lew Vork 
 
 '\ Sj/mohonic Study 
 
Ex ICtbrtB 
 
 SEYMOUR DURST 
 
 -^ * 'Tort nieiitv ^rTt/tercutfn. o^ <^<? M^wa-tarks 
 
 When you leave, please leave this hook 
 
 Because it has heen said 
 "Ever'thing comes t' him who waits 
 
 Except a loaned hook." 
 
^C ^F 
 
 Avery Architectur.^l and Fine Arts Library 
 Gift of Seymour B. Durst Old York Library 
 
NEW YORK: 
 
 A SYMPHONIC STUDY 
 
 In Three Parts 
 
 PART I 
 The Terrestrial Discord 
 
 PART II 
 The Celestial Concord 
 
 PART III 
 The Discord vs. the Concord 
 
m 
 
 l!ISIl\|llliltl 
 
 m 
 
New York: 
 A Symphonic Study 
 
 In Three Parts 
 
 By 
 MELUSINA FAY PEIRCE 
 
 And only the Master snail praise us, and only the Master shall blame; 
 And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame; 
 But each for the joy of working and each in his separate star 
 Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are." 
 
 — Kipling. 
 
 THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 440 FOURTH AVENUE, - NEW YORK 
 
 MCMXVIII 
 
HN 
 
 So V 
 P4 
 
 Copyright, 1918, by 
 Melusina Fay Peirce 
 
To 
 My Friend of Friends 
 because he was the friend* 
 of this my book — its 
 pages are devotedly inscribed. 
 
" / do feel that there is a screw of such magnitude loose 
 somewhere that the whole framework of society is shaken." 
 
 — Charles Dickens. 
 
 "Man has nothing but contempt for the woman. The 
 hatred of women is an essential of our modern heroic 
 life." — Gabrielle D'annunzio. 
 
 " There is a rock on which every human soul must 
 anchor or be split; it is the sex opposite to its own." 
 
 — Frederick Robertson. 
 
PART I 
 THE TERRESTRIAL DISCORD 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 THE TERRESTRIAL DISCORD. 
 
 THE DEXTERS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Prelude 5 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I Mrs. Dexter 9 
 
 II " Poor Tim " 14 
 
 III Julia 19 
 
 IV Mrs. Dexter's " New Jerusalem " 25 
 
 V Fanny Dexter ... 35 
 
 VI A New Yorker 43 
 
 VII His "Little Queen" 53 
 
 VIII A New Household 60 
 
 IX *' Something Too Much of This " 65 
 
 X Still " Excelsior " 70 
 
 XI Cheated Hymen 77 
 
 XII Wedding Number Two 89 
 
 XIII The " Little Housekeeper " 101 
 
 XIV The Old Story 108 
 
 XV A Domestic Despot 125 
 
 XVI The Joys of Flirtation 136 
 
 XVII The Calverts Abroad 146 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 XVIII Number Three . . .^ 157 
 
 XIX A Broken Engagement 165 
 
 XX The Shopper Abroad 172 
 
 XXI A Broken Heart 179 
 
 XXII " FaciHs Decensus " 192 
 
 XXIII A " A Man of the World " 204 
 
 • XXIV Education Tells 212 
 
 XXV The Bottomless Pit 219 
 
 XXVI Deserted 229 
 
 XXVII Lost— The Last Chance 234 
 
 XXVIII Belmont 242 
 
 XXIX Austen Brown .'. 254 
 
 XXX How " Swells " Are Evolved 262 
 
 XXXI The Mrs. Browns 267 
 
 XXXII The " Shadows We Pursue ! " 276 
 
 XXXIII " The Day Is Past and Gone " 281 
 
 THE HOWf:S. 
 
 XXXIV "Ifs" 290 
 
 XXXV Discovery 298 
 
 XXXVI Sentenced 310 
 
 XXXVII An Adventuress 319 
 
 XXXVIII The Worm at the Root 327 
 
 THE BROWNS. 
 
 XXXIX "The Evil That Men Do Lives After 
 
 Them" 337 
 
 XL The Bubble Bursts 346 
 
 XLI Man and Nature 352 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CALVERT. 
 
 XLII A " Business " American 363 
 
 XLIII A Democratic Leader 372 
 
 XLIV Something Men Hate 378 
 
 XLV An American Editor 382 
 
 XLVI '* His Little Game " 388 
 
 XLVH A "Statesman" 392 
 
 XLVHI A " Party " Nomination 398 
 
 XLIX Vox Populi 405 
 
 L An Anglo-Irish Journalist 408 
 
 LI A Traitor to Jefferson 414 
 
 LII A Presidential Nomination 421 
 
 LIII The Ministers and the Man 428 
 
 LIV A Presidential Campaign 434 
 
 LV More Godkin Ethics 442 
 
 LVI October, 1884 447 
 
 LVII " Counted In " 453 
 
 LVIII The Apex , 457 
 
 LIX Dust to Dust 463 
 
 LX Did It Pay 469 
 
 LXI The First Cleveland Term 472 
 
 LXII The Harrison Administration 475 
 
 LXIII The Second Cleveland Term 479 
 
 LXIV The Cleveland Exit 482 
 
 LXV A Character Sketch 486 
 
 LXVI Sowing and Reaping 490 
 
 LXVII The Unforgivable 4^2 
 
 LXVIII " From Bad to Worse " 49« 
 
 LXIX And Worse Remains Behind 501 
 
NEW YORK: 
 
 A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 PART I.— THE TERRESTRIAL DISCORD. 
 
 PRELUDE 
 
 In penning the following pages my motive has been the 
 underlying motive of my whole life — to rescue my own 
 sex from profanation and ruin. 
 
 If they should at all contribute to this submerged Cause 
 to the same extent they would also save my country from 
 imperialism. 
 
 For the cause of Inviolate Womanhood is the cause of 
 Republican Institutions. Profaned and ruined woman- 
 hood presupposes profaning and sensual manhood, and pro- 
 faning and sensual manhood in every age and clime of the 
 world has meant autocratic government — the many, in 
 some form, by some means, ruled by the few. 
 
 Collective man never is and never has been non-gov- 
 erned. Collective man is and always has been governed 
 either by himself collectively and therefore what is called 
 
6 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 self-governed, or governed by some one else, and there- 
 fore ruled. 
 
 Government, however, in every case implies a law 
 which the governed obeys. To what law, then, shall men 
 conform in order to enjoy self-government and to evolve, 
 perpetuate and enlarge free institutions f 
 
 The late 0. Henry — the loved, the lamented — to one 
 who sought his viezvs of a life beyond the grave, replied: — 
 '7 had a little dog and his name was Rover. When he 
 died he died all over'* — and immediately changed the 
 subject. 
 
 The god-like Edison, Promethean benefactor of mankind, 
 was asked what he ivas aiming at and what was the use, 
 after all, of his inventions? He quickly returned: — '7 
 don't know what you and I are here for or where we are 
 going. Do you f JVhy do people rush and struggle? Why 
 do you write as though your life depended on it and enjoy 
 it, too? Why do I invent? We work because in some way 
 it satisfies us. That is all I know." 
 
 And I recall ''"t? sn^nc years ago the rich and brilliant 
 Labouchere of London, echoing the famous Omar Khay- 
 yam, declared in his newspaper, " Truth" that since zve 
 human beings " arc pitched on to this revolvina 'all" from 
 we knoiv not zvherc, for zve know not why, and are zuhirl- 
 ing we know not whither, the manifold lapses and errors 
 into which we fall should be considered and judged 
 leniently rather than severely. 
 
 But if the nrcat, the gifted and the successful among 
 mankind can thus content themselves to drift from birth 
 to death without any spiritual Polar Star to guide them, 
 to one humble thinker the injustice of life, so far greater 
 
XEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 7 
 
 than its justice — the sorrow of life, so hopelessly out- 
 weighing its joy — would make such a mental attitude 
 impossible. Without a definite conviction whence we 
 have come, why we are here, and whither ive are going, 
 the voluntary acceptance of human limitations and suffer- 
 ings, the voluntary endurance of the intolerable spectacle 
 of the weak everyivhere betrayed and exploited by the 
 strong, would argue a lack of rational intelligence. Sui- 
 cide, especially for women, would he the only common 
 sense. 
 
 Whoever then takes the trouble to read these pages 
 will kindly remember throughout that they were penned 
 according to the teachings of the Old and New Testa- 
 ments as the writer understands them. Other races, other 
 minds, than the Hebrews of ancient Palestine have had 
 and do have their theories of the problem of mortal des- 
 tiny. To the writer, that which she finds in the so-called 
 Bible is at once perfectly beautiftd, beautifully perfect, 
 and utterly, absolutely, infinitely satisfying. 
 
 The Highest Authority of that Bible said — "Judge not 
 according to the appearance, but judge riqhfcous judg- 
 ment." 
 
 Of what avail is it if reformers and statesmen, from 
 reporters to presidents, attack and mow dozvn the poison- 
 grozvth every where overspreading the land, if the living 
 root thereof be still left ignored and undisturbed in the 
 ground? 
 
 In this book — written haltingly and at long intervals 
 because of an almost insurmountable repugnance to the 
 task — liritten therefore, imperfectly, inadequately, as we 
 do everything that we mortally hate to do and that is 
 
8 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 bitterly more than we can do — / have tried to lay bare the 
 poison-root itself and to indicate the sole force that can 
 destroy it. 
 
 Melusina Fay Peirce, 
 Chicago^ 
 1910. 
 
MRS. DEXTER. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 MRS. DEXTER. 
 
 Up to sixty years ago a certain beautifully placed New 
 England village had been connected with New York and 
 Boston only by stage-coach, about fifty miles nearer the 
 latter than the former, and had therefore been doing all 
 its business and deriving its highest standards from her. 
 While there were no cast-iron distinctions in Belmont 
 society, so that at a general party you would probably 
 meet your shoemaker and your dressmaker, there was also 
 an inner circle of friends who dropped daily in and out 
 of each other's houses and often invited each other to 
 high tea, and who were so cultured and refined that, even 
 granting an occasional provincialism, they would have 
 been enjoyed as intelligent and agreeable gentle-folk any- 
 where. 
 
 The leading lawyers and the pastors of the Congre- 
 gational and Episcopal churches with their wives and 
 
yEPV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 daughters, the delightful and remarkable unmarried sister 
 of one of these lawyers, a prosperous and exceedingly 
 decorous banker's family, the principal school-mistress, a 
 genial merchant and his wife, together with two or three 
 other women wonderfully and inscrutably superior to their 
 stolid and limited bread-winners of husbands ; these people 
 at once gave an educated tone to the little place and led a 
 pleasant life themselves. Exquisite New England house- 
 wifery was common among them, and to live well within 
 their means much of their New England religion. 
 
 In this clever circle there was, however, one person 
 who felt herself not of it, but born for a very different 
 sphere. Very pretty and a rustic belle in her youth, as a 
 matron of forty-five she was unpoetically stout and de- 
 cidedly faded, though her teeth were as fine, and in spite 
 of much housework, her hand and foot nearly as small 
 as ever. Her hair, which had early turned grey, she kept 
 to its original black by dyeing. Her husband was a 
 plodding lawyer in Belmont, and she was the mother of 
 three daughters. Her ruling traits were a vanity so trans- 
 parent and a pretension so extraordinary, that in the 
 village her very name, ''Mrs. Dexter," was almost a by- 
 word, so synonymous was it with insincerity, and above 
 all, with absurdity. Beginning life -with nothing, every 
 step in her domestic career had been a triumph, as one 
 by one she gathered round her the inexpensive household 
 decorations that expressed her naturally ' ' frenchy ' ' taste. 
 By the time her eldest daughter was in long dresses, her 
 little parlors had attained to turkey-red curtains and a 
 tapestry carpet gay with flowers — and very bright and 
 cheerful in the long winter evenings they looked. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. H 
 
 It is often the case that people whom their fellows can- 
 not respect or even heartily like, have very pleasant houses 
 to go to, and this was the case with Mrs. Dexter. Though 
 she was the person most ridiculed and disapproved of in 
 the community, her house was practically one of the most 
 popular, perhaps because her manner was always cordial, 
 and because she was too much taken up with her own in- 
 terests to spend much time in discussing her neighbors. She 
 was profuse in her flattering expressions, talked constantly 
 of what she would do for the church and for society if she 
 only had the means, and provided it cost nothing, she 
 really was occasionally kind and obliging ; but if it could 
 be helped she never paid a debt, or gave an entertainment, 
 or a present, or a subscription, no matter how small. 
 
 Her insincerity and meanness, however, did not extend 
 to her children. In this land of devoted and indulgent 
 mothers she was among the most so, and as her daughters 
 grew up, her whole life became a plot and a strain and a 
 sacrifice to marry them according to her ambition. Bel- 
 mont, she felt, had never been the right sphere for herself. 
 Its people were too undemonstrative, their principles too 
 severe, their tastes too quiet for this inborn Frenchwoman. 
 In her heart she determined that her girls should have a 
 better chance than she had had. And there was nothing 
 of the white feather in her ambition. It was vaulting. 
 The long-building railroad which was to connect New 
 York and Montreal, had, in 1849, at last got as far as Bel- 
 mont, and its daily ''through" train brought to the slow 
 pulse of the tranquil hamlet the bounding throb of the 
 eager metropolis whose household gods are Mammon for 
 men and Fashion for women. 
 
 Mrs. Dexter' s was the first rapturous response of Belmont 
 
12 NEW YORK; A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 to what was destined to prove a poison thrill. Her heaven 
 upon earth, the great, rushing^ fascinating city of New 
 York, which years ago she had just once visited, and which 
 hitherto had seemed so unattainable was now — transport ! 
 — within a day's paltry journey. She had a second cousin 
 living there, and she determined that Julia, her eldest 
 daughter, just past seventeen, should spend there her 
 eighteenth winter. 
 
 Thence was despatched in May an affectionate epistle, 
 phonetic in spelling and regardless o^ stops, but containing 
 cordial invitations to her cousin and all her cousin's family 
 to spend the coming summer in Belmont. She lamented 
 that in a place where everybody was related to everybody 
 else, the Dexters alone were almost without a family circle, 
 so that her ''poor children" were always wishing they 
 had cousins as the other Belmont girls had. Now that the 
 railroad at last united New York and Belmont, she couldn't 
 help hoping that their young people might soon get ac- 
 quainted and mutually enjoy and improve each other. 
 Not, of course, that her ''little country Julia" could im- 
 prove her cousin's " dear, city-bred Anna !" Far from it ! 
 Julia, she was sorry to say, needed much polishing in the 
 graces and accomplishments ! But she was a very intel- 
 lectual girl ("intellectual" and "stylish" were Mrs. 
 Dexter' s favorite words, because she knew she was the 
 latter and feared she ought to be the former), and Mrs. 
 Dexter was sure that she and Anna would enjoy their 
 books and their walks together. In fact, this oldest 
 daughter would be so glad to have a companion more con- 
 genial to her than the " rather ordinary " young ladies of 
 Belmont, that " she sends word to dear Anna by me, if she 
 will only come, we will do everything in our power to 
 make her happy, etc., etc." 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 13 
 
 The cousin did not find it convenient to accept the 
 invitation, as ''unfortunately," so she expressed herself, 
 *'we have just completed our arrangements for the 
 season," but she suggested that if Julia would come and 
 spend the next winter in New York, perhaps Anna would 
 return with her to Belmont the following summer. 
 
 This was precisely the turn for which Mrs. Dexter had 
 hoped. All the friends of the delighted mother were 
 henceforth bored to death with eternal descriptions of how 
 dear, how estimable, how remarkable a woman was her 
 cousin, Mrs. Wilkins, how fond they had been of eaca 
 other when they were girls, what a privilege it was to be 
 with her, ''and oh, such a de-z'^Z-ed Christian, too, Mr. 
 Gardner-a-h ! ' ' she exclaimed to her pastor, closing her 
 eyes with a peculiar sanctimoniousness that in a suitable 
 presence she could assume on the instant. 
 
 Mr. Dexter' s income, however, *only sufficed for their 
 ordinary expenses, and here would be an extraordinary one, 
 involving not only the travelling to New York, but a ward- 
 robe, at least in externals, quite beyond anything to which 
 any Belmont belle had as yet aspired. But Mrs. Dexter 
 was far too able a strategist to have planned a campaign 
 without knowing beforehand where was to be procured the 
 material of war. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 *'POOR TIM." 
 
 Joseph, or '^Joe" Dexter, as Mrs. Dexter's lord and 
 master was familiarly called, having been early left an 
 orphan, was taken in and brought up by a kindly old uncle 
 who lived on a farm some twenty miles east from Belmont. 
 In the nearest village was a large collegiate academy [i\ 
 whichj under the auspices of the Methodists, the co-educa^ 
 tion of grown youths and maidens was carried on without 
 any suspicion on the part of either teachers or pupils that 
 they were solving a great educational problem long before 
 its future agitation in the high educational world. Mr. 
 Dexter's uncle had only one child, a son, and he, without 
 being an idiot outright, was, as his neighbors said, so de- 
 cidedly ''wanting," that his father did not even attempt 
 the higher education for him, but gave the academic ad- 
 vantages that might otherwise have been his, to his cousin. 
 ''Nephew Joe" was grateful for the kindness, and when, 
 some years after, his benefactor was about td die and leave 
 poor Timothy without a home and with, perhaps, two thou- 
 sand dollars in difficult savings, he promised • the uneasy 
 father that the feeble-minded one should have a home with 
 him, and also that he would carefully guard for him his 
 little fortune. 
 
 He made this promise on the rash impulse of an affect- 
 ing moment, and as he drove back to Belmont he felt un- 
 
N£IV YORK; A SYMPHONIC STUDY. . 15 
 
 comfortably enough at the thought of the freezing look he 
 was certain to encounter from the pale-blue determined eye 
 of his wife as he told her of it. He was an easy man, and 
 so hated the angry expostulation of which, in her own 
 cause, Mrs. Dexter was only too capable, that he generally 
 gave m before any disagreement was well on. But fore- 
 warned is fore-armed. Through all the homeward miles 
 he was predetermined to maintain his ground, and before 
 going to sleep he ended the stormy upbraidings which, ac- 
 cording to anticipation, descended upon him, by saying 
 imperiously: ''Come wife! Make the best of it. He's 
 very quiet, poor fellow ! You won't find it so bad as you 
 think." 
 
 Mrs. Dexter did make the best of it, but wholly from 
 her own point of view, which was to get the best of it. 
 From the first she "put her foot down," as she declared 
 to her children she would, that Tim should not eat with 
 the family. "/ won't have him at the table! " she ex- 
 claimed, " his table-manners are disgusting — no better' n a 
 farm hand's." 
 
 "You ate with farm hands years enough at your own 
 grandfather's table, and in your own grandfather's kitchen, 
 Libby," retorted her husband, " not to be putting on airs 
 now." 
 
 " If I did I was sickened enough with it then, and if I 
 was going to keep in a farm atmosphere all my days, what 
 did I marry you for, I'd like to know? I don't propose 
 that my refined children shall be exposed to what I was 
 subjected to after my own dear father's death." 
 
 Through this clever device Mrs. Dexter avoided increas- 
 ing her closely-calculated table supply, and poor Tim had 
 to content himself in the kitchen with what little was left 
 
i6 . NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 over. By insufficient food, and by all the winter discom- 
 fort within the power of the ^house-mistress in a severe 
 climate to inflict, she made the hapless creature's life such 
 a burden to him, that he was continually wandering back 
 over the hills to spend weeks at a time with old friends and 
 neighbors who were more compassionate than his flinty 
 relative. About the time of the Mexican war he drifted 
 away altogether, and now for some time had not been 
 heard of. Mrs. Dexter devoutly hoped that the war had 
 swallowed him up, and improvising a fable on that theory 
 one day to a cousin who was enquiring about him, she soon 
 imposed it upon her own mind as an absolute fact. 
 
 It was to the trust-money in her husband's hands belong- 
 ing to this feeble being that, even before angling for the 
 New York invitation, she had looked to aid her in her ma- 
 ternal project for her eldest daughter. When with sparkling 
 eyes she had read out to Mr. Dexter her cousin's letter, she 
 exclaimed: ''Of course we must let her go! It would 
 be everything to her." 
 
 But Mr. Dexter answered slowly : " Well — yes — 'twould 
 be a good thing for Jule, I don't doubt. But I don't see 
 how we can afford it. You must see that yourself. You 
 know there's a payment due yet on these carpets," glanc- 
 ing across the cheerful parlors. 
 
 '' Not much — and it would only take about a hundred 
 and fifty dollars. And what if we do let our Belmont bills 
 run behind for a year or two, for the child's good? Our 
 credit's good, and what's the use of having credit if you 
 can't use it? A poor hundred or two oughtn't to weigh 
 against the possibility of Jule' s settling herself in life with 
 a good city match." ^ 
 
 ' ' She might not make the match, and there would be 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 17 
 
 the debt. I really don't see, Elizabeth, how we can ven- 
 ture it." 
 
 "Julia not marry? As pretty as she is? Nonsense! 
 She's sure to marry well if she has only half a chance. 
 But what chance has she here? There's not a single mate 
 in town for her, and you know that as well as I do. 
 Julia isn't the girl to live off candle-ends and do her own 
 work as all but about three of us Belmont women do. But, 
 Joe! " — with a sudden animation as if it had just flashed 
 upon her — '' Why can't we borrow it of Tim's legacy ? " 
 
 ''Not to be thought of. That is trust-money, you 
 know. ' ' 
 
 '''Trust' fiddlestick! Why shouldn't it be thought 
 of? If your uncle was alive and you asked him to lend it, 
 he would in a minute. He thought more of you than he 
 did of his own poor cretur anyway." (In the bosom of 
 her family Mrs. Dexter often lapsed into the vernacular in 
 which she had been brought up). 
 
 " He might lend it, but he would be sure to want se- 
 curity. He was pretty long-headed, was uncle." 
 
 " Well, Tim hasn't been heard of for four years, and of 
 course he's dead ; and if he is, one-third of the money is 
 your's anyhow. Come, Joe ! Do have common sense 
 and common feeling for your own child. Of course we'll 
 gradually replace the loan. Why shouldn't we? Any- 
 body' d think we're thieves. Don't be ridiklus, old 
 man ! " 
 
 As has been said, Mr. Dexter was easy-going, and be- 
 sides, in his secret heart, he was himself well pleased at the 
 idea of his little girl going down to the great gay city with 
 an outfit that would justly set off her undoubted charms. 
 His wife perceived his leaning and returned again and 
 
i8 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 again to the charge until at last he yielded, and confided 
 to her the two hundred and fifty dollars she decided she 
 required. 
 
 That sum, in those days before the Civil War had raised 
 prices, or the sewing machine had introduced the modern 
 elaboration of "trimmings," meant a good deal. The guest- 
 room was assigned to a dressmaker, who came and stayed 
 in the house, and there she and Mrs. Dexter and Julia sat, 
 cutting, fitting and stitching for the young debutante, until, 
 in addition to her usual wardrobe, there hung in the guest- 
 room closet a silk of ''mazarine" or dark blue, a black silk, 
 a breakfast wrapper of maroon merino with cord and 
 tassel round the waist and the skirt flowing open to display 
 a worked petticoat beneath, and a party dress of white 
 tarletane. These, with a pink satin bonnet and a new 
 cloak and furs, Mrs. Dexter judged sufficient for Julia to 
 begin the world with. She had visions of one or two more 
 dresses that might be managed later if they were found 
 indispensable. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 JULIA. 
 
 When the pretty clothes were all done, and Julia had 
 tried them all on in succession, in order to show them to 
 the fond eyes of her father, the result was such as to make 
 him privately confident that the matrimonial campaign was 
 as good as won. For Julia certainly was pretty, nay, she 
 was one of those unaccountable children that make one 
 wonder where their parents got them, so unlike by nature 
 did she seem to either of hers and to her mother in par- 
 ticular. Providential that nature so often does " hark 
 back " to her better things, or what would become of the 
 race ! 
 
 She was a Httle creature, this Julia, with a rather flat 
 bosom and pipe-stem arms which she had inherited from 
 her father, who was the typical " lank " American ; but 
 her waist was tiny, her back was straight, and her perfect 
 lower shapeliness and extremely small hands and feet she 
 owed to her mother. Mrs. Dexter's petite extremities, 
 however, were plump and commonplace, whereas Julia's 
 were poetically slender and her hand as soft and white as 
 a white rose-leaf. Her little head was well shaped and 
 well set and covered with waving black hair that contrasted 
 charmingly with her broad white brow and pink cheeks. 
 Her features were regular, her teeth like pearls, and her 
 mouth and smile lovely. Her pale blue eyes were rather 
 
20 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 weak, but this defect was hardly noticed, as she never 
 more than half opened them and kept them much upon the 
 ground. Taking her altogether the ensemble was not only 
 pretty, but fascinating. She was as proud as her mother 
 was vain, and she threw back her little head with such hau- 
 teur that she actually added to her height ; but then she had, 
 too, when she smiled, the sweetest dimples in her cheeks in 
 the world. 
 
 She was a spoiled child, and therefore hardly to be 
 blamed for being indolent, self-indulgent and high tem- 
 pered ; but she was truly affectionate, intensely loyal to 
 her friends and very intelligent. Though with no educa- 
 tion other than she had picked up in a careless and desul- 
 tory attendance at the village academy, and no accom- 
 plishment save that of banging dissonant chords on the 
 piano and screaming a song fearfully out of tune — she yet 
 had so much dignity, tact and natural refinement, she kept 
 so well up in current light literature, and withal dressed so 
 tastefully, looked so pretty, and talked so easily and brightly, 
 that (provided she were not asked to sing) she would have 
 adorned any drawing-room anywhere. In short, she was 
 a born elegafite. 
 
 To do poor Mrs. Dexter justice, Julia was her idol. She 
 believed her to be gifted with a rare and profound intellect, 
 and looked up to her daughter as to a real superior. And 
 nature had indeed meant Julia to be one of her truest ladies 
 and noblest women, but she was spoiled in the after-making. 
 
 To New York at last the fond mother despatched her 
 darling, and all winter long the village was edified with 
 Julia's city experience — the churches, the operas, the par- 
 ties and the lectures she went to, the new dresses she bought, 
 and, above all, with the dancing class at Dodworth's, of 
 
X£ir YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 21 
 
 which she, according to her mother, became a distinguished 
 member. She went for a stay of three months, but the 
 whole eight of the New England winter had dragged them- 
 selves out before Julia came home, bringing with her that 
 ''lovely girl," her cousin Anna, upon whom Mrs. Dexter 
 had so fervently descanted all the previous year. She 
 turned out to be a tall, plain, dull, unpretending, and un- 
 attractive young woman, and a most admirable foil to her 
 charming country cousin, who had returned with her hair 
 revolutionized by the new Parisian coiffure, with all the 
 rest of her make-up piquante in the extreme from being (as 
 Belmont firmly believed) in the very latest fashion — with 
 more tossings of the pretty head and more satisfaction with 
 herself than ever, but with the same warm and true heart 
 underneath it all. Something else, too, she came back 
 with, in fact with the very thing her mother had sent her 
 for, as the village soon in high interest whispered to itself 
 — "a beau ! " 
 
 Julia's admirer was a dashing young clerk at the head of 
 an important retail department of a renowned New York 
 dry goods house. Like Julia herself, he was from the coun- 
 try and had received but a village school education. His 
 original name was Jones, but in contempt he had changed 
 it to Calvert, and " Frank Calvert" had certainly a very 
 taking sound. It was well chosen, too, for he was a hand- 
 some, generous, spirited fellow, blessed with good sense and 
 steady habits, and as he joined an excellent capacity for 
 business with great attention to it, he was a favorite with 
 the merchant prince, his employer, and on his way up in 
 the world. 
 
 True that he had not fortified his scanty education with 
 miscellaneous light reading, as Julia had hers, so that he 
 
2 2 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 could not SO crushingly deprecate ^the last poor novel, or 
 descant as fluently and authoritatively upon the great con- 
 temporary lights — Hawthorne, Thackeray, Dickens and 
 t. harles Kingsley — as she ; but for all that, as matches go 
 Julia might have gone much further and fared much worse 
 — while as to character, though not, like herself, a "mem- 
 ber of the church ' ' (the Episcopal church of course — Mrs. 
 Dexter' s instinct for externals and swelldom could not 
 have united with any other), his spartan beginnings and 
 long business training had made him far more capable of 
 industry, patience, self-denial and devotion, than was the 
 spoiled and flattered little maiden with whom he was so 
 desperately in love. 
 
 Mamma Dexter was radiantly satisfied with Frank Calvert 
 as a prospective son-in-law. A high-priest in one of the 
 great temples — nay, in the temple of American fashion, 
 what could have suited her better ? The fastidious Julia, 
 however, was hardly so well content in contemplating him 
 as a husband. She declared over and over again to her 
 mother and to her most intimate friend that he was not her 
 "ideal." 
 
 The truth was, Julia's father had talent enough to be a 
 little of a thinker and a good deal of a talker, and as she 
 was constantly told, and really imagined herself to be, 
 " intellectual," she had always aspired, and indeed had 
 determined, to marry a lawyer. The leading lawyer of 
 Belmont, Mr. Ashurst, was, as she expressed it, her "ad- 
 miration. ' ' He was one of the first men in the State, a 
 Harvard man as well, and a most rare and delightful com- 
 panion. The families were near neighbors and saw each 
 other often, and Julia was intelligent enough to appreciate 
 and thoroughly to admire, not only Mr. but Miss Ashurst, 
 
JVEPV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 23 
 
 his still more brilliant sister, who was almost as well-known 
 throughout the State for her culture and eloquence in con- 
 versation, as he was for legal learning and acumen. 
 
 Julia took Miss Ashurst partially for her model, and 
 when that lady, at the maturity of thirty-nine, married a 
 judge from Springfield, Massachusetts — Julia, though then 
 but fifteen, M^as much impressed with the stir and excite- 
 ment throughout the little community over this marriage, 
 at the universal lamentation over the lady's departure, and 
 still more with the leading position she at once took in the 
 society to which she was transferred. Julia loved to imag- 
 ine herself playing a similar part, for Miss Ashurst had 
 money, and was never obliged, nor ever known, to clip 
 her bright wings with the household cares to which all the 
 other women in Belmont were slaves, and to which Julia 
 had a genuine literary aversion. Therefore, though Mr. 
 Calvert's handsome person and chivalric devotion had to a 
 certain extent won her heart, so that she found herself too 
 much in love with him to refuse him, yet neither her am- 
 bition nor her judgment were quite satisfied. 
 
 She was captivated, but her lover did not command her 
 reverence, and therefore her passion, as her real superior, 
 and something deep and true told this imperious young 
 creature that she ought to have a husband upon whom her 
 mind could rest as well as her heart. While coquetting 
 with Mr. Calvert's offer, over and over again she ended the 
 discussions with her mother about it by saying, with strange 
 wistful instinct for her mother's daughter, that she wanted 
 to marry a man she could '' look up to." 
 
 But no snch parti was then in Belmont, and Mrs. Dexter 
 was too much fired with the ambition of seeing her darling 
 married to an energetic New Yorker, and married early, to 
 
24 .V£IV YOJ^K: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 favor her waiting for a more congenial suitor. Half in 
 love, therefore, and half in vanity, with a mixture of ten- 
 derness and prudence and that relentless conviction that 
 impels so many girls to the irrevocable step — There is 
 nothing better for me to do I — Julia Dexter plighted her- 
 self to Francis Calvert, loving him dearly and even jeal- 
 ously, but still enthroning herself consciously above him, 
 and perfectly satisfied to see him a devoted slave at her 
 feet. 
 
 It took her many months to make up her mind, and it 
 was six or eight more before the wedding-day was fixed. 
 According to the sensible and far more delicate country 
 custom, the engagement was not announced until shortly 
 before the marriage, and up to that time Mrs. Dexter 
 was extremely mysterious and non-committal. Afterward, 
 she copiously edified her friends on Julia's trousseau 
 and on Mr. Calvert's unexampled virtues and graces, and 
 somewhat the reverse of edified the more thoughtful on 
 what she hoped would be the starting principles of the 
 young menage. ''Julia is delicate, and I think it is per- 
 fectly barbarous for a young girl to have children and go 
 to housekeeping the first thing. Housekeeping is nothing 
 but work and slave from morning till night, and children 
 had better not come until they are wanted, etc., etc." 
 
 Poor little Julia ! It was hard to send her forth into the 
 battle of life with only the training such parents could give; 
 and when in the emerald days of June she went round 
 making her farewell calls in delicate muslin and a dainty 
 New York bonnet, she looked so sweet and so sincere that 
 those who most resented her mother's follies and preten- 
 sions could not but wish her well. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MRS. DEXTER's " NEW JERUSALEM." 
 
 Up to this point Julia's wedding was the most exciting 
 event of Mrs. Dexter's life, not only as -the occasion of 
 her marrying her favorite child in a manner she entirely 
 approved, but also because she aspired to have Julia's 
 the most " stylish " wedding that had ever been seen in 
 Belmont. 
 
 She had never given so large a party as this was to be. 
 The ceremony was fixed for the church at seven in the 
 evening, and a reception was to take place at the house 
 immediately after. Julia was to be in bridal white and to 
 be attended by two bridesmaids, her sister Fanny and her 
 cousin Anna, with their escorting groomsmen. One or 
 two of Mr. Calvert's relations were coming, and also his 
 most intimate friend, Mr. Howe, a New York clerk like 
 himself, whom he had chosen for " first groomsman " (as 
 in those days the best man was called), and with whom, in 
 consequence, and as Mrs. Dexter was fully aware, Miss 
 Fanny would have to walk up the church aisle, and next 
 whom to stand throughout the reception. Altogether, an 
 ambitious programme for simple Belmont. 
 
 Mrs. Dexter's intimates knew that either she never could 
 or never would get together supper enough for the occa- 
 sion, and so, the week beforehand, they good-naturedly 
 combined to make sure that the feast should shame neither 
 
26 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 Belmont housekeeping nor Belmont hospitality. Every- 
 body had been invited and ever>^body came, though, since 
 it was Mrs. Dexter, quite as much to criticise as to enjoy. 
 
 And, alas ! the wedding was not a success either spec- 
 tacular or social. In the first place, it rained dismally. 
 In the second, though the bride was correct in white silk 
 and tulle veil, a faultless bridal toilette was quite beyond 
 even Mrs. Dexter. The Belmont glass of fashion had' 
 never seen one, consequently she could not reflect it. 
 The dress was not becomingly made, and the veil was too 
 short and too scanty and very awkwardly put on. The 
 pretty Julia had never looked less well, if indeed she had 
 ever looked so ill in her life ; and the bridegroom, a con- 
 noisseur from seeing the best-dressed women in the country 
 constantly passing in street costume before him, was in 
 secret quite seriously annoyed. So true it is that nothing is 
 perfectly done that is not easily done — done without effort. 
 
 The youthful pair indulged in a short wedding journey, 
 and then returned to the city, where they established them- 
 selves in two rooms in a high-class boarding house, and set 
 out to be happy. And very happy they were, for Julia en- 
 joyed being worshipped, and for a long time it was sweet 
 to the ardent young husband to worship. Even after six 
 months the bloom and the dew were yet upon the wonder 
 and the sweetness of the ''Thou," when, as the holidays 
 approached, Mrs. Dexter realized the fond dream of her 
 life by actually finding herself on a visit to her New Jeru- 
 salem, or, rather, as she pronounced New Jerusalem — 
 "Noo Yawk!" 
 
 She had been telling everybody since the wedding how 
 happy Julia was, and that there was "■ only one thing" the 
 child wanted, viz : to see her mother. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 27 
 
 * • Every letter I get, it is ' Now mother, do come on and 
 .1 ay with us, if it is only for a week ! Frank is as anxious 
 <o see you as I am. Mrs. Ford has a pleasant room that 
 she can give you, and we will do everything to make you 
 have a good time. ' — You see, Frank is away all day at his 
 business, and Jule has a good many lonely hours, I know, 
 though she doesn't say much about it. So it really seems 
 as if it was my duty to go, though I hate to leave Mr, 
 Dexter and the children. Still," clearing her throat and 
 posing her hand affectedly on her ample chest, " my lungs 
 trouble me a good deal this winter, and I feel that a change 
 of climate is almost imperative-a-h. " (Among Mrs. Dex- 
 ter' s company manners was the ending of her paragraphs 
 with a long-drawn ** a-h " and smile of ineffable elegance.) 
 
 And so this devoted wife and mother had torn herself 
 away and had come to spend a few weeks with her beloved 
 Julia in the enchanted land of her almost better-loved New 
 York, and oh ! that first step on the sidewalk of a great 
 city — that crisp, strange, magnetic, intoxicating thrill ! 
 Was ever mortal vouchsafed a morrient of greater ecstasy 
 than Mrs. Dexter when first that stony surface kissed her 
 little foot ! Fortunate being — to attain the insatiate long- 
 ing of years before she was too old or too discouraged to 
 enjoy it ! 
 
 The New York of that day, by the way, was sympathetic 
 to Americans. The dingy, odious, omnipresent English 
 sparrow, pert incarnation of low-born alien aggressiveness, 
 had not then displaced the lovely, stately American doves 
 that hovered everywhere about the ways, sacred emblems 
 of a Holy Spirit not yet grieved afar. Its cheerful squares 
 had not much to show besides their tree-lined, vine-draped 
 
28 A Ell' YORK. A SVMPHONJC Sl'UDi. 
 
 rows of clean brown-stone houses and the '* pleasant and 
 pretty people " that lived in thetn ; but it was still at one 
 with itself, with its good clearly on the top and its bad de- 
 cidedly at the bottom. 
 
 Not then did the thick miasms of Europe brood heavily 
 over a monstrous and soul-torpid town, nor was New York 
 as yet [hat tragic jumble of irreconcilable antagonisms into 
 which at this writing (1892) she has evolved. The logic of 
 events had hardly begun to work out the certain results of 
 the treachery to patriotism which was even then the fixed 
 policy of her master-minds — that, namely, of getting rich 
 while the public weal takes care of itself. 
 
 In 1852, New Yorkers were not jammed into dense miles 
 of flats, tenements, boarding houses and hotels parted only 
 by a narrow central line of "palatial mansions" deserted 
 for one-half the year. The money-centre of this cotmtry 
 could still afford a genuine residence-quarter of genuine 
 homes, wherein, the bisecting Broadway apart, Trade did 
 not obtrude her brazen front at every turn as now she in- 
 sistingly does. Peanut and fruit stands ad nauseam, and a 
 liquor saloon every instant, did not keep eating and drink- 
 ing everlastingly in consciousness. Elevated roads did 
 not block the vistas nor electric wires cobweb the air. 
 The Jew was not yet a feature, the German w^as not yet a 
 brother, the Irishman was not yet the master, nor yet had 
 New York, betrayed by a supine and divided Protestant 
 clergy, sacrificed to them her American Sunday. On that 
 day business shutters were up and business blinds were 
 down, the streets were quiet save for the soft church-bell 
 sounds that echoed over them, and empty but of festively- 
 dressed citizens going to honor God — for women had not 
 then found out that it was "bad form" to attend their 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 29 
 
 Maker's receptions on Sundays in clothes quite as good as 
 those they wore to each other's receptions on week days. 
 
 True that the street centres were fearfully dirty — but 
 one was not so very conscious of it, for Croton water was 
 unlimited, and it was the general custom to hose off the 
 sidewalks daily, so that at least one did not have to tread, 
 as afterward for so many years, upon a stained and shock- 
 ing surface carpeted more or less with dust and slatternly 
 with papers and chips ! 
 
 In fine, if there were nothing about the place artisti- 
 cally beautiful, neither was there anything painfully dis- 
 quieting. The stamp of intelligence, refinement and self- 
 respect, of Americanism and of religion, was as vividly 
 upon that long-ago New York as is the deep brand of the 
 reverse elements now. Art, architecture and music were 
 scarcely born. Central Park and the multitude of summer 
 resources were not. Pictures and picture-galleries and even 
 theatres were few and far between, and bric-a-brac and 
 decorative firms were absolutely unimagined. There was 
 little to see and to enjoy. But what there was at least was 
 unalloyed — was not set in the plundering and demoralizing 
 Irish rule with which now for a generation New York has 
 discounted her multiform advantages! Among American 
 cities it was easily the distingue city, as its high-strung, 
 graceful, masterful people, less intellectual than percep- 
 tive, and extraordinarily executive, were easily the dis- 
 tingue people. 
 
 But what have they done with themselves, those men of 
 elegance and power that one used so often to remark — 
 for one might almost as well seek for such in one's walks 
 as for the fabled phoenix or the extinct dodo ? Inquiring 
 
30 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 about this when I went there to live in 1884, the reply 
 was — ''Gentlemen now very generally go down to busi- 
 ness in hansoms and coupes" — which perhaps accounts for 
 their disappearance from public view. The multitudinous 
 man one does meet bears the fresh, natty, well-dressed 
 New York stamp and he is faithful to the admirable fash- 
 ion from which New Yorkers have never swerved, of 
 acknowledging the beard, if at all, only by the moustache; 
 but so many are plump, pink-tinted, looking as if they fed 
 physically on foie gras and mentally on " Town Topics" 
 and written all over with self-indulgence, that one won- 
 ders in regret whether the thin American cheek, so dis- 
 ciplined, so romantic, the nervous spare American hand, 
 the general spartan leanness — all so manful, so adorable, 
 have forever vanished from the American metropolis 
 before the broad faces, the pudgy palms, the fat legs of 
 the continental European? 
 
 And if the New York men are transformed, so are the 
 New York women. For that ravishing fine fleiir of 
 American womanhood whoch was once the topmost crest 
 of the high-bred city, one looks almost in vain ! If there 
 are as many "ladies" in proportion as there used to be, 
 amid the billowing crowds of eager shoppers, one cannot 
 now discern them. They do not give the tone to their 
 fellows as once they did. Like the sea-anemone, their 
 exquisiteness has shrunk into itself. In Mrs. Dexter's 
 time the airy, silk-clad matrons and maidens, often with 
 their attendant cavaliers, to the stranger made Broadway 
 a perpetual romance. It was the hey-day — ^the golden 
 prime of the New York girl ! 
 
