given us when we were boys. 286 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Society has been engaged on the problems of pov- erty and crime in all time past, and doubtless will be for all time to come. Philanthropy has wrestled with the question as Jacob wrestled for the blessing. It has pointed out the ladder of ascent, the principal rounds of which are Faith, Hope and Charity. But these symbols require culture to understand; the beginning is too high for the timid feet of ignor- ance. Make education the first step of the elevation, that all may reach a material footing, and hopeless un- fortunates who are now in the lowest depths of misery and degradation will be abundantly able to rise and help themselves. This would be especially the case in our own country, where — "Thousands of hands want acres, And thousands of acres want hands." This age has seen one signally distinguished man of great wealth who understood the conditions and needs of the poor, and used his princely means intelligently for their benefit. He was an American by birth, by education the product of the common schools of New England, but he was a man of two hemispheres and a benefactor of his race. In Eng- land he founded hospitals and asylums; in America he lavished his wealth for the cause of education. How different in direction, and yet how like in pur- pose. The end was reached in the Old World by asylums ; in the New World by schools. What wealth of mournful sympathy there is in the former ; what bloom of hope in the latter. EDUCATIONAL. 28/ The donor thoroughly understood the situation on both sides of the Atlantic, and by his royal munifi- cence won the admiration of his own times and the gratitude of long generations to come. In every school book in the land, as a mark of honor for the unselfish good he did, should be printed — George Peabody, the grandest million- naire philanthropist that ever lived. Educate the poor, and thus remove them further from the temptations of crime. Educate the poor, and thus place in their hands a weapon to subdue the besetting sins incident to their condition, and instil into their hearts the hope of better things. Educate the poor. Elevate their ambition. In- crease their means. Teach them to enjoy what they get, participate in the enjoyment of their next neighbors, the rich, and give them a life interest in society at large. Make education the effective foe of poverty, and find the only true solution of this most living question of political economy, which has so long puzzled the brains of mankind. Colleges and universities and the various private institutions of learning can not do it, because of their intrinsic exclusiveness and incapacity to extend their fostering wings over all. They are powerless to accomplish this object, or even materially to ad- vance it, being a part of an entirely different design. What then ? A system of universal instruction must grapple with it — a system comprehensive enough to em- brace all in its scope. It has been found, we trust and believe, in the public schools of America. THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. Popular education, through the magnetism there is in the term, has become a national thought. It was the necessary outgrowth of other free institu- tions in which the United States is leading the van of nations. With us it must be of that character best adapted to promote the healthy growth and harmonious development of the country. This is the first great work it has to do, and it will require a union of all our forces, and the exercise of all our energies to do it well. Our legislators, our states- men, our learned men must be actively engaged in the cause, as these prominent classes are to-day, and have ever been in some of the old European coun- tries and especially in England. The leading minds of Great Britain are continually busy with education and reforms ; and to a high state of culture, which seems to be hereditary as their patents as gentlemen and titles as lords of the realm, is principally due the remarkable fact that after all these centuries of luxury and refinement, there are no evidences of decay among the aristocracy and nobility of Eng- land. On the contrary, every age extends the old, vig- orous English growth of cultured manhood and womanhood by bringing the lords and the people nearer and nearer together ; and even royalty is now mingling its blood in the subject's veins. English freedom was an old boast which became a reality, and, as time passed, rose to the height of grandeur. It was the legitimate offspring of English education, and is jealously guarded by its mighty mother, who transmitted the heritage to all English- EDUCATIONAL. 289 speaking peoples. She perfected monarchy in Great Britain, and she founded a republic in America. If our good mother England lost a continent at Bunker Hill because she had to contend with a new element of education which she did not understand, she saved a world at Waterloo perhaps through the lesson taught her by her loyal yet progressive children. We have an amazing example of the power of education in the late terrible clash of arms between Germany and France. Germany had many learned men and learned insti- tutions, and was at the same time an essentially educated people. France had learned men and brilliant institutions as well, but according to the standard of her powerful neighbor, was not an edu- cated nation. Germany lived in the present, and for the future, and its most vital thought was the unity of the Fa- therland. All over the German States thought con- verged in the grand central point of national union. France lived in the past, and feasted till she sick- ened on her old glory. The education of the masses was neglected and intelligence became contaminated with superstition. Whenever they attempted a move- ment out of their worse than torpid state they lacked the inspiration of a strong popular purpose, and a skeleton hand was thrust forth out of the dark and dragged them back. It was the ghost of their idol, the great emperor. They moved many times for a free republic, but lacked the education of personal liberty, and the republic always became the battle- ground for the empire. 