 Our fathers were wont to dwell upon and lament the 
 
I 
 
 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 31 
 
 delicacy and fragility of the American feminine type. 
 Their sons may well lament the coarser foreign tide that 
 has overwhelmed it. One may now spend hours in New 
 York shops and streets and remark not one ideally beau- 
 tiful face — a thing in Mrs. Dexter's time almost impossible. 
 In short, considered in its every-day aspect, the human 
 element which to the poetic eye was once New York's 
 most fascinating feature, has come to be the most alarm- 
 ing expression of the word that is written all over the 
 metropolis from the Harlem to the Battery — over her 
 measureless miles of monotonous tenements, over her 
 Brobdignagian sky-scrapers which shoulder so far, far 
 above her churches, over her treeless, turfless sidewalks, 
 over her gross, full-fed population — the special word of 
 the Jew, Satan's own dearest and deadliest word, the most 
 terrible word that Christendom can frame, because it is 
 the beginning of the end of the Kingdom of Heaven — 
 
 " MATERIALISM.'' 
 
 "The beginning of the end" did I say? Nay, did not 
 the end come when in 1891, on her then latest, loftiest 
 tower, more than three hundred feet in the air, New York 
 enpinnacled a nude and gilded huntress who proclaims to 
 every eye that the region of which she is the tutelary 
 genius has flung to the winds the feminine ideals no 
 less of the Pagan Diana than of the Christian Ma- 
 donna ! 
 
 Since Art began never was such a "thing dreamed of as 
 an unclothed woman crowning a city — yet summer crowds 
 nightly sit beneath the abashed stars and this disrobed 
 goddess while almost equally denuded chorus girls give one 
 of those decadent "shows" wanting which for his evening 
 
32 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 recreation the New York "sumrrter" man would feel him- 
 self defrauded indeed! 
 
 The favorite New York architect proposed, and the 
 favorite New York sculptor designed this bronze sacrilege 
 against one of the hallowed traditions of the race, for 
 American artists, like American theatre managers, are 
 mad after the "nude," — a plutocrat who hands the plate 
 in a leading church is one of the chief stockholders of the 
 great building devoted to such uses, and in July, 1892, in 
 its wide amphitheatre an army of young ''Christian En- 
 deavorers" sang their hymns and listened to their preachers 
 every evening for nearly a week, while on the theatre- 
 stage separated from them by a partition, and also on the 
 roof-garden over their heads, this " burlesque " exploita- 
 tion of American girlhood was going on. 
 
 And in this selfsame 1892 the popular divine across the 
 street from the "Garden " — with the usual vigilance and 
 consistency of the so-called " Christian " ministry, is in- 
 voking the law only against hidden horrors, and arousing 
 the public only against the evildoers of Tammany Hall! 
 
 The decorous yet charming New York of Mrs. Dexter's 
 day, gayly confident in its present and totally blind to its 
 future, proved to her devout country adorer so enthralling 
 that the "few weeks" had lengthened into five months 
 before Belmont saw 4:he lady again. "Julia could not bear 
 to hear of my leaving her," she said to her callers on 
 her return. " If you want to see devotion I wish you could 
 see Frank Calvert I Really, he allows Julia to do nothing! 
 They have a little wall-closet in their room in which he 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 33 
 
 always keeps wines and delicacies, and regularly every 
 night he sets the table and gets out a little supper and 
 attends to everything himself! I tell Jule he is spoiling 
 her, but she laughs and says she is quite willing to be waited 
 on. He just worships her — a-h ! " 
 
 It was quite true that Julia had been very glad to have 
 her mother stay on and on. She was intensely sociable, 
 and loved to spend long hours in talking and being sympa- 
 thized with. 
 
 It was nice to have her mother to go about the shops 
 with — " stores " they called them in those days — and to do 
 all her and Calvert's mending and be always there to 
 appeal to in all sorts of little decisions. Moreover, Julia 
 was devotedly attached to her mother and very dependent 
 upon her ; and, indeed, who, after all, would ever love her 
 again as this fond mother did? 
 
 Seeing how Julia enjoyed the visit — when, at the begin- 
 ning of every week, Mrs. Dexter Would say, " Well, my 
 dear children, I must go on Wednesday, and not trespass 
 on your hospitality any longer," — the male " child " would 
 answer good humoredly : " Oh, never mind, mother ! Stay 
 another week. You'll make it all right by boarding Julia 
 in the summer," — and, of course, Mrs. Dexter would stay. 
 The " pleasant room " she had romanced about to her Bel- 
 mont friends was only the cheapest hall bedroom Mrs. 
 Ford had, and therefore was not very expensive ; but still, 
 whenever they went anywhere, there was always an extra 
 ticket to buy, extra omnibus fare to pay, an extra guest 
 at the little supper, so that when Calvert at last put her on 
 the train to return to Belmont, his heart felt lighter and 
 his purse heavier than it had done for some weeks. He 
 
34 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 was charmed to 'have his ''little darling" as he fondly 
 called her, and his little parlor again all to himself. Not 
 only had it been vividly borne in upon him after the first 
 Mrs. Dexter fortnight that " two is company but three is 
 a crowd," but he even caught himself wondering whether 
 or not his devoted mother-^in-law was just the least little 
 bit of a sponge ! 
 
 To do her justice, Mrs. Dexter had done what she could 
 to save him extra expense in evening amusements, by 
 making his friend, Mr. Howe, pay for her as often as she 
 thought prudent. When getting up a party for the theatre, 
 for instance, she would laugh and say in Mr. Howe's 
 presence : " You needn't trouble about an escort for me, 
 Frank. Mr. Howe will be my beau ! " — upon which Mr. 
 Howe would be " only too happy" and would procure and 
 pay for Mrs. Dextcr's tickets and also for her ice cream 
 after the play. Of course, she would sit next to him, and 
 as a reward she would entertain him with copious accounts 
 and laudations of her second daughter, Fanny. 
 
 [Note. — The foreging description of New York between 
 1884-1892, and which held good until the reform regime 
 of Mayor Strong in 1894-1897, was written and electro- 
 typed in 1892. 
 
 Cambridge y 1915.] 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 FANNY DEXTER. 
 
 Fanny Dexter was only fourteen when Mr. Howe 
 came on to Belmont to act as Mr. Calvert's best man, and 
 she was very small of her age. But that was nothing to 
 Mrs. Dexter. When the travellers presented themselves 
 from the train, Calvert was naturally so absorbed in 
 meeting his lady-love that Mrs. Dexter was able, without 
 being over-heard, to introduce his friend to " our second 
 daughter, Fanny, Mr. Howe ; — our ' little housekeeper ' 
 we call her-a-h." 
 
 As beauty was the float with which Mrs. Dexter had 
 confidently launched her eldest girl on the unknown 
 ocean of the great world, so domesticity was to be the 
 winning card for the second one, and Mr. Howe was 
 instantly impressed by the introduction precisely as she 
 meant he should be. In a few years he would be quite 
 rejtdy for a wife, as he was already doing very well, and 
 the idea of an unsophisticated young girl with simple and 
 domestic tastes, fell refreshingly and assuringly on his 
 urban ear. After a gay evening in the bright and cosy 
 little parlors, as he undressed at night he thought to him- 
 self: " Since Calvert seems to have found such a treasure 
 in Julia, why shouldn't I think of little Fanny some 
 day ? " He accordingly took her out to drive during his 
 stay in Belmont, asked her to be his partner every evening 
 
36 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 at cards, and when he returned to New York subscribed to 
 the New York Ledger for her and sent her from his 
 ' ' store * ' a box of perfume and fancy soap. 
 
 This budding sentiment it was that Mrs. Dexter was so 
 careful to cultivate during her New York visit. Parts of 
 Fanny's letters, with mysterious reticence of other parts to 
 heighten the effect, were read to him, and her sprightli- 
 ness, amiability and housekeeping tastes, were constantly 
 commented on. Above all, he himself was most assid- 
 uously flattered, and that he should spend his next sum- 
 mer's vacation in Belmont was taken as a matter of course. 
 
 Her winter's work thus skillfully accomplished, Mrs. 
 Dexter buried herself again in the country to live for many 
 ensuing months on city memories and hopes. But though 
 she had now secured a solid foothold in what had hitherto 
 been but a rainbow castle in Spain, she none the less strove 
 also for a higher place amid the disdained realities of 
 Belmont. 
 
 A village magnate had died within a few years, and his 
 rather pretentious house, together with a modicum of the 
 ground on which it stood, was for sale. Mrs. Dexter per- 
 suaded her husband to part with their little elm-shaded 
 cottage and to purchase this mansion instead. A mortgage 
 accomplished it for them, and when Julia came home for 
 her first summer visit, she found her mother triumphantly 
 seated on another round of ambition's ladder, and for the 
 first time in her life, the mistress of an establishment not 
 altogether unworthy of a social leader such as she felt her- 
 self to be. 
 
 Nor had che returned from the city empty-handed — 
 thanks to her own genius for bargaining and for getting 
 little offerings both from the present and from the hoped- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 37 
 
 for son-in-law ; consequently she was able to furnish 
 one of her parlors with lace curtains and " brocatelle " 
 damask a la New York, though to afford this, she had to 
 shut up the other and larger one on the opposite side of 
 the hall and ignore it completely. 
 
 *' Lord ! " said the village wit a-propos of this — '' don't 
 you think you know anything about the furnishing of her 
 house from that one room. There's more management in 
 that woman's little finger than in all the rest of Belmont 
 put together. Like as not, every chair in the house is in 
 that south parlor of hers, but if you should take a fancy 
 to go into the north one, before you could say * Jack 
 Robinson ! ' she'd have 'em all scuttled in there somehow, 
 and you'd think they all belonged there." 
 
 However this may have been, Mrs. Dexter assumed 
 with her larger quarters a much more magnificent air than 
 formerly, and before very long snubbed one of her best 
 friends who was living in a house precisely like her old 
 one, and who, one day, was half- laughingly deprecating its 
 size compared with Mrs. Dexter's present grandeur, with 
 — *' Yes, Mrs. Farwell, your house is small, but you bear 
 it beautifully! " 
 
 Ah, how that remark sank into the sensitive memory 
 that heard it, how deeply it rankled there, what a secret 
 but intense ambition it fired, and what havoc in after years 
 its contagion wrought ! 
 
 Mrs. Dexter's cup fairly ran over this summer. Besides 
 the prestige of the larger house, her beloved Julia was with 
 her, looking prettier than ever, and agitating the whole 
 Episcopal church Sunday after Sunday with her really 
 exquisite dressing. Finally, in August, the gay and gallant 
 Calvert came for her, bringing Mr. Howe with him, and 
 
38 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 the latter was so devoted to Miss Fanny during his short 
 visit, that all Belmont was easily made aware of the 
 inauguration of a new life-drama. 
 
 Fanny Dexter resembled her sister Julia in nothing, but 
 was her mother's own child from crown to toe. Up to 
 fifteen she was plain, with pale cheeks, large pale eyes and 
 straight brown hair, a wide mouth, a little pug nose and 
 thin arms. She was as merry as a cricket, as trifling as a 
 butterfly, and as slippery as an eel. When a young lady 
 she used to tell with great glee how once at school, for 
 some flagrant mischief, her teacher gave her a blow 
 upon the palm with a ferule, upon which she fell down in 
 an apparent dead faint, and could not be perfectly revived 
 until she was taken home — a feat that not only gained her 
 a holiday but frightened the teacher so effectually that 
 she never dared attempt to discipline her again. She 
 could dance a sailor's hornpipe, a Highland fling, or an 
 Irish jig, make herself up into and talk like a little old 
 woman, or walk on her stiffened toes like a ballet-dancer. 
 She was very jolly, sociable, and a natural business-woman, 
 helpful to her busy mother in her housekeeping, and 
 equal to sudden emergencies where Julia would have 
 been paralyzed. 
 
 Mrs. Dexter' s mental and moral flimsiness did not 
 extend to her capacity for affairs. She had all a New 
 England woman's '' faculty, " and was a shrewd manager 
 and a hard worker. She was a thorough needle-woman 
 and a delicious cook, who rose early and went to bed late 
 and ''eat the bread of carefulness " generally. While her 
 daughters were growing up she supplied all the deficiencies 
 of her one second-rate servant herself, spending all the 
 time not required by her needle in the kitchen, where 
 
NEW YORK; A SYMPHOXJC STUDY. 39 
 
 Fanny made herself useful in a thousand little ways, while 
 Julia sat by the sitting-room stove in a calico wrapper and 
 unkempt hair, gossipping with a friend or poring over a 
 book. 
 
 In truth Fanny was a capable little personage, with very 
 definite ideas of how things ought to be done, and she 
 announced very early that she was going to keep her house 
 "very neat," and have her husband's slippers all ready for 
 him to put on every evening when he came home. Her 
 ruling passion, however, was pleasure, and her simple con- 
 ception of existence was to get the utmost pleasure out of 
 it that she could, let pay for it who would. She received 
 Mr. Howe's attentions and presents with great compla- 
 cency, from her mother's broad hints inferred that she 
 might marry him some day, and at his request corres- 
 ponded with him most amicably; but during her sixteenth 
 year she flirted none the less with the ignorant young men 
 in the village stores who were doing duty as the village 
 beaux. 
 
 The three or four youths who belonged to her own more 
 exclusive and fastidious circle were either absent at their 
 studies or betrothed already ; but Fanny loved and needed 
 dancing and fun so much, that she was very willing to take 
 a tgte-a-tete sleigh-ride to a neighboring village for an even- 
 ing merry-making with almost anybody, and if her escort's 
 arm were suffered to remain round her waist during much 
 of the ride home, and a good-night kiss granted at the 
 door, why, like the old-time " kissing-games " and all the 
 rest of it, it was nothing more than the custom, forty years 
 ago, in all unlettered society, and, I presume, is so still — 
 a survival from the pre-culture days when the highest born 
 youths and maidens of Europe employed their vacant wits 
 
40 A'£IV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 when together in the same way, Nobody had ever told 
 Fanny it was any harm, and she had not, like her sister Julia, 
 the native pride and reserve to make her withdraw instinct- 
 ively from it. She was practical, material, philistine 
 throughout, and the attitude of her mind toward this, as 
 indeed toward pretty much everything else through life, was 
 Hamlet's: '' There's nothing good or bad, but thinking 
 makes it so ! " 
 
 These peculiarly unconventional pleasures, however, 
 were enjoyed by Miss Fanny only while her managing 
 mamma was away on her second visit to New York, and 
 they ended with that lady's return ; for she came back with 
 the decision that a young damsel with a probable city fu- 
 ture must be brought into shape for that future, and conse- 
 quently, that Fanny must spend the next two years at 
 boarding-school. 
 
 A fashionable New York boarding-school would, of 
 course, have been the thing, but equally of course it was pe- 
 cuniarily out of the question, and Mrs. Dexter could not 
 but sigh over the unkindness of fate in not permitting her 
 to manage it. Instead, she took the next best that was 
 open to her, and sent Fanny to a celebrated establishment 
 in Troy, hoping that a course of study and accomplish- 
 ments at this institution would bestow upon her such a 
 prestige and finish that Mr. Howe's final subjection could 
 not fail. 
 
 Did Miss Fanny find the "Troy Ladies' Academy" 
 dull? Far from it. In the same town was a scientific 
 school for the other sex, and Fanny and one or two con- 
 genial schoolmates had full scope for their love of frolic 
 and flirtation, in letting down at night from their windows 
 to the waiting youths below, little bags containing notes 
 
XEIV YORK': A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 41 
 
 which made appointments for clandestine Saturday meet- 
 ings and walks, and drawing them up filled with bon-bons 
 and billet-doux in return. She learned nothing, of course, 
 but in the first nine months she was there the transforma- 
 tion from childhood to girlhood performed its frequent 
 miracle. Her cheeks flushed pink, her lips turned scarlet 
 and framed her extremely white and regular teeth so bril- 
 liantly that her merry and ever-ready smile was alluring in 
 its beauty, to say nothing of a certain coaxing and kind- 
 ling look she involuntarily added to it when she wished to 
 make an impression ; her light brown hair was abundant 
 and always perfectly arranged ; her nose grew a little 
 straighter, and her eyes took a deei>er shade, and though 
 her figure was too short-waisted and a trifle square, yet she 
 had some bust, and her trig little bodice suited her gay 
 and youthful air very well. 
 
 Just at this time Mr. Howe was on the point of being 
 made a junior partner in the large importing house of 
 fancy goods which employed him. Like his friend, Cal- 
 vert, he had won his own way in the world by his industr};, 
 integrity and clearheadedness. His face was pale and 
 finely-cut ; in person he was very small and very slender, 
 and if, like many small people, he was artlessly self-satis- 
 fied, also was he generous, kindly, pure and true as steel. 
 Captivated by Fanny's mirth and light-heartedness and by 
 the idea of her housewifely tastes, and thinking her a little 
 woodland flower, fresh and sweet — from the first he had 
 taken a romantic pleasure in attaching himself to the lively 
 child of fourteen, and in watching what he fancied her 
 education and development. 
 
 When, therefore, he came on to Belmont to see her 
 after lier first year at school, and fonnd her so much ])ret- 
 
42 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 tier than she had promised to be ^ two years before; when 
 she sang to him her little songs and played off upon him 
 her douce and mignonne ways, he was only too glad to be 
 entirely carried away, and though no engagement was 
 announced or even admitted by Mrs. Dexter, yet imme- 
 diately after the young man's return to New York a 
 beautiful solitaire diamond ring found its way to Miss 
 Fanny's hand, and played far too conspicuous a part there 
 for the Belmont neighbors to believe it any mere pledge of 
 platonic friendship. 
 
 The diamond was much costlier than Julia's betrothal 
 ring, for Mr. Howe's income was double what Mr. Cal- 
 vert's had been at a similar crisis. The two men got each 
 the sister that was least suited to him. The pure, high- 
 minded, romantic Howe would much better have matched 
 the clever and fastidious Julia, while the restless and 
 pleasure-loving Fanny would equally have been far more 
 enthralled by the handsome, forcible Calvert. Surely the 
 Genius of Sublunary Marriage should be represented by a 
 captivating woman seated in a chariot drawn by a hundred 
 horses whose reins she wilfully has allowed to become so 
 inextricably tangled that the wrong pairs are generally try- 
 ing to pull together, and all are more or less rearing, 
 plunging, straining, kicking, balking, or backing, while 
 she herself sits smiling ironically aloft nor exerts one 
 energy to help the poor bewildered, frantic creatures out ! 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A NEW YORKER. 
 
 Mrs. Dexter refrained from announcing the engage- 
 ment for which she had so unremittingly striven, not only 
 because it was not the country fashion to do so. A far 
 more potent reason, though she kept it locked in the deep- 
 est depths of her bosom, was, that after Fanny's return 
 to school, another matrimonial possibility, a dazzling pos- 
 sibility, had flashed into the Belmont horizon, and she 
 would not publicly pledge her daughter to the old love 
 until she was sure the girl could not be on with the new. 
 
 Harvey Thayer was the second son of a New York 
 broker who had made a large fortune, it is said, by 
 " turning sharp corners in business," and whose mother, 
 the illiterate daughter of an old French vegetable hawker, 
 had become an heiress from the rise in value of her 
 father's garden in the upper part of the city. The son in 
 question of those parents was not " hopeful " by any 
 means. With a father a mere money-making machine, 
 with a mother utterly ignorant and weak, with superficial 
 older sisters carrying dress not to extravagance but to 
 mania, and knowing himself to be rich, nothing could 
 induce the youth to study or to make any useful or manly 
 effort of any kind. He began to smoke when he was 
 twelve, he was no novice in vice at sixteen, and at 
 eighteen his mind was infantile, his body completely 
 
44 iVi^^ YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 enervated, his heart withered by ^corrupt experience and 
 his cynicism that of a profligate. 
 
 To keep him from entire premature ruin, his father, in 
 despair, sent him up to the Episcopal minister of Belmont, 
 Mr. Gardner, for a year. Reprobate though she knew 
 him to be, the latter' s keen and high-strung wife could not 
 help very soon confessing herself fond of Harvey Thayer. 
 Below the middle height of men, he was well though 
 slenderly shaped, his hands and feet effeminately small, 
 and grace the characteristic of his person and address, as 
 melancholy was of his face. The latter — framed in pale 
 brown silky hair — with its olive hue, its dark grey eyes 
 and its voluptuous mouth, was to most girls first peculiar, 
 then interesting, then irresistibly attractive as only that 
 beauty is which reveals itself point by point and never 
 wholly unveils until it finds its victims in its power, when 
 it draws their gaze as the magnet does the iron, even 
 though it draw their hearts out with it. When known, the 
 effect of Harvey Thayer's face was that of a chord of 
 music, and the charm of that chord was in its sadness — 
 sadness resulting, not indeed from any outside ills, for he 
 had none, but from the vacuity of his mind, the empti- 
 ness of his heart, the satiety of his life. He did not long. 
 He could not love. His French descent had stamped his 
 face with poetry and art, his nature was gentle and refined, 
 he might have been pure and beneficent. He was so fond 
 of babies and children as to seem perfectly happy when 
 amusing Mrs. Gardner's little ones, and he was as con- 
 tented with the tiny room and simple fare she gave him as 
 though his New York home were not a sumptuous residence 
 in the then high fashion of Twenty-third Street ; buthis mis- 
 taken bringing up had blighted his manhood, and he knew it. 
 
A'£PV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 45 
 
 He vaguely felt himself to be insignificant and ignorant 
 and bad, but he was too self-indulgent and morally 
 languid to reform. He dwelt in a perpetual discourage- 
 ment of spirit which, while too negative to be called 
 suffering, yet gave an impression of melancholy to girls 
 too ignorant or inexperienced to rat^ him at his true 
 value. Voluntarily or involuntarily, his face, his man- 
 ner, appealed to them for sympathy, and only too 
 skillful was he in turning that easily-won sympathy to 
 account. 
 
 For little as Harvey Thayer knew of books, his mastery 
 of the feminine heart amounted to genius, and he was as 
 finished, artistic and successful a flirt as a man can be 
 who has none of the muses, save Terpsichore, to help him. 
 One definite aim and ambition, though a secret one, he 
 had. It was to marry into some old New York family, 
 and so become identified with the ''best" New York 
 society, for his father was the merest parvenu, and had 
 no social recognition, while his sisters had with difficulty 
 attained even the outermost — the ''rich but common" 
 circle of the world of fashion. It may be judged, therefore, 
 how small was the chance that he would ever think of 
 Miss Fanny Dexter, a little country girl whose sister had 
 lately married a New York retail dry-goods clerk, as his 
 possible matrimonial future. 
 
 Nevertheless, the most flattering visions floated before Mrs. 
 Dexter' s maternal ambition. Great indeed was her excite- 
 ment at hearing that during her winter absence in New 
 York, no paltry retail clerk, but the son of a Wall Street 
 capitalist, had actually come to study in Belmont ! She 
 looked at him every Sunday in church with admiring and 
 longing eyes, made Mr. Gardner bring him to call, and as 
 
46 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 soon as Fanny came home from her summer vacation, one 
 or two young people were invited to tea, and Mr. Thayer 
 with them. 
 
 Quite surprised to find in a quiet little puritan place 
 where cards and dancing seemed almost a sin, an easy, 
 pleasant house where he could waltz, play whist and 
 euchre and talk ad libitum to a gay and coquettish young 
 girl in fetching corn-colored muslin who was supposed 
 to be engaged but was quite as accessible as though she 
 were not — the New Yorker enjoyed his evening very 
 much. At parting Mrs. Dexter said: *'Do come in 
 often, Mr. Thayer, and take a hand at whist. You play 
 so well that you're quite an acquisition, and we play cards 
 every evening." 
 
 Mr. Thayer professed himself charmed to be allowed the 
 privilege, and within a week had indeed made himself at 
 Mrs. Dexter' s most completely at home. Mrs. Gardner 
 soon perceived it and said to her husband: "Now that 
 Mrs. Dexter has got hold of him, there is no use in our 
 trying to do him any good," which was a mistake, for 
 Harvey had a sincere liking and esteem for the Gardners 
 and cared not a fig for the ridiculous woman whom he saw 
 through perfectly, and delighted to sit and quiz by the 
 half hour. For all that, her house was precisely suited to 
 his idle taste and torpid capacity, and as his only amuse- 
 ment in life was to build love-castles and batter them 
 down again, he proceeded to pass a very agreeable, and, 
 all temptation to vice being absent, in his opinion a very 
 virtuous summer. 
 
 Most young men, I am glad to believe, would have had 
 prohibitory scruples about flirting with a girl with an 
 engagement ring on her finger, and to whom every post 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY 47 
 
 brought long love letters, and many an express, love gifts; 
 but where flirting was concerned, Harvey Thayer had no 
 honor. To make every attractive girl he met in love 
 with him, if thereby an emotion, an excitement of any 
 kind were to be gained, was his deliberate principle. 
 And certainly Fanny Dexter was not an unwilling victim. 
 For the next two months she bestowed no more thought 
 on her fiance than was necessary to send short little 
 answers once or twice a week to his voluminous epistles. 
 Indeed, Harvey Thayer had hardly known her a fortnight 
 when he found her one evening reading one of the latter 
 on the front door-step and had the assurance to say 
 to her : 
 
 '' Put up that trash and come out and take a walk with 
 me. You know you don't care for it." 
 
 Fanny colored a little but laughed and retorted — 
 '' That's all you know about it, Mr. Impudence ! I don't 
 think I ever confessed to you what I cared for. I certainly 
 don't care to go to walk with^<?// ! " 
 
 "■ Why have you done it three times then? " 
 
 *'0h, because I love to be amused, and there's no one 
 else to amuse me." 
 
 '' Then come and be amused now, or I won't come 
 again for a week." 
 
 "Thank you! I'll try to survive your absence. But 
 you can't stay away — you know you can't." 
 
 "You think so? Then we'll see. Good evening," 
 and lifting his hat he turned and sauntered down the slop- 
 ing path to the street gate. He would have kept his 
 threat (stern discipline being his rule in flirtation as it is 
 with all masters of the art), but that after the third deserted 
 and dismal evening Fanny began writing him coaxing 
 
48 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 little notes, so that on the fifth he condescended to re-ap- 
 pear. But she never refused hirA again. 
 
 This was the only approach to a quarrel they had. 
 Like two butterflies they laughed, danced and when alone 
 caressed away the fleeting hours, not even Harvey's most 
 melancholy mood sufficing to draw a cloud over Fanny's 
 liveliness, or to soften her into sentiment. So Harvey did 
 not enjoy it as keenly — it was not to him so satisfactory an 
 experience — so completely a love- idyl, as the one of the 
 previous summer at Newport, when, at the end of a 
 passionate affair, during which, in true flirt-fashion, he had 
 won maiden confessions and kisses without offering himself, 
 he had had the luxury of standing cool and calm as a 
 young Rhadamanthus while a sweet " Margie " of sixteen, 
 with disordered hair and agonized face, was on her 
 knees before him, pleading vainly for pardon for some 
 little offence to which he had purposely provoked her, so 
 that he might be able to reiterate ruthlessly that he had 
 "lost his confidence in her and that it could never be 
 restored ! ' ' 
 
 Fanny, in fact, gave his vanity no such satisfaction, for 
 though their evening strolls and stolen kisses had not been 
 few, and though she felt that all the heart she had to give 
 was Harvey Thayer's, she was yet cool-headed enough to 
 realize that he had neither asked her to marry him nor 
 frankly declared that he loved her. So she laughed him a 
 good-bye when she went off to school again, and never 
 thought of such a thing as letting go the good honest bird 
 she had in hand for the delusive charmer in the bush, 
 charm he never so wisely. Harvey's melting sugar-plums 
 were indeed delicious, but they were not the equivalent of 
 Mr. Howe's hard dollars. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 49 
 
 Mrs. Dexter was not discouraged, however. She put 
 off her winter flitting to New York until January, that she 
 might be at home to arrange a visit from Fanny and one 
 of her school-mates for the holidays. The latter was a 
 young girl from Cincinnati of such exceptional beauty that 
 some great artist should have painted her as the '' Light of 
 the Harem" or a Mohammedan houri. She had a round 
 baby face through whose clear brunette her cheek flamed 
 like an ardent rose. The delicious curves of her pouting 
 and scarlet lips parted brilliantly over teeth like pearls; 
 her little nose was perfect ; her lambent orient eyes opened 
 under delicately pencilled arches, and her dusky hair 
 shaped a Greek brow and a most dainty head. Not only 
 was her face faultless. Her figure, though she was not 
 tall, was equally so ; and morever, within her beautiful 
 throat slept the rich voice of a prima-donna. Nature 
 grew tired only at her hands and feet, which were not so 
 small and exquisite as the rest of her charms demanded. 
 In all costumes, in all attitudes, whether in carefullest 
 evening toilette or with her hair screwed on top of her 
 head preparatory to a bath, — morning, noon and night, 
 Isabel Eaton was equally beautiful — always, unchangeably, 
 the same. 
 
 But, like many great beauties, she was so inert, so 
 passive, that her gifts went comparatively for nothing. 
 The idolized and only daughter of her parents, and loving 
 them too most loyally, she yet so rarely wrote to them 
 that at least once a month the principal of the school 
 w^ould receive from them an anxious telegram inquiring 
 how she was. She was not, like Fanny, light-minded. 
 It would have been impossible to her to descend to flirting 
 with two men at once as Fanny was always doing; but 
 
50 Ar£^ YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 (again like great beauties) she was not fastidious in men, 
 was easily pleased, and changed easily from one admirer to 
 another. 
 
 Mrs. Dexter felt almost sure that if Harvey Thayer were 
 not serious with Fanny he would fall in love with this 
 peerless creature, and thus marrying Fanny's intimate 
 friend, the Dexters might become at least outside members 
 of his fashionable New York circle. But Mr. Thayer and 
 Miss Eaton did not in the least feel each other's fascina- 
 tions. Harvey was, in truth, amazed at her beauty, and 
 began his usual insinuating advances. But the young lady 
 was so accustomed to explicit adoration, that his flirtatious 
 nuances were lost upon her, nor would she have brooked 
 the little insolences and brutalities that conquered Fanny ; 
 besides which, she was so thoroughly lazy and gentle herself 
 that a man of the same type did not much attract her. 
 Instead, her maiden fancy fastened itself upon the only 
 intellectual bachelor in the place, an interesting but penni- 
 less young lawyer just home from his studies, who surren- 
 dered instantly and absolutely in two evenings. 
 
 Harvey therefore remained externally true to the com- 
 paratively angular and irregular but piquante Fanny, and 
 internally true to the as yet unknown young lady of his 
 own city, whose blue blood he hoped one day to incorpo- 
 rate with his own. In our complicated modern era of 
 professional beauties and married belles he might have 
 thought best to decide otherwise; for if anything could 
 procure for a rich parvenu, distinction in the contemporary 
 "smart " world of New York and London, it would be to 
 enter it with such a vision on his arm as Isabel Eaton, a 
 veritable human rose, feminine roundness and softness 
 and sweetness in its quintessence ! 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 51 
 
 The young people had a merry fortnight of village win- 
 ter gayety, during which Mr. Thayer was devoted to 
 Fanny, and had as many sudden and mysterious interviews 
 with her in the hall or dining-room and as many sleigh- 
 rides a deuxy as though he and not Mr. Howe had been 
 engaged to her. But when the holidays were over, all the 
 love-dreams dissolved without more practical sequence 
 than the frost- pictures on the window-panes that accom- 
 panied them. The young lawyer, indeed, was only too des- 
 perately in earnest, but great beauties are rarely impulsive, 
 and Miss Eaton would promise nothing more than that she 
 would return once more to Belmont. The girls went back 
 to school precisely as they had left it, and when at the end 
 of her allotted two years Fanny made her last joyous 
 adieux to books and the Troy Ladies* Academy, she found 
 no Harvey to welcome her back to Belmont. 
 
 And he had gone without a sign — disappeared as com- 
 pletely as the balloon that melts in the sky. He never 
 corresponded with his lady-loves — in the first place because 
 he could not spell without a dictionary; in the second, 
 because written love would have been far more tangible 
 than anything he ever permitted himself to bestow upon 
 them ; in the third, because a month rarely elapsed between 
 the ending of an old flirtation and the beginning of a new 
 one. After parting he generally received from one to 
 three passionate epistles, and there, for him, the affair 
 ended. He had had the fun of building his love-castle 
 and knocking it down. , What matter to him if the poor 
 little maiden heart within was all bestrewn with ruin and 
 desolation. Never even by word or look had he tempted 
 innocence or taken advantage of the abandonment or the 
 ignorance of those virgin loves, and that, he thought, was 
 
52 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 virtue. And so, compared with the modern club-man who 
 devotes himself to fascinating young married women and 
 making them as disloyal to their husbands as they can pos- 
 sibly be got to go, it was indeed *' virtue ! " 
 
 Nevertheless, what atrocious sufferings are those even of 
 innocent love as inflicted by the stronger upon the weaker 
 sex — the fathomless, pitiless torture of longing and despair 
 endured by unmarried girls ''without a sign" — slow 
 days, weeks, months, years of hoping and waiting for 
 a bliss that never comes, or that having once been, never 
 comes again — truest earthly type of '* the worm that never 
 dies," of ''the fire that is not quenched! " When girls 
 have any outside scope for their energies and ambitions 
 they can forget it in work and in achievement ; but where 
 they live cooped up at home as they so often do — sheltered 
 and "supported" and passively waiting like fruit on the 
 bough for a passer-by who will choose and so offer them a 
 destiny — oh, is there any future state of being wherein 
 those who in the power and freedom of manhood so 
 wantonly broad-cast these iron pangs, will echo them in 
 their own experience enough even faintly to realize what 
 they once caused their fellow-creatures? If such there be, 
 then for his poor little Newport " Margie " alone, Harvey 
 Thayer must pay a sorrowful retribution ! 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HIS '" LITTLE QUEEN." 
 
 Mr. Calvert saw his mother-in-law arrive for her sec- 
 ond New York visit with a sinking heart, but Julia was 
 overjoyed, for now that wedded life was no longer a deli- 
 cious wonder, and the glamour of the great city was get- 
 ting to be an old story, she was not so sure that in some 
 respects, her life therein, compared with that which her 
 mother had so hurried her out of in Belmont, was not 
 slightly forlorn. Mr. Calvert had no city relations, nor, 
 excepting Mrs. Wilkins, had Julia. Mrs. Wilkins was a 
 good but plain and dull woman, and her small and obscure 
 visiting list contained not one interesting person. Yet 
 these, with their boarding-house acquaintance and Mr. 
 Calvert's few friends, were all the people Julia knew in 
 this huge town. 
 
 How could there by any culture, any elegance, any dis- 
 tinction, in a circle of which retail clerks — self-made, 
 uneducated young men, even though employed in such 
 firms as Stewart's or Arnold's — formed the principal 
 members ? 
 
 There was nothing in New York which could intellect- 
 ually leaven such people. Great financiers were here, 
 dumbly, tirelessly heaping their great dumb fortunes, but 
 no great citizens — urging, inspiring, uplifting their fellows. 
 In every walk of life were leading men, but no leaders. 
 
54 ^£^^V YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 A lambent literary galaxy — Irving, Bryant, Curtis, Bay- 
 ard Taylor — adorned but could not dispel the deep literary 
 twilight. The sun-ray of one immortal genius, Edgar Poe, 
 had sought to pierce it, only to be sent starving into his 
 grave. Owing to the hostility of the Catholic Church, there 
 was no High School system in New York to diffuse intelli- 
 gence among the masses as the atmosphere diffuses the 
 solar Hght ! * — no popular educator like the Lowell Insti- 
 tute of Boston, with its admirable lecture courses free 
 every night in the week for six months of the year ; no free 
 public libraries with their vast, silent influence on the aver- 
 age of culture. Amid the indifference of all influential 
 society above them, what was Calvert's little sub-world 
 hkely to learn about the latest books, publications and 
 periodicals, or of what concerned the statesmen, authors, 
 artists and thinkers of the world except as these were 
 briefly chronicled by the daily paper which men skimmed 
 every morning going down town in the stage? If they 
 read a light magazine it was the most. The more serious 
 periodicals were never dreamed of, and novels aside, a 
 real book was quite an unknown quantity. 
 
 And yet, next to talking about people— for she dearly 
 loved to gossip and speculate about her acquaintance— to 
 talk and to hear about books and public characters and pub- 
 lic affairs was Julia's pet enjoyment. In Belmont, owing 
 to her intimacy with the Ashurst coterie, she occasionally 
 met superior people— was, in fact, brought into contact 
 with the best minds of her own rural State. Her quick 
 intelHgence and bright repartee, moreover, had made her 
 one of the pet Iambs of her clergyman's flock— and this 
 clergyman was nothing less than an exquisite, scholarly 
 
 * N. B. Until the anti-Tammany administration of Mayor Strong* 
 1894-97, there w^re no High Schools in New York City. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 55 
 
 Bostonian of the Bostonians, a Harvard graduate, who )ent 
 her books and interested himself in her reading. From 
 both his and Mr. Ashurst's inspiration she was now cut off, 
 and no others took their places, for no clergyman ever 
 came near her. 
 
 In those days the infant musical and artistic interests of 
 New York were not in everybody's mouth as the maturer 
 ones are now, and were to be found only by those who 
 loved them enough to seek them. Knowing nothing of 
 either, it never occurred to Julia to try and number these 
 among her distractions. In the morning she could stroll 
 down Broadway in and out of the shops, and the theatre 
 was always a possibility in the evening; but neither of these 
 amusements counted for much with her, and as she could 
 not read novels all the time and detested sewing, she really 
 suffered with loneliness in the long, long days when Frank 
 was closely confined to his business, and often came home 
 too tired at night even to care to talk. She would not 
 have gone back to Belmont for the world, and yet the 
 rushing town was often to her a vacuum and a void. 
 
 It was no wonder, then, that the indolent, dependent, 
 sociable young creature welcomed her mother with enthu- 
 siasm as the second and also the third winter of her mar- 
 riage set in, and parted with her reluctantly when the 
 spring opened ; but with Mr. Calvert the reluctance and 
 the enthusiasm were all the other way. The trouble was, 
 he found that his fond and flattering mother-in-law never 
 came under his roof, or got him under hers without con- 
 triving also to get herself into his debt on the basis of 
 "expecting a cheque next week," and of leaving herself 
 there for the unanswerable reason that ** Mr. Dexter could 
 not collect ; '* and being first and before everything a busi- 
 
56 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 ness man, he determined after the third long interminable 
 visit, that if, as he was graduall)^ coming to believe, he had 
 given a good deal more in his marriage than he received, 
 Mrs. Dexter, at any rate, should get very little further out 
 of him. 
 
 However ardently a man may worship his wife at first, 
 and call her his ** little queen," the time sooner or later 
 comes when he wishes the situation reversed and would 
 fain have the attention of their immediate circle directed 
 rather to his sovereignty than to hers. The process gen- 
 erally comes about insensibly, as the bride merges into the 
 matron and forgets herself in her husband and children ; 
 but our pretty Julia, literary and indolent, fond of admi- 
 ration and flattery, loving to be petted and waited on, and 
 with inflated ideas of her own superiority, was not one of 
 the self-forgetting kind — ^at least, not vis-a-vis with a man 
 whom she had declared from the first was not her " ideal " 
 ^nd in marrying whom she had always felt she had com- 
 mitted a condescension. Quite the centre of her own 
 little universe, she took for granted that she was the centre 
 of Frank Calvert's also, and enthroned in her beauty and 
 talents she expected to be worked for and provided for by 
 him as a matter of course. 
 
 In short, like a multitude of other American wives, 
 Julia's views of conjugal reciprocity were simply, though 
 quite unconsciously, those of the kept mistress toward 
 her ** protector." And her husband was so generous and 
 so fond, and his large earnings made it so easy for him to 
 keep her in liberal comfort, that he would only have 
 enjoyed carrying the pretty burden that depended so abso- 
 lutely upon him, had she had any adequate sense of 
 their real relative values — of his as the energetic and 
 
A^EW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 57 
 
 successful bread-winner, of hers as the languid and nerve- 
 less spender. But while it was to his talent and effort and 
 and fidelity that they owed all their prosperity, because it 
 was commercial and not professional talent, it never 
 seemed to Julia that, in the same sense, it was talent, and 
 that it would have asserted itself equally in more intellect- 
 ual and conspicuous forms had the training and the oppor- 
 tunity been open to it. 
 
 Thus underrating her husband, so little did it occur to 
 her self-love that he should at least appear to the world to 
 be the head of the married pair, that she delighted to show 
 her power, as if never quite sure that she possessed it 
 unless she were exhibiting it. From the beginning she 
 took the lead in conversation when in company, and in- 
 private, when Mr. Calvert differed from her about little 
 things, she would not refrain from ready sarcasms or sharp 
 repartee even before a third person. She was such a very, 
 very pretty woman — Calvert's fastidious eye was so con- 
 tinually gratified by the " points" that kept gleaming out 
 at him like the irridescence on a pigeon's throat — her 
 slender shape, her perfect head, her exquisite hand and 
 foot, the clear white and red of her cheek, her lovely 
 dimples and smile — that he was generally patient and 
 good-natured with her and either received her little snubs 
 laughingly or paid her off in teasing — for she was so proud 
 that she was easily teased. But sometimes he would take 
 refuge in bad temper and put her down with something 
 savage, and then, no matter what the provocation might 
 have been, she was too haughty ever to utter the first 
 reconciling word. It was always he who had to humble 
 himself and come round with pretty coaxing names and 
 fond caresses — and yet this young wife was a professed 
 
58 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 follower of that meek and lowly Jesus, who when He opened 
 His mouth to teach this dark, ut^happy world how to climb 
 toward the light, said as His very first word — " Blessed 
 are the poor (i. e., the humble, the teachable) in spirit! " 
 
 As for real wifely tenderness, though during the first 
 years of their married life Calvert was all tenderness to 
 her, and though Julia was so warm and sweet to all her 
 friends — rarely did he gain more than a pleased and soft- 
 ened look or a little pat on the cheek in return for his 
 devotion. It never occurred to her that simply wifely 
 policy and prudence demanded that she should feign if she 
 could not feel. A sympathetic glance, a phrase of fond 
 solicitude, a foolish petting never escaped her, and she 
 honestly thought she did her whole duty in merely suffer- 
 ing herself to be loved. 
 
 It was hardly her fault. The relation between her own 
 parents was absolutely frigid. She had never been taught 
 that to love and think and care for another was a wife's 
 special mission. She had married with only a vague con- 
 ception of what marriage is, and without being really in 
 love with her husband, or ever having been so with anyone 
 else. It is not always desirable to be the first occupant of 
 a woman's heart. Had Julia been disappointed before she 
 met Mr. Calvert he would have been much better appre- 
 ciated, since there is nothing like loving in vain one's self 
 to teach one how to be grateful for love from another. 
 
 As it was, her first inward recoil from the realities of 
 marriage had never been made good to her, as it often is 
 in similar cases, by the awakening and- growth of the 
 passion which alone justifies marriage. She always felt 
 that she had made the sacrifice, and that the pound of 
 flesh in return for it was nothing more than her due. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 59 
 
 That it would always be paid she took as a matter of 
 course. Ignorant of human nature and confident in her 
 own unusual charm, it never entered into her wildest 
 speculations that Mr. Calvert could ever get tired of this 
 de haut en bas and be tempted to break his chains. So 
 she kept on digging the pit into which even such happiness 
 as she had was one day to plunge and be buried forever. 
 
 i 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A NEW HOUSEHOLD. 
 
 After three or four years, boarding, as it always does, 
 grew very tiresome to the young couple, and as Calvert had 
 now risen to be the head of the wholesale branch of his 
 department in the extensive house that employed him, his 
 increased earnings permitted him to think of making a 
 little home of his own. Julia, too, was now expecting her 
 first confinement, and that made housekeeping almost im- 
 perative. As we have seen, Mrs. Dexter had special rea- 
 sons for not appearing in New York this winter until after 
 the holidays, and Mr. Calvert devoutly hoped that they 
 should escape her for the whole season. No sooner, how- 
 ever, did she hear the news from Julia in February, than 
 she came fluttering down on all the wings of solicitude and 
 excitement to help her darling make up her house linen 
 and layette, and to enjoy the bliss of all the consulting and 
 shopping and bargaining that the setting up of a new 
 household involves. 
 
 A frown had gathered on Mr. Calvert's handsome face 
 when he heard that his mother-in-law was expected. 
 
 " I really see no need whatever of your mother's coming 
 to see us at this time, Julia. I wish you would write to 
 her and say that it is not at all convenient. Mrs. Ford 
 has no vacant room, and she will have to take our little 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 6i 
 
 side room, as she did last time, and that crowds us dread- 
 fully." 
 
 " Thank you, Frank ! If you wish to send such an un- 
 gracious message to my mother, you may do it yourself. If 
 you had any feeling I should think you would wish her to 
 be with me for the next few months. ' ' 
 
 "During your confinement, of course; but up to that 
 time we shall have expenses enough, I'm thinking, without 
 your mother's board and etceteras to pay, too." 
 
 ** Whose fault is it that there are extra expenses? I'm 
 sure /don't want to have children, and never did ! It is 
 hard that I should have to bear all the wretchedness and 
 misery of it and not have the only person with me who 
 could give me any comfort and sympathy." 
 
 Calvert said nothing more, but he took within himself a 
 resolution deep and dire. Julia's unfeigned terror and 
 aversion at the situation in which she found herself, had 
 disgusted him and gone far to give him a thorough con- 
 tempt for women in general. Though not given to books, 
 he had picked up a strong impression that women who 
 loved their husbands were not apt to be unwilling to bear 
 them children. '^I don't believe she cares a rap for me," 
 said he to himself, "but, by Jove, I'm not going to take 
 care of her and her old mother too, as before another 
 half-year she'll find out." 
 
 Mrs. Dexter' s intensity of interest in hunting the roof 
 that was to shelter the Calvert menage can be imagined, 
 but alas ! after exhausting New York advertisements and 
 house agents, Frank Calvert declared decidedly that he 
 could not afford New York rents, and that they must go 
 over to Brooklyn. This was a severe set-back to Mrs. 
 Dexter' s pride, and she sighed to herself that if Julia had 
 
62 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 her management they could live in New York on Calvert's 
 estimate and save money on it She even suggested as 
 much to the young lady, but was silenced with : 
 
 *'Oh, nonsense, mother! You don't suppose /can 
 count the drops of milk, as you do, do you?" — and ac- 
 cordingly a little house in Brooklyn in a cheerful shady 
 street, was taken for two years. 
 
 Mr. Calvert did not leave the house-furnishing to Julia 
 and Mrs. Dexter by any means. His practical and busy 
 temperament took the greatest delight in going with them 
 to the upholstery and furniture shops, and in giving, des- 
 potic man-fashion, the final decision about everything. 
 The result of their combined efforts was a comfortable little 
 box enough, and in his pride and joy at having an estab- 
 lishment of his own, its master thought it almost perfect. 
 In reality it was just like thousands of other New York and 
 Brooklyn homes, and expressed the upholsterer far more 
 than it did any individuality or talent of the occupants. 
 The regulation carpets, curtains and furniture, a few show 
 books on the table and on the bottom shelves of an etagere, 
 a stag or a dog of Landseer on the wall, a bronze clock 
 and figures on the mantel and a parian ^* Clytie " on some- 
 thing else — cannot the reader see it all from the memory 
 of endless repetitions among his acquaintance? 
 
 Newspaper correspondents in Paris have observed apropos 
 of the sales of the effects of noted demi-mondaines, that 
 women who had given the laws in dress to two hemispheres, 
 had no taste or discrimination whatever in the furnishing 
 and arrangement of their costly establishments. 
 
 But how should such women know what the houses of 
 women of birth and culture are like? They are not brought 
 up in such themselves, and have no possible means of ac- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 63 
 
 cess to them. Naturally then, they cannot imitate them ; 
 whereas, on the other hand, they do see ladies driving and 
 walking every day, and so of course they can catch and 
 copy their toilet effects and even re-combine, and with the 
 aid of the boundless money at their command, go beyond 
 them. 
 
 And similarly with the Calverts. Frank Calvert always 
 superintended the purchase of Julia's clothes with the most 
 anxious care, and the result was a toilet as severely elegant 
 and exquisite as though she were a descendant of all the 
 Knickerbockers. He every day saw the highest fashion in 
 America thronging the counter at which he and his brother 
 clerks presided, and it was easy for his practised eye to 
 reproduce it all in his wife's dress. But a home of high 
 and inherited culture he could not see nor even imagine, 
 and so he could not imitate it; neither, to be candid, 
 could many other New Yorkers outside of the narrow cir- 
 cle of the pre-revolutionary aristocrats. These families 
 had libraries, pictures and such rare and beautiful things as 
 befit opulent and cultivated society. But they were such 
 a little eddy by themselves that on the torrent of wealth 
 which had come pouring into New York their standards 
 made little or no impression. In fact, until the wave of 
 English Decorative Art struck (literally) the city of New 
 York through the Philadelphia Exposition, nothing in our 
 grand American centre was more noticeable than the 
 almost absurd contrast between its charmingly, often poeti- 
 cally dressed women, and the blank, astonishing sameness 
 and vacuity of its interiors. As was once said of some- 
 thing else, " They were all alike as so many negro voters, 
 and for the same reason — a deficiency of brains." 
 
 And yet, Edgar Poe, that master artist and embodiment 
 
64 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 of sensitive and unerring taste, had in his '' Philosophy of 
 Furniture ' ' pointed out the^ loudness, ignorance and 
 garishness of the average New York drawing room, and 
 had laid down most of the now accepted principles of 
 Household Art more than a quarter of a century before 
 the Philadelphia Exposition, and many years before 
 even Morris and Eastlake in London had begun re- 
 claiming modern house decoration from the vulgar errors 
 of its way ! 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 "SOMETHING TOO MUCH OF THIS." 
 
 It was immediately after Julia's recovery from ner con- 
 finement that Mr. Calvert had his long meditated break 
 with Mrs. Dexter. She knew well that she had outstayed 
 her welcome, and that she was of no earthly use in the 
 now thoroughly organized household. Yet such was her 
 loathing of the country and her passion for the city that 
 week followed week and still she lingered on. Finally one 
 morning Mr. Calvert said to her: **Mrs. Dexter, my ex- 
 penses are now much larger than they were before, and 
 how about that thousand dollars or over that you owe me ? 
 I shall really need about two hundred of it next week." 
 
 Mrs. Dexter turned pale, and cleared her throat a little 
 before answering. ' * A thousand dollars ! Is it as much 
 as that, Frank? Are you sure? I had an idea that it 
 was not more than five hundred." 
 
 '' Much nearer twelve hundred than a thousand, as true 
 as you're sitting there, though I'll call it a thousand. I 
 have it all down in black and white, dates and occasions 
 and everything." 
 
 So had Mrs. Dexter. She was not a reckless borrower 
 or debtor. She always knew exactly the sum total that 
 she was owing, and her cold blue eyes seemed always hunt- 
 ing among their crow's feet for ways and means to pay it. 
 Tim's legacy, the whole of it, had long ago been trans 
 
66 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 muted into the various triumphs of the Dexter New York 
 and Belmont career. v 
 
 *' I was thinking only last week, Frank, dear, that what 
 with Julia's illness and all you would be needing some of 
 the money, and I wrote to Mr. Dexter to send me at least 
 a hundred dollars immediately ; and he wrote back that I 
 should have the next hundred and fifty that came to him 
 from the Benson lawsuit — you remember about that law- 
 suit, don't you? All the lawyers are in it, and the fees 
 are tremendous — for Belmont, I mean. Of course they'd 
 be nothing in New York. What I always tell Mr. Dexter 
 — if he only wouldn' t \\'2&X.t himself and keep us all poor 
 by sticking in the mud up in Belmont ! ' ' 
 
 •' When does Mr. Dexter expect this money ? " 
 
 ''He said it might be any time; he is pressing for it 
 now. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Now come, Mrs. Dexter, own up ! Does my father- 
 in-law know at all — has he the least idea — that you have 
 from time to time borrowed all this money from me ? " 
 
 Mrs. Dexter had never told him ; that was certain. 
 Whether he suspected it or not was another matter. But 
 she exclaimed virtuously — 
 
 '' Why, of course he knows it, and whenever I have 
 spoken to him about paying up, he always said, ' Frank 
 knows the money is perfectly safe with me, and whenever 
 he wants it I suppose he will call for it.' ' 
 
 " Excuse me, madam, but," with crushing emphasis, 
 *' I don' t believe it ! My father-in-law is an honest man, 
 and he would never have thought of such a thing as let- 
 ting you run in debt to me to such an extent when it is as 
 much as he can do to make both ends meet. Now, Mrs. 
 Dexter, I'll tell you what. I've seen through your little 
 
NEW YORK; A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 67 
 
 game very nearly from the beginning, but for Julia's sake 
 I made up my mind to bear it as long as I could stand it. 
 But I said to myself, my limit is a thousand dollars. 
 Whenever she reaches that she sponges no more on Frank 
 Calvert. You have passed that limit by more than a hun- 
 dred dollars. I shall buy your ticket for Belmont to-day, 
 and I expect you to leave this house to-morrow and never 
 come into it again for more than one month at a time, 
 once a year. The thousand I will wipe off my books. ' ' 
 
 "Thank you! You will do nothing of the kind. 
 Every cent of that debt shall be paid up, principal and in- 
 terest. I never was so insulted in my life I To think of 
 my being treated so by Julia' s husband — that precious 
 child for whom I did everything but breathe until she mar- 
 ried a brute ! ' ' and Mrs. Dexter burst into angry tears. 
 
 '' * Brute ' indeed ! If I' had had any idea what a pre- 
 cious mother in-law I was in for, your * precious Julia' 
 should have had no chance to accept the ' brute ' (to say 
 nothing of her being such a damned, cold, exacting thing 
 herself)," added he, sotto voce, as he strode out of the 
 house. 
 
 Mrs. Dexter went up stairs to pack. She related her 
 wrongs to Julia, and the latter scarcely looked at or spoke 
 to her husband for a week after her mother's departure. 
 But Calvert had taken the bit between his teeth, and to a 
 certain extent was now determined to be master. 
 
 "■ See here, Julia," said he, after some days of domestic 
 thunder-cloud, " I don't propose to be pouted at in my own 
 house any longer. Your mother is in the wrong, and you 
 know she is. But if you prefer her wrong to my right you 
 can have her. I will give you half — no, two-thirds, since 
 you have the child — of my income, which, however, I shall 
 
68 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 not increase in case it grows any larger. You can live 
 with whom and how you like, and I will make myself con- 
 tented, bachelor-fashion, once Aiore in New York. On 
 the other hand, if you are going to live with me, whether 
 I am your * ideal ' (with a slight sneer) or not, you must 
 be civil. I know I've done a harsh, a very harsh thing, 
 but, by George ! when you. want to hold a — a — (he wanted 
 to say * snake ') an eel, you've got to put your heel down." 
 
 He waited for an answer, but Julia still sat sullen. 
 
 " Come ! will you be friends and let me enjoy our little 
 home and baby now we've got 'em ? You wouldn't want 
 to break this all up, would you ? And yet to have your 
 mother with us six or seven months of every year would 
 poison my life — drive me crazy ! Come, dear ! admit 
 that I've done the generous thing by Mrs. Dexter all this 
 time, and that I really can do no more ; more than two 
 hundred and fifty a year ! Think of it, and I only a 
 clerk!" 
 
 He was kneeling by her side with his arm round her, 
 and to tell the truth, Julia had herself been amazed at the 
 amount. 
 
 " You need not have sent her away in such a brutal and 
 ungentlemanly fashion." 
 
 ** Hang it ! you know I have to get mad before I can 
 say anything disagreeable to anybody." 
 
 For once Julia repressed an impulse to stick a pin into 
 him by retorting that **she didn't know anything of the 
 kind," and so they patched it up. She was thoroughly 
 surprised and startled at Calvert's proposal of a separation. 
 In her, loyalty and constancy were something intense — 
 the very strongest fibres of her nature ; and though she 
 did not romantically love her husband, yet she felt so en- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 69 
 
 tirely that she belonged to him, was bone of his bone and 
 flesh of his flesh, that the possibility of parting with him 
 would have been to her inconceivable. Yet here he was 
 suggesting it almost off-hand ! For the first time the 
 ''little queen" had a suspicion that, like other thrones, 
 her own was not incpDaNe of ♦^cttering. The petals of 
 life's flower had begun to fall. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 STILL '' EXCELSIOR. 
 
 Notwithstanding her ignominious banishment, Mrs. 
 Dexter returned to Behnont with a lighter heart than she 
 had known for some time. ' * The thousand I will take off 
 my books;'' — that surprising and delicious announcement 
 fairly sang in her ears — was more than balm enough for 
 her wounded pride. In another year Fanny would be 
 married, and that would give her a second and far firmer 
 foothold in the city of her devotion than the first — the 
 generous, chivalrous, unsuspicious David Howe being a 
 very different person from that ''mean, rude, cross, selfish, 
 overbearing Calvert !'' as she now in her thoughts con- 
 temptuously characterized the latter. As for next winter, 
 she would not care to be longer in New York '' any way " 
 than just to do the shopping with Fanny for Fanny's 
 trousseau, for it would take them the whole ensuing season 
 to make it up in time for the June wedding. 
 
 Such was the cheerful burden of her reflections, and 
 when her Belmont friends came to call, she could not say 
 enough of ''Frank Calvert's" generous ideas in house- 
 keeping, and she sketched for them what had been to her 
 the mortifying collapse of the young people into Brooklyn 
 for their first housekeeping, in the brightest tints of her 
 magic palate : 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 71 
 
 ^\ Such a lovely bejew of a house in Brooklyn ! Julia is 
 enjoying the change so much ! New York is so noisy — so 
 dusty ! She had got tired of it. Brooklyn is more like 
 the country — more trees and a great deal quieter. You 
 know Julia never can forget Belmont. Mr. Calvert pre- 
 ferred New York — more can ven lent to his business and 
 everything; but he said, '■ Oh, well, if Julia likes it, we'll 
 say Brooklyn, though I know she won't stay there- —one- 
 horse place ! ' He saw that she was nervous at that par- 
 ticular time, poor child, and he consulted her every wish 
 -a-h." 
 
 ''How does Mrs. Calvert enjoy housekeeping?" the 
 housewifely Belmont mind would of course inquire. 
 
 '' Delighted! You'd think she'd been at it all her life. 
 I fairly opened my eyes at the child. Don't seem to be 
 the least trouble to her, and certainly she has everything 
 to do with. The house is curtained and carpeted all over, 
 and as for the furniture — really ! she had to beg Mr. Cal- 
 vert not to be extravagant. Men always are, you know. 
 -£'/-egant rosewood in the drawing-room, and black walnut 
 with marble tops in all the rooms ; the most be-tzz^-tiful 
 damask — linen sheets and pillow slips, and oh — love-\y 
 silver and glass ? I just wish you could drop in at their 
 table. Mr. Calvert is such a provider ! He does all the 
 marketing himself on his way to business. He said the 
 very first day that he had had enough of boarding-house 
 fare, and now he was going to have something good to eat 
 -a-h." 
 
 Her mother's eulogy of Julia's housekeeping, by the 
 way, was more true than from her indolence might before- 
 hand have been supposed — the secret of it being that she 
 not only had naturally fastidious tastes, but also held in 
 
72 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 memory the high Belmont standards of neatness and home 
 cookery, and she calmly insisted on her servants coming 
 up to them. She never praised her maids. She never 
 made allowance for them. She used them precisely like 
 machines, and never spared them an unnecessary step. 
 Consequently, on Solomon's principle of: **If thy slave 
 complain, lay on more work," she was well served. But 
 it was singular how naturally it came to her, this helpless 
 fine-ladyism and imperiousness combined, when in her na- 
 tive village all the women but one or two spent their morn- 
 ings in calico and an apron, ekeing out the rude strength 
 of their rough Irish maids-of-all work, by making beds and 
 washing dishes, sweeping, dusting, and putting to rights, 
 and doing all the delicate cooking themselves besides. It 
 was the unadulterated, original ''bog-trotter" the Amer- 
 ican housekeeper had then to contend with — not the much 
 more refined, but even more exasperating young woman 
 as she has long been evolved by the Irish National School 
 system inaugurated over eighty years ago. 
 
 Our Julia never lifted a finger. She merely spake and 
 it was done — her little princess hands remaining in her lap 
 as white and soft as though there were no such things as 
 dish-cloths and dusters in the world. As for the baby, it 
 was a pretty and jolly and brown-eyed girl-dumpling, 
 so vigorous and healthy that it gave its mother little 
 trouble. But somehow it looked too like its father to 
 awaken a thoroughly responsive chord in her breast. So 
 maternity, like wifehood, remained still sleeping Within 
 her, and though now to some extent outwardly busied with 
 womanly cares, Julia really remained as self-absorbed as 
 ever. 
 
 In the summer she went up to Belmont as usual, espe- 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 73 
 
 cially as the little Clara was to be baptized, and Julia would 
 not willingly have let any one do it but Mr. Gardner; 
 though, like most mothers, the thought of what baptism 
 really is, never entered her mind. Christians constantly 
 ask each other, ''Is he or she a member of the church? '•' 
 when they mean, ''Is he or she a communicant?^^ — quite 
 ignoring that it is baptism which makes the " member " of 
 Christ's "church," and which entails all the Christian's 
 responsibilities. 
 
 The "dream too bright to last" of Harvey Thayer 
 having totally faded away, Mrs. Dexter decided to an- 
 nounce, which in Belmont was not to contradict, the en- 
 gagement which the deluded Howe had looked upon as 
 practically settled for years. 
 
 In fact, the Dexter coruscations of this season were the 
 most vivid and impressive that Belmont had as yet wit- 
 nessed. The exquisitely fresh young mother, Mrs. Cal- 
 vert, the bright and delicately blooming Fanny, Isabel 
 Eaton, beauty's softest queen — the three headed by Mrs. 
 Dexter' s own conscious "style," on Sundays filled the 
 Dexter pew at the top of the little church with a bewilder- 
 ment of fashion and fascination. 
 
 Those were the lawless days when, if she wished, a 
 woman could clothe herself in all the hues of the rainbow 
 at once, and with each one fighting all the others. This 
 Mrs. Calvert and Miss Eaton never did. As is generally 
 the case with the prettiest women, their dress was but the 
 harmonious frame or setting to their charms. But Fanny 
 had a passion for strong and glaring color, and even her 
 clear pink cheeks could hardly reconcile the war between 
 the blue crape bonnet and green silk mantilla with which 
 she dazzled Mr. Gardner's sober flock that summer. The 
 
74 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 Dexters always came late to church, and as their silken 
 skirts slowly rustled up the aisle^the breath of perfume 
 that lingered behind them seemed to the bright-eyed rising 
 generation which watched their gorgeousness like an ema- 
 nation from another world. 
 
 Nor were these gay flowers barren of fruit for the garden 
 of the Lord. They always put in a quarter each into the 
 monthly collection, so that, as Mrs. Dexter pointed out to 
 Mr. Gardner with pious satisfaction — ''Never less than a 
 dollar goes into the plate from our pew every Communion 
 Sunday-a-h ! ' ' 
 
 It was the only Dexter contribution to the support of re- 
 ligion — Mr. Gardner's salary, by the way, being six hun- 
 dred dollars a year, which was never entirely paid, while 
 his wife played the organ, his son blew the bellows, his 
 daughters sang in the choir, all for nothing, and they took 
 pupils into their family to eke out with, besides. 
 
 How easy it is to sneer at the Christian clergy — at those 
 patient, unobtrusive men, who alone of their fellow crea- 
 tures try with their slender force to hold this great way- 
 ward world still moored to Heaven ; and how few of the 
 strong ones of the earth condescend to help them in a ti- 
 tanic, eternal task compared with which all their own ends 
 are light and vain as were poor Mrs. Dexter' s aims and 
 strivings after oneness with the money and fashion of New 
 York ! I think if the confident and intellectual but earth- 
 satisfied Mr. Ashurst shall be shown by some angel in the 
 next world one after another of Mr. Gardner's exquisitely 
 spiritual sermons with — ''Mr. Ashurst present,'' or, Mr. 
 Ashurst not present ' ' invariably noted upon each, his 
 heart will smite him to discover how his mere presence up- 
 held that meek ambassador of God, and how his many un- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 75 
 
 necessary absences probably depressed and weighed him 
 down. 
 
 The brilliancy of this Dexter season culminated when 
 the happy lover came up to Belmont and made a summer 
 visit of several weeks, taking the whole family and their 
 favorite neighbors on jolly picnics and excursions, and 
 paying the piper after Mrs. Dexter' s own heart. When he 
 returned to the city he sent his betrothed a watch in blue 
 enamel and diamonds worthy of a countess, and at the vil- 
 lage teas she wore it in full sight, much to the disgust of 
 one Belmont matron whose city relatives were of the most 
 undoubted social prestige, and who remarked sarcastically 
 to a friend that she had "■ never heard of a watch being 
 displayed as an ornament T' The wedding was definitely 
 fixed for the following June, and all through the interven- 
 ing period Mr. Howe's star was triumphantly in the as- 
 cendant in Mrs. Dexter's horizon. His generosity, his 
 cleverness, his devotion to his family, the immense esteem 
 and confidence felt in him by the firm which had just 
 taken him into partnership, his strict moral principle, his 
 remarkable wit (Mr. Howe was an inveterate punster) — 
 upon all these virtues and perfections Mrs. Dexter was 
 never weary of descanting. 
 
 It all had rather a flavor of Dead Sea fruit to Fanny, it 
 must be confessed, whose thoughts were continually con- 
 trasting the real joy of the previous summer with the hol- 
 low smiles of this. The lovely Eaton, too, left Belmont 
 in drooping spirits. Her heart would fain have found its 
 home with her country adorer, who was really an excep- 
 tionally gifted fellow, and whose after career proved it. 
 But alas, beauties must have money, and so, though she 
 wept, she refused him. Mr. Calvert did not appear 
 
76 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 in Belmont this season. In fact, excepting for a day 
 or two at Fanny's wedding^, he was not seen there 
 again for years, and people after a time guessed quite 
 correctly that the relations between himself and his de- 
 voted mother-in-law had become, in diplomatic parlance, 
 •'somewhat strained!'* 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 CHEATED HYMEN. 
 
 Everything being progressive in this country, all the 
 arrangements and appointments of her second daughter's 
 wedding were projected by Mrs. Dexter much nearer the 
 New York plane than those of her first had been. There 
 were more silk dresses in Miss Fanny's trousseau, and her 
 under-linen was much more elaborate. More guests were 
 to be invited from a distance and fewer from the village. 
 The bride was to be in white satin, and there were to be 
 four bridesmaids, Miss Eaton, of course, being the first ; 
 and lastly, the ceremony was to be performed at the house 
 instead of at the church, Mrs. Dexter having a confused 
 notion that this was more aristocratic and exclusive, and a 
 clearer one that all the left-out humbler portion of Bel- 
 mont society would be intensely disappointed, and that 
 she, Mrs. Dexter, could condescend to them from a 
 loftier privileged height than ever ! 
 
 It was the same mistaken principle of happiness as that 
 upon which certain of the Newport multi-millionaires 
 have built such barriers between their sea-lawns and the 
 famous "cliff-walk," which has always been free to the 
 public, that the latter can not so much as glance across 
 their vast proprietary swards ! "It's English, you know," 
 to hide your beautiful things behind a wall from your 
 neighbors' enjoyment, just as to Mrs. Dexter a house- 
 
78 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 wedding which every-day Behiiont could not see was *' New 
 York, " and probably those eternal aristocrats, the angels, 
 smile quite as sadly over the 6ne mundane standard of 
 swelldom as over the other. "My thoughts are not your 
 thoughts, saith " their "Lord, neither are your ways my 
 ways ! ' ' 
 
 The gallant and genial bridegroom-elect was also disap- 
 pointed at Mrs. Dexter' s arrangement. He would have 
 been so proud to walk down the church aisle with his 
 sunny little bride on his arm, particularly — and this is not 
 always the luck of short bridegrooms — as their respective 
 heights matched so well. But when Mrs. Dexter explained 
 to him that Fanny (who would have faced the Roman le- 
 gions with composure) felt a shrinking about being married 
 so publicly, — " she's a sort of timid wild-flower, you know 
 — a— h," Mr. Howe felt how far finer than his own were 
 his bride's sensibilities, and was only too glad to sym- 
 pathize in her desire. Poor man ! At the very altar he 
 was to begin the role of giving up which he was never to 
 lay down until the end. 
 
 Among the invitations to the wedding was the following: 
 
 My Dear Mr. Thayer : 
 
 Did you know that I am actually going soon to take upon me the 
 cares and responsibilities of wedded life I — and that the "day" is fixed 
 for Thursday, June 30 ? Won't you come with my other friends from a 
 distance and see me '•'■sacnficed ! ! " And besides, now that I am going to 
 settle down into a steady old married woman, can't you trust me with that 
 famous secret you always said I was " too gay and unformed " to hear ? 
 Now don't disappoint 
 
 Your old friend 
 
 Fan/ 
 
 P. S. I wonder whether anything in married life will be half as 
 pleasant as some things ou^ of it ? " 
 
NEW YORK; A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 79 
 
 "He will send me a present, any way," said the busi- 
 ness-like Fanny, as she mailed this reckless epistle. 
 
 *'So," said Harvey Thayer to himself when he received 
 it, ''the pretty moth loved the candle, after all, did it, 
 and wants to singe its wings a little more? Well, I'll go 
 up there and tell her the 'secret' and see how she likes it." 
 
 Not even for the pleasurable excitement he anticipated, 
 however, would he have taken the journey to Belmont 
 alone. He could never be an hour without a companion, 
 so deadly a weight of boredom pressed upon him the 
 moment he was left to the vacuity of his own mind. So 
 with the promise that "some fun" awaited them among 
 the pretty girls of Belmont, he persuaded his intimate 
 friend, a rich and ignorant and languid and dissipated 
 snob like himself, but whose mother was a " Stuyvesant," 
 to go up from New York with him about three weeks 
 before the wedding. 
 
 When on the evening of their arrival the pair presented 
 themselves at Mrs. Dexter' s in the full panoply of citydom 
 — as she saw them little Fanny's spirit melted within her. 
 Harvey Thayer had now been going into New York 
 society for eighteen months and was an acknowledged 
 "catch" even among the self-possessed and conquering 
 belles who led the gay and exclusive world he loved. His 
 expression was critical and assured : his dress wore the last 
 air of fashion : a delicate moustache graced his lip, and 
 the silky lengths of waving hair which had so well suited 
 his poetic grace, were replaced by a close-cut elegance of 
 locks that showed the touch of the highest tonsorial art. 
 
 The parlor was full of the family and of company when 
 the friends were ushered in, but before the call was over 
 our veteran manceuvrers found themselves in the hall, with 
 
So NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 faces, in their joy at meeting again, all wreathed as of 
 old in their own sweetest, most coaxing smiles. 
 
 *'So!" cried Fanny, with the most alluring glance, 
 *< You've really come up to tell me the ' secret,' have you? " 
 
 "■ I don't know. I haven't decided." 
 
 *' The same old tease ! If not, what did you come for? " 
 
 '*I came to look at you," he said, seriously; to look 
 you over," scanning her very intently; *' to see if it is 
 really the same girl I used to know." 
 
 ** Well—is it?" 
 
 ''Can't tell; but even if I could, my opinion is of 
 small consequence — is nothing, in fact. ' ' 
 
 ''You are very much mistaken. Your opinion is of 
 great consequence — is particularly valuable to me, and 
 always will be, Mr. Thayer." 
 
 "Sacredly second to that of Mr. Howe, I suppose," 
 sarcastically. " Well, that's what I call ' nothing.' " 
 
 "Just as exacting as ever! That's two things you 
 haven't changed in ! " 
 
 "Do you suppose I am 'exacting' to everybody? 
 Doesn't it depend on — on — certain feelings, whether one 
 is exacting or not ? ' ' 
 
 "Oh, don't ask me about 'feelings,' please! I'm not 
 learned in that way at all. Really, Mr. Thayer," in turn 
 looking at him critically from head to foot — "you're so 
 stylish you almost took my breath away as you came in ! " 
 
 "And you are so coquettish," frowning, "that you 
 almost take mine ! Yes," slowly and judicially, " you are 
 changed, Miss Dexter. There is something hard and cold 
 about you, like a woman of the world." 
 
 ' ' Nonsense ! tell me the secret — quick ! — before we 
 have to go back into the parlor." 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 8i 
 
 " No, I don't think I will ; not to you." 
 
 " Why not to me? I'm not * too gay and unformed' 
 still — surely ? ' ' 
 
 " N — no; but still you don't seem to have any tender- 
 ness. The woman I confide in must have some tender- 
 ness — some sympathy." 
 
 *' I don't believe you've got any secret ! " 
 
 '* I don't believe you've got any heart ! " 
 
 '' Of course not ! " saucily, '' Mr. Howe has it." 
 
 ''Pshaw! stupidity!" and he turned pettishly back 
 into the parlor. 
 
 She did not follow, and presently he strolled out again 
 and found her apparently in deep meditation. 
 
 '' You look pensive, Miss Dexter. What are you think- 
 ing about ? ' ' 
 
 ''Of nothing that would interest Mr. Thayer." 
 
 " Whatever interests Miss Dexter interests me." 
 
 Laughing: "I'm afraid I can't return that compliment." 
 
 " Your ' dearest friend' — pardon! — I should say, your 
 once dearest friend, forgotten so soon?" murmured he, 
 with tender reproach. 
 
 "I don't think / forgot first, Mr. Thayer," answered 
 she, becoming suddenly grave and with deepening eyes. 
 
 "But what were you thinking about? You did not 
 look happy." 
 
 "All your imagination! I wouldn't tell you for a 
 million. Besides," laughing, ''your secret — the great 
 secret — must come first." 
 
 " Do you think you can be very, very sympathetic with 
 a man's deep trouble? " 
 
 "Oh, you frighten me," returning toward the parlor, 
 *' is it so very deep? " 
 
82 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 And so the fencing went on between them for several 
 days at more than one daily interview. Fanny knew he 
 was trying to get on the old footing, and even her faint 
 sense of propriety was making a stand that he should not. 
 For Harvey it was quite a fascinating little game. He 
 was surprised that she held her own so well, and was quite 
 willing to prolong the bootless struggle. Belmont horses 
 were good and Belmont drives unsurpassed for beauty; 
 Mr. Gardner now had several young girls living and 
 studying in his family, and to the prettiest of these Harvey 
 proceeded to make himself flirtatiously agreeable. May 
 Gardner, too, who was but thirteen when Harvey left Bel- 
 mont, and whose childish heart had adored him, had shot 
 up into a slim, graceful, naive girl of fifteen, and as Mrs. 
 Gardner noted his soft glance resting complacently upon 
 her, and her mantling cheek in return, she trembled as 
 might a mother-hen who sees the ruthless kite hovering 
 over her brood. 
 
 So between the Gardners and the Dexters and the 
 horses Harvey was passing his time very pleasantly indeed, 
 and his friend was imitating him as well as he could, when 
 one evening, after the early country tea, Harvey walked 
 over to Mrs. Dexter' s and said abruptly and gloomily to 
 Fanny: ''It's a lovely evening, and there will be a 
 moon. Will you walk up the brook with me, and* I will 
 tell you the ' secret. ' ' ' 
 
 Fanny started, and echoed: '''Up the brook?* I 
 haven't been there since we used to go there two years 
 ago." 
 
 "The best of reasons for going once again. We didn't 
 bid it a formal 'good-bye,' I believe;" then, most 
 appealingly, and looking the picture of wretchedness as 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 83 
 
 she hesitated and once or twice shook her head — " can 
 you refuse me, Fanny — refuse me this last favor — for we 
 are going to-morrow?" 
 
 She did not, she would not think, and wrapping herself 
 in a white woolen nubia or *' cloud," as the girls called 
 them in those days, in a quarter of an hour they were 
 sauntering up the grassy banks of a secluded ravine through 
 which wound a little transparent stream in S after S — each 
 totally different from the others and each more charming 
 than the last. They walked rather silently, for Fanny's 
 heart was strangely full, and Harvey was considering what 
 to say and how to say it. At last they came to a hidden, 
 exquisite dell where for a few yards nature's darling rushed 
 over its rocky bed in fairy rapids and cascades between 
 meeting and over-hanging trees. On the interlacing roots 
 of these the youthful pair seated themselves, and at first, 
 in unwonted, fateful silence, watched the sweet hurrying 
 water while the falling twilight darkened round them. 
 As if unconsciously, Harvey laid aside his hat and lifted 
 his brow that the soft evening breeze might blow over it. 
 Then he turned toward his companion and bent his gaze 
 steadily upon the wistful little face that questioned his, 
 and whose clear and delicate coloring amid her summer 
 draperies of pale blue and white, made her at that moment 
 so poetic a vision of spotless maidenhood. 
 
 Suddenly Harvey seized the hand of the trembling girl 
 and said in a low, hopeless tone : * ' Fanny, my secret is 
 that I loved you, but you were so young and so thought- 
 less that I forbore to tell it till a few more years had 
 taught you your own heart. The news of your marriage 
 came upon me like a thunder-bolt. You were in haste 
 indeed! " 
 
84 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 Fanny grew pale and cold as death. 
 
 *'Why, Harvey! I thought; you were only flirting. I 
 never supposed you really cared for me. Besides, you 
 knew that Mr. Howe had offered himself, and that my 
 parents wished me to marry him." 
 
 "Didn't j^a wish to marry him? Which were you 
 flirting with, him or me? " 
 
 '* I had no idea you cared for me," reiterated Fanny. 
 
 "That isn't the point. Did you care for 7ne ! Did 
 you give me any reason to suppose that you cared for me 
 — I don't mean in looks and words, but in deeds? You 
 did not break ofl" with Mr. Howe. You did not return 
 him his letters or his gifts and tell him your whole heart 
 could not be his. In fact, not being sure of me, you 
 thought best to keep on with him. Now, Fanny," rising 
 and standing before her and speaking with a grand air — 
 "I never will be loved calculatingly. The girl I choose 
 must be willing to risk everything, give up everything, 
 blindly, for me and to me." 
 
 She, too, rose and faced him with wild, pleading eyes 
 and quivering lips. "Harvey, you never said even once 
 that you loved me." 
 
 " No, and I shall never say it to a girl I am not sure 
 of. I looked for some absolute token from you, but it 
 never came. You laughed, even, as you told me good- 
 bye. Fanny, to see a girl flirt as you did with two men at 
 once, shakes my faith in woman ! " 
 
 Perfectly overwhelmed with disappointed love, with the 
 contrast between what she might have been as Mrs. Harvey 
 Thayer and what she would be as Mrs. David Howe, and 
 with that sense of debasement which Harvey knew so well 
 how to infuse into the girls he was rejecting, so that they 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 85 
 
 thought it was only their own unworthiness that was at 
 fault, — poor little Fanny burst into a passion of tears, sob- 
 bing out, ''What shall I do! What shall I do ! " in the 
 most heartrending manner. 
 
 The selfish youth was really touched. After all, he had 
 never had anything but pleasure from this thoughtless 
 trifler. She had not pursued and wearied him with the 
 complaints and reproaches of hopeless passion as had some 
 other wounded hearts, but had dropped him as gaily as he 
 had her. Why had he come up here to gratify his love of 
 conquest and to cloud her marriage festivities? He was 
 always drawn to children and to all innocent and helpless 
 things, and suddenly he felt a depth of tenderness for the 
 uoe-smitten little bride-elect that suri)rised himself. 
 
 He put his arm round her and whispered: *'Did you 
 really love me, then, Fanny, after all?" 
 
 She sank to his embrace, sobbing: "I always loved you. 
 but I thought you didn't care for me. I idolize you ! " 
 
 **At least we will have one last hour of happiness 
 together," breathed he, covering her with kisses, — and so 
 in delicious passion and sadness mingled, her head on his 
 breast as other fair tragic heads had lain there before, did 
 the two flirts pass the dusky hours, the brook rippling its 
 now sad little song below them, and the leaves whispering 
 and sighing above them, until the moonbeams sifted coldly 
 down, and even the reckless, imprudent Fanny felt that 
 she must return. Had she hoped from moment to moment 
 that the declaration would come, — that he would say, 
 *' Even now, at the eleventh hour, be my wife instead of 
 Mr. Howe's?" 
 
 Alas, no ! As they rose to go he said in well-simulated 
 tones of grief: ''If I had only known — if I had only 
 
S6 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 guessed of this before ! But now it is too late. I should 
 esteem it the last dishonor to rob another man of his 
 bride." 
 
 Wicked, diabolical liar and thief! — and had he not, 
 that very hour, robbed his fellow-man of the spiritual bride 
 that alone gave the visible one her value — changed the 
 maiden soul into a base pander that could deliberately 
 barter its outer personality for a name and a bread-winner ? 
 Had Harvey Thayer stayed away from Belmont, the 
 episode of a year and a half before would have been so 
 bedimmed in the volatile Fanny's memory by the pre- 
 occupations of actual life — her real engagement and ap- 
 proaching marriage to Mr. Howe would have made her so 
 one with him regarding all the outlook of her future, that 
 she might have gone to the altar in a mood at least affec- 
 tionate and loyal to the bridegroom from whom she had 
 already received so much and was there to receive every- 
 thing; — and now this false one's dazzling, delusive image 
 had come between and made the true lover a horror. To 
 the one her whole soul passionately clung — from the other 
 as passionately revolted. 
 
 When the torturer left the unhappy child at her own 
 door, she ran through the hall without heeding her moth- 
 er's call from the parlor, and flying up stairs to her own 
 room she locked herself in. But Mrs. Dexter, who ever 
 since Mr. Thayer's unexpected appearance had been hop- 
 ing almost against hope that her ambitious dreams would 
 fulfil themselves in spite of the wedding day fixed for the 
 next fortnight, could not rest until she had learned the 
 meaning of the evening walk. She mounted after her 
 daughter, and finding the door fastened, begged to be let 
 in. Fanny let her entreat several minutes, for in truth she 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 87 
 
 felt desperate, and wanted to be left to herself. At last, 
 however, she yielded, but no sooner did her mother enter 
 with: "Why, my dear Frances, what is the matter?" 
 than she burst out into the most violent hysterics, and 
 abandoned herself to a wild, determined uncontrol that 
 testified well to her perfectly undisciplined nature. ''She 
 hated Mr. Howe ! She never would marry him ! She 
 was perfectly miserable ! Her heart was broken ! Her 
 parents had bartered her away ! They had engaged her 
 when she was a mere child ! All they thought of was to get 
 rid of her as soon as possible ! etc. , etc. ' ' 
 
 ''But, my daughter!" said Mrs. Dexter, soothingly, 
 " surely if Mr. Thayer loves you it is not impossible to 
 break the engagement with David. He would never wish 
 to lead an unwilling bride to the altar. He would infinitely 
 rather give you up than have you suffer ! " 
 
 "No, no," moaned Fanny. "I know that Harvey 
 considers it dishonorable to influence a girl to break an 
 engagement." 
 
 Mrs. Dexter 'gave up all hope : " What did he want to 
 come up here for, then? " she cried, angrily. " Wretch ! 
 to drive you half crazy only two weeks before your wedding 
 day!" 
 
 Toward morning the exhausted girl dropped asleep and 
 did not waken even at the shrill whistle of the early train 
 that carried the two friends back to New York, for Harvey 
 had decided that it was best to beat an instant retreat — 
 one grand dramatic scene with each lady-love being the 
 utmost that his fatigued spirit could bear. 
 
 Fanny felt a death-pang when she heard of his departure, 
 and in truth something then died within her selfish heart 
 that never rose to life again. It was but a fragile flower that 
 
88 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 had waved above the original soil of her shallow nature. 
 Once torn up and flung aside it withered instantly away 
 and no similar root ever penetrated that dry and stony 
 ground. During the ensuing weeks she resigned herself 
 with resolute philosophy to her hard fate. Her spirit rose 
 with the excitement and bustle of preparation about her ; 
 her bridesmaids and intimate friends arrived, and she was 
 able to receive her lover, if not with effusion, at least with 
 surface smiles and pleasure sufficient to confirm him m 
 perfect happiness and trust. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 WEDDING NUMBER TWO. 
 
 Fanny Dexter was one of those fortunately organized 
 beings whose spontaneous command of their faculties is 
 such that they always ''rise to an emergency" and are 
 always "equal to the occasion;" consequently, unlike 
 Julia, as a bride she looked her very best. 
 