290 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. The German hosts gathered on their borders hke a cloud surcharged with hghtning of their wonderful vitality. It was not the army of a nation, but a whole race in arms, and it fell upon its hereditary foe with an iron storm. It was more. It was an educated engine driving remorselessly through a mass of national and ancestral pride, which stood wrapped in dreams of the past, and believed itself to be invincible and immortal. On drove the army of which every troop thought like a savant, and every battery opened its argument like a university. Pride, however strong, was no match for education such as this. Traditional prowess, however grand, could not win battles against one living, all-pervading thought, which, by reason of an universal belief in eternal justice, had become an accomplished fact before one blow was struck. In such a contest there could be but one result, and it furnishes, perhaps, the most striking illustra- tion in the unnumbered pages of history pf both the moral and physical power of popular education. Schools are of instantaneous growth. We are not required to wait on them as we wait for a young orchard to bear fruit. The intermediate stages of development were passed long ago, and the yield is spontaneous and abundant. They need only to be transplanted from one locality to another — from the nursery to the field. They thrive as well in the desert as in the garden, and may attain the same perfection everywhere. As regards the quality of education, the Old World possesses no advantage over the new, nor is the East EDUCATIONAL. 29I of our own country superior to the West, for the varieties are sure to reproduce themselves. The means, alone, must be provided and set to work, and the thing is done. This is what we are doing in Warrensburg to-day. The operation of the public school system in the city of St. Louis is a bright example of the wonder- ful success in brain culture that can be reached in a quarter of a century, and reflects lasting credit upon those who have had its management. We can safely pride ourselves upon the best, and should " give honor to whom honor is due " for this especial bless- ing which we enjoy. To do this work as it has been done required not only brilliant intellect and profound knowledge of all the branches taught, but every-day business capacity and organizing ability of the highest order. The best evidence of the varied attainments of these masters is the great work they have done. Their highest praise is the gratitude of their fellow- citizens, and the personal pride with which each citizen regards the incomparable system of education by them created. This retired and unselfish labor, for the most part hidden from the public eye, might have passed with- out adequate recognition of the powers brought to it had it not been for our enlightened educational journals, which from time to time have given us glimpses of the forces at work, and the philosophy of their action. The American people are in a moving mood. Everything is moving westward. Even the East is 292 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. moving out West. The mind, genius, wealth and power of this great nation will be most richly devel- oped in the Valley of the Mississippi. Our own proud State is doing her part in the general move- ment, and will receive her full share of the glory. She may build the Athens of America within her borders. The State of Missouri is now the most important outpost of the territory, at the same time subjugated and disenthralled by the advancing legions of the educated. It may be regarded in many respects as the border-land adjoining the enemy's country. Education is another "voice of one crying in the wilderness " to prepare the way for the greatest con- federation of peoples that the world ever saw. The voice has a pleading pathos which can not fail of conversion, and that lofty tone, springing only from the consciousness of a new revelation and a sublime mission. Our noble corps of teachers are gathered like sen- tinels on the heights all around, and much depends upon their watchfulness and bravery. On their ban- ners gleams to the benighted a "strange device," which is at once their watchword and the herald of victory. Their faces are turned towards the setting sun, but they shine resplendent with the beams of the morning, at whose fountain they have drunk inspiration, and are now proclaiming the glad tidings of moral redemption and a* promised land. One word — gravitation — solved the problem of the universe. One word — education — is solving the problem of society and mankind. EDUCATIONAL. 293 Men may tear down whatever they build up except education, which is moulded in their type and stamped in their very souls. It alone, of all human architecture, is indestructible, imperishable, and solid as the foundations of the world. NORMAL SCHOOL DEDICATION. II. 'HE awakened genius of education is stretch- % ing its young limbs, and the warm blood is coursing healthily in its veins and arteries. ^^J It is building magnificent county seats, and apparently means to establish a firm footing in newly opened territory by paving every school district in our State with corner-stones. These ceremonies and this public demonstration signify that the people who inaugurated them are in solemn earnest. You thus proclaim to the whole world that your hearts and souls are alive to the im- portance of the movement, and you thus pledge your lives, fortunes and sacred honor to the consummation of your aspirations, and the realization of your hopes. Having taken this step you can not retreat. Pride comes in to guard the work already done, and your native enterprise will urge you to the execution of the design. The corner-stone has been tested by the proper implements of the builders' craft and pronounced well formed, true and trusty, and correctly laid. It is capable of sustaining the superstructure. Apply the lesson. You have begun right. Your work is true — your material is solid, your foundation is EDUCATIONAL. 