 Mr. Calvert now first disclosed his disapproval of the 
 way that Julia's veil had been put on by insisting on ad- 
 justing Fanny's himself, and with such success, that, as 
 her mother exclaimed admiringly, she looked "just sweet 
 enough to eat!" One of Fanny's unfailing charms, in 
 fact, was the peculiarly clean effect of her transparent 
 skin and perfectly arranged hair — and her long white 
 satin dress and snowy veil and wreath crowned her on 
 this occasion with a special immaculateness that was most 
 appropriate. The bridesmaids could not afford dresses 
 alike for the occasion, but as each happened to have a 
 fresh evening silk of bright color, and all different, what 
 with white sashes, flowers and gloves they looked suffi- 
 ciently their part, and, glorified by the usual serene mir- 
 acle of Miss Eaton's beauty, whose toilette of the then 
 fashionable corn-color could not have been more becom- 
 ing, they made a very gay and attractive group. The 
 bridegroom was radiant, Mrs. Dexter lofty and benignant 
 in regulation mauve, and Julia exquisite in pale pink 
 
90 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 moire trimmed with delicate lace. True that Mrs. Dex- 
 ter' s attention and her purse Had been so absorbed by the 
 demands of the outer man of her guests — by her gratifica- 
 tion of their " lust Of the eye " — that the wants of the in- 
 ner she had a second time grandly left to fate. But a sec- 
 ond time was her faith rewarded by her neighbors stepping 
 in at the eleventh hour and furnishing forth the wedding 
 supper. 
 
 All Belmont — that is — all high-placed Belmont, was 
 there in its very best, vaguely conscious that a new era 
 had dawned, and that, ridiculous as Mrs. Dexter was, she 
 had established a precedent in weddings which must in 
 future be maintained. The lady felt not the slightest 
 sense of obligation for the feast which her friends had 
 spread upon her board without cost or trouble to herself. 
 She was a thorough egotist, and every egotist is a mass of 
 ingratitude. In her own estimation she was the benefac- 
 tress of this benighted little town who more than squared 
 her neighborly debts by simply showing people how to do 
 things. The missionary zeal and spirit were so strong 
 within her that the vulgar consideration of ''who pays" 
 never troubled her for an instant. There was, in short, 
 but one small, very small spot on the sun of this brilliant 
 — this almost astonishing success. 
 
 Among the relatives present from a distance were a sea- 
 captain and his family. He had just returned from the 
 tropics and had brought with him two flower-wreaths, ex- 
 actly alike, made of fairy snow-white shells. He gave one 
 to Fanny, who thriftily decided to use it instead of provid- 
 ing one of orange-blossoms, and the other to his own very 
 plain and dowdy daughter; and she, totally oblivious of 
 the fitness of things, just before dressing for the great oc- 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 91 
 
 casion naively announced that she was going to wear her's 
 too ! The Dexter ladies were almost paralyzed with dis- 
 may and disgust, but there was no time to procure any 
 substitute- wreath, and the fact that the bride was not ' ' the 
 one and the only * ' to wear the bridal crown at her own 
 wedding, was no doubt caused by that mysterious but 
 faithful sympathy of inanimate things with human affairs 
 which is always writing runic warnings on the wall before- 
 hand, but which we never can read until after the event. 
 
 The cheerful Fanny had always determined to dance at 
 her own wedding, partly because she was so fond of danc- 
 ing, and partly because not to display herself to the great- 
 est advantage on the only time in her life when she could 
 be invested with the poetry and becomingness of bridal 
 white and veil, would have been to her clear and practical 
 mind simply irrational. As Terpischore certainly ought 
 to be the presiding muse at youthful nuptials, Fanny was 
 quite right in her decision, and Belmont people could not 
 remember when they had enjoyed themselves so much — 
 the young in dancing with the graceful, gracious creature, 
 and the old in looking on. 
 
 In the midst of the gaiety and animation, who should 
 suddenly appear at the drawing-room door in all the fas- 
 cination of dress-suits — (men never completely throw off 
 the animal except in evening-dress), but the ruthless Har- 
 vey Thayer and his friend ! The unconscionable flirt had 
 actually come up from New York to give his vanity of 
 conquest the luxury — first of beholding a bride of whose 
 expected tragic pallor and breaking heart he himself 
 should be the conscious cause ; and then of sensationally 
 ending the whole unhallowed episode by a few last whis- 
 pered thrilling words of passion and despair, yes, under 
 
92 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 her bridegroom's very eyes, and when the church-service 
 had just made her a sworn ar^d lawful wife ! The blase 
 sybarite's veins were in a tingle with the unique exquisite- 
 ness of the excitement. 
 
 At any other time, such a presence from those far inac- 
 cessible circles in her own house and in the sight of all 
 Belmont, would have been to Mrs. Dexter the climax — the 
 transport, of social bliss ; but now for a moment she could 
 have murdered him. ** How would Fanny take it ? " she 
 almost gasped to herself. 
 
 The charming bride, however, was at the moment so 
 elate — was floating so buoyantly on the crest of the social 
 wave, that not even Harvey's subduing beauty and crush- 
 ing New York get-up could dash her light-heartedness. 
 His supposed victim greeted him smilingly, introduced 
 him to Mr. Howe, and said audibly and sweetly that she 
 hoped she should soon receive the wedding cards of him- 
 self and the young lady she understood he had been *'so 
 devoted to all winter." 
 
 She had not heard anything of the kind, for there was 
 no possible way by which she could hear news of him ; but 
 he had not sent her any wedding present — that rich, rich 
 fellow — and she had given him all her heart ! Had it 
 then, had \\. all been for nothing, absolutely nothing — not 
 even a souvenir — and after that parting? (So had run 
 her mortified thoughts continually this last week, when by 
 every New York express she had expecteci a bridal gift and 
 none had appeared.) No wonder she was not in the mood 
 to let him come off first best this time ! 
 
 Surprised at this flippancy to him, and at such an hour, 
 Harvey returned, tragically — '' I shall never marry, Mrs. 
 Howe," and with marked emphasis on the '' Mrs. Howe." 
 
NEH^ YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 93 
 
 "Oh, yes, you will I — even if 'she' has given you the 
 mitten. Broken hearts are soon mended, Mr. Thayer ' ' — 
 with a saucy little toss, '' and there are as good fish in the 
 sea as ever were caught, you know. I only hope you will 
 get as good a wife as I have husband ! " — and then she 
 turned resolutely to his friend, nor could Harvey com- 
 mand her attention or win from her a word or a look of 
 sentimental rapport all the rest of the evening. 
 
 The young gentleman was so discomfitted that, though 
 Mrs. Gardner's pretty pupil and also her budding daughter 
 May were both present, he made no response to the elo- 
 quent eyes of either of them, and seemed entirely oblivious 
 of the half-launched flirtation with the former to proceed 
 with which had in fact been one of his motives in coming 
 up. Even Miss Eaton he looked on languidly and 
 scarcely addressed — so disgusted was he with the snowy 
 little figure beside her. His friend, however, did instant 
 homage to the beauty, and could not understand why on 
 earth Thayer insisted on dragging him back to the forlorn, 
 horrid tavern at the first decent moment, nor why he 
 looked so blue and gloomy, and said so little as they 
 smoked their good-night cigars. 
 
 When an adored one is guilty of some slight as incon- 
 ceivable as it is unexpected, the cultus is at an end, and it 
 is in this way that most adorations of human divinities do 
 finish themselves. As a rule our hearts' idols care very 
 little whether they remain on the lofty pedestals to which 
 we have exalted them, for who does prize very much — who 
 does not a little despise, or at least undervalue, that which 
 lies under his feet? Consequently, and always to our 
 immense surprise, our gods and goddesses are more apt 
 than not, some day heedlessly to walk off over the edge, 
 
94 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 and naturally, with but one result. We can't help it! 
 There they lie — smashed for u^ for all time to come. 
 
 This was what had suddenly happened to Harvey Thayer 
 from not having sent Fanny a wedding present — her origi- 
 nal thought, be it remembered, in writing to him at all. 
 The first, last, irresistible impulse of real love, its only 
 infallible test, is giving. A man will often give to a 
 woman he does not, but it is impossible for him not to 
 give to a woman he does love. After her unveiling of 
 passionate but hopeless devotion, the costliest souvenir 
 Harvey could have selected would have seemed to Fanny 
 but the natural tribute of his tenderness and his re- 
 • gret. A " handsome " present was the very least she had 
 expected ; but when nothing had come, it was to her clear 
 common sense a cut inconceivable save on one most 
 humiliating theory — 'he had not really appreciated her — 
 he had undervalued her ! Let relative, friend or lover 
 once realize this to be his true position in a beloved one's 
 mind and love is done. Not to be loved can be forgiven 
 — not to be appreciated, never ! 
 
 So far as Fanny Dexter was concerned, therefore, 
 Harvey Thayer had walked off his pedestal, and when on 
 that wedding night he packed up the faultless garb in 
 which he had complacently arrayed himself for unlawful 
 conquest, his vanity was suffering acutely from the shock. 
 He in turn was experiencing the inconceivable — a snub 
 from a little country thing to whom his mere notice was 
 an honor ! 
 
 Fanny had given him so much without apparently ex- 
 pecting anything, that it had not occurred to him there 
 was a debit side against him in her little mind as well. 
 Had she been of his own circle a wedding gift would have 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 95 
 
 been a matter of course, but with her he was always so 
 conscious of the social gulf between them, that he actually 
 forgot the most obvious convenances of the situation ! 
 He could not then fathom the girl's sudden change toward 
 him, but since changed she evidently was, why, let every 
 shred of late-born sentiment he had toward her, go ! 
 '' She was a damned flirt after all ! " was his conclusion of 
 the whole matter, and the next morning he and his friend 
 took the opposite train to that which had conveyed away 
 the bridal pair, and went northward to try and kill time 
 by a summer trip in Canada. 
 
 Of all the comedy and tragedy of Harvey Thayer's 
 amusement, what then remained? 
 
 For one thing, the real injury done to the unsuspecting 
 lover-husband. He believed that he was uniting to his 
 very spirit a spirit-bride of which the youthful, breathing 
 form was but the roseate incarnation. Deluded man ! 
 That form alone was all that was absolutely his own. 
 
 For the rest, Julia's marriage of sentiment merely, 
 without passion, had been hazardous enough; but Fanny's 
 — but this one, with nothing for its basis on the woman's 
 part but worldly advantage — there is but one thing to be 
 said when such a marriage is consummated, whether it be 
 that of the ''first lady of the land" or the last — ''It is 
 not and it cannot come to good ! ' ' 
 
 Little Belmont knew Harvey Thayer no more — probably 
 has never known quite his like again, as the genuinely 
 gilded New Yorker rarely strays from the accustomed 
 haunts of his kind. He was reminded of Belmont every 
 few years by a casual meeting in the street or a theatre- 
 lobby with his old flame. They always spoke cordially, 
 but he never called, in spite of her friendly and even 
 
96 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 coquettish invitations. The balls, the dinners, the races 
 and the dissipations of the little Croesus-world which to 
 him was so immense, at first^ absorbed his puerile energies, 
 and later, strange to say, their places were taken by the 
 real interests of the Infinite World to come. 
 
 Driving home an aunt one day whose pet and heir he 
 was, as he turned into the park gates of her summer home, 
 a wheel caught and upset them, and the lady was instantly 
 killed. To our pleasure-lover the shock was so great that 
 the solemn truths which Mrs. Gardner in Belmont used 
 to expound to him and to her children in the daily 
 Bible reading, recurred to him in all their deep reality. 
 In the heart shaken and softened by horror and grief 
 the good seed sprang up, and, impossible as it once 
 had seemed, Harvey Thayer became a reformed and a 
 religious man. 
 
 Almost immediately after, he paid his serious addresses 
 to the favorite cousin of his " Stuyvesant " friend. Thou2:h 
 not pretty, she was pleasant, well-connected and good, 
 and superior though she was to him both in birth and 
 education, his fascinations and his money plead quite as 
 successfully for him when he was in earnest as they gen- 
 erally had when he was in play. The marriage made him 
 one with the, to him, sacred old Knickerbocker circle to 
 which he had always aspired. His mind was too enervated 
 for him to attempt any pursuit whatever, or he would have 
 taken orders in the Episcopal church, and so added another 
 to the many shallow, despotic, and superstitious *' priests " 
 — as they now call themselves — of that once ** Protestant " 
 communion. Instead, he vegetated for twenty years on a 
 lovely estate on the Hudson, and when just on the point 
 of moving to New York, in order that his only son might 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 97 
 
 go to Columbia and the eldest of his three pretty daughters 
 be brought out into society, he suddenly died. 
 
 The mourning delayed the debut of the lovely Valen- 
 tina — for thus was she baptized — but a year, and then she 
 made her entrance into the fashionable world with all the 
 prestige that opulence, position and beauty could give. 
 She was so rich, so fairy-like and so sweet that society 
 melted before her. Wooers flocked about her, but she 
 was so rigidly chaperoned that she had no real liberty of 
 choice, and before the winter was out, she gave her hand, 
 as her mother advised, to the richest and the best-born of 
 them all — to a well-known society '^ sport" somewhat 
 bald and weather-beaten and twice her nineteen years. 
 A perfect horsewoman, she is now one of the reigning 
 married belles of the '' hunting set" of the envied '' four 
 hundred," and her young heart is vibrating to the woes 
 and aspirations of the cool magnetic male flirts about her, 
 much as those of her own father's youthful flames used to 
 vibrate to his. It is the married, not the unmarried 
 women that Harvey Thayer the Second and his friends 
 pursue to-day, and how long it will be before the sensitive 
 Valentina's soul takes fire from what it is exposed to, some 
 of the experienced are looking and waiting to see. 
 
 Her excellent remaining parent divides her time be- 
 tween her social ''duties " and the so-called " charities," 
 while waiting to pilot her much younger daughters over 
 the summer sea which glitters exclusively for those pos- 
 sessing Stuyvesant-Thayer advantages. 
 
 I have been told by foreigners, and judging from foreign 
 novels I infer, that in Europe parents do not dare to leave 
 their young people together for fear of the flirtations and 
 scandals that might ensue. The young men are not to be 
 
98 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 trusted. And are New York mothers afraid that New 
 York sons cannot be trusted, that they have copied the 
 English and the French ideas of perpetual guardianship 
 and surveillance for daughters? 
 
 Governesses and maids surround every impulse with a 
 compressing and suffocating atmosphere, and when fin- 
 ished with these, the anxious mama and the vigilant chap- 
 eron take their places to prove that in this free land it is 
 possible for a free-born American to reach womanhood as 
 mentally swathed and bound as a chrysalis in its shell. In 
 this undeveloped state is consummated, the earlier the bet- 
 ter, the child's marriage to a rich native or to a foreign 
 title, and then she is launched to float like an untaught 
 butterfly whither fate may waft her ! 
 
 And opulent people the country over who are striving 
 for social position, imitate Mrs. Stuyvesant-Thayer and her 
 *' four hundred " exclusive friends, because such constitute 
 '^ New York" swelldom, and borrow their gyves and their 
 fetters to put on ^ket'r heiresses also, in order that as many 
 American girls as possible may receive the reigning 
 metropolitan stamp. 
 
 As late as 1880 the chaperon was unknown in Chicago. 
 About that time she established herself there and twelve 
 years after she made her appearance at Indianapolis. 
 Thus westward does the Star of Slavery take its way. 
 Poor America — poor betrayed Colossa of the Ages! 
 What would feel those wise and ardent women who 
 nursed you a hundred years ago, true and glorious 
 helpmeets of the loftiest statesmen who ever lived, 
 could they behold the degenerate daughters who gossip 
 and lounge in your mighty shadow, and look carelessly on 
 while your swift and tireless enemies daily dig beneath 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 99 
 
 your feet the pit into which you have already sunk — even 
 to the knees f 
 
 Not after life's '^ fitful fever" but after its stagnant 
 pool, Harvey Thayer sleeps in a forgotten grave. Liter- 
 ally "rolling in wealth," at the top of the most arrogant 
 social circle in America, therefore with the range of his 
 country's greatest possibilities within his horizon, his epi- 
 taph, like those of most of his acquaintance, might justly 
 have been, — "He was born: he lived: he died." He 
 never spent anything like his income. It simply went pil- 
 ing on and up above him like a huge gold bastion against 
 which he, a pigmy, passively reclined. So little did he 
 feel the obligations of such wealth, that even to the Epis- 
 copal church, the only organization except his club to 
 which his consciousness extended, and which commanded 
 him to send forth the gospel " to every creature," he gave 
 but a thousand dollars a year — five hundred to his clergy- 
 man's salary and the rest to church charities and mis- 
 sions ; nor did he leave it in his will one single cent ! 
 
 Fanny Dexter' s other exceptional friend, the once peer- 
 less Isabal Eaton, sleeps likewise her last sleep. Within 
 two years after Fanny's marriage, she placidly gave her 
 hand, as great beauties so often do, to a city wooer as 
 poor in every other attraction as he was rich in securi- 
 ties and stocks. The soft, indolent houri soon found her- 
 self a mother, and with the new relation became startlingly 
 changed. Self was not only forgotten. It was martyred, 
 and her really irrational, almost wild maternal devotion to 
 her little ones swiftly transformed into a touching nursery 
 ghost the once wonderful ball-room rose — and then in a 
 few years more the lovely ghost had vanished too ! Her 
 perfect woman's person, as a beautiful woman's should, 
 
loo NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 had enshrined a deep and intense woman's soul after 
 all! , 
 
 Well in a world of human ugliness and stupidity may 
 we yield the tribute of a sigh to this Isabel and this Har- 
 vey — to these two fair and fascinating, these gifted and 
 harmonious beings, whom nature had dowered so lavishly 
 that they might easily have been consummate masters in 
 the Art of Living, and through the whole of it have con- 
 ferred exquisite joys and delights wherever they went and 
 upon whomsoever they knew. But in childhood no one 
 placed their steps on the upward path of resolute self-im- 
 provement and self-control, and so instead they remained 
 hardly more than pathetic negations. 
 
 Let us believe that in Paradise they are granted a better 
 chance, and that there we shall one day meet them, their 
 ignorance enlightened, their mistakes all righted, their 
 beauties and their graces a thousand and a thousand fold 
 enhanced ! 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE *' LITTLE HOUSEKEEPER." 
 
 After the hollow festivity of her wedding, Fanny and 
 Mr. Howe spent the honeymoon most appropriately amid 
 the glare, gaiety and extravagance of the then Saratoga. 
 The bride cast care and regrets to the winds, and enjoyed 
 the driving and dancing, the dressing and promenading as 
 only such natures can. She did not flirt, naturally, for 
 she was with Mr. Howe all the time, but she saw, as she 
 said to herself, '' lots " of men with whom she would have 
 liked to flirt. Ah ! if it had only been her fate to come to 
 this paradise a girl instead of married ! 
 
 When they returned to the city they boarded only until 
 they could find a house, and by dint of Fanny's energy 
 they succeeded in obtaining what they desired without 
 having to wait until the following May. Not only was 
 Mr. Howe the junior partner of his old and extensive firm. 
 He had always been prudent enough to lay by for the 
 future, and he had been fortunate in the investment of his 
 savings. Fanny thus started on the voyage of life much 
 more brilliantly than Julia — sails set and pennants flying. 
 Her interest in furnishing her house was intense, and her 
 bargaining and wheedling over every article impressive — 
 her whole gamut of persuasion being brought into play 
 from playful coaxing to imperious demand. As in dress, 
 
I02 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 her taste in house-belongings was gay, not to say gaudy, 
 but the ensemble of the home^ was cheerful, like its mis- 
 tress, and when Mrs. Dexter, earlier than usual, came 
 down from the country, she felt such bliss on entering its 
 well-warmed, well-carpeted, sunny and semi-luxurious 
 rooms, that for the moment her cup was almost too full. 
 Most remarkable of all, Mr. Howe had a passion for pict- 
 ures — '* paintings," he and Fanny called them — and was 
 discriminating enough to prefer pleasing and characteristic 
 American originals to gloomy and meaningless foreign 
 copies. So their drawing and dining room walls, instead 
 of the apologies for pictures of most young households, 
 had actually something "■ not bad " in oils or water color 
 in all their principal divisions. 
 
 Fanny bore out her mother's sobriquet and made a 
 capital housekeeper. Her organizing, executive faculty 
 now found a congenial sphere. She had no intention to 
 economize or to stint herself, and she did not j but neither 
 was there any confusion, dirt or waste about her establish- 
 ment. From her attics to her cellar, from her laces to her 
 rag-bags, everything was in perfect order and exquisitely 
 neat. She generally did her own marketing, as of course 
 every ideal housekeeper does. Her table was American, 
 abundant and satisfactory. In cookery she did not go 
 beyond the elements she had known in Belmont, but these 
 she maintained inflexibly. Like Julia, she never helped 
 her servants, nor ever spared them, and got out of them 
 still more than her older sister. Whether she rained 
 embroidered and fluted white skirts into their washtubs, or 
 had frequent lunch or dinner company, Sundays included, 
 they patiently endured the burden and fulfilled the task, 
 and she never apologized or said ' * thank you ' ' for it, 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 103 
 
 either. When they got too tired they gave warning, and 
 with perfect facility she found others to take their places. 
 It is a gift — this unconscious governing faculty that some 
 women have, and servants, being in fact but grown-up 
 children, are always more contented with such mistresses 
 than with any others. It is the timorous, apologetic 
 employer that they despise and trample upon. 
 
 As time went on the little housekeeper proved herself 
 always beforehand with the seasons. Her winter things 
 were well in hand early in the fall, and by February her 
 spring sewing was thoroughly finished up. She was never 
 hurried, nor ever felt herself driven by piles of inchoate 
 work behind her, as are so many breathless, over-weighted 
 mothers. She could be ready at a moment's notice to 
 start anywhere. No proposed excursion or theatre party 
 was ever balked because she could not join it when asked. 
 If any change, or any pleasure, or any excitement was in 
 prospect, Fanny Howe was always found cap-a-pie, ready 
 to rush in and enjoy it. She could leave her family 
 machine at any time, knowing that it could run on scarce 
 conscious of her absence. 
 
 In short, her housekeeping was no trouble to her what- 
 ever, but this was not because she thought so little of it, 
 but because she involuntarily thought so strongly and 
 so much. Whatever this young woman had to do was 
 always stereoptically present to her mind, all round and 
 from beginning to end, and was provided for in her 
 decision long before the moment came for it to appear as 
 a practical reality. Had she been a man she would have 
 been as bold and confident an " operator " as the famously- 
 infamous one of her native State. In truth, the secret 
 of housekeeping is the secret of success in anything. It 
 
I04 NEW YORK: A SYMPJIOXIC STUDY. 
 
 merely means exceptional ability — mental force — whether 
 you call it '' intellectual " force of not. 
 
 Little Mrs. Howe was quite conscious of her housewifely 
 prowess, and exacted due recognition of it from everyone 
 about her. She was not therefore the ideal house-mistress 
 whose ministrations for the comfort of everyone fall as 
 noiselessly as the dew or the ''gentle rain from heaven." 
 There was nothing gracious, nothing tender, in her fore- 
 thought. Love and solicitude for others had no part m 
 her success. It was due wholly to her splendid business 
 faculty and determination to " have things right." 
 
 To his devoted mother-in-law the opening of Mr. 
 Howe's congenial household, where economy was not 
 perforce the ruling spirit and one more or less at the 
 plentiful table made no difference, was a god-send — a 
 haven of hope and joy indeed ! Her rude expulsion as a 
 regular winter denizen from the Calvert mansion was now 
 made up to her, and she felt she was reaping at last the 
 due reward of her maternal enterprise and tact. Mr. 
 Calvert had magnanimously refrained from hinting to his 
 confiding friend what he was probably in for, and that 
 generous heart was quite large enough for all and every- 
 thing that belonged to Fanny. 
 
 As her betrothed, and quite aside from beautiful and 
 costly lover's gifts, he had done very much for her. Mrs. 
 Dexter had but to mention something she "thought" of 
 getting for the " precious child," if happily the " everlast- 
 ing no " of Mr. Dexter's purse should by chance permit, 
 and within a short time it came into her possession as a 
 matter of course. In this way Fanny's music and dancing 
 lessons at school and her cit> vacation trips, also the 
 expenses of herself and her mother on their final visit 
 
X£W VGA' A'.- A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 105 
 
 to New York for trousseau purposes, besides various seem- 
 ing extravagances of that trousseau, had all been paid for. 
 Now, however, that Fanny's entire support devolved upon 
 him, and Mrs. Dexter had but one child left to establish, 
 it might have been supposed that Mr. Dexter' s earnings 
 would suffice without those borrowings on the strength of 
 the purely spiritual remittances from Belmont which had 
 so disgusted Mr. Calvert. 
 
 But to Mrs. Dexter delicacy and gratitude were alike 
 impossible. With her it was *'get all you can, and keep 
 all you get," even from such a ceaseless benefactor as 
 David Howe. She always declared that lawyers were the 
 hardest worked and the worst paid servants of the public 
 in the world, and to hear her talk, one would have sup- 
 posed that the whole Dexter family had to subsist on air. 
 After Fanny's marriage it was for years the fond dream of 
 her life that Mr. Dexter should get a partnership in some 
 New York law firm . 
 
 ''With his talents," she would declare, ''my husband 
 would be earning his thousands now in New York if he 
 would only have the energy to make the move. Old 
 Judge Vail used to say that * if Dexter only had ambition 
 he would make his mark anywhere. He never met a more 
 logical mind or heard a more convincing reasoner. ' " 
 But the fine academic phrases fathered on the deceased 
 judge by Mrs. Dexter' s imagination, had no more effect 
 on her husband than had Mrs. Gamp's "Harris" quota- 
 tions on Betsy Prig. He had not an impulse of his wife's 
 infinite enterprise, but was a passive, contented nature, a 
 slow sententious talker, an inveterate tobacco-chewer 
 (therefore probably always half-narcotized), and though 
 steadily industrious, never did more than his stint. He 
 
lo6 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 loved his home and especially his daughters, dearly, and 
 many a man, goaded by the dislocations and discom- 
 forts that his wife brought upon him by her long annual 
 absences, would have finally given in to the views of the 
 aspiring one and really tried his fortune as she wished. 
 
 But in truth Mr. Dexter doubted his own qualifications 
 for city success. He offered no opposition to his wife's 
 plans regarding her daughters or herself. He faithfully 
 made over to her everything he earned except what suf- 
 ficed for his own modest wants, and not a hair's breadth 
 farther could she move him. During her winter absences, 
 when he either lived dismally in the big house with an in- 
 efficient old woman to cook for him, or shut it up alto- 
 gether, he found existence extremely detestable; but it 
 was easier to console himself with private whiskey-and- 
 water, and to seek sympathy and companionship in remote 
 and doubtful farm-houses, than to adventure the competi- 
 tions of New York. 
 
 And so, after the first few years of energetic but futile 
 argument and pleading, the ill-assorted couple zig-zagged 
 on, apart in winter, together in summer, never breathing 
 to outsiders a word against each other, but inwardly aggra- 
 vating each other all the time to the verge of endurance. 
 Mrs. Dexter was always in want of money. Mr. Dexter, 
 as it seemed to her, never had any. After the exhaustion 
 of poor Tim's little fortune in the beginning of her New 
 York career, she had been left to fight her battle against 
 life in the country practically alone. She carried on the 
 struggle by marvellous economies and meannesses and by 
 keeping in debt as deeply as she dared to everybody, but, 
 after the Calvert defection, her chief dependence was the 
 generosity and credulity of Mr. Howe. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 107 
 
 There is no doubt that, to put it mildly, Mr. Howe 
 dearly loved to be appreciated. It was his one weakness, 
 and Mrs. Dexter could play on it to the full. But let him 
 not be undervalued for this. A spinster of over forty, 
 who from her girlhood had had an unbroken string of ad- 
 mirers and offers from men of all descriptions — from her 
 contemporaries, from men much older than herself and 
 men much younger than herself, from professional men 
 and business men, from men highly eligible and men non- 
 eligible — this woman, who was never either pretty, rich or 
 brilliant, and who now was not even young, was at last 
 asked by an intimate friend in some exasperation: '* What 
 on earth is the secret spell — the magnetic charm ? ' ' 
 ** Flattery," returned the siren, **and you can't lay it on 
 too thick! " 
 
 Besides her unremitting flattery, however, Mrs. Dexter's 
 financial method with Mr. Howe showed a good deal more 
 finesse than the simple borrowings from Mr. Calvert which 
 had brought her to such grief. From the day of her au- 
 tumn advent in New York until she went away in spring, 
 Mrs. Dexter deposited the whole of what money she 
 brought with her and also what from time to time she re- 
 ceived, with Mr. Howe as with a banker, and then when 
 she wanted any, she would ask him for ten, twenty-five or 
 fifty dollars as the case might be — always adding, <*If I 
 overdraw, David, be sure to let me know, and Mr. Dexter 
 will make it good next week. I keep no account because 
 I know it's all right. Only, I trust to you to keep me 
 straight ! My poor head isn't much where accounts are 
 concerned-a-h ! ' ' 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE OLD STORY. 
 
 The only person in the restricted visiting Calvert circle 
 who could exchange opinions on light literature with Julia 
 Calvert, or indulge her in those discussions of the general 
 principles of romance that she loved, was an obscure, not 
 at all elegant, and not very young unmarried lawyer 
 named Whitney. It was enough to glance at the coarse 
 expression of his coarse features, to discover what was his 
 general moral and intellectual level ; but he did dabble in 
 books a little, and as he showed besides a high apprecia- 
 tion of Julia's mental powers, she in turn thought him 
 *^very cultivated," and his weekly or bi-weekly call had 
 long been to her the grateful oasis in the monotony of the 
 petty commercial society to which on leaving Belmont she 
 had descended. 
 
 Greatly as this gentleman admired Mrs. Calvert, he had 
 a sister who equally admired Mr. Calvert. The latter had 
 been a friend, almost an intimate, of Miss Jenny Whit- 
 ney's, before he met Julia, and he was aware that the rea- 
 son he always felt so particularly comfortable when he was 
 with her, was because he suspected her of a secret pen- 
 chant for himself. He was quite right, for his engagement 
 had been a genuine blow to her ; but as she was of a 
 merry disposition, she laughed it off as best she could, and 
 was as good friends with Mrs. Calvert as though the latter 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 109 
 
 had not carried off the man who to her was an embodi- 
 ment of everything handsome, elegant and clever. 
 
 Miss Whitney was small, with coal black and mischiev- 
 ous eyes, a dark coarse skin, very red cheeks, black frizzly 
 hair, and a very wide mouth with white, well-kept teeth. 
 Her hands and feet were rather large, but her figure was 
 trim, and she dressed in a gypsy style that was highly be- 
 coming. She was a light and tireless dancer, very ingeni- 
 ous and endlessly industrious, always with some pretty 
 fancy-work in her hand, always kind, always good-natured, 
 always ready for anything, not literary in the least, and 
 especially without a trace of Julia's exacting sentiment. 
 She was anxious to be married, and intended so to be as 
 soon as some one offered with what she considered a com- 
 fortable income. She had worshipped in vain at the 
 shrine of Beauty, and was now quite ready to pay her 
 vows at the altar of Mammon. Up to a certain point her 
 priijciples were very elastic. She considered she had a 
 right to flirt to any extent as long as she was an unmarried 
 woman, but she meant to abandon all such follies for life 
 from the moment she gave her word to her future husband. 
 
 This husband seemed in no hurry to appear, however, 
 and after a year or two, her old tenderness yet lingering in 
 her breast, she got in the way of hovering round the Cal- 
 verts. 
 
 She called constantly on Julia during the last six 
 months of the latter' s boarding experience, and Julia, in- 
 satiably sociable, and glad of the companionship of any 
 one whom she did not positively dislike, often asked her 
 to stay to dinner and spend the evening. Mr. Whitney 
 generally called round for his sister, and Julia was always 
 charmed to see him. With her delicate beauty, her lovely 
 
no NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 toilets, and her distant though winning sweetness, she es- 
 tablished a sort of little empire over him, and he secretly 
 thought that she had fallen to a most unappreciative hus- 
 band. So those two would sit and talk books together, 
 while Miss Whitney and Mr. Calvert talked gossip or the 
 fashions. Sometimes Mr. Whitney could not come for 
 his sister, when Mr. Calvert would have to go home with 
 her, and then they generally talked about ' ' old times. ' ' 
 
 When the Calverts went to housekeeping in Brooklyn, 
 Miss Whitney, or "Jenny" as they familiarly called her, 
 used to come over to pass the night or even to spend sev- 
 eral days, and this domestic intimacy made her sometimes 
 a witness to the frequent jars between the married pair 
 which one was quite as reckless of provoking as the other. 
 As for example the following — Julia beginning : 
 
 "Frank, did you get the tickets for Mr. Everett's ad- 
 dress on Washington in New York to-night?" 
 
 "No, Juley." 
 
 "Why, Frank! That is too bad! You know how I 
 have been counting on it, and, Jenny," turning to her, 
 " you heard me tell him the very last thing this morning 
 before he went to the city ? ' ' 
 
 "I didn't forget it." 
 
 " ^Didn't?' " echoed Julia, with asperity: "then, pray, 
 why didn't you get them ? " 
 
 "I didn't see how you were to get there. Whitney 
 couldn't be your escort because he had another engage- 
 ment, and tired as I am every night at this season, I 
 couldn't be bored to go and hear a man talk two hours 
 about an old chap who has been talked to death anyhow. 
 I don' t see how people stand it. ' ' 
 
 '*I dare say not. There are a good many things in 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. Ill 
 
 heaven and earth that are not dreamed of in your philos- 
 ophy," tossing her head ; "■ but because you cannot enjoy 
 a thing you needn't take it for granted, ever, that /can't ! 
 I wouldn't have missed that lecture for anything. Everett 
 is one of the great orators of the country, and everybody 
 goes to hear him. But it's just like you ! " 
 
 ''Well, /think, Mrs. Calvert, that it's just XxV^ you. 
 Twice last week I wanted to go to the theatre, and you 
 wouldn't budge." 
 
 ''I'm sick of the theatre, and you never want to go 
 anywhere else." 
 
 "Because the theatre rests me. It takes my mind off 
 my business and makes me laugh ; so it pays to go. But 
 these solemn subjects are like doing a double day's work. 
 Now you sit all day and read novels ' ' 
 
 "Leaving my house to take care of itself, I suppose," 
 interrupted Julia, angrily. 
 
 " — and it's no wonder you want something serious at 
 night. I should think you would ; and I would make the 
 effort to go with you as I often have before, if you in turn 
 would take any pleasure in going to what pleases me. 
 But, by Jove ! I'm about tired of making all the sacri- 
 fices." 
 
 ' ' Did you ever make sacrifices for me, dear ? ' ' drawled 
 Julia, sarcastically. "If you did, it's so long ago that 
 you must excuse me for havmg forgotten it. Stay — I do 
 remember now that when you began paying me attention 
 you took me to hear a set of Agassiz's lectures on Natural 
 History. Very considerate, I'm sure ! " 
 
 "Oh — ^Agassiz?" questioned Miss Whitney, seizing the 
 opportunity to make a diversion: "He is that French- 
 man, or German — isn't he, the papers talked so much 
 
11.2 A'EIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 about? Jim (her brother) took me to one of that same 
 set, I guess, and he spoke such broken English that I could 
 hardly understand a word." 
 
 '' Couldn't you? " cried Julia, with enthusiasm ; ** why, 
 I understood him perfectly, and he was/^r-fectly fascinat- 
 ing. I never enjoyed anything more in my life. The 
 way he drew those illustrations on the black board — de- 
 lightful ! You understood him, didn't you, Frank ? I re- 
 member you seemed to enjoy it." 
 
 '*0h, yes! I like Natural History. That's practical, 
 and anything practical suits me. But I don't think Agas- 
 siz is a Frenchman. He's a German, isn't he ? Anyway, 
 he looks like one — reg'lar Dutchman ! " 
 
 ' ' No, no. He is a Swiss. The Swiss speak French. The 
 famous Rousseau was a Swiss and he wrote in French," 
 returned Julia, happy in delivering a little piece of 
 recondite knowledge that she was sure the others didn't 
 possess. 
 
 ''How she always does know everything, doesn't she, 
 Mr. Calvert ! " exclaimed Miss Whitney, admiringly. 
 
 "Of course! We're nowhere when she's round — eh, 
 Juley? " said Mr. Calvert good-naturedly, and the tiff ex- 
 ternally was over, but remained tingling down in the bot- 
 tom of their hearts for the rest of the evening. 
 
 Miss Jenny had a very adroit way of turning off these 
 pleasing conjugal controversies at the first possible mo- 
 ment, but inwardly her heart melted with tenderness over 
 the generous, hot-headed fellow of whom his cool little 
 wife thought so little. She thought how differently she 
 would have treated him, and secretly she always sided 
 with him. He had an instinct that she did, and it made 
 him more rough and hardy in having his own way. It 
 
iV£ll^ YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 113 
 
 made him dangerously grateful to her, too. A very clever 
 woman, on reading Mrs. Tilton's first "statement" in the 
 famous Beecher-Tilton controversy, quoted from it the 
 sentence — ''When I was with Mr. Beecher, I seemed to 
 myself to be somebody,'" and said — ''That tells the whole 
 story ! No doubt Tilton was an obtuse, selfish egotist 
 who always depreciated his wife and exalted himself, while 
 Mr. Beecher appreciated her " 
 
 Similarly was it with Frank Calvert. His self-respect, 
 continually w^ounded and bleeding from his wife's sarcasms 
 and tacit assumption of superiority, was healed and re- 
 stored by Miss Jenny's silent sympathy and approval, and 
 the more he saw of her, the more he asked himself why he 
 had been such a fool as to take a girl who had been six 
 months making up her mind whether she wanted him, in- 
 stead of one whom he was sure would have accepted him 
 with ecstasy on the first asking. 
 
 Frank was fond of back-gammon and often begged for 
 a rubber in the evening. Julia hated the game, and gen- 
 erally played under protest ; but Miss Whitney adored it, 
 as she did all games of chance, and was always glad to be 
 his partner. So she and Mr. Calvert gradually fell into 
 a cosy habit of playing together after dinner. If the 
 dice were against the latter, however, he would not be 
 content with a rubber merely, but always insisted on play- 
 ing until he won. Julia was generally content to be left 
 to her Eve?ung Post or her novel, but sometimes she 
 wanted to talk, and then, if they would not leave off, she 
 would exclaim at their unsociableness, and perhaps betake 
 herself in pretended dudgeon to bed. 
 
 Above flirting with anyone herself, and incapable even 
 of conceiving it with another woman's husband, it never 
 
114 ^ElV YORK:: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 entered the young wife's mind to fear that she was perhaps 
 tempting her liege by having ^his easy, merry, flattering 
 young woman so much about them. Jenny was older 
 than she, not half so pretty, and in fact rather ^'common." 
 Confident of her own superior attractions she never even 
 thought of her as a rival. 
 
 One evening, however, it happened that when Julia 
 was supposed safe in her own room, she had in reality 
 gone down into the kitchen to solace herself with a cup 
 of hot cocoa before going to bed. She got talking with 
 the cook, and it was some little time before she came up 
 again. Her tread was light, and as in ascending she 
 heard neither dice nor voices in the front drawing room 
 where they had been sitting, she concluded that Miss 
 Jenny had retired, but as the gas was burning, that 
 Frank was probably still in there finishing his cigar over 
 the register. The back drawing room was unlighted, but 
 its door, which was near the head of the kitchen stairs, 
 was open, and she was walking in to have a little conjugal 
 chat, when her step was arrested by a sight which froze 
 her blood — for Frank Calvert and Jenny — thoughtless, 
 reckless beings — were standing in the front room in a 
 good-night embrace ! 
 
 They had neither seen nor heard her, and she regained 
 her room. Her mirror reflected a face like death, but she 
 crept to bed and pretended to be asleep, so that her hus- 
 band should off"er her no good-night kiss ! The next 
 morning she pleaded a headache, and remaining in bed 
 she asked Miss Whitney to do some morning errands for 
 her. Jenny was all sympathy and eagerness to oblige, but 
 the moment she was out of the house, Julia flew to her 
 room and ransacked her drawers and the pockets of her 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 115 
 
 dresses. She was rewarded by finding the following in 
 Calvert's handwriting; — 
 
 My sweetest Friend, 
 
 When are you coming over to old " 341" again ? If you knew how 
 the evenings drag with no one but a cold, unsympathetic companion to 
 talk to ! When you are there, yoiu- dear bright eyes give me new life. 
 I tried my very best to call the other day when you said you should be 
 "all alone" (sweet word!) but alas! I could not possibly get away 
 from the store. Were you mad with your Herbert that you have not let 
 him see you since? Don't you know that I would have come if I 
 could ? Don't I think of you every minute that I have time to think at 
 all ? O, when I realize the happiness I might have had, it drives me 
 wild ! Only those kind eyes and those sweet unwilling ( ?) kisses con- 
 sole me for a few brief moments for its dreadful loss. Do let me have 
 them soon again, or I shall fear you do not care much for your own 
 devoted, miserable — 
 
 H. 
 
 The earth opened beneath Julia's feet. She seemed to 
 herself to have fallen into an abyss of infamy and woe. 
 She had but three thoughts — to get the treacherous girl 
 out of the house — to see her father, and to leave Calvert 
 forever. She sent a telegram to her father — " Come to 
 me quick and don't tell anybody but mother," and wrote 
 a line to Miss Whitney which she ordered the servant to 
 give her when she came in — and then she locked herself 
 in her room. 
 
 This was the note to Miss Whitney : 
 
 I saw you last night when you little suspected it. I have just 
 found in one of your pockets a love-letter from Mr. Calvert to you, I 
 have sent for my father, also for an exprpssman to take your trunk to 
 New York. I trusted you, and you have ruined me ! You have taken 
 from me all that I had — my husband's love. Base, wicked, detestable 
 girl ! May you Que day be served as you have served me ! 
 
 Julia Dexter Calvert. 
 
Ii6 NE IV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 " When he sent my mother o^ last year, he did not count 
 upon my sending off some df y his <' sweetest friend" — 
 said Julia to herself, revengefully. 
 
 Miss Whitney, ashamed and conscience-stricken, packed 
 her trunk with a face as ghastly as Julia's own, and left the 
 house. Her enemy put to flight, and nothing more to be 
 done until her father appeared, Julia's nerves gave way, 
 and she spent the afternoon in her room in dreadful weep- 
 ing. She thought her misery was unique — that it exceed- 
 ed all that woman had ever suffered from the hands of 
 man. ' ' A man that for six months begged and implored 
 me to marry him — who would be utterly ' ruined ' if I re- 
 fused him — who had * never loved or dreamed of any 
 woman ' but me ! ' ' 
 
 When Calvert came home he was frightened at the state 
 in which he found his wife. She had not combed her hair 
 nor dressed herself all day ; her eyes were so swollen with 
 weeping that she was unrecognizable, and she would not 
 tell him what was the matter. ''My Julia — my dearest 
 girl — my wife ! What is the matter ? . What has hap- 
 pened? Have you had bad news? Where's Jenny?" 
 
 ' ' Nothing is the matter — at least, nothing that you can 
 do anything about. Father will be here to-morrow morn- 
 ing and I will tell him. I don't know where Jenny is. 
 Please go down stairs and leave me to myself." 
 
 He brought her up some dinner and tried to make her 
 eat — some tea, and coaxed her to drink, and all in vain. 
 He persisted in staying with her and trying to pet and 
 comfort her until she said — ''Frank, you will drive me 
 mad if you stay in this room. I tell you I don't want to 
 see you, and I won't until father comes. Do you want me 
 to begin to shriek and scream ? ' ' 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. -i-^i^l 
 
 She looked so wild that he was verily afraid she would, 
 so he left her and went out for a doctor and then went 
 over to New York to seek an explanation from Miss 
 Whitney. 
 
 The parlor was empty, which he thought fortunate, and 
 he sent up his card; but the young lady did not come 
 down. It is the peculiarity of entanglements with married 
 people — whether it be only that adultery of the heart 
 called flirtation, such as Calvert and Miss Whitney had 
 been indulging in, or the unpardonable sin itself — that 
 even ih the eyes of the participants they are generally 
 only romantic and sacred and refined while they are unsus- 
 pected. When they are found out they often become as 
 revolting to the lovers themselves as they are to the rest 
 of the world, and remorse and shame drive out the unlaw- 
 ful passion from their hearts like revengeful furies. 
 
 In the trial a few years ago of two terrible criminafs — 
 guilty lovers who were accused of murdering their married 
 partners in order that they might marry each other — it 
 was wonderful how eagerly the man in his sworn statement 
 tried to make out the woman as a murderess cool and 
 atrocious beyond belief. Evidently no least spark of 
 regard for her remained. He was only anxious to make 
 himself appear white in comparison with her inky black- 
 ness. 
 
 And so in the great clerical scandal of the century, 
 many will remember how willing was the gifted defendant 
 to insinuate that the poor little woman who was the sole 
 victim of it all, was weak-minded, infatuated, a liar, a 
 monomaniac — anything, so that he could clear himself. 
 Yet, during the years when his lawless love-making to 
 this very woman, the wife of his friend, was going on, he 
 
Ii8 NEW YORKt a symphonic STUDY. 
 
 was accustomed to speak of her as the peculiar embodi- 
 ment of all that was divinely^feminine and tender ! 
 
 Something similar to these was Jenny Whitney's revul- 
 sion of feeling, only that, girl-like, to herself she alone 
 seemed the criminal. Her flirtation with a married man 
 being discovered, she saw -immediately how inexcusable 
 it had been. Now she felt for herself only loathing and 
 disgust, and for him utter coldness. She would not come 
 down, but she sent him a farewell note that she had spent 
 the afternoon, amid bitter tears, in writing. 
 
 • 
 Julia has discovered everything, and we must part. She wrote 
 to me — "/ trusted you and you have ruined me^ O how she must 
 despise me ! — but not so much as I despise myself. I have been 
 infatuated! I don't know what I have been thinking of! I never 
 thought flirting much harm, but I see now that with a mavj-ied man it 
 is a CRIME ! I trust this will not break up your friendship with my 
 brother — that he will hear nothing of it. I know how much he thinks 
 of you both. I am going immediately to Cincinnati to visit my sister, 
 and I hope you both will forget that you have ever known such a 
 reckless, thoughtless girl, as 
 
 Jenny. 
 P. S. Please show this to Julia. 
 
 This note made Calvert furious with Jenny, furious 
 with Julia, furious with himself. 
 
 ''Show it to Julia?" — not he! and he tore it in a 
 thousand pieces. He felt as if he hated the girl who told 
 him that to receive his tenderness had been a ''crime." 
 There was nothing criminal about it. He would not have 
 led her into anything seriously wrong for the world. Of 
 one thing he was very certain. He would never love his 
 wife again, and if she undertook to take the high hand, so 
 would he. He returned home and slept in the guest- 
 room and went off to the city the next morning without 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 119 
 
 seeing or enquiring for Julia. Her father appeared after 
 breakfast, and to him she poured out her woes. 
 
 ^' Father, he no longer loves me. You see it from this 
 letter. I cannot live with him. It's impossible. It 
 would kill me." 
 
 *' Tell me what you propose to do." 
 
 *' Take Clara and leave him, of course ! He said once 
 before that he would give me two-thirds of his income and 
 that I could live where I liked. I did not choose to take 
 the offer then, but now I will." 
 
 ^' How do you know he will make the offer again? " 
 
 ** He must ! He shall ! After such an injury as this he 
 dare not refuse it." 
 
 " Frank Calvert is a very high-spirited man, my dear 
 child, and a very obstinate one, as you have reason to 
 know. The law will give you nothing on the basis of this 
 flirtation with Jenny Whitney, for you have no evidence 
 that it is anything more, and you do not believe, yourself, 
 that it is anything more. Still less will it give you Clara. 
 If you leave Frank, the law will look upon him as a de- 
 serted hu-sband, and you will l)e entitled to neither child 
 nor income unless he chooses to give them to you. Of 
 course you can come home to Belmont, if you like, but 
 with your mother half the time in New York, Fanny mar- 
 ried, and Josephine at school, and pinched to death for 
 means all the time as we are, you can judge what that 
 would be compared with your present position and com- 
 forts. 
 
 ''I wish I was dead!" sobbed Julia. ''The only 
 thing there is for me to do is to die, and then he could 
 marry that vile, deceitful girl." 
 
 ** The only thing for you to do is to live and be a gay, 
 
120 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 happy little wife, and you will easily win him back again," 
 returned her father. v 
 
 ' ' To have to be dependent — to have to be the wife of 
 a man that doesn't love me ! 0-h — what humiliation ! — 
 what degradation ! ' ' 
 
 *' Julia, my dear, you know very little of the world. If 
 you did, you would know that these things are happening 
 every day in the lives of many — I may say, of the majority 
 of married people, and every day they are forgiven and 
 forgotten. You know lawyers hear everything, and if I 
 should tell you half I know about the married men even of 
 our quiet little Belmont, you would think we were all go- 
 ing to the devil. (Perhaps they were — more literally than 
 Mr. Dexter meant !) These little affairs arise from the 
 most transient impulses — are the expression of the most 
 fickle surface emotion. They have nothing to do with the 
 deep, sacred feeling a man has for his wife ! Frank is all 
 right at bottom. He's all sound at the core. I know he 
 is, and when he realizes how unhappy he has made you, 
 he will probably never think of having such a sentimental 
 friendship again as long as he lives. I'm almost vexed 
 with you for being so unreasonable." 
 
 '' * Unreasonable ' ? Why, father, I never made the thou- 
 sandth part of the professions to Frank Calvert that he 
 has to me — I might say, a thousand times — and yet I 
 would no more flirt with another man than I would cut 
 my head oif." 
 
 '^ Well, well, my dear, men are not like women in these 
 matters — ' ' 
 
 " I shouldn't think they were ! " indignantly interrupted 
 the weeping Julia. 
 
 "■ — and they've got to be judged by quite different 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 121 
 
 standards. They're easily led away, you know — easily 
 flattered. No doubt this Miss Whitney flattered Calvert 
 and made herself agreeable to him, and all that sort of 
 thing, and for the moment he was affected by it. But 
 you'll find it was only for the moment — only for the 
 moment ! ' ' 
 
 Mr. Dexter was a very loving father and a crafty old 
 Jawyer-fox as well, and after spending the day with his 
 tragic little daughter spinning sophistries and lies like the 
 above, and like the Evening Post in the 1884 campaign, 
 dragging down all other men in order to make the repro- 
 bate in question excusable, he got her by degrees into a 
 more reasonable frame of mind. 
 
 She still kept her room, however, and Mr. Dexter and 
 Calvert dined together alone. The father-in-law talked 
 pleasantly on indifferent subjects until the coffee was 
 brought in and Frank offered him a cigar, when, after 
 puffing awhile in silence he at last broke the ice. 
 
 ** This is an unpleasant business, my dear boy. Julia is 
 heart-broken because she doesn't believe you love her. 
 She thinks you want to get rid of her and sent for me to 
 arrange the matter in case you do. She is willing to go if 
 you wish, but I fear the separation would kill her. She's 
 not demonstrative, I know. I tell her that it is her fault, 
 and a serious one. But her feelings are very deep, very 
 loyal, and she has never even looked at a man but you." 
 
 Thus the skillful diplomat. Frank had not expected 
 this tone. He had braced himself up for something quite 
 different, and he melted at once at the thought of Julia's 
 love and distress. 
 
 " Send her away? " he cried. ** Send my Julia away? 
 — ^why, the child is crazy ! I never had such a thought. 
 
122 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 I confess I've been having a rather foolish flirtation, 
 which, it seems, she has f&und out ; but by the Lord 
 that made me, the girl is nothing to me nor I to her. 
 Julia had her here so much for company, and she has such 
 a easy, familiar, pleasant sort of manner, that I got a little 
 silly over her before I knew it. But I declare" — sponta- 
 neous lies coming faster and faster, ''I'm deuced glad 
 Julia has found it out, for to tell the truth it troubled me, 
 aad yet I didn't know how to get out of it." 
 
 He rushed up the stairs two at a time, and burst into 
 her room. 
 
 ''Julia! My darling! My pet ! My treasure ! You are 
 not willing to go away from your Frank, even if he wants 
 you to, are you ? What ! let my wife and child leave me ! 
 Impossible ! I have been wrong, but I have suffered all 
 the time (!) for I knew I was doing wrong. There is 
 only misery in such outside feelings. O, Julia ! be my 
 own sweet, loving, little wife once more, and I will never 
 look at another woman again ! ' ' 
 
 She had really suffered so intensely, and upon reflection 
 was so appalled at her own proposition of going out into 
 the world, that she was glad enough to shrink back, cow- 
 ard-like and woman-like, into her nest. The human heart 
 is a complicated, and in marriage a perfectly inscrutable 
 thing. Where truth ends and falsehood begins with this 
 double being called " man and wife " is almost impossible 
 to tell. The pair were outwardly reconciled, and for a 
 season were warmer and more tender to each other than 
 they had been for a long time before. 
 
 But why is the human heart so constituted that its other 
 ties and affections are like gold — still precious even if 
 bruised and battered, while marriage, which from the 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 123 
 
 inherent difficulties of the situation, ought to have been 
 framed to withstand the hardest shocks, is like faience — 
 the least crack takes away all its value. Does any loyal 
 husband forget a flirtation against himself that he has once 
 looked squarely in the face and acknowledged as such? 
 Does any wife? Certainly Julia could not. Her confi- 
 dence in life was gone. The '' little rift " had come into 
 her lute, and with it the music and the charm had vanished 
 forever away. Nay, much more. She had been so sure 
 of the solid rock on which her earthly house was built, that 
 the gusts of temper and misunderstanding that blew over 
 it had had but little significance for her. Now, though 
 by but a hair's breadth, that rock was split down to its 
 very foundations. No matter what Calvert did she would 
 be faithful in word and deed. She would be true to 
 herself, ever, but it was no longer a marriage to her. 
 They were not one any more, but two, and the fascinating 
 but proud woman secretly wrapped herself up in her 
 isolation, and fancied that her husband would not perceive 
 it because her manner to him was what it had always 
 been since the first cross word he ever spoke to her — 
 neither more nor less. 
 
 As for Calvert, his confidence in himself was gone. 
 His marriage had shown him what he did not — Jenny 
 Whitney had shown him what he did — want in woman. 
 He was not a Christian, and in the absence of a public 
 opinion demanding it, Christianity is the only force that 
 can constrain a husband to be true to a wife who has 
 ceased to be first in his heart. The Christian command 
 is there, and the Christian accepts and obeys it because 
 there it is, even if he walk over burning ploughshares to 
 do it. 
 
124 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 But to the ** natural " unconverted man — to the man of 
 the world, even to the most honorable, this is nonsense as 
 much as though he should be required to starve when he 
 saw food before him. Such a man will indeed consult his 
 wife's happiness, because that he promised to himself to 
 do when he asked her to be his wife. But he will also 
 take happiness for himself where, in his opinion, it does 
 not injure her. The stolen waters had been so sweet to 
 the warm-hearted, impulsive Calvert, that he knew within 
 himself, should they again well at his feet he would again 
 stoop to drink of them. But not twice would he be so 
 thoughtless as to run any risk of his wife finding it out. 
 Julia should never again have cause for uneasiness — that 
 much her storm of grief and distress made him swear 
 to himself. Moreover, he would not — he thought he 
 would not — seek a flirtation ! And here his resolves ended. 
 
 As for Miss Whitney — in Cincinnati she met a staid 
 and moneyed widower of thirty-five, who very soon 
 became absorbingly anxious that the sprightly New Yorker 
 should " make a home " for himself, and *' be a mother " 
 to his children. 
 
 The good-hearted girl accepted the trust in the spirit in 
 which it was offered, and a few years from the season 
 which had shattered the idol of her youth, saw her 
 settled down into one of those cheerful, faithful, self- 
 forgetting matrons who bestow upon the world so large a 
 share of its comfort and of its negative happiness. 
 
 The ready-made family proved grateful and devoted, 
 existence flowed tranquilly and prosperously on, and in 
 after life, early friends spoke of '* Jenny Whitney" as a 
 *< success! " 
 
I 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 A DOMESTIC DESPOT. 
 
 Unlike her less energetic elder sister, Mrs. David Howe 
 had no objection to motherhood. In fact, she had a person- 
 al motive for accepting it. Her lungs were delicate and her 
 physician had assured her that nursing was the best thing 
 for her health. So she said, philosophically : '* Somebody 
 has got to have the children, and I suppose it might as 
 well be me," and serenely presented her husband with a 
 baby every year or two — a boy and a girl alternating with 
 each other with great propriety. Nurses and seamstresses 
 were plenty, and after the little ones came their first three 
 or four years were as lavishly wrapped in white dresses and 
 embroideries as any Fifth Avenue toddler of them all ! 
 
 Mrs. Howe's house-atmosphere was very gay. Like her 
 mother, she knew how to make it easy for people, particu- 
 larly if they were of the nobler sex. 
 
 " I won't have my husband going off to clubs and bars 
 and billiard rooms," she would say, with a great air of 
 wifely virtue and sweetness, ' ' and deserting his family 
 when he wants to see his friends. I tell him he must 
 bring them home ! " — and she made him set up a billiard- 
 table and herself learned the game and practised it many 
 an evening and Sunday afternoon with Mr. Howe and his 
 visitors. In this way she secured not only her husband's 
 society, which she could, but also that of his men acquaint- 
 
126 NEM^ YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 ance, which she could not, have dispensed with — dress, 
 distraction and male companionship ad libitum being her 
 ideal of existence, as indeed it always has been with all the 
 Venus-women who ever lived. And were there no other 
 life than this, such would in fact be the only sensible ideal 
 for any woman. — Why not, *' if to-morrow we die? " 
 
 David Howe, the excellent and prospering man whom 
 Mrs. Dexter had so successfully secured for her second 
 daughter, had a face which, in spite of the keen business 
 stamp upon it, expressed all the gifts and virtues — the 
 intelligence, will, integrity and purity — the generosity, 
 cheerfulness and refinement that its owner quite exception- 
 ally possessed. He was purely American, the product of 
 those free Protestant-Christian forces which have given to 
 this country its steady procession of self-governed, single- 
 hearted, romantic and devoted men, who, in spite of the 
 perpetual deflections of the foreign masses on either side of 
 them, and quite unconscious of the depth and strength and 
 poetry of their own natures, have carried it onward and up- 
 ward to its present glory and power. He and his brothers 
 had been orphaned in their teens, and had made their way 
 through the world simply by their native aptness, industry 
 and high character. They had several sisters, one of 
 whom David Howe had always supported, and from the 
 first she was an inmate of his married home. 
 
 Mr. Howe had received only an elementary education, 
 and, like most men who have had only that, was un- 
 conscious of the want of a more liberal one, as the 
 demands and strain of business left him no time to 
 discover mental deficiencies. He possessed, therefore, not 
 a virile, instructed mind, but a boyish, intelligent one. 
 He could string off rhymes and descriptions, was a good 
 
JV£^V YORK; A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 127 
 
 story-teller and a ready punster, and possessed an unusual 
 eye for a good picture. But he was not deep. In religion 
 he was a Universalist and in politics he was of course a 
 Republican. 
 
 Morality and respectability were not David Howe's 
 acquired, but his original nature. He was '' born good," 
 and the departures from truth, sincerity and delicacy of 
 which his wife and Mrs. Dexter were capable, never 
 occurred to him as even within the bounds of possibility. 
 He judged the sex by his own self-abnegating mother 
 and sisters, and enshrined those nearest to him as simply 
 above suspicion. That stronger> man was to work for 
 weaker and lovelier woman, give her everything she 
 wanted and exact nothing back, was the matter-of-course 
 chivalry of his life. As much as any man he would have 
 loved to be loved, but he did not know women. His 
 sisters, like their mother, were very quiet and undemon- 
 strative, and demonstration was so little necessary to 
 himself that it did not occur to him to question the scanty 
 measure of his wife's tenderness. So it was only little 
 by little, very slowly and very dimly, that as the years 
 went on he realized what a simulacrum he had mistaken 
 for a madonna. 
 
 One of the first of his tardy discoveries was that his lit- 
 tle Fanny would have her own way, and that when her 
 wilfulness was questioned she could pout and scold most 
 vigorously. In fact, the good-natured imperiousness and 
 despotism of her usual home manner were quite incredible. 
 In general, men are more selfish in the domestic circle 
 than women, and not without some show of reason when 
 they furnish the entire support of that circle. But here 
 and there is a woman — always a capable woman, too — who 
 
128 NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 plants herself in the centre of her family as in an easy 
 chair, and makes the rest giveSvay to her weight and her 
 elbows just when and how she pleases. No tyrants are 
 more intolerable, and such a tyrant was Fanny ; but Mr. 
 Howe was so much in love with her, and so much down 
 town on business, that the slavery in which he practically 
 lived was not a very heavy yoke for him to bear. 
 
 His home always looked so inviting as he entered it, 
 his youthful wife was always so bright, so dainty, so co- 
 quettishly dressed and generally in such sparkling spirits, 
 that she at once satisfied and amused him. He was proud 
 of her housekeeping, proud of her personality, and very 
 soon reconciled himself to such little crosses as having cer- 
 tain dishes that he could not abide continually on his 
 table, while his beloved johnny-cake and fish-balls and 
 baked beans, which Fanny detested, were as continually 
 excluded. He had had his breakfast not later than half- 
 past seven all his life, and one of his bachelor dreams had 
 been of a pink-and-white little breakfast divinity in a 
 white morning-dress pouring his coffee for him. But the 
 Dexter girls were inveterate late risers, and Fanny de- 
 clared that if Mr. Howe wanted an early breakfast he 
 could eat it alone; she couldn't possibly be down before 
 half-past eight — and alone he would daily have been had 
 not his sister Jeannette taken pains to sit down to the meal 
 with him as when they boarded together before his mar- 
 riage. 
 
 Dinner, on the other hand, Mr. Howe would have pre- 
 ferred at half-past six. He worked so very hard that after 
 coming home he liked to lie and rest on the lounge for a 
 quarter of an hour or twenty minutes before dressing for 
 the evening. But Fanny wanted it at six, so as to have 
 
NBW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 129 
 
 more time and not be hurried in case they wished to go 
 out afterwards. "Why, Davy," she expostulated, "you 
 can lie down after dinner just as well as before, and take a 
 longer nap, even — and it is so much better for the ser- 
 vants ! They get through their work earlier and it 
 makes 'em more contented. It's a shame to make the 
 poor things work so late! " Of course the dinner hour 
 was fixed at six, and promptly to the minute Mrs. Fanny 
 sat down, whether the head of the house were there or not. 
 "If I should wait, it would only get you into bad habits, 
 Davy, you know it would ! First it would be five minutes 
 every day, and then ten, and then twenty, and everything 
 would be kept waiting and get spoiled. If men won't be 
 punctual they can't expect good meals; " and it came to 
 poor Howe's actually bribing his own waitress to keep his 
 dinner hot for him when he was late, as otherwise his wife 
 would let him help himself to a cold one, and all on the 
 score of his own good — with absolute unconcern. 
 
 \nd so it was in cases innumerable. Mr. Howe chose 
 a particular stand in the back drawing-room for his papers 
 and pamphlets, and when Fanny quietly determined they 
 shouldn't stay there, and vowed and declared every time 
 they disappeared that she had not seen them and knew 
 nothing about them, he simply looked about for a drawer 
 somewhere else, and contented himself with that. His 
 eyes were sensitive to light in the evening, but Fanny 
 loved light in floods, and always had the room she herself 
 sat in, at least, so brilliantly illuminated that her husband 
 was often driven back as far as the lounge in the dining- 
 room before he could escape the glare. It would no more 
 have occurred to her to provide shaded lights for the weary 
 one in his own parlors, than it would to sit in the dark al- 
 
I30 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 together. Whatever happened, Fanny Howe was always 
 comfortable. Others might vtake care of themselves as 
 they could. 
 
 Another of Mr. Howe's traditions was that of going reg- 
 ularly to church on Sunday morning. It was almost a su- 
 perstition. To please Fanny he gave up his pew in the 
 Universalist church he had long attended, and took one 
 in a fashionable Episcopal one where they knew not a 
 soul, exchanging a thoughtful, clever, interesting discourse 
 which echoed his own sentiments, and which he enjoyed 
 in a cheerful auditorium wherein sat also several of his 
 friends and acquaintances, for a long service in which he 
 did not join, carried on in a gothic building gloomy as a 
 prison with stained glass, and which was ended by a 
 twenty-minute reiteration of well-worn tenets, very few of 
 which he believed. The sacrifice made, Fanny found so 
 jnany excuses for staying at home on Sunday mornings, 
 that instead of flocking punctually in with his pretty wife 
 and the rest of the congregation as regularly as the day 
 came round, half the time this literally *' dissenting " hus- 
 band had to spend the consecrated hours alone in his un- 
 congenial pew, doing the family religion for himself and 
 his Episcopalian worser half as well ! 
 
 But the sufferer without compensation from Fanny's 
 thorough selfishness was Mr. Howe's sister Jeanette. 
 Fanny was married when only eighteen, while the latter 
 was already twenty-two. She chose, therefore, to consider 
 her sister-in-law almost an '' old maid," and from the first, 
 though she resented the fact of Mr. Howe's having to 
 support Jeanette, she took the ground that the young lady 
 would never marry and was a predestined spinster. 
 
 Miss Howe was a tiny little creature with a pretty figure 
 
A^EW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 131 
 
 and a sweet but resigned and melancholy face. She had 
 an eligible admirer who had sighed in vain for encourage- 
 ment for at least five years ; but Jeanette was all delicacy, 
 and would not accept him without love — yet love him she 
 could not, because her heart had once been given boot- 
 lessly away, and the poor girl could never get it back 
 again. This, however, was a secret, and all her friends 
 scolded because, without any apparent reason, she would 
 not smile on the devoted Wilder. 
 
 Fanny so thoroughly despised her for her obstinacy that 
 she made her life a burden to her without scruple. The 
 pavement she walked on was not more a mere convenience 
 to her than Jeanette. She herself had taken her first good 
 offer as a matter of course, and why should this penniless 
 thing be more squeamish and hang herself for life round 
 her brother's neck? And yet Jeanette had never asked 
 her brother for much money. He had educated her, and 
 she had expected to teach for a living in return ; but he 
 preferred to associate her in his social and domestic world 
 with himself, and as she suffered among strangers, and was 
 deeply attached to him besides, she gladly acquiesced in 
 his decision. 
 
 In return she had taken care to make as slight a 
 drain upon his purse for her expenses as possible. She was 
 always fearing he could not afford it, and when she saw 
 the presents he lavished upon his betrothed, and afterward 
 the scale upon which the pair set up housekeeping, 
 together with the cost and abundance of her sister-in-law's 
 wardrobe, she was stupefied. She pondered over her 
 brother's resources, and as she did not nearly know them 
 all, she could not make out how they should be adequate 
 to such an expenditure. She was a care-taking, anxious 
 
132 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 little creature, and whatever she feared, she saw that it 
 would be in vain to w^rn David, and so she simply 
 exerted her energies to save in any direction she could. 
 
 Mrs. Howe took these efforts as a matter of course. 
 Jeanette had long made most of her own clothes and done 
 all her brother's mending; now, in addition, whenever a 
 seamstress or a dressmaker came to the house, Jeanette sat 
 and sewed with her all day. Whenever there was company, 
 Jeanette hovered round the cook and the waitress and did 
 the odds and ends that show for nothing, and yet that take 
 so long to accomplish and are so indispensable to the 
 finish of a drawing room or a dinner ; or if an errand had 
 to be done in a hurry, it was always Jeanette who could 
 spare an hour for it. 
 
 When the babies came, one after another, equally was it 
 Jeanette who filled up the gaps, took care of them when 
 the nurse had her weekly day off, sat up in the evening 
 with them when they were wakeful, helped with the mend- 
 ing of their dainty clothes, and even weaned them. In 
 short, Jeanette was the family factotum, and for wages, 
 she had her board, a room with one of the children as 
 they increased in number, and the making-over of Fanny's 
 cast-off dresses — it being one of the latter' s persistent 
 fictions to the generous Howe, who was periodically 
 anxious about it, that Jeanette preferred to re-fashion 
 Fanny's things, since, being already fitted, this was '^ so 
 much less trouble and responsibility ! " 
 
 A married woman can do immensely much toward help- 
 ing an unmarried one to a ''settlement" if she choose. 
 The simple appearance of value that one woman may have 
 for another often goes a great way with a man, just as to 
 see a man popular with men gives him an added value and 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 133 
 
 prestige in the eyes of women. If Fanny had felt the 
 regard and admiration for Jeanette that the latter' s 
 devotion deserved, and had shown it — if she had taken 
 care that she was always freshly and piquantly dressed, 
 and had placed her at least on equal terms with herself 
 in entertaining company, her gentle sister-in-law would 
 probably have proved sufficiently attractive to have had, 
 not one, but several chances to forget the early lover who 
 had been false to her. 
 
 But such a course never occurred to the egotism 
 which dimmed poor little Jeanette' s social candle on 
 all occasions without scruple. At dinner the interesting 
 man was of course always at Fanny's right hand, and after 
 dinner nothing was easier than to monopolize his attention 
 in a dozen different ways. She would propose a game of 
 cards and herself would be his partner, or they would 
 adjourn to the billiard room for a trial of skill together. 
 
 If the theatre had been arranged for, Fanny of course 
 would enter the seats first, then their guest, then Miss 
 Jeanette and Mr. Howe, and returning home the two 
 former would pair off and the latter would follow. Were 
 the evening to be spent at home, in whichever of the two 
 parlors they were sitting, Fanny was apt to get into the 
 other with the stranger, either to look out of the window 
 at the weather, or to examine a new house-plant that had 
 been sent in, or to turn over her photograph album, or to 
 dance a little together with Jeanette turni^suca a rather 
 lame w^altz. It was simply wonderful, Fanny's flirtatious 
 ingenuity, and none but eyes as fond and faithful as David 
 Howe's could have failed to see how his wife absorbed 
 whatever man happened to be about, and how Jeanette 
 was definitely relegated to the background. 
 
134 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 Even if the baby cried, before the pretty mamma would 
 stir from the depths of her floiinces, Jeannette had to see 
 what was the matter and report. Fanny and Julia, by the 
 way, both had the most alluring way of leaning back in a 
 low arm-chair amid the soft luxury of their silken skirts 
 and with their little white and jewelled hands before 
 them, of looking singularly fascinating and seductive — 
 though in Julia's case it was the charming but touch-me- 
 not woman to be respected as much as admired that the 
 beholder contemplated, while to the experienced eye, 
 Fanny was the would-be siren who was restrained just so 
 long as impulse and temptation did not combine. 
 
 The woman of pleasure invariably presents a consistent 
 combination of extravagance and greed. No matter with 
 what reckless profusion she may spend, she is always care- 
 ful to look after possible additions to her resources, be 
 they never so small. Fanny was an adept at eating phil- 
 opoenas, at making bets, at giving hints to her men friends 
 regarding her lesser wants, and in return for her smiles 
 and invitations they were but too happy to send her flow- 
 ers, fruit, boxes of bon-bons or of gloves, or any other 
 trifle they judged might please her fancy. Secretly, Mr. 
 Howe did not relish it at all, but since such evidences of 
 appreciation gave great pleasure to their recipient, his del- 
 icacy did not permit him to interpose. He thought she 
 would be as much distressed and shocked to be found 
 fault with as he would be to find the fault, whereas there 
 are few greater mistakes in human nature than to waste 
 delicacy on obtuse and selfish people — on the ruthless 
 characters who themselves trample down all before them. 
 As well appeal to an elephant with a feather duster instead 
 of with the pitch-fork which alone can pierce his tough 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 135 
 
 integument. A storm of passion, a whirlwind of jealousy, 
 a few up-and-down commands, Fanny would have respect- 
 ed and responded to — nay, after her fashion, might have 
 loved. But to Mr. Howe's romantic and elevated nature 
 such resources of the lower atmosphere were impossible. 
 
 The lover of his race might contemplate the spectacle 
 of a family of children being committed to such guar- 
 dianship as Fanny's with unmixed dismay; but truth to 
 say, the little ones of this utterly ill-regulated mother were 
 obedient, well-behaved and sweet — Fanny's passion for 
 order and perfection in her little domain extending even 
 to the habits and manners of her babies. Moreover, their 
 mother was so determined to have her own way that when 
 she said "no" they knew it was ''no" — and better con- 
 viction cannot enter into the childish mind than that. On 
 it may rest the all-important conception that Life itself is 
 an affair of Law — of submission to a Higher Power. 
 
V 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE JOYS OF FLIRTATION. 
 
 Mrs. Howe's gay camaraderie with men had in general 
 no serious consequences, nor was it intended to have any. 
 If her manner expressed that universal personal leaning 
 toward the other sex which characterizes all true flirts 
 and is the secret of their magnetism, it was enjoyed, but 
 seldom misunderstood by those whom most it flaitered. If 
 Mr. Howe's friends and associates contributed to her life 
 the zest which she craved, they mostly stopped where she 
 stopped, according to the native American fashion. 
 
 But women who play a game that is really with fire, of 
 course take always the chance of a conflagration. When 
 this fascinating young matron was about twenty-four, she 
 met at Belmont Springs one July, where part of the Dex- 
 ter summer contingent was spending six weeks, a suscept- 
 ible youth who took her frank ways and caressing manner 
 for anything but amusement. The son of an unedu- 
 cated American who had made a large fortune in 
 Montreal — he was a high-strung, flighty, superficial crea- 
 ture of nineteen or twenty, not overweighted with brains, 
 and passionately fond of music. As he sang a little, and 
 extemporized in a dashing and fragmentary way on the 
 piano, he thought himself a genius, of course, and the 
 secret passport to his affections was appreciation of his 
 music. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 137 
 
 This Fanny immediately perceived, and in her almost 
 involuntary way began to flatter him to the top of his 
 bent. To have the perfumed, silken-clad New Yorker 
 hanging upon his performance — leaning on the piano or 
 sitting near him by the hour while he played — was heaven 
 to the vain young fellow, and Fanny lavished her alluring 
 smiles, her little sighs, her sympathethic pressure of the 
 hand upon this inexperienced heart until, like wood 
 under a burning-glass, it burst into flames — into one 
 of those insensate passions that sometimes seize upon 
 sensitive but ill-regulated natures, and run away with 
 them. 
 
 The guests at the hotel soon remarked that Fanny and 
 Philip Harrison, as he was called, were always together 
 and nearly always apart from other people. The youth, 
 in fact, simply gave himself up to the enchantress, and he 
 paid liberally for the privilege of spending every moment 
 in her society that he possibly could. Boats, horses and 
 conveyances were every day at the service of her party at 
 his expense, and the wretched cookery of the country hotel 
 was agreeably diversified by the hampers of wine and 
 other delicacies which arrived delightfully from Montreal 
 just when they were wanted. The pair fished together, 
 they walked together, they lounged together on the seats 
 of the grove which surrounded the house, or they strolled 
 down and sat on the rocks of the lake shore together. 
 Fanny took tolerable care to have some one within chap- 
 eroning distance, and she drew the line at driving alone 
 with Harrison. But for the rest she cared not a farthing 
 what anybody thought or anybody said. In the evening 
 they ensconced themselves on the long piazza in a distant 
 corner of their own, she in a low chair and he on the 
 
138 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 steps at her feet, and if she knew that he was kissing her 
 dress, or even, when it was c^uite dark, if he took posses- 
 sion of her hand for the same purpose, she thought it no 
 one's affair but her own. 
 
 Five weeks flew all too quickly by for the intoxicated 
 Harrison. When the sixth arrived, at whose close he 
 knew she must leave the Springs, the dreadful reflection 
 broke over him — What should he do without her ? What 
 was life to be, lacking this charming presence which filled 
 it as champagne fills the wine-cup, and which had sudden- 
 ly become the one imperative need of his existence ? He 
 exhatisted all his powers of persuasion in trying to make 
 her stay but a fortnight instead of a week longer, and 
 when he failed, the black shadow of his coming calamity 
 invaded even the wretched modicum of time that was left 
 him. 
 
 Our pleasure-lover had most thoroughly enjoyed this 
 prodigal devotion and all the good things it had so lav- 
 ishly brought her, but what now to do with the violent 
 passion she had so invoked, she did not know. It was 
 the last evening of her stay. She had been packing, and 
 for some hours Harrison had perforce seen nothing of her. 
 After the early country tea they were sitting on the piazza 
 as often before, when he begged her to walk with him to 
 a favorite seat of theirs close to the lake and deep within 
 the grove. The poor youth felt that he must get away 
 where the energy of agony that was within him could 
 speak above the low undertone of their ordinary inter- 
 course. 
 
 When they reached their resting-place Fanny seated 
 herself on a bench under the overshadowing trees, and the 
 agitated Philip stood looking down upon her. 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 139 
 
 * * So you are going — you will go — to-morrow ? " he 
 burst out. 
 
 ''Why, Phil, of course! What did you expect?" re- 
 turned she, pettishly. '* Do you think a married woman 
 has no other vocation than to stay round enjoying life as 
 long as her young gentleman friends want to have her? " 
 
 ''True," said Philip, bitterly. "The mail reminded 
 me every day that there is a Mr. Howe, and I suppose 
 you must now go back to him. Tell me, do you love 
 him ? I have never asked if you love me ! I say, do you 
 love him ? ' ' 
 
 "Of course I do!" cried Fanny, virtuously. "He's 
 the best man in the world." 
 
 "I can't conceive of your caring anything for him and 
 being as — as — " he hesitated, " as kind to me as you have 
 been. If I had a wife and she allowed any other man to 
 be devoted to her, I would shoot her." 
 
 " Mr. Howe is not like you," returned Fanny, tran- 
 quilly. " He has perfect confidence in me." 
 
 " Of course he has ! " cried the distracted youth, wring- 
 ing his hands. " Of course you are married ! Of course 
 you are utterly out of my reach ! Of course I've been an 
 infernal fool to shut my eyes and simply enjoy the mo- 
 ments as they flew ! But all the same it's the ruin of me. 
 I can never support existence away from you, and I've 
 about made up my mind not to try." 
 
 " Nonsense, Phil ! What do you mean? " 
 
 " I mean one better die than live if one can't have what 
 one wants in this world." 
 
 "Philip," said Fanny, seriously, " if you talk this way 
 I shall be sorry I ever spoke to you or looked at you. 
 Only nineteen years old, and with everything to live for, 
 
I40 N£^V YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 and to make a fuss about an old married woman like me ! 
 Nobody has what they want in th^s world. We all have to 
 take what we can get and be thankful for it. As for me, 
 you'll forget me the very next pretty face you see." 
 
 * ' As you will me the very next pleasant fellow you meet 
 — or perhaps as soon as you see Mr. Howe, to whom you 
 are so devotedly attached," said Philip, scornfully. 
 
 *' You need not be sarcastic, sir ! " retorted Fanny ; "I 
 do think everything of Mr. Howe. Poor old Davy ! I 
 quite long to see him." 
 
 *' You dare say that to me — to me. Madam! " shouted 
 Harrison, beside himself. ** You have dared to let me de- 
 vote myself body and soul to you all these weeks, while in 
 reality you are in love with your husband ? ' ' 
 
 '''In reality in love with my husband?'" echoed 
 Fanny, in simulated indignation. "What do you mean, 
 Mr. Harrison? Did you suppose I was anything else? 
 What do you take me for? I tell you, of course I love 
 my husband better than any one else in the world. I 
 never dreamed — I never expressed — anything for you but 
 the friendship of a sister." 
 
 "Damn friendship!" said Philip, savagely. "You 
 thought it was friendship, did you? — brotherly regard, I 
 suppose — that made me lavish kisses on your little white 
 hand, or on the hem of your dress, or devour with kisses 
 your ribbon or your handkerchief when you were absent ? 
 In New York that is called friendship, is it ? In Canada 
 we should call it love." 
 
 " Philip Harrison," said Fanny, severely, " you have 
 mistaken me altogether. I love to enjoy myself, and so, I 
 thought, did you. I shouldn't have had nearly so good a 
 time without you at these stupid Springs, nor would you 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 141 
 
 without me. Do try to be reasonable. If you attached 
 any importance to kissing my hand, I assure you I did 
 not, and if I were you I should be ashamed to let my feel- 
 ings get the better of me just because we have had a pleas- 
 ant six weeks together." 
 
 " You think that musicians — that artists — can regulate 
 their feelings by rule and measure as you business people 
 evidently do — eh ? Talk to me of being ' reasonable ! ' " 
 cried he, wildly. ** Do you know how I feel at this 
 moment, and as I believe you could never feel? My 
 heart is burning, literally — burning with living flames — 
 like those Catholic pictures of the hearts of Jesus and 
 Mary ! Do you think I shall do nothing to put such tor- 
 ment out — that I will stand it ? " and he dashed himself on 
 the grass at her feet and hid his face in his arms. 
 
 Fanny suddenly remembered how she herself, when just 
 such an undisciplined child, had wanted to die when Harvey 
 Thayer left her, and she began to fear that poor Harrison's 
 melodramatics might mean something after all. A genu- 
 ine pity welled up within her — perhaps more — a genuine 
 sympathy for a spirit lawless and reckless like her own ! 
 
 "Philip!" she cried appeal ingly and bending toward 
 him, *'I implore you! Listen to me! Be good! Be 
 sweet ! What can I do ? What is it you want ? ' ' 
 
 <'You — I want you, you, you!''' sobbed the wretched 
 boy; " you to be always with me as you've been these six 
 weeks ! ' ' 
 
 *' But this world isn't made so, dear Philip ! A married 
 woman can't come and go as she will. I have my home 
 and my children and my duties. You would not have me 
 forsake these? You know it is impossible. Nobody 
 would respect me. Don't you know that? " 
 
142 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 '* Yes, I know it, and I do not ask it. But since I can- 
 not ask it and cannot have it, I must die. The lake — a 
 pistol — must end it ! " 
 
 ''And rob me of my friend, and break your parents' 
 hearts, and have everybody crying out against me, and 
 the whole story come to my husband's ears? And all 
 rather than endure a little parting — a little pain ! What 
 cowardice ! Can't you come and visit me in New York? 
 Can't you come here again next summer? We are always 
 here in August." He did not answer her. ''Come! — 
 speak to me, Philip ! ' ' 
 
 He lifted himself to a sitting posture and waited to 
 stanch his tears and force down his sobs. At last, in 
 broken tones, in abject despair, and with sighs still 
 bursting from his breast, he said : 
 
 ' ' What perfect mockery you talk ! You ask me to en- 
 dure torments and longing that I cannot endure, in order 
 that you may not be ' talked about ; ' and for reward you 
 coolly propose to play this game over and over again every 
 year ! ' ' then after a pause and with a miserable smile, ' ' — sort 
 of ' sport for you and death for me,' as the frogs said." 
 
 " Oh, Philip, how cruel you are to me ! " 
 
 He did not reply, and Fanny sat troubled on her bench, 
 leaning her head against the tree beside it. The grassy 
 grove sloped gently toward the water and met the clean 
 slate rocks that with their fringe of pebbles and sand lined 
 the lovely shore. The sun was just dropping behind a low 
 mountain across the lake, and his last level beams turned 
 the expanse between into a great sheet of rippling gold, 
 then struck on the tree-trunks and on the grass and on the 
 grief-torn face before her. 
 
 As the giant orb disappeared down his glowing abyss, 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHGXIC STUDY. 143 
 
 Philip murmured : "Just like that I'm going to plunge 
 out of sight — and all through you ! ' ' 
 
 *< Philip," cried Fanny, passionately, ''if I thought 
 you were serious I should be beside myself! But you are 
 only trying to frighten me — confess that you are ! " He 
 shook his head, turning upon her such burning and des- 
 perate eyes that perforce she dropped her voice and mur- 
 mured — "Do you really love me so much as to want to 
 die for me ? I never imagined such love ! I can never 
 repay it ! No, you cannot mean it? " 
 
 He lifted a fold of her dress adoringly in his hand and 
 kissed it. ''Not mean it — when you are my life — my 
 soul ? Is there any music in my organ-pipes at home 
 with the breath all out of them? — and what is my life 
 now with you going out of it? Oh — if I had never seen 
 you!'' and he dropped his head in his hands. 
 
 "Then, Philip, if you really care for me, I have only 
 one word to say to you — wait ! Wait six months. For- 
 get for the present this horrible thought, this horrible pur- 
 pose, and see if you feel the same in half a year. Do it 
 for my sake, dear, dear Philip," bending over him and 
 taking his hand away from his eyes, ' ' and this will give 
 me, too, time to think, to weigh and consider everything. 
 Believe me, I will not wreck your life. You shall corre- 
 spond with me constantly. You can come to New York 
 — and in the meantime, go into society — go among men ! 
 Amuse yourself, as with all your money you can so easily 
 do. Why, Phil," lightly, "if you kill yourself, I shall 
 have to kill myself, too, to escape the scandal — and just 
 imagine cheerful ' Fanny ' stiff and cold under the water ! " 
 — thus the cool;, collected woman to the tortured, inexpe- 
 rienced boy, until by alternate bantering and tenderness, 
 
144 ^EW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 she thought, though he answered little, that she had per- 
 suaded him out of his despair. 
 
 Suddenly from the grass he writhed up round her like a 
 serpent, kneeling beside her, his arms clasping her with 
 passionate, madman strength. 
 