295 strong, and assures you that you may go on laying stone upon stone, until the building is finished and stands in your midst an enduring monument of your skill. It is not a monument to commemorate the dead, but to perpetuate the wisdom and foresight of the living. It is to live among you and grow with you, the hope of maturity and the safeguard of the young. To future generations it will record a great act of justice, and conscientious performance of duty of the fathers and mothers of eighteen hundred and seventy- one. The corner-stone has been consecrated with the corn of nourishment, the wine of refreshment, and the oil of joy, — emblematical of health, peace and prosperity. Let us draw the lesson. The universal brotherhood which we represent in- culcates harmony among the whole people in the prosecution of such an undertaking as this. It insists that we must work as an unit, and strive as one man to insure complete success; that, however we may differ in creeds and opinions in other affairs of life, we must lay all personal preferences and prejudices inimical to this purpose upon a common altar dedi- cated to universal education. Then the edifice will grow, stone upon stone, har- moniously to its summit, in an atmosphere of peace, radiant with the glow of health, and resounding with the rejoicings of prosperity. Every stone will be consecrated to human progress by the corn of nourishment, the wine of refreshment, and the oil of joy- 296 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. The squared stone of the corner represents the great thought which underlies the act; the living thought from which the movement springs ; the har- monious thought which must permeate and direct all its counsels. It is symbolical of a perfect character developed by culture. It comprehends the grand result of all our educational work, and is also typical of the completed structure. And now we come to the finished building. What does it teach ? What blessings does it promise ? Contrast it with the old frame school- house which squats away down in the vista of our memory. It is another pile of evidence that the peo- ple, having taken hold of their own affairs, are capa- ble of managing the trust. Having wrested from old feudal systems freedom of person, they are rapidly becoming freeholders in mind, and think and act for themselves. Mental and moral servitude is by far the worst species of slavery. These shackles have fallen, and the whole people are marching with deep ranks and a broad front, up to their higher intellec- tual destiny. A detachment of them has halted here to-day, halted only, not stopped. They are celebrat- ing a peaceful victory, and will soon go marching on to heights of still more exalted being, that shine upon their longing vision from afar. The professions, which of old, were clothed with terror, and delivered their oracles from behind a dark, impenetrable curtain to the people cowering in a dimly lighted chamber, have yielded to the clamors of the audience for more light. The veil was torn away. Much intellectual humbug has been exposed. EDUCATIONAL. 297 Periwig doctors, armed with audacity and voiced with thunder, ha.ve vanished. "The altars are broke in the temple of Baal." The old solemnities that presided by overawing, and tyrannized in darkness, are gone forever, and their places shall know them no more. The people have rushed like a swelling sea into these mysterious sanctuaries, and taken possession of their ancient in- heritance and their rights. The professions, divested of their superstitious auxiliaries, mingle with the masses, of which they form a respectable and now honorable part, and in their exercise mutual confi- dence and reciprocal love have taken the place of irrational awe and secret hate. The audience halls are lighted and aired — your Normal School is one of them. Behold it and re- joice, ye emancipated people. The old dark school- house is gone. The old school-master, sore afflicted with his rheumatic mentality, could not endure the pouring-in streams of light and air, and the cheery voice of freedom. He, too, is gone; gone with his instruments of torture ; " Gone glimmering through the dream of things that were." A new era reigns in the realms of mind. Its morn- ing light has aroused the people to put forth their strength. Their watchword is " Popular Education," and we are now, as it were, surrounding the corner- stone of a new temple of the sun, celebrating the dawn of a brighter day with thankfulness, gratulation and joy. 298 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. There is no necessity of poverty in this beautiful land. Education is a richer patrimony than gold. The voice of culture is becoming more powerful than the jingle of the " almighty dollar." A man may be compelled to labor, but if he have mental culture he can not be poor — " He, th^ heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of Time." Let us hope — those who can not hope may still dream — that we are driving into an age of the world when poverty will be impossible, and squalid sloth unknown ; when honest labor will be the only type of nobility ; when all will be rich in that which alone can make wealth of value, and all workers with the hands ; when education will be universal, and men and women rated according to the use they make of it, and the amount of good they do. Such would be a truly golden age, without the servile drudgery of gold. And now let us take a cursory view of the field as it is spread before us, and note the prospect. A good, solid education seems to-be the spirit of the time. All may participate in its benefits and bless- ings until the old class distinctions and barriers of life exist no more to traverse and scar the body poli- tic with harsh dividing lines. The laborer, the me- chanic, the farmer, the merchant and the professional man spring from the same level and receive their early training in the same schools. So far, society is equalized. This mingling of youth is the basis of a better life-long understanding. They know each other simply as they are, and no one knows what EDUCATIONAL. 299 business or profession his fellow is destined to adopt. Ambition and mental proclivities determine their calling and mould their future lives. School educa- tion is but the key of knowledge to unlock the mys- teries of the unknown. Having it, every man must use it for himself; otherwise it rusts and becomes worthless in his hands. It is a fact of which there are innumerable living examples, that a boy who gets an education in our common schools, having ambition and fair natural ability, can be anything he will. His course is free, and every avenue to distinction and honor opens to his magic key. If he rise above his fellows he has a thorough knowledge of the condition and needs of those below him, and his experience has infinitely increased his power for good. He may be a great educator, or a legislator, or a governor, without the crutch of money to lean upon, or any of the so-called " learned professions " to help him along. What does he want with their one-sidedness when his edu- cation has been experimental, and in some sort uni- versal ? He is far better without one single profession to guide the destinies of men of all conditions and professions. Relics of the old masquerade of the professions still linger, even under our republican system of society. The gown and wig, and pomposity have been dis- carded, but the tradition remains ; and the idea that the professions alone are fitted to manage public af- fairs, and give tone to public life, shows much vitality. Its tendency is to concentrate the ruling power in the hands of a particular class, instead of representing 300 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. in its administration the interests of all. This, the policy of our public school system will in time correct, its very life and spirit being opposed to all forms of aristocracy, which assumes exclusive prerogatives and the sole right to rule. Men have striven life-long for wealth, and ended their days in the alms-houses; for power, and became prisoners and slaves. But never yet has an earnest effort to become educated failed to bring its sub- stantial results and its crown of honor. In the bright lexicon of "Young America," resolved to educate himself, there is truly no such word as fail. Let no youth of our country sit down and grieve be- cause his opportunities have not afforded him a special education, when he has had the advantage of our glorious system of public schools to make him- self a man. Now a word for the little people, many of whom are here to-day, who would rather run wild in the woods and fields and study nature, than learn their lessons in books. If the books can not be taken to the fields, the spirit of the fields can be brought to the books. We sometimes hear of dull children who never learned anything at school, and finally left those in- stitutions with the diploma of a dunce. Some of these academic dunces have developed into the brightest intellects that ever illumed the world. The contrast between the beginning and the end of such lives may well create suspicion that the teachers and not the children were dull. These old masters of letters apparently knew EDUCATIONAL. 3© I everything but what was nearest — human nature — which was to them a sealed book. They never thought of opening the little volumes before them, and reading and sympathizing with what was there. They looked upon the child-brain all alike — as a sheet of white paper, upon which they commenced scribbling uninteUigible words without reference to what was already written, never to be blotted out. The very natural result was nonsense, and the child, not knowing how it came, gave up the puzzle in despair, and was content to be called a fool. Poor little victim of unmerited disgrace ! who could have taught the teacher the very beginning and end of all knowledge in its prattling way, if the pompous man had but listened to nature's voice, prophetic in the child! There is nothing so brim full of pa- thos as the pleading of such tongues in ears that can not, or will not, hear them ; or the dumb, yet eloquent appealing of such hearts to hearts that can not understand. The art of teaching promulgated by our Normal Schools is happily founded in human nature, and, therefore, it seizes at once upon the character of the child, moves in sympathy with it, stimulates interest opens the book of knowledge like a wonderful story, and gives to the dry tomes of science the freshness, and flavor of the loved Arabian tales. How many years of dullness and disgrace are thus saved, to be added to the lustrous years thereafter, that contribute to the store of the world's treasures, with which it forever enriches its future. Our pubHc schools are the great arsenals of 302 THE MASQUE OF THE MUSES. progress. All the forces of civilization meet in the school-room among the teachers and boys and girls, and quietly organize for their successive campaigns. They go forth with shields more radiant than Achilles' armor, and lives more invulnerable than Achilles' self, to disperse the mob of error, and take the embattled citadels of abuse by storm. Learning is no old philosopher's dream, but it is the waking reality of millions who are struggling out of the shadows of ignorance and poverty into the sunlight of knowledge and comfort. It is not the light only, it is the eye, and it shapes the object. It is the strong arm that wields the weapon, and it is the bright blade that flashes and cleaves. It is the muscle and the intellect ; instinct and reason ; body and soul. Knowledge is not the solitary diamond of great price which sparkles and burns on the breast of some magnate of the land ; it is a whole diadem of jewels, within the reach of high and low, rich and poor, to grace the brow of every one who puts forth a hand to grasp the prize. It reverses the natural laws which govern other precious things. The more there is of it the more valuable does it become, and the more one gives away the more one has. We have struck a new vein of it here — an exhaustless mine of that shining ore which contributes more than any other influence to happiness, prosperity, worldly wealth and power. Let it be worked until every hand holds a sceptre and every head wears a crown. SKETCHES FROM LIFE, UKEL-ZAM. LEGEND OF THE VEILED PROPHET. iji^lfOR several years the annual carnivals of the ^1 Veiled Prophets have been occasions of wide ^ and wondering interest in that marvellous