 '' Kiss me! — once! — but once ! " he whispered, fiercely, 
 and unresisting she bent down lips that it was sacrilege for 
 him to touch. 
 
 Never afterward could he recall that kiss — that longed- 
 for, forbidden, supreme moment — for its very intensity 
 swooned it away into oblivion, and, dazed and blinded as 
 if after a whelming surge, he found himself walking by her 
 on their way back to the hotel. 
 
 For her, its scarlet force burnt for hours upon her lips 
 like a blood-red seal. Was it perhaps the seal of her 
 compact with the Evil One — Satan's prophetic marking of 
 his own ? Ah, if she could have feared so herself, and 
 after that first violation of her wedded consecration, could 
 have rushed back from the Rubicon whose singing siren 
 waves were as yet but curling about her feet ! 
 
 Harrison's haggard and stricken face the next morning 
 when he said good-bye, haunted Fanny's heart even in 
 busy New York, for a week. 
 
 On his return to Montreal he took her advice precisely 
 as she had intended ; that is, he did not kill his body, but 
 he did his best to kill his soul by plunging into pursuits 
 and company that left him little room for pure or romantic 
 loves. In these new scenes he met a wild medical student 
 who was going to study in Paris, and as Philip spoke 
 French fluently he decided to accompany him thither. 
 About half a year after the episode at Belmont Springs 
 he surprised Fanny by calling at her New York home to 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 145 
 
 tell her that he was off for France. His whole effect was 
 coarser and he had a ''■ fast " look. 
 
 "Was I not right," said she, in her sauciest manner, 
 <'to tell you to wait six months? Isn't this life, with its 
 Montreal and Paris and lots of other nice things, better 
 than that cold lake ? ' ' 
 
 He looked at her at first steadfastly, then sternly, as she 
 stood there smiling and flashing in her silken draperies, 
 her well-loved diamonds in her ears and on her hands, 
 and answered deliberately: "No, Mrs. Howe, it is not. 
 It would have been better for me if I had then and there 
 taken my own life; and what is more, something tells me 
 that it would have been better far for you if I had also 
 taken yours." 
 
 I^anny smiled a confident smile to herself as he left the 
 hoii.se. She had pla\ed with fire and come out un- 
 scorched. "Poor little Phil!" said she to herself; 
 "he's a half-crazy creature and always will be. If it 
 hadn't been me it would have been somebody else. He 
 has no common sense. He imagines half he says ! " and 
 then she thought no more about him. Not to a callow 
 youth could this strong and steel-like nature bend ! 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE CALVERTS ABROAD. 
 
 There are in the world wise and wonderful women who 
 after once detecting in the men they have married the 
 tendency to inconstancy, never again give it a chance to 
 develop. Such a wife gives no hint of her humiliating 
 discovery, but cheerful, self-controlled, devoted, makes 
 herself a second self to her husband, his shadow — his min- 
 istrant — indispensable — conforming to him as a well-bro- 
 ken shoe conforms to the foot, and above all, never leav- 
 ing him too long at a time ! If with all this she knows 
 enough about dress to be pleasant to look upon, her mar- 
 ried success is assured. Her husband will adore her, nor 
 ever suspect the almost superhuman skill she has displayed 
 in holding him. True that this is hardly the highest ideal 
 of the relation. As a woman once said of it — " If it's a 
 pleasure to win a husband, it's a penance to keep him ! " 
 But the type of wife who thinks it " pays" is in England 
 a frequent one. In our own much more individualized 
 civilization, it is far more rare, and it is needless to say 
 that it was the last type upon which Julia Calvert, even 
 had fate permitted, would have stooped to model her own 
 haughty and exacting spirit. 
 
 Fate did not permit. Calvert had not yet got over his 
 regret and repentance for having so shocked and grieved 
 his once '' little queen " and now mother of his child, and 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 147 
 
 Julia was reigning almost as much the spoiled and petted 
 woman as when they were first married — when the great 
 importing house that employed him raised his salary and 
 promoted him to be the foreign buyer in his department, 
 rhe new position would require him to go abroad, prin- 
 cipally to France, twice a year ; but this welcome rise in 
 business life, great opportunity though it was to complete 
 his business training and form foreign connections by 
 which he would be able some day to set up for himself, 
 was practically the knell of the now disillusioned Calvert 
 union, since more marriages are shattered by the mui:i- 
 tudes of American husbands whose affairs compel them to 
 travel continually, than by any other cause except the uni- 
 versal summer flittings from their homes of city wives. It 
 is so easy to grow apart, and, once apart, it is so impos- 
 sible to grow again together ! 
 
 Naturally our youthful pair did not see it in that light, 
 nor did their friends. Ever since Fanny's marriage and 
 housekeeping, the Dexter women had been longing that 
 Julia should be back in New York — and for one thing. 
 Calvert's increased income meant a removal to a house in 
 the beloved city so soon as their Brooklyn lease should ex- 
 pire. For another, it meant, at least in Mrs. Dexter' s im- 
 agination, the glorious distinction for Julia of frequent 
 trips to Europe with her husband. Of course Calvert 
 could not take her with him the first time, but he vowed 
 he would the second, *'and meantime, Juley, you can be 
 studying up your French," said he, as with love in his 
 heart and on his lips, with regrets at leaving her and with 
 joyous anticipations of the new experiences that were beck- 
 oning before him, he tore himself away. 
 
 The indolent but constant Julia, who, like her father, 
 
148 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 was never restless and hated changes, had a dreary feeling 
 that one chapter in her life wasi closed ; but nothing could 
 exceed Mrs. Dexter' s elation at being able to tell the un- 
 happy natives in Belmont, that Mr. Calvert had ''gone to 
 Europe, ' ' and would moreover be obliged in future to go 
 thither twice a year. 
 
 '' He writes every steamer," said she, '' and is perfectly 
 carried away with Paris ! He says that compared with 
 Paris New York is a cobble-stone to a diamond — (as true, 
 by the way, in 1892, as it was in 1855). Of course Julia 
 could not go with him the first time, but he is determined 
 to take her next time. He writes — * Mother will keep 
 house for you and take care of Clara, and I must have you 
 over here to see this splendid, this magnificent city. I al- 
 ways thought nothing could beat our store, but it's noth- 
 ing to the stores in Paris ! ' But Frank says it's hard 
 work finding boots and slippers small enough for Jule ! 
 He says the clerks stare when he shows them her shoe 
 and tells them it is his wife's! He isn't going to have 
 her wear anything now but what comes from Paris-a-h ' ' 
 — with her own ineffable air. " Everything there is so 
 superior to what we have over here ! But I dread it, I 
 dread it!" — with a sign of resignation. ''Julia will 
 probably be on the water half the time now, more or 
 less, and I shall never be able to sleep when the wind 
 blows-a-h ! ' ' 
 
 Calvert did write by every steamer, and did think of his 
 little wife faithfully all the time he was gone. He saw 
 dozens of things he wanted to buy for her, but generally 
 he refrained, because, as he told her when he got back: 
 ** You must go over to get fitted before we can make a real 
 Parisienne out of you. You'd only half spoil the things, 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 149 
 
 having 'em made up here — they're so ahead in style ! " 
 When he returned, they decided that she had best remain 
 behind also the second time, both because he was still 
 '* learning the ropes " as he expressed it, and because they 
 could now afford to leave Brooklyn and take a house near 
 the Howes. The moving happily accomplished, on his 
 third trip Julia really found herself on the steamer with 
 him, while Mrs. Dexter was left, radiant with satisfaction, 
 to the exquisite enjoyment of keeping house in New York 
 for them while they should be gone. 
 
 Julia might have been studying French the preceding 
 year, so as to fit herself to make the most of her Parisian 
 experience when it came ; but with all her natural clever- 
 ness, she had never made a genuine intellectual effort in 
 her life, and to master a language, even imperfectly, was 
 more than her indolent temperament would undertake. 
 She did not even consult her husband's guide-books 
 enough to learn the least thing about the places to which 
 she was going. It was easier to have him tell her ! 
 
 Her journey abroad, therefore, failed to give her much 
 information, or to awaken in her any needs, or to open to 
 her any resources which had not been hers before. She 
 was a capital sailor, and greatly enjoyed the steamer going 
 over. Conversation was her bliss, and ** there were so 
 many nice people to talk to ! " as she wrote her mother. 
 But arrived in France, Mr. Calvert was constantly out on 
 business, and could take her sight-seeing only to a limited 
 extent. Ignorance of the language, of the money, and of 
 the customs, made her timid in going about alone. When 
 she first got to Paris, she set forth as a matter of course 
 one morning, for a walk, and was frightened and indignant 
 at the insolence with which she was stared at and even 
 
ISO NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 accosted. ''American men" she wrote to a friend, ''al- 
 ways take a woman to be virtuous unless they know to the 
 contrary ; but Frenchmen — disgusting creatures ! — are ex- 
 actly the reverse." So this unthrifty traveller spent a 
 large part of her time solitary in her room, shivering in 
 the grey, chill, dismal city that Paris often is in winter, 
 missing her New York comforts and the bright New York 
 sky, and wishing for some one to speak to. 
 
 When it came to the shopping, however, Calvert out- 
 did himself. Julia liked lovely things as well as any 
 woman, but she was satisfied with enough, and she would 
 hear the shop-girls exclaim to each other with amazement 
 because " Monsieur wanted Madame to have this and that, 
 and she — inconceivable / refused. So generally was it the 
 other way. The lady wanted and the husband refused. 
 But American husbands were quite apart, etc., etc." 
 
 The three months were at last over, and Julia, cat-like 
 creature, felt an unwonted exhilaration when her foot 
 touched the deck of the steamer that was to take her home. 
 She was "glad to have seen Paris and the other places," 
 as she expressed it — for those were the days when Paris 
 was the heaven of good Americans, and London only a 
 side issue — " but New York was good enough for her ! " 
 
 Her want of enthusiasm and her discomfort at little 
 things had much damped Calvert's pleasure in bringing 
 her. "Ah well ! " he said to himself with a sigh, "it's no 
 use ! " and he remembered a certain little shop-maiden 
 with dark, dove-like eyes, a caressing voice, and a sub- 
 missive manner which had gone straight to his heart. 
 "How totally different from American women!" he 
 thought, as he saw her hovering about his wife while her 
 dresses and wraps were being tried on, kneeling on the 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 151 
 
 ground beside her, adjusting here and pinning there so 
 quietly, so dexterously, and looking up so meekly for ap- 
 proval or direction. He found her very pretty. Her 
 bust and arms were so shapely, her forehead so low, and her 
 eye-brows so delicately pencilled ! He wondered if she 
 would be in that establishment when he went back. Julia 
 had arranged that her future dresses should be made there 
 and had left general instructions with this girl as being the 
 go-between for English speaking customers. Yes, of course 
 he would have to see her again. He would like to hear 
 her pretty broken English once more. Certainly, he 
 would hear it ! 
 
 On the Cunarder going back, Julia found herself at table 
 next a striking-looking man of about thirty-five who at 
 once interested himself in his exquisitely pretty neighbor. 
 In the course of a day or two she learned his name, and also 
 that he was a lawyer from Philadelphia, and a widower. 
 Beyond that her delicacy did not enquire, perhaps because 
 she was entirely happy in the simple fact of his existence. 
 That he was of good family and high in his profession she 
 could not doubt. He talked charmingly on the subjects 
 with which she was most conversant, and listened even 
 better — listened with an air almost of deference that was 
 infinitely flattering. There was a pensiveness in his face 
 that might mean much or nothing, but which to Julia 
 spoke volumes. Calvert almost instantly observed her 
 interest in the stranger, and as instantly grew jealous — and 
 not without reason, for as devoted as a man could be to a 
 woman who has a husband ever at her elbow, Julia's 
 fellow-passenger certainly was. 
 
 As there were four meals a day on the steamer, they had 
 at least four opportunities for conversation, and Calvert 
 
152 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 was often inwardly infuriated to notice how involuntarily 
 their voices dropped so that \he could not possibly take 
 part in what they were saying. In the evening he could 
 not resist cards, but Julia always declined to play, and 
 then her new friend would sit and talk with her either on 
 deck or in the cabin. The voyage was long, for the winds 
 were contrary, and at that time the shortest passage was 
 twelve days ; but to Julia every one of the raw and chill 
 fifteen was steeped in magic whose rosy and smiling hours 
 sped each more swiftly than the last. 
 
 She had always known her ideal was in the world ; she 
 had always felt it, — and now here he was ! Strong as was 
 their mutual attraction, she did not attempt to flirt and 
 neither did he. Julia was loyalty and chastity itself, a 
 woman incorruptible. He was an American of severe 
 standards who did not admit to himself the possibility, 
 even, of tampering with his neighbor's wife. They merely 
 felt that immeasurable content in each other's society which 
 would seem to indicate a natural union if anything before- 
 hand can, and they took every opportunity consistent with 
 dignity and propriety of being together that they could. 
 
 Calvert saw it all and writhed. To flirt with a charming 
 woman one's self is delicious, but to see one's wife evi- 
 dently absorbed in another man is agony and humiliation. 
 When the, to him, interminable voyage ended, and they 
 were on the dock, in the confusion of the Custom-house 
 Julia feared she had lost her Philadelphia friend, and that 
 she should not see him again. While Calvert was 
 attending to the revenue officers, she sat wan and des- 
 olate in the carriage, looking wistfully for a last glimpse 
 of her hero, — when he himself ran up. 
 
 He saw the misery in her pale face. Some of it, at 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 153 
 
 least, was reflected in his own. But how could a man, 
 successfully pursuing an absorbing profession amid the 
 competition of his peers, and about him all the pleasant 
 distractions of the high social world, appreciate what was 
 the blank of existence to this woman who felt within her- 
 self special gifts for such a world, and who yet was 
 married to a mere New York clerk ? 
 
 He took her little hand, — '' Good-bye," said he, " and 
 thank you for the never-to-be-forgotten charm of our 
 voyage ! ' ' 
 
 ''You really go on at once to Philadelphia?" asked 
 she, almost reproachfully. 
 
 "To-night." 
 
 ''Not very complimentary to New York to quit us so 
 soon," returned she, smiling, "I was in hopes you might 
 dine with us." Julia did not wish to be tempted, yet, 
 woman-like, was unable to resist throwing out an almost 
 imperceptible lure. 
 
 " I wish I were not obliged to hurry. I would so much 
 like to have seen you in your own home ! — " 
 
 They gazed silently at each other. " Probably we shall 
 not meet again," murmured she, involuntarily, with de- 
 spairing eyes and an irrepressible quiver of her lips. 
 
 "I think for me, at least, it would be best not," 
 returned he, gravely, with one plunging look into her 
 soul. 
 
 The slender, nervous hand for one instant clung wildly 
 to his with all its woman's feeble force, then released him, 
 and lifting his hat, in a moment he had vanished forever 
 out of her life. 
 
 "If my husband exists in this world," said Julia to her- 
 self in her anguish, " that is he, and / cannot have him !'' 
 
154 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 — and she thought bitterly of her own girlish hesitation at 
 taking Calvert, and how if teft to herself she never would 
 have done it. 
 
 Amid the talk and excitement of arriving home after 
 such an immense event as in those days and in that circle 
 was a trip to Europe, Calvert was not aware of any change 
 in Julia. But when all the the new purchases had been 
 exhibited, and everything about their adventures had been 
 told that could possibly be told and re- told to the inter- 
 ested family ears, the jealous husband feared or fancied 
 that his wife was no longer the same. She certainly was, 
 for her, distinctly quiet and distraite. 
 
 In this softened phase she was strangely charming, and 
 just because Calvert felt himself most miserably doubting 
 it, he began to hunger violently for her real love, fond- 
 ness and devotion. It seemed to him he wanted Julia's 
 very self as he had never wanted it before \ but she was 
 only cool, indifferent and weary-minded. 
 
 His advances were not very demonstrative or profuse. 
 Really, he did not venture. Hitherto he had always given 
 so much love, and Julia had returned at best, an indulgent 
 fondness, rather than love. Did she feel now, even that 
 for him? 
 
 One evening, about three weeks after their return, she 
 was sitting silent in one corner of the sofa — sitting on 
 her foot, as so many women love to do — while he read his 
 newspaper and smoked. The house was perfectly quiet, 
 for it was after ten o'clock — nearly bed-time. 
 
 Suddenly he put down paper and cigar, and coming 
 over to her he nestled himself on the sofa with his arms 
 round her and his head on her shoulder. ' * Do you love 
 me, Juley?" he murmured. **I love you so much! 
 
NEW YORK; A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 1 55 
 
 You look so sweet sitting here. What are you thinking 
 about, darling? Kiss me ! " 
 
 She didn't raise her arm to support his head, nor did she 
 lean her face to his. ** Seems to me you are very affection- 
 ate all of a sudden! " returned she, looking down upon 
 him with her sweet, proud smile. 
 
 *' Not ' all of a sudden ' at all ! I'm always affectionate 
 — at least, I'd like to be, as you know well enough. It's 
 you who are the cool hand." 
 
 *'01d married people like us oughtn't to be silly?" 
 said Julia, offishly. 
 
 ''Put your arm under my head, dear, won't you, and 
 kiss me? Love me a little, Julia. I'm so tired to-night, 
 and I do feel so blue, too ! My little wife — my little 
 Julia — I'm so glad to be back in our pretty home 
 alone with you ! " He kissed her mouth, then closed his 
 eyes and rested on her bosom. For a little while she laid 
 her cheek to his, once or twice touched brow and lids with 
 her lips, then nothing more. 
 
 Men never forget their mothers, and he wanted to be 
 petted, to be babied, to be called the dear, caressing things 
 that are so deadly silly to every ear but those that hear 
 them ! 
 
 But his wife was so motionless that at last he opened his 
 eyes. Hers were not bent upon him ; they were fixed ab- 
 sently across the room. Evidently, too evidently, her 
 thoughts were not with the husband on her heart, but with 
 some far, far away interest. ''Well, I declare!" ex- 
 claimed Calvert briskly, and springing up — " I was almost 
 asleep! I must go to bed. Good night! " and he left 
 her sitting there. 
 
 When he got to his room he muttered : " It's that damned 
 
156 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 Philadelphian ! ' ' and from that hour Frank Calvert ad- 
 dressed himself without remorse to that still hunt for 
 woman's love and self-surrender which is the deep under- 
 current of so many men's lives — which, though not its 
 ostensible is yet its dearest purpose, and which such men 
 as Calvert will attain, be sacrificed to it what must ! 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 NUMBER THREE. 
 
 After her second daughter's marriage, Mrs. Dexter' s 
 maternal solicitude very naturally concentrated itself upon 
 her third and last, Josephine. But Josephine was four 
 years younger than Fanny — only fourteen, therefore, and 
 there was really not much occasion for haste. Judging 
 from her successes with her first two, it was almost a mat- 
 ter of course that the third would do well — would perhaps 
 marry as much better than Fanny as Fanny had than Julia. 
 The devoted mother was really entitled to a little vacation 
 from the peculiar cares of managing mamma-hood, and 
 she took it. Josephine, who had scarcely been to school 
 five quarters in her life, who knew absolutely nothing, and 
 whose very spelling was on a par with that of servant-girls, 
 was allowed to lounge away two more of girlhood's price- 
 less years. By the time she was sixteen, a cousin of Mr. 
 Dexter' s had made a success of a young ladies' boarding- 
 school in the flourishing city of Cleveland, and no other 
 plan suggesting itself, the principal of this institution, as 
 being a relative, was cajoled by Mrs. Dexter into one of 
 those *' something for nothing" arrangements which she 
 invariably attempted in every bargain of her life. Her 
 youngest, though not her fondest hope — for no one ever 
 supplanted Julia in her mother's heart^was thither exiled 
 until she was eighteen ; the impression that there were 
 
158 NEW YORK: A SVMPHONrC STUDY. 
 
 rich people in Cleveland, and that consequently fate 
 might be holding some yoiing heir in reserve there for 
 a pretty New England charmer, going for much in the 
 decision. 
 
 I have said how Mrs. Dexter enjoyed finding herself 
 domiciled at the Howe's the first winter after Fanny's mar- 
 riage, and this intermezzo of Josephine's nonage was no 
 doubt the happiest period of her life — its veritable Indian 
 summer. How she loved the large, composite, com- 
 panionable roar of the big city as she heard it anew every 
 autumn when she came down ! The thrilling fire-bells 
 at night, the lumbering ice carts at two or three o'clock 
 in the morning, the lively rattle of the milkmen and their 
 shrill calls at five or six, the street cries, the hand organs, 
 the distant metallic slither, — every city sound or sight was 
 dear and grateful to her. During her eight months visit, 
 she alternated between Fanny's and Julia's houses, staying 
 with the former, but of course continually spending whole 
 days and nights with the latter. 
 
 Naturally busy, she continued her motherly and grand- 
 motherly offices of mending, and when a seamstress was to 
 the fore, of making for her offspring. She was always 
 ready to do an errand, to beat up a cake, to fill up any 
 housekeeping gap, to take a hand at cards, to receive an 
 inopportune caller, to flatter her sons-in-law. On Sun- 
 days she was invariable in her attendance in Mr. Howe's 
 pew, though always, as in Belmont, a little late, and with 
 the same air appropriate to the occasion that was the last 
 finishing touch of her Sunday toilette, and as she listened 
 to the deep seething organ- tones that rolled and pervaded 
 both the building and her soul — that soul really seemed to 
 rise on wings of ecstasy toward a Better World ! 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 159 
 
 It was at this period that she improvised for herself the 
 original and peculiar amusement of occasionally penetrat- 
 ing the sacred adyta of the New York aristocracy. She 
 would call at some well-known though not too-croesus 
 door and send up her card, glance eagerly about in the 
 absence of the servant, and when the mistress of the house 
 appeared — looking surprised at the stranger, or if the ser- 
 vant returned to ask if there were not some mistake, as 
 the lady ''did not remember any such name" — Mrs. 
 Dexter would rise in apparent confusion, explain that she 
 was a stranger from Philadelphia or Boston and in looking 
 out a friend's similar name in the directory "must have 
 mistaken the initials-a-h " — then, with apologies as nearly 
 in the manner of a grande daitie as she could command, she 
 would sail self-possessedly out into the street. When she 
 returned to Belmont in the summer she would casually men- 
 tion to her village callers, points in the 'V/-egant drawing- 
 rooms " of her friends " Mrs. Cruger " or " Mrs. Fearing" 
 — " Mrs. Duncan " or " Mrs. Sydney Mason-a-h ! " 
 
 Or she would observe when the funeral of any social 
 notability was announced as "at the house," dress herself 
 in appropriate black with concerned countenance to match, 
 and repair thither at the appointed hour among the other 
 friends. Of course at such a time she would be admitted 
 without question, and she then experienced the really ser- 
 aphic pleasure of sitting silently in a circle of undoubted 
 fashionables, and noting everything she could about them 
 or the house itself. 
 
 In summer she still indulged Mr. Dexter with his own 
 home, though had it not been that her daughters were ex- 
 tremely fond of Belmont and of the neighboring Belmont 
 Springs, the poor man would long since have ceased to 
 
l6o NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 have even that much vouchsafed him. On her first vaca- 
 tion Josephine brought one of her cousin's daughters back 
 with her, and the young lady was equally amused and an- 
 noyed at Mrs. Dexter' s extremes of economy and at her 
 extravagance of pretension. 
 
 She came to stay a month, but her vigorous Western 
 appetite retreated at the end of a fortnight, literally starved 
 out. She rarely had a sufficient meal. Everything was 
 deliciously cooked, meats and vegetables done to a turn 
 and daintily served, the pastry delicate and flaky as fairy- 
 work — but there was so little of it ! 
 
 ** Mr. Dexter ! " Mrs. Dexter would call out, reproach- 
 fully, *'why don't you help Kate to another piece of 
 steak ? You are starving the child ! ' ' 
 
 "I beg your pardon," Mr. Dexter would courteously 
 reply, holding the carving-knife and fork over the bone 
 and coarser remnants on the dish, and making a feint to 
 find something — *' will you have another bit ? " 
 
 ** No, thank you," cousin Kate would answer, '*you 
 helped me very liberally," and would then go on filling 
 up the vacancies with potato or bread and butter. 
 
 Mrs. Dexter kept her usual one cheap servant, and Kate 
 knew it perfectly well, and her hostess knew that she knew 
 it; yet would she go to the head of the stairs and call — 
 *'Brid-get! — Ma-ry ! — El-len ! " and returning to the 
 room would say in apparent disgust — *'Well! what can 
 those girls be doing ? I must go down and see after them 
 myself. Servants are such plagues I " — and then she 
 would disappear for two or three hours on hospitable {i.e. 
 culinary) cares intent. But she never gave the least hint 
 that the waitress at the table was the cook and the laun- 
 dress as well — was other than the waitress alone. In fact. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. i6i 
 
 to her, for the moment, the maid 7vas nothing but the 
 waitress. She always felt herself the fine-lady mistress of 
 three servants at least, and before a stranger it was easier 
 to carry out the illusion than admit the truth. She rose 
 at five in the morning to make her pies and cake, and at 
 half- past eight would come languidly into the breakfast- 
 room in a white morning dress and dainty cap, as if at 
 that late hour she were only unwillingly up and were half- 
 asleep yet ! In fact, Mrs. Dexter lived literally in a world 
 of her own creating, as I once knew two little girls of five 
 and eight for a whole year forget their own individuality 
 and the realities of life in a mimic realm peopled exclu- 
 sively by their dolls ! 
 
 The mother's matrimonial prescience in sending Jo- 
 sephine westward to school, was, as usual, justified ; for 
 when the young lady came home for her first summer va- 
 cation, she had a great deal to say about *' George Mc- 
 Cloud," and when she returned at the end of the two stip- 
 ulated years, George McCloud was her escort, and the 
 admission of an engagement between them was immediate. 
 The youth was the son of a General McCloud who had 
 won some distinction in the Mexican War and was now 
 developing distant iron interests with a residence in Cleve- 
 land as a base. Unluckily, the ardent lover was but a 
 year or two older than his fiancee. Worse yet, he was 
 still entirely dependent on his father ; so there was noth- 
 ing for them but to wait three years at least — and between 
 two people who have no motive whatever for falling in 
 love excepting youth and good looks, long engagements 
 offer endless chances for short breakings-off. 
 
 Josephine Dexter was as different from her sisters as 
 they were from each other. She was much taller than 
 
1 62 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 either, and her phenomenal indolence had rounded her 
 shoulders ; but as it was in the Dexter blood to carry off 
 any defect whatever without detriment to the general 
 effect, so this one of the fair Josie was not minded by her 
 admirers any more than was the decided cast in one of her 
 dark eyes. 
 
 She had a pretty bust-contour and yet was slender and 
 willowy as a sylph. Her head and features and face were 
 excessively small, and the latter, as it were, pointed. Her 
 hair was raven black, her eyes dark brown, with black curl- 
 ing lashes, her coloring brunette, with red cheeks and 
 scarlet lips. Like her sister Julia, her eyelids were habit- 
 ually drooping, so that one scarcely noticed the cast, and 
 the curling lashes on her cheek were one of her fascinations. 
 Her whole effect was fluid and serpentine to the last 
 degree ; but it was a harmless serpentineness, for she was 
 perfectly ignorant, perfectly inert, and withal embodied 
 music from the hairs of her head to the tips of her long 
 and sinuous fingers. 
 
 How should Mrs. Dexter, sordid, scheming woman, and 
 in almost music-barren Belmont, have been the mother of 
 a genuine musical genius ? What mystic influence could 
 have played upon her ere the child was born, and made 
 this one chord out of the thousands latent in her as in us 
 all, vibrate throughout her offspring's being? 
 
 My own explanation is that poor Mrs. Dexter was in 
 reality an artist, that is, a person born to receive and to 
 give Joy through Beauty — but in this case born and buried in 
 that frequent cellar of narrow toil and stagnant dullness — 
 a country village. Consequently, all her moral twistings 
 and convolutions were after all but the desperate efforts 
 which a vigorous plant in a cellar will inevitably make to 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 1 63 
 
 reach the far-distant light which is its life. The grace 
 and harmony, the charm and adaptibility, of her children, 
 in spite of their absolute negations in mental or moral 
 education — the costume and social virtuosi, so to speak, 
 that they all were, were evidences of the baffled artistic 
 strain in their mother's blood — France uprising against 
 England — Pleasure avenging itself on Puritanism. Like 
 begets like, and from an artist an artist should come if 
 contrary influences do not prevent. Mrs. Dexter herself 
 had a voice and an excellent ear, and always sang loudly 
 in church. Some chance visitor in Belmont — some young 
 girl home from school with a few show-pieces, may have 
 furnished the magic force that crystallized into her music- 
 child. 
 
 Be it all as it may, the fact remains that at five years old 
 the little Josephine Dexter caught and reproduced after 
 one hearing, the airs of the difficult Thalberg and De 
 Meyer transcriptions played by her rector's wife — the 
 highly musical Mrs. Gardner. 
 
 The latter was startled by so wonderful an ear, and 
 begged the child's mother to have her taught at once, or 
 she would never learn to read music. But eight or ten 
 dollars a quarter for lessons to a baby of five years old was 
 not to be thought of, even were the gift as priceless as 
 Mrs. Gardner maintained. It is true that Tim's legacy 
 was at that moment being drawn upon for Julia's first 
 New York outfit, but no thought of its possibilities for 
 Josephine crossed the mother's straitened mind. 
 
 The little Josephine, therefore, being as lazy as she was 
 gifted, was allowed to grow to her eleventh year before 
 any attempt was made to teach her the notes. Of course, 
 unless aided by great earnestness in the pupil, or great 
 
j>' 
 
 164 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 severity or perseverance in the teacher, the attempt by 
 that time was hopeless, and of the two latter Mrs. Dexter 
 would neither have allowed the one nor paid for the other. 
 And so the rare jewel that nature had flung to the world 
 was lost. At fourteen, Josephine Dexter, never having 
 been out of Belmont nor heard any music but the playing 
 of Mrs. Gardner and her daughter, would sit, her lashes 
 on her cheeks, dreaming over the piano with so exquisitely 
 musical a touch, and with such delicate and melancholy 
 little fancies streaming from her fingers, as would have 
 brought tears to the eyes of a connoisseur. The girl, like 
 Mrs. Gardner herself, might have enchanted the world as 
 an artist, and, again like her, might have vindicated the 
 feminine possibilities for musical composition, if only she 
 had been taught. Ah, on how many myriads of graves 
 might this epitaph — " Had she only'' — be inscribed ! 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 A BROKEN ENGAGEMENT. 
 
 In his two or three summer visits to the Dexter man- 
 sion, the young McCloud found himself as happy as the 
 men that knew it not too well, invariably were. Mrs. 
 Howe was always there, and as we have seen, she and Jo- 
 sephine and her mother understood well how to strew the 
 flowers of life to their admirers and to get far more strewn 
 in return. Money seemed to be more plenty with the 
 westerner than it had been even with the generous Howe. 
 On one visit he took the party on the charming trip to 
 Montreal and Quebec. On the next he found himself 
 paying all their expenses to Saratoga. The visits were 
 not long, to be sure, but the bills were — markedly so ! 
 
 In company, Josephine Dexter had neither the anima- 
 tion, the cleverness, nor the sunny sweetness of her sisters. 
 Her attraction was rather in her repose, for she said very 
 little — her extreme ignorance and her extreme indolence 
 giving her, indeed, very little to say. She had a little 
 turn-down mouth like Patti's, which, together with the 
 great refinement of her features and her usual quiet, gave 
 her an air of melancholy and sentiment. Her quick ear 
 caught every peculiarity of pronunciation that she thought 
 fashionable or elegant, so that her speech was the oddest 
 jumble imaginable of Boston and New York and Brooklyn 
 accents. Her gait was adapted from that of one striking 
 
1 66 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 girl she knew — her laugh and her voice imitated from an- 
 other. In short, externally she was a chaos of affectations 
 and internally a mass of passive, as her sister Fanny was 
 of active, selfishness. In one thing only, besides music, 
 was she quick — in one thing was she lightning — in dealing 
 cards. With Mrs. Dexter and her two youngest daughters, 
 cards were a passion. To while away the dull Belmont 
 evenings Josephine had been pressed into the service from 
 her earliest childhood, and her mind being unoccupied by 
 anything else, it was no wonder that the card-spirit took 
 full possession and dwelt there. 
 
 The young lady was looking forward to her marriage at 
 twenty-one — for by that time her lover would be twenty- 
 three, when one day an agitated letter came from the lat- 
 ter announcing his father's failure in business. Besides the 
 story of their misfortunes, it was full of protestations of his 
 own deathless fidelity to his darling Josephine — only they 
 could not now be married in six months as they had in- 
 tended. Would she — could she — wait for him — be true 
 to him, as he was so, so true to her ? Oh, yes ! He could 
 not doubt it. He judged her heart by his own. Should 
 anything have happened to her he would but love her 
 better, cherish her dearer — and how could she feel other- 
 wise toward him ? The firm had lost everything but honor, 
 but they had many friends, and as soon as possible they 
 were going on again. He confessed it — he had not him- 
 self been as earnest, as strenuous in his business as, with 
 such a prize as his Josephine committed to him, he should 
 have been. He had taken too much for granted that 
 things were all right. But now he should work as never 
 man did, and he should be so happy in his work, 
 because it would be for her, etc., etc. She must write 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 167 
 
 soon, if but one line — to reassure ''her own and ever 
 devoted — George. ' ' 
 
 Mrs. Baxter's cold eye glinted cold steel as the weeping 
 Josephine rehearsed to her the letter. " That's just like a 
 man ! " she snapped out, in infinite contempt. *' ' Should 
 anything happen to you he would love you better, cherish 
 you dearer,' — and — 'how could you feel otherwise toward 
 him ? ' — If you should lose your beauty he would * love you 
 better,' eh? * Cherish you dearer,' — would he? I wouldn't 
 trust him, no, indeed ! nor any other man. He pays his 
 money and he takes his choice, but if he don't pay, he 
 don't take, neither! That's about the sense of it, Jo- 
 sephine, my dear, and of course you'll have to break off 
 the engagement." 
 
 ''Oh, mother! " 
 
 " Now, Josephine, do you think you can wait three 
 or four years — sacrifice all that youth and be on your 
 father's hands all that extra time, on the chance that 
 at the end of it George McCloud will be able to marry 
 and live in the style you expected when you accepted 
 him? Nonsense!" 
 
 <* He'll think I only accepted him for his money, and I 
 did like him so much. Poor George ! " — and her hand- 
 kerchief really became quite drenched. 
 
 "Never mind what he thinks! Poor men mustn't 
 have thoughts ; ' ' said Mrs. Dexter, chuckling at her own 
 cleverness. " He and his father must be a stupid pair be- 
 tween 'em to fail ! I can't imagine men being such id- 
 jots as to fail! Why a man can't keep his money after 
 he's once got it, I don't see. Ridik'lus ! " 
 
 " Poor George ! " reiterated Josephine, dismally. 
 
 "Poor you! I should say, Jo," retorted Mrs. Dexter. 
 
1 68 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 '' At your age Fanny and Julia had been married for 
 years, and now you are flung all back on the world again." 
 
 ' ' Must I really break off my engagement with him ? ' ' 
 
 *' ' Must you ? ' " echoed her mother. '< Of course you 
 must. Of course you needn't say so in so many words — 
 or rather, father must write for you and say that under the 
 circumstances he and I are not willing the engagement 
 should be unconditional. When George gets ready 
 to marry, the correspondence can be renewed if both 
 wish it." 
 
 *' I suppose I must," said Josephine; and she went and 
 lay down on her bed and cried over her altered prospects 
 for a long time. Mrs. Dexter let her cry without attempt- 
 ing to comfort her. She thought she might as well have 
 it out at once. Finally a new thought occurred to the 
 girl and she rose and came back to her mother. 
 
 ** Since I've got to break off with George, mother, I 
 suppose I shall have to send back his presents. My poor 
 engagement ring ! Such a pretty one ! ' ' and she held up 
 her hand and made the fine brilliant sparkle in the light. 
 
 In the interim Mrs. Dexter' s own meditations had been 
 occupied with this very subject. ''N-no," said she, 
 doubtfully. '*I don't think you'd better send back his 
 presents. That would hurt his feelings — make him feel 
 cheap, I'm afraid. And it would look as if you were 
 breaking off the engagement for good and all, when of 
 course, if the firm gets all right again, as I hope it may — 
 why, the affair might be renewed." 
 
 *'But, mother," persisted Josephine, ''of course I'm 
 either engaged to George or I'm not. If not, I 7tiust 
 send back his ring, for if I keep it he will take for 
 granted I still feel bound to him." 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 169 
 
 Now, one of Mrs. Dexter' s secret ambitions she never 
 yet had compassed ; nor, in truth, had she much expected 
 ever to do so. She had accomplished a' velvet cloak, — 
 though it had always had a half-look as if it might have 
 been bought second-hand, — and also a mink cape such as 
 all well-to-do women wore then as later they wore seal- 
 skin jackets; only the mink was very light and faded 
 instead of fashionably dark and rich in color. But a 
 diamond ring — a real brilliant — had ever seemed to her 
 hopeless. Now, however, a sudden ray of light, as from 
 the wished-for gem itself, illumined this dark recess of her 
 fate. Nay, she saw the diamond on her finger ! 
 
 So she said: ''Well, dear, I suppose you are right 
 about it. The ring ought certainly to go back. But 
 there is no hurry. There's no need of hastening matters. 
 In fact, I think George will probably want you to keep it 
 to remember him by," and Mrs. Dexter laughed. ''I'm 
 sure /should want to be remembered by my first love if I 
 was a young man ! ' ' 
 
 '' If the engagement is broken off, of course everybody 
 will know, and how could I then wear the ring ? ' ' 
 
 '* You needn't wear it here. Put it in your drawer. In 
 fact, perhaps I'll buy it of Mr. McCloud for myself. 
 Probably he wouldn't want much for it." 
 
 "Why, mother! — what — an — i-dea ! " said Josephine, 
 scandalized. 
 
 ''You goosey! You thought I was in earnest," said 
 Mrs. Dexter, laughing again. " I'm only joking." 
 
 But she was not joking. Mr. Dexter wrote the hollow 
 letter dictated by his wife, and Mr. McCloud, and still 
 more the chivalrous gentleman, his father, were furious 
 enough as they read it. "Think of it, sir! " said the 
 
[if, 170 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 outraged lover. ' ' Not one word from Josephine and only 
 this icy thing from her old fox; of a father ! " 
 
 *' Why — they're adventuresses — that girl and her moth- 
 er — my boy ! I never heard anything more bare-faced in 
 my life. It's evident she accepted you simply because she 
 thought you had money. You've had a lucky escape. I 
 don't know but to you, it's worth the failure ! I confess 
 I always was disgusted with the way they made you shell 
 out for them." 
 
 ''I did spend a lot on them all — there's no mistake 
 about that ! " said young George, with a sigh. "■ Wish I 
 had some of it now ! " 
 
 George was very young. At best his heart was not very 
 deep, and after a few weeks he was hating all the Dexters 
 more than he had ever loved them. Having arrived at 
 this state of mind he wrote to Mr. Dexter expressing sur- 
 . prise that his engagement ring had not been returned when 
 himself had been turned adrift. 
 
 ''What are you thinking of, Libby?" queried Mr. 
 Dexter, angrily, ''not to have returned that ring? It 
 ought to have gone back long ago." 
 
 " Laws ! — I didn't suppose he would think of it again ! 
 A gift's a gift, and I should think a man would be ashamed 
 to ask a girl for a thing he had once given her. Shows he 
 was mean at heart — doesn't it? He was small loss, I 
 guess. You needn't mind, Mr. Dexter. I'll write to him 
 myself." 
 
 George McCloud was accordingly stupefied at receiving 
 the following communication : 
 
 My Dear Mr McCloul) — 
 
 Your, note to Mr. Dexter is at hand and I am very much surprised 
 and mortifide that when he wrote he should have forgotten to tell you 
 
NEW YORK; A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 171 
 
 about your beautifull engagement ring you remember your promise of a 
 subscription of ^150.00 to our new church and thinking you would 
 of coiu^e want that promise kept as I had told the building com- 
 mittee of your intention and they had counted on it in their estamates 
 I decided to pay the ^150.00 myself and keep the ring as an equiva- 
 lunt though no doubt less than you paid for it it is as much as you could 
 get for it in any other way if not more hoping this disposal of it may 
 be satasfactory to you and with my and Josephine's best wishes for your 
 happiness and prosperrity 
 
 I am yours sincerely 
 
 Elizabeth G. Dexter. 
 
 Mr. McCloud had never *' promised" $150.00 to the 
 new church at all ! Mrs. Dexter had once laughingly 
 asked him if he did not want to subscribe that sum to the 
 church Mr. Gardner and his congregation were building, 
 and he had replied, as laughingly, that he would see about 
 it when his ''ship came in." 
 
 Needless to say that Mrs. Dexter never paid one penny 
 into the church treasury ; but there was the diamond — 
 glittering on her finger to the end of her days ; and for 
 the lie and the theft, why — the lady was as unconscious of 
 either as the babe unborn ! 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE SHOPPER ABROAD. 
 
 The year was not out after Julia Calvert's return from 
 Europe when she was again a mother. Even before the 
 little one came, she welcomed, instead of dreading it, for 
 an imperative craving for something to love better than 
 she loved herself, had at last been born within her. 
 
 And this baby was indeed worth loving ; nay, no mother 
 could have held it in her arms and felt that its life had 
 come from hers, without adoring it, rapturously, desper- 
 ately. The little creature was perfectly exquisite — Julia's 
 express image, and yet with an indescribable sensibility, 
 sweetness and responsiveness about it that won every heart 
 and hinted at the infinite broodings of the mother's spirit 
 while it was evolving within her. Julia named it *' Flora," 
 the fairy thing looked so like a flower, and the whole force 
 and wealth of her nature streamed forth and wrapped itself 
 round and round the child like a garment. She felt it 
 was her child, her very own, and that the alien Calvert 
 nature had no part nor lot in it. She loved to tease her 
 husband by saying: "Frank, you had nothing to do 
 with getting up this baby. Clara's jj^^wr child !" As she 
 had wakened to realizing what it might have been to be a 
 wife, so now she knew what it was to be a mother. For 
 the first time in her life she was radiantly happy, and 
 Mrs. Dexter was more beatific over her than ever. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 173 
 
 Mrs. Fanny, too, continued to be an increasing credit 
 to the maternal pride. After Julia's foreign trip that lit- 
 tle personage was decidedly restless until Mr. Howe prom- 
 ised to take her across the water as well. It must be con- 
 fessed that he did not feel much like doing it. His 
 family expenses were large, and a journey abroad with a 
 wife so fond of dress and pleasure as his own, would not 
 be a financial bagatelle. Still, he decided he could stretch 
 a point and afford it, especially as he had a strong aesthetic 
 hankering hirnself to see the other side, and as in his 
 twenty years of business devotion he had never taken more 
 than an annual two weeks vacation. 
 
 Mrs. Dexter, therefore, with an ever-swelling sense of 
 the family importance and prestige, was able to announce 
 in Belmont that on Mr. Calvert's fifth crossing, the 
 Howes were to accompany him, — their plan being to ''do 
 Europe" in three months so as to return also with him. 
 Calvert was as much interested to give the pair the benefit 
 of his foreign knowledge and experience as they were to 
 receive them, and as a traveller, the wide-awake Fanny 
 was certainly a refreshing contrast to the inert and dreamy 
 Julia. Mr. Howe cast an intelligent glance at the cathe- 
 drals and monuments and galleries, and Fanny a compre- 
 hensive one at the shops and the people, and both were 
 equally impressed and satisfied with what their journey 
 conferred. 
 
 As leading towns in Europe so often have their manu- 
 facturing specialties, in nearly every place they came to, 
 Fanny saw something she ardently wanted to buy — with 
 the result that her violent yearnings over various '' finds" 
 that took her fancy, caused the Howes to fall somewhat 
 behind their time-table, so that instead of giving to Rome 
 
174 .V£IV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 the week they had intended, they were obliged to limit 
 their stay in the historic cosmcte to two days. 
 
 Heavens and earth ! of these two precious days they 
 found the first was a ** festa," and all the shops and gal- 
 leries were shut ! What should Mrs. Howe do about the 
 Roman scarf commissions in prospect of which she had 
 been revelling, and of which she had never lost sight 
 during their progress toward the Eternal City ? 
 
 Well — the Vatican and all the picture galleries might 
 go, but the scarfs must and should be had ! The first day 
 she drove about pretty generally and saw St. Peter's, the 
 Forum, the Coliseum and the Pantheon. The next, dis- 
 regarding Mr. Howe's expostulations and even anger, she 
 set out resolutely to explore for the coveted fabrics, and 
 during the morning discovered that gold work of the most 
 exquisite description was also a Roman specialty. Inevi- 
 table consequence — hours of rapture over the Castellani and 
 less celebrated show-cases, and not a picture nor a statue 
 beheld by Mrs. David Howe that day ! In the evening 
 at the table d'hote she descanted upon her shopping suc- 
 cesses to some countrywomen with ideals like her own, 
 and as they all rose from dinner, her glowing — "■ Come to 
 my room and see my scarfs ! ' ' could hardly have been sur- 
 passed in triumphant pride by the — ''Come and let me 
 show you my jewels! " of the mother of the Gracchi in 
 the same city two thousand years before. 
 
 As she returned to Paris she was full of apprehension 
 lest her modiste should not have completed her various 
 orders. ''You know, mother," she said on relating her 
 experience after she got home, " that Le Brun, that favor- 
 ite dressmaker who speaks English, never will keep her en- 
 gagements, and quite often ladies have to wait over a 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. I75 
 
 steamer or two before they can get their things — and yet 
 she's so awfully stylish that people can't bear to go any- 
 where else. Before I got back to Paris I made my plan. 
 I was fitted before I left, and I had ordered all my dresses, 
 and engaged them to be done a fortnight before I really 
 wanted 'em so as to make sure of having 'em. When we 
 got to Paris I had only three days before we left for Liver- 
 pool. I drove at once to Le Brun and said I had been 
 detained, but I supposed my things were ready, as they 
 were promised for two whole weeks before. Just as I ex- 
 pected, Le Brun sent word that ''Madame's dresses were 
 not done." I said I was very glad to hear it, for I 
 should prefer to try them on to make sure they were all 
 right before finishing. Could I do so then ? ' ' Very 
 sorry ; but Madame Le Brun was just fitting another cus- 
 tomer." Then could I come the next morning at ten, I 
 asked? *'0h, certainly, Madame's dresses should be 
 ready to-morrow at ten. ' ' Next day I went and waited an 
 hour, and no dresses forthcoming — not even one ; at last, 
 as I insisted, Le Brun sent word that her forewoman had 
 been taken sick and the dresses were not in a state to be 
 fitted. Oh, I said — then the dresses are not cut? So 
 much the better. Go and tell Madame Le Brun that I 
 will not take them at all now. She could not possibly 
 finish them and I could not possibly wait, as we sail im- 
 mediately. At this, Le Brun came rustling down herself. 
 *' Pardon ! Madame's dresses air cut, but dey cannot be 
 feenish. I hope — I am zure — Madame vill be good enough 
 to vait a verra few days, or to let me sen dem apres 
 Madame!" Not at all, Madame Le Brun. It is now 
 almost eleven o'clock, and I give you forty-eight hours. 
 In forty-eight hours to the minute if my dresses are not 
 
176 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 done and in their boxes in this room, all ready to take 
 away, I leave them on your hands. " Imposseeble, Mad- 
 ame — imposseeble! Madame may call, mais," shrugging 
 her shoulders, *'she will not fine her dresses! " To the 
 minute I called as I said I would, and there sure enough 
 they were — actually in their boxes ! All the same I took 
 them out and looked them all over in Le Brun's presence, 
 for I was determined to make sure they were exactly what 
 I bargained for. These French women cheat awfully, you 
 know, if they think you're not up to 'em ! So I came off 
 with flying colors, and Mrs. Barber was perfectly hopping 
 when I told her, for she wanted to sail with us, and Le 
 Brun has kept her hanging on three weeks for two dresses, 
 and I got my four lovely ones all made and boxed in 
 practically two days — for I don't believe one thread of 
 them had been touched ! ' ' 
 
 **She probably made her work- women sit up day and 
 night for the forty-eight hours to do them," commented 
 Mr. Howe, who had not enjoyed paying for them. 
 
 *'Very likely," said Fanny, indifferently, ''but that's 
 their lookout ! Mine was to get my dresses, and I did I 
 Say, mother, don't you think this white one is sweet — 
 finished with the pale Roman sash and bows?" 
 
 ** Per-{^c\\y elegant 1 " prolonged Mrs. Dexter, raptur- 
 ously — " ^^-quisite ! " 
 
 **/ almost hate to see it!" exclaimed Mr. Howe. 
 ** Nothing I could say would turn Fanny from spending 
 one of our two pitiful days in Rome in hunting those rags, 
 when she could have got them just as well in Paris, of 
 course. ' * 
 
 '*Not so cheap, Davy," said Fanny, reprovingly. 
 
 ** What's a few francs more or less when you're spend- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 177 
 
 ing fifteen or twenty dollars a day each, in travelling and 
 hotels and cabs? Those sculptures in the Vatican — 
 there's nothing approaching them in the whole world. 
 They took my breath away. You can't conceive what 
 sculpture is until you see them, and Fanny wouldn't go 
 near them — not even for half an hour." 
 
 ''The sculpture' 11 keep," said Fanny, laughing at his 
 disgust — ''I'll see 'em next time! Besides, I don't be- 
 lieve they are much ahead of those in the Louvre. I saw 
 those, and I didn't care much for 'em ! Any way, Rome 
 doesn't compare with Paris ! I really don't see why peo- 
 ple make such a time over it ! 'Tisn't half what it's 
 cracked-up to be. / think it's rather of a shabby, mean 
 looking old place ! The sights I did see disappointed me 
 dreadfully. Judging from the Coliseum and the Pantheon, 
 the Romans didn't have much of an idea what a handsome 
 building was, I should say. As for the Forum, it's a per- 
 fect fraud. A few old pillars standing about, and a bat- 
 tered old arch ! Even St. Peter's didn't look so very 
 large to me, if it is the biggest church in the world. If 
 your old Vatican you rave over so was no better than the 
 rest, I spent my time much better over my dear scarfs and 
 my lovely ram's-head breast-pin and beetle cuff- buttons. 
 Castellani asked such a price for his that I rummaged 
 about till I found some nearly as pretty for about half. ' ' 
 
 Returning from the continent with full trunks and 
 empty heads — what typical New York women were Julia 
 and Fanny Dexter, and how perfectly the now remorse- 
 lessly ugly metropolis which New York women are so 
 proud to call their home, has come to express their own 
 strange and most un-American lack of culture ! It is not 
 that they love clothes too much. It is that they do not 
 
178 ATE IV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 love other things enough. Within their homes, many of 
 them, like the alluring Dexter daughters, are living, 
 breathing Works of Art — so perfectly have they mastered 
 the difficult and subtle Art of Dress. But there their cul- " 
 ture of the Beautiful stops, and with theirs, apparently, 
 that of their husbands. 
 
 Of course a beautiful woman beautifully dressed is the 
 most beautiful thing in the world — and I have often won- 
 dered whether it is because the natural craving for the 
 Beautiful is continually appeased for New York men by 
 the costume-fascinations of their wives and daughters, that 
 they are so extraordinarily indifferent to the frightful aes- 
 thetic negations of the town they are content, and the rest 
 of us are forced, to dwell in ? Or is it that whenever they 
 get frantic to see something not deadly *' uninteresting " — 
 (we thank thee, Matthew Arnold, for stamping America 
 as man makes it, with that most expressive word !) — they 
 can jump into a steamer and satisfy their longings on the 
 other side ? 
 
 A few years ago a gifted sculptor said to me one evening 
 in New York: "I'm disgusted — I'm sick — heart-sick 
 over this country ! In Lafayette Place they are pulling 
 down an old church, and the contractor who bought the 
 materials offered to give any one who would take them 
 away the fluted pillars of the Greek porch — great ,i;raniLe 
 monoliths eighteen feet high, every one of them ! The city 
 might have hauled them up to Central Park and grouped 
 them in any fashion, anywhere, and they would have been 
 lovely and a joy forever ; — and because no one would save 
 them, the contractor is breaking them to pieces ! " 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 A BROKEN HEART. 
 
 I SUPPOSE that sooner or later to every adult human 
 heart the worst thing happens that can happen, and to 
 each one of us that dread event, whatever it may be, is 
 the real scythe of Time that mows us down. After that, 
 though we may linger long, in reality we are slowly, sure- 
 ly, dying all the while. 
 
 Julia Calvert's happiness in her exquisite baby proved 
 but a brief seraphic dream with a ghastly awakening. 
 The lovely infant, which belonged to that angehcal host of 
 children who are popularly said to be "too good to live," 
 and who probably are " taken away from the evil to 
 come," after about two years, for the mother, of passion- 
 ate fascination and of joy, developed symptoms of water 
 on the brain. To the undisciplined woman was meted 
 out nearly three weeks of awful apprehension and sus- 
 pense, of which the intolerable ending was a last faint 
 baby breath fluttering down into the silence of the grave. 
 
 That this child should be taken from her was to Julia 
 so simply incedible, that she would not believe such a 
 thing could be until she saw the little sufferer composed 
 into marble stillness before her. The frantic mother had 
 felt that some change must happen — some miracle must be 
 worked to save her idol; and when death proved pitiless 
 and she had to lay her heart's only darling in the unre- 
 
i8o NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 turning ground, she did not care how soon they laid her- 
 self there too. Before her parbxysms of grief Calvert was 
 powerless and dismayed. ''Am I nothing — is Clara — are 
 we then nothing to you, Julia ? " he appealed to her in one 
 of them. 
 
 "O Frank, don't ask me! Don't talk to me! You 
 can't conceive of such love as mine for Flora. I don't 
 know who is and who isn't in the world now. Everything 
 is blackness of darkness. ' ' 
 
 Julia never attempted to be consoled. She did not 
 want to be consoled. That, to her narrow conception, 
 would have been unfaithfulness to her angel Flora. She 
 did not reflect, in her earth-bound mind, that, dear as 
 Flora was to her, and wild with interest and curiosity as 
 she had been to know into what sort of woman the win- 
 some creature would grow, even so was she herself precious 
 to her Creator, and that even as she was grieving over the 
 untimely blight of the rare dawning qualities of her treas- 
 ure, so doubtless was her Father in Heaven deploring the 
 far worse, because self-imposed blight, of all her own. 
 
 Outside of herself she perceived nothing. She was not 
 only the centre of her own universe. She was its circum- 
 ference as well. Her personal woe spread far beyond the 
 stars and blotted both them and their Maker out. After 
 her baby's departure she took no interest in anything. 
 Though now perfectly sure that her husband indulged in 
 alien loves in Paris, she cared nothing about it. Indeed 
 she was rather glad that his warmth and caresses were sen- 
 sibly diminished, for so she was spared the effort of trying 
 not to repulse them. 
 
 Her other child was a pretty, healthy little thing, full 
 of talent and questioning, who only wanted occupation 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. l8l 
 
 for her inexhaustible energy to make her happy and con- 
 tented all day long. But her mother never took the least 
 trouble about her. It would have broken Froebel's heart 
 to hear Clara fret and cry for long minutes, while Julia sat 
 reading a novel or talking to a friend, until at last she 
 would rouse herself to say, ''What does ail you, Clara? 
 Naughty child!" — and to hear the little one's tearful 
 answer, ''I want somfin to do." ''Well,yf«^/ something 
 to do then ! You mustn't be so cross ! " — and that would 
 be the end of it. 
 
 Thus Julia Calvert, wrapped in her own sensations, 
 utterly failed to see that a brilliant, noble-hearted man, 
 and a splendid little girl, both of whom she might have 
 influenced to all happiness and good, were so living at her 
 side that she was daily driving them farther and farther 
 away from, instead of leading them toward, the Kingdom 
 of Heaven. 
 
 Before she had laid aside her mourning for little Flora, 
 the Civil War broke out. Her father, Mr. Dexter, had 
 always been a Democrat, for the simple reason that in his 
 da}' the Democratic party had nearly always been the 
 party in power. Like most men, he gravitated irresistibly 
 to the strongest side, and like most wonien, Julia's poli- 
 tics were her father's. 
 
 Frank Calvert was a Democrat, too, but with much 
 more definite ideas on the subject than his little wife. As 
 belonging to the importing and selling class, the low ' ' tar- 
 iff for revenue only " of the political inheritors of Jefferson 
 were much more to his interest than the high protective 
 duties of the Whigs. Consequently he opposed the Whigs 
 '• on principle." Moreover, he approved of the let-alone 
 policy of the Democratic party toward the slavery ques- 
 
152 NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 tion, for like all the men of the world of his day, he 
 thought the then southern labor system quite good enough 
 for " niggers." 
 
 ''It's not an affair for Congress to meddle with at all ! " 
 cried he. " Let each State decide it when it comes into the 
 Union, as they did prior to this damned Abolition. The 
 constitution recognizes slaves as property, and what is 
 their "property" Southerners have just as much right to 
 take with them into the Territories as Northerners have to 
 take their property there. There's no sense nor justice in 
 any other view, and if the South is mad because this new- 
 fangled party called ''Republican" is organized to keep 
 slave-owners out of the Territories that they've got just as 
 much right to as we have — by George ! I don' t wonder ! 
 The Territories are the common right of every citizen of 
 the United States who wants to emigrate into them. Do you 
 suppose Virginia would ever have given up that enormous 
 piece of her land-grant that made those four great States 
 of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky, if she'd supposed 
 her people were to be kept from settling beyond the Mis- 
 sissippi if they wanted to ? There was never such a free 
 gift of territory to a government since the world began, 
 as Virginia gave the Union out of pure generosity ! And 
 is the North going to pay her back by not letting her 
 citizens take their slaves with them in case they want to 
 go West?" 
 
 Julia listened, and thought it was all reasonable enough. 
 
 But when, to the amazement of Northern Democrats, 
 several Southern States actually seceded from the Union, 
 and not only so, South Carolina attacked and took a 
 United'States fort in Charleston harbor — every considera- 
 tion of what was or was not " constitutional " in the pre- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 183 
 
 ceding acts of the two sections, shrivelled and disappeared 
 like parchment in the flame of fury that swept over the 
 North at this blow against what the supreme efforts of 
 Washington and his co-workers to secure, had made in 
 American eyes the very " Palladium " of American Lib- 
 erty — the Federal Union. 
 
 Mr. Dexter, as was to be expected, turned with the tide, 
 and savagely hoped that '' enough Southern blood to float 
 a navy would be shed to paV for Sumter ; " and Julia, with 
 her intense and characteristic loyalty to whatever was her 
 own, felt with her father, and with her own section. 
 
 Like hosts of others, who, immediately decided that it 
 was the peculiar depravity engendered by the '' peculiar 
 institution" which had made such an unnatural crime as 
 *' rebellion" against their "lawful" government possible, 
 Julia became the most bigoted of Republicans, the most 
 ardent of Northerners, and the most contemptuous and 
 pitiless of feminine foes of the Seceders. 
 
 Calvert still doggedly maintained his previous opinions, 
 and if anything could further have alienated the ill-yoked 
 pair, it would have been his indifference to Union victo- 
 ries, his anger and disgust at one "unconstitutional" act 
 of the Republican administration after another — and, per 
 contra, her incessant stream of sarcasm and resentment 
 against "rebels,"" traitors" and "copperheads," and her 
 intense triumph and elation at every Union success. 
 
 She heard one day that the husband of a former friend 
 of hers who lived in the South had joined the Confederate 
 army. " I hope they'll have a bomb-shell in the middle 
 of their breakfast table some fine morning ! " cried Julia. 
 
 ^' Julia/'' exclaimed her husband, sternly — "and you 
 pretend to be a ' Christian ! ' You want your friend to 
 
1 84 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 see her boy's head blown off, I suppose; or perhaps you'd 
 prefer her own limbs shattered ! Is that what you call 
 loving and forgiving your enemies ? ' ' 
 
 ** They're not my enemies," said Julia, unabashed. 
 ** They're the enemies of my country." 
 
 **If you were down there, you'd think and act just as 
 they do. They've been brought up to believe each of 
 their own States sovereign. You've been brought up to 
 believe the Union sovereign. . It's all a matter of which 
 side of the line people are on. One's just as bad as the 
 other. ' ' 
 
 '' One isn't ! They're the ones to blame ! They — be- 
 — gan — this — war, Frank Calvert! You can't deny that. 
 They brought it on themselves." 
 
 **Yes, after the North had been sticking pins and 
 needles into 'em for a generation until they were about 
 crazy ! — writing books and editing newspapers and hold- 
 ing meetings up here to hold them up to the scorn of the 
 civilized world, and encouraging their slave property to 
 run away. Why, John Brown even tried to make their 
 slaves rise in insurrection against them ! Perhaps you 
 don't know what a slave insurrection means, Mrs. Calvert? 
 — though you would if you would read about San Do- 
 mingo, — merely white women outraged by black fiends 
 and white babies stuck on bayonets ! I tell you, Julia, 
 John Brown fired the first shot of this war, and when the 
 North elected Lincoln, a purely sectional candidate, and 
 a man pledged to keep slavery out of the Territories, no 
 wonder the South felt that equal rights between the sec- 
 tions were over. So they were. ' ' 
 
 '' They had no business to want to spread such a wicked 
 system in the Territories," declared Julia. <'The Abo- 
 
NEW YORK; A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 1 85 
 
 litionists were right when they said that * Slavery is the 
 sum of all villainies.' The rebels trying to overthrow 
 such a blessed government as ours for the sake of slavery 
 proves it. Wretches ! " 
 
 * ' Those slaves are just as well off as any laboring 
 classes," retorted Calvert; " in fact, better off than most. 
 They've plenty to eat and drink, they're not very hard 
 worked, and they're fat and shining — ' happy as a clam * 
 most of the time — dancing and singing and jolly, and 
 when they're sick they're taken care of I wish you could 
 see in contrast the peasants and the artisans in the south of 
 France, as I have — living on black bread and carrot broth 
 — poor devils ! — and boiled meat about once a month ! " 
 
 ''Slavery's a horrid system," insisted Julia; "slave 
 masters have no morals. The pretty mulatto girls and 
 quadroons are all nothing but their mistresses, they say." 
 
 " Slave masters have as much morals as other rich men. 
 Pretty girls of all working classes generally go more or less 
 to the bad — can 'most always be bought. Why, it's a 
 regular family saying in France if a working-girl has a 
 pretty face — ' E lie f era fortune.' " 
 
 ''Yes, in your beloved France, I don't doubt! But I 
 don't believe the North is as bad as that. And besides, 
 look how they sell families apart — tear mothers from their 
 children ! Outrageous ! ' ' 
 
 " I guess the mothers are pretty often glad to get rid of 
 'em ! I know Southern men have told me that nigger 
 husbands and wives often ask to be sold apart. I tell you, 
 Jule, it's all bosh to credit the lower classes with all the 
 fine-spun feelings and sentiments of the upper classes. 
 And besides, don't white parents have to part from their 
 children when necessity requires? Look at me! Didn't 
 
1 86 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 I leave my mother when I ,was a shaver of fourteen and 
 come to New York to earn my living? " 
 
 ''Well, I hope the war will never end while there is a 
 single slave ! The fact that no slave woman can be a law- 
 ful wife is enough for me. How those Southern women 
 can pretend, even, to any self-respect and tolerate what 
 they do, I can't conceive." 
 
 '' Probably in the same way that you can call down ven- 
 geance on them and pretend to be a Christian," sneered 
 her husband. '' For my part, I think ' the pot better not 
 call the kettle black.' " 
 
 In common with most Northern women, Julia was en- 
 thusiastic over that first downward step in American chiv- 
 alry and rev^erence toward the weaker sex, of which so 
 many have now been taken that there are not many more 
 to take, — the infamous ''General Order No. 28." of 
 General Butler against the New Orleans women. 
 
 At the time it happened she and Calvert had one of 
 their hot disputes over it. 
 
 "I am surprised that ym, Julia! " exclaimed her hus- 
 band, "with your grand views about the equal value of 
 women with men — don't see what you admit in applaud- 
 ing this dastardly act of a militia bully — for no trained 
 soldier could dream of dragging his flag in such filth ! If 
 a rebel woman insults our troops or our flag, let her be 
 punished as a rebel man would be, — nothing more — noth- 
 ing less. But you, the refined and fastidious Julia Calvert, 
 instead of bemg indignant at this vile outrage against your 
 sex, are actually glorying that Butler has proclaimed to his 
 soldiers that they may regard such a woman as a woman of 
 the town and treat her accordingly ! ' ' 
 
 "I don't care!" cried Julia; ''anything is good 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 187 
 
 enough for rebel women ! How dare they spit on the 
 United States flag? Now let 'em squirm in a strong 
 man's hand 1 Ha, ha ! They've got just what they 
 deserve, / say ! General Butler's the right man in the 
 right place, and the whole North thinks so ! " 
 
 ''/don't think so!" returned Calvert; ''/think he 
 ought to be drummed out of the service and out of the 
 society of decent men as a national disgrace ! ' ' 
 
 "Oh, you!'' returned Julia, in lofty contempt; "of 
 course you despise anybody who fights for the Union. All 
 copperheads do ! " 
 
 "Well, my girl," flamed Calvert, with revengeful eyes 
 — "hitherto in America a woman was something whose 
 sex protected her; but if you gentle ladies don't want 
 it so any longer — all right I Instead of holding you 
 up over our heads, perhaps we'll find it quite as easy as 
 your "strong" General Butler, to push you to the wall 
 — or even worse — whenever we have a mind to / — Just put 
 that into your pipe and smoke it ! " and he stalked wrath- 
 fully away, leaving Julia to grind her teeth and think how 
 she hated him. 
 
 And so, as in ten thousands of other homes in both sec- 
 tions, the great national struggle was waged in miniature 
 ever}' time the subject came up, and in this case with sim- 
 ilar alienating results, until the pair grew so deadly cold to 
 each other that the final manifestation of it shocked even 
 themselves. 
 
 On one of Calvert's return voyages, a long and terrific 
 storm disabled and delayed the steamer on which he 
 was. On landing, Calvert first reported, as usual, to 
 his employer, and at the end of a fatiguing day hastened 
 home with an overflowing heart that after his perils and 
 
1 88 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 terrors longed for a warm and tender welcome from those 
 he loved. As it happened,^ Mrs. Dexter and Fanny were 
 in the drawing-room with Julia and little Clara and also a 
 young lady friend who was staying there. 
 
 Clara rushed impetuously into her father's arms, but 
 Julia rose languidly, and kissing him slightly, exclaimed — 
 ''Well — I didn't know but what you had gone to the 
 bottom ! " 
 
 ''Rather hoped I had, didn't you?" returned he, 
 laughing, though he was cruelly hurt. " No, we didn't 
 quite get there, though we tried our best. But we had an 
 awful time! " 
 
 ' ' Oh, do tell us about it ! " exclaimed the visiting ladies. 
 
 He began a thrilling recital of the storm and of their 
 danger, and the others were listening breathlessly, when 
 Julia broke in with : — 
 
 "By the way, Frank, did you remember to get me in 
 Paris the black grenadine I wrote about ? ' ' 
 
 For a moment Calvert seemed dazed, then rising, an- 
 swered crisply, " I am happy to say, Mrs. Calvert, that I 
 completely forgot it ! " and with a transformed and freez- 
 ing look he took his valise and went up stairs. 
 
 " Oh, Julia ! " cried the dismayed women, as his ascend- 
 ing step grew fainter, "how could you, when you know 
 how sensitive he is ! You've hurt his feelings dreadfully." 
 
 " How could I suppose he would fly out at a little thing 
 like that?" retorted Julia, pettishly. "It just came into 
 my head and I thought I'd ask about it before it slipped 
 my mind, as my dressmaker has been waiting three days 
 for the goods. Supposing the steamer would be on time, 
 I engaged her to make it this week." 
 
 Calvert did not go to his wife's room, but to the uppe 
 
JV£IV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 189 
 
 « 
 
 floor, where he locked himself in and stared out of the 
 window until dinner-time. He would not even admit 
 Clara. Alas, in his danger on that awful ocean he had 
 made so many resolves, and now in his bitterness they 
 were so contemptuously dispersed ! 
 
 On reflection, Julia was ashamed enough of her brutal- 
 ity to try after dinner to apologize for it. But Calvert cut 
 her short with — " Don't be a hypocrite, Julia ! A woman 
 who could regret such things couldn't do them. A super- 
 fluous husband — that's about it. No one could mistake 
 such a reception." 
 
 ''No, no, Frank!" cried Julia, bursting into tears; 
 ''but — but — " sobbing convulsively, "since baby died — 
 my heart is a stone, — and — and — I can't melt it back ! 1 
 ought to die," continued she, wildly, "and leave you to 
 get some one else to make you happy ! ' ' 
 
 Her husband made no movement to comfort her. He 
 felt no impulse to do so. He simply looked at her a mo- 
 ment, then ejaculating " God help us ! " he left the room. 
 His next voyage was to be his last, for he was going into 
 business for himself, and he had been wondering how he 
 was even to keep up appearances for a wife who apparently 
 had not one throb of feeling for him — who in fact prob- 
 ably had an aversion to him ! 
 
 The sequel will show what might have resulted to the 
 strong and strenuous Calvert and to his country, had the 
 wife of his youth been as womanly as she was feminine. 
 
 As it was — at only thirty-two years old, our poor Julia 
 was incapable of knowing or caring what she did to her 
 husband or to anybody. Her death of the heart after 
 Mora's death had spread, as it always does, to the citadel 
 of physical life as well, and she had lapsed into that weak- 
 
icio JV£W YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 1 
 ness of body and numbness of spirit to which we mortals 
 yield when hope is gone aad we are ready for the de- 
 stroyer. Even her country, passionately as she gave to it 
 the last of earthly feeling that she had, could not rouse her 
 to any effort. If she could have interested herself in the 
 work that other women everywhere were doing for the sol- 
 diers, she might have been saved. But of this her life- 
 long indolence and selfishness prevented her from even 
 thinking. 
 
 When, therefore, Calvert returned from his final three 
 months' absence, he was shocked to find his wife in a 
 hopeless and rapid decline. God was indeed ''helping" 
 him in the only way he could be helped, for his perverse 
 but lovely Julia was to perish, and Mrs. Dexter was to 
 know the greatest sorrow of which her cold and narrow 
 affections were capable. The disease whose willing victim 
 her daughter was, did its work swiftly but not ruthlessl} . 
 Picture as she had been in health, Julia was a picture in 
 sickness, a statue in death, and from the first, Calvert 
 spared nothing that could give her any, even the least, 
 comfort or ease. Her mother hung over her through it 
 all, and had the satisfaction of telling her Belmont friends 
 in her usual fictionary style, that ''Julia was laid out in 
 her wedding-dress, only her neck and arms were covered 
 with a profusion of ' real ' lace ! Mr. Calvert would 
 have it so, though it did seem extravagant, and you can't 
 imagine how perfectly ^jc-quisite she looked ! I wish you 
 could have seen the flowers ! They were /^r-fectly mag- 
 nificent ! Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Price, and Mr. and Mrs. 
 Morton, who are immensely rich, sent the most ^/-egant 
 crosses, and other friends sent wreaths and bouquets. The 
 house was just filled with them-a-h ! " 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 191 
 
 At Mrs. Dexter' s desire, Mr. Calvert had the wreath 
 that he himself had ordered for the coffin-lid, '^ preserved," 
 as it is called, and framed in a funereal black walnut oval 
 under glass. This melancholy souvenir of the vanished 
 Julia hung in Mrs. Dexter' s bed-room so long as she kept 
 house in Belmont, and the only present she was ever 
 known to make was the eventual gift of the dismal object 
 to a youth for whom Julia had stood sponsor ! 
 
 Before her death Julia did have one solicitude. She 
 earnestly requested that Clara should never be sent to a 
 boarding-school. 
 
 Throughout his wife's illness Calvert was all anxious 
 tenderness, and she responded by never being easy when 
 he was out of the room. During his business hours she 
 enquired the time continually, and when he was with 
 her, her eyes followed him with softness and content — her 
 fragile hand often went out to his — her weary head rested 
 often on his strong and willing breast. 
 
 As after a drenching and dreary day a pale and doubt- 
 ful sun will sometimes throw a parting gleam over a tear- 
 ful world — so at the end of this unhappy union, a few rays 
 from that Orb of Love which should have made it all joy- 
 ous, gilded its pathetic close. Julia's sufferings from her 
 cruel disease were intense. She bore them patiently, and 
 may what they and all her trials taught her appear in an- 
 other life ! Her epitaph for this one should have been — 
 * ' Une existence manquee / ' ' 
 
CHAPTER XXIL 
 
 FACILIS DESCENSUS. 
 
 Josephine's engagement broken off, and Julia dead. 
 Here were two heavy misfortunes for Mrs. Dexter' s elastic 
 spirit ; but between the two had befallen her a worse one 
 yet, for her daughter Fanny had been obliged to give up 
 housekeeping ! 
 
 The self-denying and hard-working Howe had not many 
 years enjoyed that " home of his own " which is the goal 
 of most men's exertions, when he found that the generous 
 expenses of his growing family and of his wife's toilet de- 
 manded a greater portion of his income than he felt to be 
 prudent. He fain would have had a larger one that he 
 might make larger savings for the future benefit of those 
 dear to him, and he watched eagerly for an opening in 
 which he might, as the phrase goes, ''make some 
 money." 
 
 At last a tempting opportunity offered for investing in 
 a mine whose eventual value was certain and whose 
 present condition was represented to him as such, that if 
 fertilized by just such a capital as his own, an immediate 
 harvest of profit would be the result. After the purchase 
 was made, he found that a much larger sum would be re- 
 quired to put the mine in working order than he had sup- 
 posed. He did not possess it, but as hitherto he had 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 193 
 
 always been prospered, he felt secure of paying the money 
 back in a few years ; and so he ventured to borrow it. 
 
 It was a piece of rashness of which in his bachelor days 
 he would not have been capable, but a cautious person 
 may insensibly become nearly the reverse by living with a 
 reckless one — for recklessness Fanny's dash and confi- 
 dence in life might well be called. The deed had been 
 done only a few months, when the country was convulsed 
 and commerce distressed by the tremendous controversies 
 of the Presidential campaign which preceded the Civil 
 War. The business of Mr. Howe's firm was in fancy arti- 
 cles, imported luxuries and superfluities of every descrip- 
 tion. Owing to the uncertainty, the demand for these 
 largely suspended, and though the house itself stood erect 
 through the coming troubles, its junior member soon found 
 himself in fearful embarrassment. In anguish he told his 
 gay and pretty wife of still under thirty, though she 
 had been often a mother, that their home must be given 
 up or transplanted to a suburb, their expenses reduced 
 in every possible way, that she must accept temporarily 
 an allowance for her dress, and that pleasures of every 
 kind must be as much as possible curtailed. 
 
 Fanny heard the news without much dismay She was 
 naturally a philosopher, and generally took the inevitable 
 coolly. To her husband's great reJef she spared him 
 either reproach or criticism, decided for boarding as 
 against reduced housekeeping, and tranquilly transferred 
 herself and her family from the roomy enjoyment of a 
 home, into the cramped limitations of a hotel-suite of 
 three bed-rooms and a parlor. The hotel was a large and 
 favorite one in Brooklyn, near a ferry, and as she gave 
 Jeannette the dark room of the suite, and organized with 
 
194 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 strict method the family belqngings into such drawers and 
 closets as were available, she did not find herself greatly 
 inconvenienced in her narrow quarters. 
 
 In her new life Mrs. Howe had so much time on her 
 hands that she might have tried to save her husband's 
 money by making her own or her children's clothes, as 
 her own mother, and his also, used to do ; but she never 
 could bear plain sewing. She would sit and watch a seam- 
 stress with a dragon eye, and plan her work for her in the 
 most thorough manner ; Miss Jeannette, too, would co- 
 operate on the sewing machine for hours, but Fann\ never 
 helped them. She did a little mending, and perpetrated 
 endless trifles in Berlin wool, even of these ihvays buy- 
 ing patterns already worked and only filling them in ; she 
 skimmed the morning paper and read novels, arranged her 
 drawers, ripped a piece of lace off of one thing to have it 
 sewed on another, went often over to Julia's while the lat- 
 ter still lived, and above all, made and kept endless 
 appointments with her bosom friend, Mrs. Belnap — a 
 little widow of her own age, who had just money enough 
 to live on, and who was as frivolous and as willing to take 
 a risk with pleasure attached, as Fanny herself. 
 
 Mrs. Belnap was pretty, and being marriageable, had 
 the right to as many admirers of the opposite sex as her 
 charms could command, and if Mrs. Howe happened to 
 be with her when she met one of them, the latter simply 
 had the benefit of it and no harm was done. Thus they 
 furnished each the propriety for the other, and as they 
 were almost inseparable, they enjoyed various rather haz- 
 ardous diversions together, and fancied that they saved 
 their reputations at the same time. 
 
 To be joined in their Broadway stroll by a "gentle- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 1 95 
 
 man friend," to be invited by him to a lunch or an ice- 
 cream at a quiet restaurant, to finish the afternoon at a 
 Philharmonic rehearsal or a theatre matinee, a picture gal- 
 lery or even by a drive, the while poor unconscious Howe 
 was straining every nerve and working himself to a shadow 
 at his business, were not impossible occurrences ; and as 
 they had once belonged to the same class of society as the 
 head clerks in the great retail establishments, they had 
 quite a circle of speaking acquaintance with whom to laugh 
 and chat even on their shopping rounds. 
 
 Fanny's early experience with Harvey Thayer, however, 
 had given her an unfortunate taste for the genuine exquis- 
 ite which no number of admirers in her own sphere could 
 satisfy. No clerk, no fledgling broker or lawyer of her 
 acquaintance bore the high-bred, haughty and fastidious 
 air that may stamp the gilded youth of any opulent and 
 exclusive society. As she met them in the street or sat 
 opposite to them in the Madison and Fifth Avenue stages 
 (such men used to ride in those stages then), she would 
 wish ardently that such creatures belonged to her world 
 or she to theirs. Moreover, the men of her world always 
 had so much to do — nor could they by any means afford 
 amusements '' regardless of expense." In spite of the im- 
 mense advance she had made over her contemporaries in 
 Belmont, life did not seem to yield to Fanny all it ought. 
 Even yet, she had but half-way scaled the social preci- 
 pice. The top — the real plateau of Joy and Freedom — 
 was still far above her in the blue ! 
 
 Easily, therefore, as "the little housekeeper" had ac- 
 commodated herself to her changed circumstances, they 
 were none the less an incalculable misfortune for her. So 
 light-minded a woman had a special need of the anchorage 
 
196 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 of a household — so energetic an one a special need for ita 
 responsibilities. As I have ^aid, Fanny's mind had beer 
 on her housekeeping all the time. Her whole establish- 
 ment interested her. From the servants' rooms, which 
 she insisted should be kept neat as wax, to the coal -bins, 
 she frequently inspected it all. Her hospitalities, her 
 days for receiving and for paying calls, the' church '' Aid 
 Society" of which she was an active and efficient 
 member — while even all these, such was her executive 
 ability, left her plenty of time for lounging and for gad- 
 ding over to Julia's or down Broadway, still they quite 
 comfortably occupied her busy little brain and made hei 
 feel herself more or less a real member of established so- 
 ciety—a personage with a definite role to play of recog- 
 nized character and importance. To be deprived of it all 
 at one stroke and set down in a strange neighboring city 
 to board, — it was indeed a dangerous experiment ! Mr. 
 Howe would far have preferred the smallest cottage in an 
 inconvenient suburb; it was inexpressible misery to him to 
 give up his home. But living at a " hotel,"' even in 
 Brooklyn, sounded better — seemed to the Dexter mind less 
 of a " come-down " — than the other alternative ; and the 
 master of the family was so humiliated by the result oi 
 his mistake — it was so terrible to him to have deprivec 
 his wife of the dear realm he had so gladly and proudly 
 given her, that he let her and her mother decide things tc 
 suit themselves. The hidden agonies, the unbreathed tor 
 tures of the bread-winners in the competitions and ship 
 wrecks of the business world — who can measure ! 
 
 While Julia lived, Fanny had some approach to a men 
 tor, for the former never hesitated to express in her hear 
 ing her high disgust and disapproval of married flirtations 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 19^ 
 
 moreover, her house was a safe and almost daily goal for 
 Fanny's idle but restless little feet. The sisters, though 
 so unlike, admired and were always fond of each other. 
 Fanny shared the family reverence for the '' intellectual " 
 Julia, while Julia delighted in Fanny's cheerfulness and 
 go, and in her trenchant so-called common-sense. But 
 immediately after his wife's untimely death, Calvert gave 
 up his home, placed Clara in Mrs. Dexter' s care, and (to 
 the latter' s infinite joy) paid their board at the same hotel 
 with the Howes, — all of which reduced Fanny to Mrs. Bel- 
 nap's two rooms in a boarding-house as her only familiaj 
 resort in the beloved city. 
 
 ** Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do,'' 
 and to no class is more mischief possible than to th( 
 large class of American city women whose husbands" 
 earnings and indulgence keep them as Mr. Howe kep< 
 Fanny— entirely free from the necessity of either physical 
 or mental exertion, with no particular place in society, 
 and with the absolute liberty of coming and going unsus- 
 pected, unwatched and unquestioned that belongs to oui 
 magnanimous American customs. It is a class unique in 
 the history of the world — as phenomenal in the hitherto 
 fixity of feminine conditions, as are the floating islands of 
 the Mexican lake compared with the everlasting hills of 
 the shores about them ! Fanny had long ago caught the 
 best New York cachet in dress, and so well understood the 
 colors that became her, that she was a target for every 
 passing eye. Her blithe temperament and good health 
 had preserved her youthful bloom and shapeliness in spite 
 of her frequent motherhood, and the perennial freshness 
 of her get-up left nothing to be desired. Her toilet was 
 as intense a pleasure to her as is his picture to an artist. 
 
198 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 She never left her mirror until she had produced the de- 
 sired effect — and in man or \Voman there is hardly a 
 greater external charm than to look, as Fanny always did, 
 "as if just out of a band-box." 
 
 Julia had been dead some little time, and in her sister's 
 shifting mind her maxims and harangues were losing their 
 hold. Worse still, David Howe had not risen in his wife's 
 estimation, for though the ''cruel war was over," and 
 many people had come out of it '' rich beyond the dreams 
 of avarice," that good man and his family were still 
 domiciled — were in the fifth year of their residence at the 
 Brooklyn hotel. American-fashion, he kept his business 
 affairs so wholly to himself that Fanny was able to judge 
 very little about them ; but she only felt the more that if 
 she had been the financial head of the married partner- 
 ship, either she would never have got into trouble at all, 
 or she would have recovered the family fortunes long ago. 
 
 *' What on earth," so she inwardly fretted, ''ever pos- 
 sessed David Howe to invest in a mine ? He knew 
 nothing about mining! Why wasn't he content with the 
 good solid wholesale business he had grown up with, and 
 which kept us all so comfortable and happy ? He ought to 
 have known he wasn't the kind to speculate ! — Strange that 
 men will rather run the risk of ruining their families than 
 let well enough alone, etc., etc." 
 
 Thus in spite of the outer frippery of her life, in the 
 nethermost depth of Fanny Howe's heart a sombre tragedy 
 was now going on. She wanted, oh, she wanted back her 
 house — her home — her place — in New York, and she saw 
 no prospect of getting it. Her eager executive energies, 
 with their daily nothing-to-do that she cared to do, often 
 bled afresh like so many chopped-off, living things. She 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 199 
 
 had supposed her Brooklyn exile would last but a year or 
 two, as Julia's had, and here she was suffering it still — 
 was still cooped up in a hotel suite with six children! 
 At times she felt half-frantic. Her sensitive, scrupu- 
 lous husband was contrasting dangerously in her mind 
 with the bolder, stronger type which will have success. 
 And besides, David never consulted her, never confided in 
 her. In business matters he had always kept her in the 
 dark, like a child. — In her own eyes this able woman 
 decidedly had her deep conjugal wrongs ! 
 
 One perfect autumn day she took a Broadway stage to 
 make a wedding-call up town. She was in the amiable 
 exhilaration and bland repose of a new and particularly 
 stunning autumn costume, and nearly all the long way 
 from the ferry, a fashionably dressed young man, very 
 dark, of un-American aspect, and with an expression of 
 complete self-will, sat opposite her. Fanny saw at once 
 that he was one of her longed-for Inaccessibles, and by the 
 time the journey was half over, she felt that for some 
 occult reason he was especially attractive to herself. As 
 she left the stage he perceived that perhaps unawares, per- 
 haps purposely, she had dropped her card-case. Picking 
 it up, he let himself out and turned into the side street 
 which she had taken. She was already going up the steps 
 of a house close by, when he ran lightly up after her — her 
 perfumes floating down to greet him — and lifting his hat, 
 he held out the dainty trifle: ''I beg your pardon, 
 Madam, but I believe you dropped this in the stage just 
 now. ' ' 
 
 " Oh !--did I ? — In another minute I should have 
 missed it very much, as I have come here to make a cere- 
 monious call. Thank you extremely ! " smiling and color- 
 
200 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 ing and bending expressive eyes upon him as she took it. 
 (The English ** Thanks very much" had not yet crossed 
 the Atlantic.) 
 
 '^But surely you will give me a card out of it as a 
 souvenir?" said he, half reproachfully. She appeared to 
 hesitate. "■ At least let me offer you one of mine ? " again 
 lifting his hat as he handed one to her. 
 
 She read it — " Henry Ward Beveridge,'' and recognized 
 the surname as one prominent in New York for wealth and 
 position. 
 
 ' ' Since you have so kindly prevented my losing all my 
 cards, I suppose you have almost a right to one,"" granted 
 she in her very sweetest manner, while smilingly holding 
 out the card-case. 
 
 ''That's right! " said he, encouragingly, as he helped 
 himself; then reading aloud — " 'Mrs. David Hcnue, Mon- 
 tague House, Brooklyfif' " — with the utmost assurance he 
 looked straight at her with his olive-grey eyes, and added, 
 — '' and when may I call on Mrs. Howe? " 
 
 ' ' ' Call ' ? — Mr. — 'Beveridge ' — is it ? " questioned 
 Fanny, examining his card again ; '* 1 — I — you know I do 
 not know you." 
 
 ' ' Not when we have exchanged cards ? ' ' 
 
 ''I'm afraid Mr. Howe would hardly consider us ac- 
 quaintances. 
 
 " Ask him what he thinks? " said Beveridge, " and I'll 
 call to-morrow to know his answer. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, no! not to-morrow." 
 
 "Next Friday, then?" 
 
 " You need not. I shall not be at home." 
 
 " Very well. I'll only have the pleasure of leavin' my 
 ard the day after to-morrow. But I know you will relent ' 
 
iVElF YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 20l 
 
 I know you won't be eruel ! " and lifting his hat with a 
 gay, audacious look that took Fanny by storm, he dis- 
 appeared round the corner, saying to himself — '' Gad, a 
 neat, allurin' little woman!" (He had a taking way, 
 this young man, of dropping most of his final gs.) 
 
 Fanny immediately confided her fascinating adventure 
 to Mrs. Belnap and asked her advice. ''If he calls, tell 
 Mr. Howe that he is an old childish acquaintance of 
 mine," said her friend, "and that I introduced you. 
 Make up anything He'll never suspect ! " 
 
 Almost to her surprise, for she feared that a visit from 
 such a social phoenix was almost too good to be true, 
 Fanny's omnibus-hero really appeared the next day but 
 one, and of course found her in her prettiest toilette and 
 most persuasive smiles. She made all the pretence in the 
 world of not expecting him, not a word of which, natural- 
 ly, he believed. 
 
 Thence began a comradeship, for such only at first it 
 was, which far more than realized Fanny's wildest dreams. 
 Nothing can be more delightful than a devoted and con- 
 genial companion whose mere notice would have been a 
 distinct compliment. Fanny very soon discovered that her 
 new acquaintance was a social personage and very rich as 
 well ; and that he should honor her own complete obscur- 
 ity by calls and attentions, she felt was fairyland luck in- 
 deed. For the moment her cup of life was rapturously 
 full. Extraordinary to think, there had suddenly dropped 
 into it a young Croesus who knew everybody, who had 
 been everywhere, and who had nothing to do but enjoy 
 nimself and minister by his presence and his purse to the 
 enjoyment of others. The aroma of those unforgettable 
 days when Harvey Thayer had lounged through the sum- 
 
202 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 mer hours with her in Belmont came back, and as formerly 
 with him, so now with Beveridge, she felt that docility 
 and restfulness which only those few bestow on their 
 fellows who have a large margin, a surplus, a reserve force 
 of one or more of the four things — money, position, 
 beauty, talent — for which all of us long and which so few 
 of us possess. 
 
 On his part the young man was not ill-pleased to be 
 occasionally seen by his men friends with such a pretty 
 and taking and perfectly dressed young woman. ''Who 
 is she? " they inquired, and after they had found out, it 
 perhaps added still further to his satisfaction to be aware 
 that they put the worst construction on his association 
 with the little pink-cheeked matron. He knew that a 
 rich man who dares to be a Lothario is not more envied 
 than admired by many of his fellows who yet have not the 
 moral audacity to emulate his crimes. 
 
 But Fanny's new friend was hardly a Lothario; at 
 least, he was not yet an active one. He quickly divined 
 exactly what a woman was — ^just how virtuous and just 
 how lacking in virtue. But it was rather his pride, his 
 American "code,", not to lead a woman on. He saw 
 that Fanny and Mrs. Belnap, howeyer appearances were 
 against them, had as yet no experience in irremediable 
 evil. Though they seemed on the downward road, he 
 knew that they were unconscious of it themselves. He 
 sometimes thought, with a dark smile, that probably he 
 should one day meet one of them at the bottom of the 
 descent, but he had neither wish nor intention to hasten 
 the catastrophe. 
 
 ''Give a certain type of woman rope enough, and she 
 will certainly hang herself in the end without any re- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 203 
 
 sponsibility on your part," was an accepted maxim of his 
 world, and it sufficed him. However rapid the pace 
 might be at which a woman were going, though he would 
 keep well up, he would never, in what he considered the 
 despicable manner of European men, urge and stimulate 
 her toward the desperate goal. Just as far as he judged 
 she wanted to go, he would accompany her, but no 
 farther — and this he thought being a man of honor. 
 
 He forgot that the very "giving a woman the rope " 
 constituted his own part of the dread responsibility. No 
 unfallen woman ever " wants" to proceed to extremities. 
 On the contrary, it is probable that no such woman, any 
 more than the Wall Street speculators we daily read of, 
 ever frankly faces the possibility of her own ruin — ever 
 permits herself to question, even, whether the man she 
 cares for is capable of trying for it ! The man can always 
 guage the precipice near which a woman is fooling, be- 
 cause that precipice is himself; the woman, seldom. If 
 he push her over, he is of course guilty. If he let her 
 stray too near the slippery edge which he knows must 
 eventually fail her, he is guilty also. "Beveridge's honor, 
 in short, like, that of many men where women are con- 
 cerned, was simply no honor at all ; — true honor being as 
 incapable of hazarding that priceless possession in another, 
 of whichever sex, as it is of sacrificing its own ! 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 A *<MAN OF THE WORLD.** 
 
 Henry Ward Beveridge was a rich Baltimore orphan, 
 nearly related to the New York Beveridges — of whom 
 Europe had taken possession in boyhood and thickened 
 all his vdins with the narcotic poison of her three thousand 
 years. He had been left to the guardianship of his 
 father's most trusted business friends, and these gentle- 
 men, ignorant or unmindful of Jefferson's golden advice 
 against foreign education for American youth, had thought 
 to do the best thing for their ward in keeping him at 
 boarding-schools on the continent until he was fluent in 
 German and French, then placing him for a time at 
 Phillip's Academy at Exeter, New Hampshire, and finally 
 getting him graduated at Harvard. 
 
 From twelve to twenty-two made in all twelve years — 
 twelve tender and impressionable years which he had 
 spent almost exclusively in the society of boys and youths 
 of his own age. In some of his college vacations he saw 
 aunts and girl-cousins in their homes; but his familiar 
 knowledge of the opposite sex was limited to the expensive 
 unfortunates to whom his large allowance and great ex- 
 pectations had very early exposed him. Why not? His 
 English, French, German and Russian schoolmates of 
 rank and wealth, mere babes in their teens though they 
 were, had their mistresses, and an American minor left to 
 
A'EI^F YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 205 
 
 his own guidance in Europe must be expected to do as 
 European minors do. When he left Harvard he knew no 
 more of the undergraduate curriculum than had sufficed to 
 pass him through at the foot of his class, but having be- 
 gun so very early to "■ see life " and to ''sow wild oats," 
 he flattered himself, as men generally do who have served 
 a similar apprenticeship, that he '' knew women." 
 
 And how deceived they are in that belief! They do 
 get to know debased, blighted and distorted women, but 
 are nearly as ignorant of womanhod as ladies who should 
 be acquainted only with untaught and criminal men would 
 be of manhood. One of the most thorough-going flirts 
 and libertines of contemporary American society lamented 
 toward the close of his life of conquest that he had not 
 cultivated the simple friendship of "sweet women." 
 Blinded by sense, he had ever sought to strike but one chord 
 of the thousand-stringed harp that the beautiful, equally 
 with the stronger sex really is, and guessed too late of tht 
 manifold harmonies he had passed unsuspected by. 
 
 At Harvard, the Beveridge money and its owner's per- 
 fect waltzing speedily gave him the entree into the best 
 Cambridge and Boston circles, and aristocratic belles 
 threw their shining nets across his path even before he 
 graduated. But with the life he led below the surface, to 
 fall in love above it was at this time impossible. He 
 turned on every girl he met a lethargic eye, feeling kindly 
 to those who showed kindness to him, provided they had 
 social position and consideration, and doing a little flirt- 
 ing wqth two or three at a time of the most attractive; but 
 if even a pretty girl without much of either asked him at 
 her own house to lead the german, he would calmly do it 
 and never once take her out at her own party ! Beveridge 
 
206 JV£PV YORK: A SY MP HO MFC STUDY. 
 
 was thoroughly ^'brutal,'' as the French say. He felt him- 
 self immensely, and adored to dominate his fellow-beings 
 simply because he was ' ' Ward Beveridge. ' ' How much 
 was magnetism, and how much was money, who can say? 
 Magnetism he certainly had, but could he have asserted it 
 as unflinchingly as he did, lacking his solid consciousness 
 of his great fortune ? There is an inspiring little fiction 
 that ''knowledge is power." Let Solomon's ''poor wise 
 man" declare how often he can overtop in spirit the 
 ignorant rich one who possesses the " power" transmuted 
 into its only valid earthly expression ! 
 
 Pleasant and stimulating, but superficial Boston sufficed 
 Beveridge through college only; — "pleasant" Boston for 
 the rich, I should explain, for without much money or 
 much assurance the stranger may find little pleasantness in 
 that sometimes stony ground. Beveridge, having a super- 
 abundance of both, was proportionally loaded with atten- 
 tions during his junior and senior years ; but by his Class- 
 Day he had outgrown his narrow and easy conquest, and 
 was ready for the dashing summer at Newport which fol- 
 lowed, where a Boston belle from the despised "South 
 End," having captivated and married the high-born Rob 
 De Windt of New York, was turning the heads of every- 
 body and turning her own life upside down at the same 
 time. 
 
 As in Boston, society in Newport unrolled itself enthu- 
 siastically before Beveridge' s golden pedestal, and it 
 would have been nothing to him to storm New York the 
 ensuing winter, but that he very unexpectedly flew off to 
 Paris as an attache of the American legation. 
 
 In the fascinating world-capital and its glittering im- 
 perial court, the rich American took his post-graduate 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 207 
 
 course as man-of-the-world accoitipli. His official position, 
 reinforced by his languages, his dancing, and of course his 
 money, opened much to him. A school friend with whom 
 he had been intimate at Vevay was now a great swell at- 
 tached to the Russian legation. Prince Troubetskoi, for 
 so was he named, was disposed to be excessively friendly, 
 and Beveridge both felt and showed himself as princely as 
 he. This x\merican had early concluded that rank was not 
 only the "guinea's stamp," but the guinea's self, and that at 
 bottom an aristocracy never is and never can be anything 
 but a plutocracy. Rich as he was, he intended, as soon 
 as he had *' had his fling," to devote himself to becoming 
 a great deal richer. With his actual and potential posses- 
 sions in his mind, therefore, from the beginning he held 
 himself with the proudest, and his very way of entering a 
 room full of titles and decorations and looking straight 
 about him as if he owped everything in it, stamped him a 
 social king and won him half the social battle. 
 
 The other half was secured by his lavish expenditures — 
 especially at the gaming-table. He was very cool about 
 this. He knew that the prestige and position among titled 
 youth to which he aspired were impossible if he did not 
 gamble freely. He resolved that if necessary he would 
 lose yearly a third of his great income at cards and bet- 
 ting — would spend another third in lavish living, and the 
 final third he proposed to lay up. 
 
 He established himself in a little hotel on the Champs 
 Elysees, where he kept open house for Troubetskoi and 
 his friends. He was seen constantly at dinners, balls and 
 functions; he made a point of theatre-going; he bought a 
 large yacht ; he devoted himself to horses and hunting 
 until he earned the coveted rank of a *' thorough sport," ^ 
 
2o8 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 and in every other respect l^e followed so faithfully the 
 ideals about him that during his Paris sojourn he had 
 " done all those things that he ought not to have done, 
 and there was no health in him " — for he had even per- 
 mitted to himself the most daring heaven-defiance of all — 
 an intrigue with a married woman! 
 
 She was a soft fascinating creature, ten years older than 
 Bevefidge, and a social star. She was unhappily mated, 
 but had found her tragedy in the fickleness of a secret 
 lover rather than in the open aberrations of her high-born 
 husband. The atmosphere of her salon and her own sub- 
 tle, musical self were so delightful to Beveridge (for he 
 loved music) that he left her in no doubt as to his chival- 
 rous admiration, and with the very unexpected result to 
 both of them that the lady fell deeply in love with him. 
 The incense and the charming millionaire attentions of 
 this youthful heart gave her own worn and discouraged one 
 new life. But in turn the knowledge of his brilliant con- 
 quest awoke in Beveridge a tumult which in that civiHza- 
 tion could have only one ending. His romantic homage 
 forsook its sweet upper level and swept down those black 
 and tortuous gorges of unlawful passion from whence it is 
 the last improbability that in this life any young man's 
 soul can find its wings again. 
 
 So admirably prudent were the pair, however, that the 
 affair was never even suspected in the hot-bed of scandal 
 in which they lived. The Draconian eleventh command- 
 ment of this woman's world simply was — " Thou shall not 
 be found out" and Beveridge religiously regarded it. To 
 accomplish their difficult meetings was the breathless 
 interest of both their Hves; to her, all she lived for; to 
 him, but the keenest of many distractions, and one from 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 209 
 
 the risk and consequent intensity of which he took many 
 vacations in the shape of hunting and other trips. 
 
 But their consciences did not trouble them. She prac- 
 tically knew no better, and he considered it was all 
 a part of the life ''over there." — ''Their standards 
 are different ; we must not judge them by our rules ; in 
 Rome do as the Romans do; women can't be delivered 
 like cattle by their parents to their husbands, and not feel 
 it ; they must have some expression for their affections ; 
 the men admit as much in their talk among themselves ; 
 in fact, they prefer it, for it gives far more variety and 
 excitement to life; if they didn't like it they would change 
 their customs; etc., etc." Thus Beveridge juggled with 
 himself, and so true it is, as the Vedas awfully express it, 
 that "Repeated sin impairs the judgment; when the 
 judgment is impaired sin is repeated ! ' ' Having begun 
 wrong and kept wrong in his relations with the other sex, 
 Beveridge had got as far as actually living in adultery and 
 calling it " the custom of the country," — ^just as in India 
 or China or Japan he and his peers would equally have 
 kept harems and called that " the custom of the country." 
 
 Meantime, America and her women still remained some- 
 thing apart in his mind, and now after a long absence his 
 affairs requiring his return, he had domiciled himself for 
 a time in New York. It was proper, Beveridge thought, 
 to have a foothold in one's own land, and in a house at 
 the back of the Fairfax Hotel on Broadway, with en- 
 trances both from one of the hotel corridors and from 
 the side street, he had fitted up with the rugs, por- 
 tieres, pictures and bric-a-brac he had brought from 
 abroad, a bachelor's apartment that was a dream. An 
 English friend who had lived with him in Paris, and who 
 
2IO NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 loved nothing better than the pleasure of buying in ac- 
 cordance with his own consummate taste, had selected 
 most of his belongings for him, and down to each tea- 
 spoon, even, every object was a separate thought. As for 
 Beveridge's wines and brandies, nothing surpassing them 
 could be brought together by mere money — and those he 
 had selected himself. 
 
 Flying about between New York, Boston, Washington 
 and the intermediate cities, and planning a hunting expe- 
 dition to the plains for some month in the future, Beve- 
 ridge found himself at first quite sufficiently amused. His 
 own countrymen and countrywomen diverted him. He 
 declared that they puzzled him. 
 
 ''What are they all strivin' for," he pretended to won- 
 der, " instead of simply settlin' down on their big incomes 
 and enjoyin' themselves? They've got to be '' John Doe 
 and Richard Roe ' ' to the end of the chapter, and why 
 don' t they give themselves airs on that, as the old Romans 
 did on Roman citizenship and looked down on kings and 
 queens with contempt? A Roman, man or woman, would 
 no more marry anybody not a Roman than I would a nig- 
 ger ! As long as it isn't a '' Prince " Astor or a " Duke " 
 Belmont, obliged to live up to his rank, w^hat difference 
 does it make whose grandfather came over first or who 
 gives the costliest entertainments? In what other country 
 on earth could a man be worth fifty millions and live in a 
 brick box on Fifth Avenue and hardly give a dinner party 
 a year and yet be considered a decent member of society ? 
 So much better off we are without that beastly foreign in- 
 cubus called ''family ! " Such swarms of shabby genteel 
 relations rich people have over there, poor devils, meekly 
 pickin' up the crumbs that fall from their master's table — 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 21 1 
 
 always mutely beggin', like span' els ! When I come home 
 and find everybody so independent and well off, hanged if 
 I don't think society Americans are fools to be so apolo- 
 getic and aspirin' to lords and lineage ! " 
 
 So Beveridge held forth at his club. But was he sin- 
 cere? Was he indeed an American? Would he have 
 respected himself so much, wanting his long list of titled 
 and high-born friends? Certainly he had spared nothing 
 to gain them. Moreover, his money placed him in the 
 '' leisure class " which has always ruled the Old World and 
 which the New, with its ''trusts" and its enormous for- 
 tunes so wickedly, cruelly, and as I believe, unconstitu- 
 tionally willed to eldest sons, is creating as fast as it can. 
 
 Of this class the business is pleasure; its work, play. 
 But innocent pleasures only satisfy as the rest or the recre- 
 ation after toil. As the serious interest of life they are 
 not intense enough. It is indeed a horrid truth that the 
 sensation of pleasure is not attained by the mere man of 
 pleasure unless at the expense of the keenest opposite of 
 pleasure in another consciousness — that his unemployed 
 energy drives him to find his satisfying enjoyment only in 
 causing some living thing to suffer — some living animal to 
 be the victim of his ''sports," some living woman to be 
 the victim of his wiles ! To be thus, however, is to be, 
 not a man, but a beast of prey ; and such, in fact, was the 
 rich, the strong, the sought-for and thoroughly self-satis- 
 fied Henry Ward Beveridge. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 EDUCATION TELLS. 
 
 Fifty years ago American pleasure-seekers had yet a 
 very long way to bring their country before she echoed, 
 as she does to-day, the French standards in what they 
 esteem diversion, and Beveridge accordingly was begin- 
 ning to find his as yet puritanic native land rather insipid 
 and dull, when, as we have seen, he encountered the pretty 
 and taking Mrs. David Howe. 
 
 For the time his ennui was stayed. While women never 
 really enjoy men who are beneath them, men rarely enjoy 
 women who are anything else, and though Beveridge would 
 have thought a duchess none too good for him to marry, 
 as a companion he was hugely content with this very fem- 
 inine little nobody, and found her the ''best company," 
 as the saying is, in the world. She was pretty to look at 
 and entertaining to hear, quick and incisive in her com- 
 ments on other people, smiling and flattering to himself — 
 always deliciously neat and always charmingly adorned. 
 What could a man want more? And she wasn't in the 
 least afraid. She was willing to go anywhere with him 
 any day but Sunday, always provided her friend, Mrs. Bel- 
 nap, were along and that she could get back to her hotel 
 in time to be dressed to receive Mr. Howe. 
 
 For Fanny didn't believe Beveridge meant her any 
 harmc She knew there were edged tools in the world in 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 213 
 
 the guise of fascinating men, but this heavy, dark-browed 
 young gentleman couldn't be one of them! He was 
 simply *'nice," — not dangerously "romantic" at all. 
 Still, it was best to be on the safe side. The chummy 
 Mrs. Belnap lived in two pretty little rooms, a parlor and 
 hall bedroom, on the second floor of a high-class boarding- 
 house — only the back rooms, 'tis true, but they were sunny 
 and home-like. She had an adorer who presented himself 
 there every day or two, and who, being too poor to marry 
 and with not health enough to work, was at her service 
 whenever she wanted him. With these two to chape- 
 rone anything jolly that might come along, Fanny judged 
 there could be no harm in having a little fun in this dull 
 world — an excursion behind Mr. Beveridge's horses — often 
 a lunch or a matinee, — a very few times an evening theatre 
 and an after-theatre supper, when for the rest of the night 
 Fanny shared Mrs. Belnap' s rooms, Mrs. Belnap had an 
 aunt living over in Orange, New Jersey, and so Fanny was 
 able to say that she and Georgie " had spent the night" 
 with this lady in that charming villa-town. 
 
 "Hotel life /> so public and yet so cramped-up," she 
 would complain — "and I do hate it so ! I should die if 
 I couldn't now and then get a glimpse of a real home 
 again, and it is so sweet and quiet over at old Mrs. Bel- 
 nap's! Such delicious home cooking, too, and I do so 
 despise a hotel table. I declare, I could hardly tear my- 
 self away after breakfast this morning. Dear ! — I wonder 
 if I ever shall have a home of my own in New York 
 again? " — all of which was naturally so very pleasant for 
 Mr. Howe to hear ! 
 
 Fanny was very explicit in stating to her family and ac- 
 quaintance what a necessity of her existence was her 
 
214 
 
 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 friend, Georgie Belnap. '* What my darling sister Julia 
 was to me no one knows — nor, how I miss her! I always 
 leaned on her. She was the eldest, you know, and such 
 strength of mind ! Somehow Georgie takes her place as 
 no one else does or can, and I must see her often ! " Ac- 
 cordingly Mrs. Belnap came over to Brooklyn at least 
 once a week and Fanny went to New York much oftener. 
 She was, of course, as careful as possible not to excite 
 Jeannette's or Mr. Howe's suspicions as to how she spent 
 her many hours of absence from her little family. Not 
 because in her own mind she was doing anything wrong. 
 This consideration did not occur to her. She was simply 
 doing what she wanted to da — ^just as she had all her life. 
 But * ' X)avid might not understand ; he was so tied to the 
 office and his home, and always had been ; he was such an 
 old sober-sides — poor, dear old Davy ! — -and Jeannette was 
 so exactly like him, etc., etc." In their hearing she would 
 speculate for ten minutes together as to the chances of 
 Beveridge and Mrs. Belnap getting engaged ; declaring she 
 *' hoped they would; it would be the most magnificent 
 match for Georgie; she thought Beveridge really liked 
 Georgie and she was doing all she could to encourage it." 
 Mr. Howe, faithful heart, little suspected the wolf 
 that had entered his fold. Beveridge appeared at the 
 hotel about once a fortnight, and twice he invited the 
 Howes and Mrs. Belnap to dine with him in New York at 
 Delmonico's and go to the theatre afterwards. Looking 
 upon him rather as Mrs. Belnap* s than his wife's social 
 property, the husband thought Beveridge a ' * very gentle- 
 manly ' ' though by no means brilliant young man, and felt 
 quite pleased at such distinguished attentions from so aris- 
 tocratic an acquaintance. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 215 
 
 Mamma Dexter was wild with excitement and hope for 
 Josephine when the mighty Beveridge sun first rose upon 
 her narrow horizon, and when she discovered that Fanny 
 and Mrs. Belnap made and kept engagements with him 
 without including the only unmarried Dexter — (Mrs. 
 Dexter' s sharp eyes were not deceived, however others 
 were), she was disgusted, and began as much of an expos- 
 tulation as her obligations to the Howes would permit. 
 But in her imperious way Fanny silenced her with — 
 ^'Mother, Mr. Beveridge isn't a marrying man, and Jo 
 might as well cry for the moon as for him. He's 
 Georgie's and my friend, and we just want you to under- 
 stand — * Hands off ! ' — Jo can find her own beaux, as I 
 did. I'm sure I gave her chances enough — staying in my 
 house in New York winter after winter — compared w^ith 
 what Julia and I had." 
 
 And so for a little swiftly-speeding time — for the apex 
 of human happiness, like every other apex, is a vanishing 
 point — Fanny floated confident and serene on a summer- 
 tide of pleasure which was after her own heart in every- 
 thing save that evening theatres and late suppers, those 
 crowning delights of true Bohemia, could but very, very 
 rarely be ventured on ! 
 
 Beveridge was vastly entertained by the affair. For 
 one thing, it piqued the handsome demi-mondaine he had 
 brought over horribly — made her anxious and uneasy and 
 very insecure of her ground ; but as she was a stranger 
 in a strange land, she did not dare to insist on an explan- 
 ation which might have resulted in a break with her 
 despotic millionaire. She need not have been afraid. 
 Beveridge would not have thrown her on the world un- 
 cared for. He was not base enough for that. But he 
 
2l6 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 perceived her suspense and fear, and calmly let her fret 
 silently on. There was such a di;amatic contrast between 
 her apprehensive eyes and her forced gayety and smiles, 
 and between both these and Fanny's cool and easy confi- 
 dence ! He found a sort of luxury in the part he made 
 her play. Like the absolute silent obedience and impas- 
 siveness of his valet, it was one of the expressions of his 
 power — of his ability to use his fellow-beings to suit 
 himself 
 
 As to Fanny, he suspected that half her pleasure in him 
 came from the money that he lavished for her little recrea- 
 tions — but he was quite willing to be made use of. He 
 was always wondering what she would venture next, and 
 for the sake of finding out, he let her do what she liked 
 with him in the amused temper with which a grown man 
 will let a toddling baby take hold of his big finger and 
 walk him at its little will about the room. They say the 
 anacondas often lie quiet in their cages for hours while 
 the lively rabbits that are to be their dinners run all over 
 them and the place. As an unmarried girl, Beveridge 
 would not have bestowed a thought, hardly a glance, upon 
 Fanny. Her attraction, then, must have consisted solely 
 in the fact that she was married, and that in being with 
 him she was running the risk of an awful catastrophe of 
 which he, as the professional pleasure-seeker, in search of 
 and actually requiring sensations, was simply awaiting the 
 event. 
 
 But he refrained from defining to himself that this was 
 what he wanted and expected of his reckless country- 
 woman, quite as carefully as she cloaked from her con- 
 science the fact that she was deceiving her husband. 
 Beveridge preferred to pretend that Fanny was to him a 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 217 
 
 ''Study" — an interesting "American" study. "Fact is, 
 a man never knows a country, a race, until he has seen its 
 women as they really are,'' remarked he, philosophically, 
 to a friend one day while discussing the sex ! 
 
 It must be owned, too, that Fanny's own hardness 
 somewhat contributed to his unscrupulousness toward her. 
 She was such a thorough Philistine ! She judged every- 
 body and everything with a materialism and ruthlessness 
 that even outdid his own, and which at once disgusted 
 and held him. The reverse of the alchemist who fain 
 would turn everything to gold — Fanny's touch transmuted 
 everything to dross. 
 
 One Sunday afternoon when Beveridge had been dining 
 with the Howes at Montague House and they were now 
 smoking and talking, Mr. Howe handed about the room, a 
 relic of the recent war, which had been given him by an 
 ex-army chaplain. It was a letter addressed to a Con- 
 federate officer who was supposed to have been killed, and 
 it ran as follows : 
 
 My precious Edward — 
 
 Your note of the 17th saying that you had come out safe from that 
 last dreadful battle has just reached me. Thank God for it ! and thank 
 heaven I did not know of the fighting at the time, or I should have 
 been simply frantic 1 I hope and pray you may not have another en- 
 gagement this campaign. Only a few words to her darling boy, because 
 paper is getting so scarce ! We are all well, even your dear mother, 
 but Mabel is still perfectly erushed by John's death. She seems incon- 
 solable, and I don't know what to say to her, for in her place how could 
 / bear it ! I have just been to look at the children sleeping, and to 
 take a kiss from them which I put here on the paper for you. They 
 looked like two rose-buds. I prayed for them and for their hero-father 
 and for our poor country and for our sacred cause for a long time. Oh, 
 my own Edward ! When I remember it was you who taught me to 
 pray — who led me to the Saviour — how can I love you enough ? To 
 
2i8 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 Him I commit you — my Love, my All ! O, may He soon bring jrou 
 back safe and in triumph to your own, bwn, own 
 
 MiLLY. 
 Millions of kisses and loves from all ! 
 
 Fanny read it last, and as she handed it back to David 
 he asked — '* Don't you think that must have been a sweet 
 woman ? ' ' 
 
 *'I never read such stuff," said Fanny; with disgust; 
 *''her Marling boy' indeed? A woman ought to be 
 ashamed to write to her husband in such a style as that ! 
 Sickening! " 
 
 ^'Why to her husband particularly?" asked Beveridge 
 in a soft, somewhat meaning tone. 
 
 ''Oh, I don't know," answered Fanny, carelessly. 
 
 ''Perhaps you don't approve of love-letters under any 
 circumstances ? ' ' 
 
 "I certainly don't appreciate them," returned Fanny — 
 "I burnt up all Mr. Howe's ages ago. When I came to 
 look them over I declare I couldn't imagine how I had 
 ever read *em at all ! " 
 
 Mr. Howe's sensitive cheek flushed painfully, and Bev- 
 eridge, really touched for him, came purposely to his 
 rescue with — "Your taste is the reverse of mine, Mrs. 
 Howe; I'm sure / shouldn't care for love-letters that 
 7£/^;r;/'/ silly and soft — more or less. I always supposed 
 that was the very idea of love-letters." 
 
 "Oh, no !'' sniffed Fanny, with infinite contempt. 
 
 "What a hard little nut it is ! " thought Beveridge to 
 himself; "I believe she's an incipient Lady Macbeth." 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE BOTTOMLESS PIT. 
 
 Had Mrs. Fanny Howe continued to stand as prudently 
 on guard with Ward Beveridge as she had begun, not long 
 would she have enjoyed the privileged society of this great 
 swell. Not many weeks would have sufficed to surfeit him 
 with drives and lunches with three empty-headed nobodies, 
 simply because two of them were young and taking women, 
 and one of them especially flattering to himself. Too 
 many others, much higher social game, were courting his 
 attention for that, and he was on the point of dropping 
 his ''little Brooklyn friend" (for thus did he catalogue 
 Fanny — to her horror, had she known it, so entirely did 
 she think of herself as a " New Yorker ") when the flirta- 
 tion took the turn toward the denouement which had l)een 
 his original motive for the acquaintance and yet which he 
 theorized he was not doing anything to bring about. 
 
 Fanny had inherited her mother's special weakness. 
 Her love of dress was overpowering, and her secret ambi- 
 tion to vie in Beveridge's eyes with the fashionable belles 
 of whom she was always dying to hear but of whom he 
 vouchsafed but an occasional mention — had made it im- 
 possible for her, this particular season, to keep within the 
 liberal allowance made to her by her husband. What she 
 could not pay for she charged, and when she drew her al- 
 
220 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 lowance she made cash payments on her running accounts ; 
 but the deficit grew larger and larger, and at last she had 
 reluctantly to face the hard fact that being over five hund- 
 red dollars behind, she could not hope to make it up. 
 Yet, how to ask her husband for it ? She was as sure as 
 though he told her, that he had not such a sum to give. 
 Neither he nor Jeannette had had a thread of new clothes 
 for two years at least. 
 
 **What if Mr. Beveridge should lend it tome?" was 
 Fanny's incessant thought. " He is so immensely rich. 
 Think of it ! Two or three hundred thousand dollars a 
 year at least ! Five hundred is but a drop in the ocean to 
 such a man." 
 
 Beveridge at last noticed, as she intended he should, 
 that his usually light-hearted friend was pensive and dis- 
 traite. He wondered if she could be falling in love with 
 him and, almost expecting a declaration, begged earnestly 
 to know what was the matter. At first she pretended that 
 nothing would induce her to tell him, but at last, of 
 course, he prevailed. 
 
 *'I am in debt five hundred dollars, and I daren't tell 
 Mr. Howe about it." 
 
 "■ In debt five hundred dollars? Is that all — and you so 
 melancholy? " and he burst out laughing. 
 
 '' It may seem a trifle to you, Mr. Beveridge, with your 
 income, but I assure you it's a mountain to me," said 
 Fanny, disconsolately. 
 
 ''What a molehill the mountain would become, Mrs. 
 Howe," said he, with assumed reproach, ''if you looked 
 upon me as a friend and not as an amusement merely. ' ' 
 
 "What! " said the practical Fanny, joyfully. "You 
 really mean you would lend it to me ? " 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 221 
 
 Beveridge was piqued at her ignoring the sentiment of 
 his question and punished her by answering dryly — ''Of 
 course I would lend it to any friend with reasonable se- 
 curity. How should you propose to pay it back ? ' ' 
 
 Fanny's face fell a little. '' Oh, I'm going to econo- 
 mize just as close as I can ! I shan't get anything new 
 this spring, or go near the stores. I'll have my old things 
 made over and go up into the country as early as possible 
 and wear them out. Then, you see, I could pay you off 
 fifty dollars every month from my allowance." 
 
 " Very virtuous — and with your tastes and habits — ve-ry 
 impracticable resolutions ! ' ' said Beveridge. 
 
 ''You think I couldn't keep my resolutions," answered 
 Fanny, eagerly. " You're mistaken. When I make up my 
 mind to a thing I always put it through," — with great 
 emphasis on the ' ' always. ' ' 
 
 "The truth is," said Beveridge, "I never lend money 
 to a woman. But I'll give it to )'ou on one very small 
 condition." 
 
 " One very small condition ? " echoed Fanny, anxiously. 
 
 "That you will come to m\ rooms and get it." 
 
 " I thought you wished to do me a kindness, but I see 
 you only want to compromise me," said Fanny, reddening 
 and indignantly. 
 
 " That's just as you choose to look at it," said Beveridge 
 so firmly that he pronounced his final gs; — "you know 
 a great many women would think they were compromising 
 themselves by simply sitting here and sipping chocolate 
 with me as you are doing now — to say nothing of all the 
 other pleasant times we've had together ! " 
 
 "I never pretended to be straight-laced. Sipping 
 chocolate in the midst of a crowd, or going on an excur- 
 
2 22 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 sion with you and Georgie Belnap, are very different things, 
 Mr. Beveridge, from going aloVie to your rooms — at least 
 according to my notions of propriety. ' ' 
 
 *' O well ! I won't dispute the point. I suppose every 
 woman has to decide for herself what is proper and what 
 isn't. I've asked you to come and see my rooms several 
 times, you know, and you have always refused. I think 
 them rather nice myself, and I'd like to know what you 
 think \ and as you would never come for love I thought 
 I'd see whether you would for money," and he laughed 
 softly. ^^But of course it was only a joke. You are not 
 so mercenary as I hoped." 
 
 ' ' I could do a good deal for five or six hundred dollars 
 just now, I confess," said Fanny, with a sigh; **but I fear 
 I could not do that." 
 
 "If nobody ever knew it, what difference could it 
 make ? ' ' asked Beveridge. (He did not care a copper 
 whether she came or not. He was simply experimenting — 
 trying how far she would go.) 
 
 ** But somebody might know it, and then where should I 
 be?" 
 
 '* Pooh! Such meetings happen by thousands and no 
 one is ever the wiser. I should be so happy to see you in 
 a particular chair near the fire-place that I've pictured you 
 in so often ! " — and he looked smouldering fire at her from 
 under his heavy eyelids. 
 
 "It seems so strange," said Fanny, evasively, "that 
 you won't help me generously and nobly and just because 
 you are my friend, instead of demanding what from a 
 married woman is really more than an equivalent. You 
 lend a few paltry hundreds, and practically ask me to give 
 my reputation." 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 223 
 
 *' I wonder how much she thinks she has left as it is? " 
 thought Beveridge, ' * excepting that nobody knows her ! * * 
 then aloud — "Doesn't a man always expect a sacrifice 
 from a woman when he does anything for her? That's 
 the law of nature. Your husband supports you and spends 
 his life for you, but he expects you to give him children 
 at the risk of yours, and keep house for him and all that. 
 The bargain between man and woman is unequal, fix it 
 how you may. But that is the glory of the woman — that 
 she forgets herself for the man." 
 
 He paused and continued very low: *'You cannot 
 forget yourself for me? " 
 
 " No. I don't belong to you and I do belong to Mr. 
 Howe," said Fanny, sturdily. 
 
 '^ ^Belong' to a man? — Bah!" sneered Beveridge. 
 "What married woman's cant that is! How can one 
 human being ' belong ' to another ? Every man belongs 
 to himself and every woman to herself — absolutely. It's 
 the priests that have put these slave's phrases into peo- 
 ple's mouths. But nobody lives up to them. If I'm ever 
 married I shall tell my wife beforehand that I'm to be just 
 as free after marriage as I was before it, and she needn't 
 expect anything else." 
 
 "And is your wife to be free, too? " asked Fanny. 
 
 " Of course ! I should despise myself for a Turk if I 
 ever wanted her to esteem herself mine one moment after 
 she had ceased to love me supremely," returned Beveridge 
 — ^lying like Satan, for he knew that above all men he 
 should be a jealous and exacting husband. 
 
 Fanny looked bewildered — as indeed she genuinely was, 
 and began drawing on her gloves in silence. 
 
 "Do you know what attracted me to you?" pursued 
 
2 24 iV^W^ YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 the tempter, as the tempted one still said nothing: ''It 
 was just this very trait — that I -thought you a free and 
 fearless spirit who could look at things as they are, with- 
 out being terrified by the hobgoblins of superstition and 
 propriety that keep most of your sex cooped up and bored 
 to death. — Well," with a sigh — "I trust I may some day 
 meet a woman as gay and sweet, as good and pure, as I 
 know you are, and as brave and daring as I hoped you 
 were, Mrs. Howe; for that, in my view, would be a 
 perfect woman. Meantime, I shall keep* an envelope 
 enclosing a thousand dollar bill on my mantel-piece 
 directed to yourself, hoping that you will come some day 
 and take it and prove yourself that woman As I told you 
 yesterday, I'm going to Baltimore and Washington to- 
 morrow to be gone a fortnight. You can take the eleva- 
 tor to the second floor in the Fairfax Hotel, turn to the 
 right, then to the left, and at the end of the corridor is a 
 recessed door hung with a curtain. Behind the curtain is 
 a bell-handle, and if you pull it my man Johnson will 
 admit you. Tell him you are my cousin, Mrs. Ned Mac 
 Tavish, from Baltimore, and to give you the theatre 
 tickets I left for you, and also some pate and olives, and 
 any wine you like that's there — and make yourself at home 
 generally. I'm sure you'll like my den," added he, 
 gaily; ''greatest luck to get it ! Those three old bache- 
 lors knew what they were about when they bought that 
 wide, old-fashioned three-story house, and arranged those 
 floors each openin' into the Fairfax ! Deuced cosy and 
 convenient ! — and one of 'em was so obligin' as to die just 
 when I was huntin' for an apartment; — but," changing 
 his tone, "it's never been perfect because youve never 
 been in it ! " Then, pausing and looking dreamily at her, 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 225 
 
 he murmured as it to himself and half unconsciously — 
 *' Ah, to be really trusted, really made use of by a true 
 woman- friend ! I, who am so alone in the world — who 
 have no mother, no sister ! ' ' 
 
 On principle Beveridge rarely paid compliments and 
 never talked sentiment. He preferred to keep a woman 
 doubting whether he really admired her, and hitherto 
 Fanny's vanity had had little satisfaction out of him 
 beyond the in itself very flattering fact tha*: he was much 
 with her. But now, the time having fully come, Bev- 
 eridge played out his trumps, and this bold and sudden 
 revelation of depths of feeling and tenderness for her 
 which she had not suspected, startled and affected Fanny 
 entirely to his satisfaction. She gazed wonderingly, 
 inquiringly, steadfastly at him, and drew involuntarily a 
 deep sigh. Then she turned her eyes away, for a few 
 moments looked vacantly about the restaurant, rose to go, 
 and as they walked together to meet the ferry-stage, their 
 talk was of indifferent things. 
 
 She spent a week of distracted irresolution between her 
 nee4 of money and her fear of taking a step of which she 
 could not foresee the consequences ; but at the end of the 
 eighth day, the note directed to '' Mrs. Ned MacTavish " 
 11. 1 I Uisappeared from Beveridge's mantel-shelf, and the 
 wife of David Howe, with dazzled, almost intoxicated 
 senses, had realized what the luxury of a millionaire can 
 be. 
 
 As the latter walked into his apartment on his return, 
 his first glance was toward the place whereon he had left 
 the momentous envelope. He had fully expected to find 
 it gone, and yet he was startled that his expectation was 
 
2 26 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 realized. Wholly without scruple as he was, he had never 
 of his own motion deliberately broken into that holy of 
 holies — the personality of a fellow-creature. No unfallen 
 girl, no yet-loyal wife, above all, no mother! — had hitherto 
 been on his conscience, and he looked anxiously, with 
 loud-beating heart, all over the rooms to make sure that 
 the letter had not been displaced by the servant. He 
 even forced himself to ask the latter, as if casually, 
 whether his cousin Mrs. MacTavish had called for the 
 tickets; and when he was told that she had, he said 
 grimly to himself : ' * She has been here once. She will 
 come again. We are in for it now, sure enough ! " — and 
 until he saw her again, there was upon his soul a night- 
 mare weight like lead. He was half inclined to fly — to 
 go abroad at once before any hopeless harm should come. 
 But his passion for conquest, for ''pleasure," his curiosity 
 to prove what Fanny would do — all were too strong, and 
 he remained, not knowing whether most to hope or fear 
 that he should eventually consummate earth's greatest 
 crime. ''If I do go," he had at last decided, "I had 
 better see her just once more ! " 
 
 But when they met, her little face was so full of joy and 
 of a new yet subdued tenderness, that he had never found 
 her so charming. Instead of bidding her good-bye, he 
 did his best to persuade her to come to his rooms again 
 for "just one mornin' — take just one little lunch with me 
 — please do ! " and having accepted so great a favor from 
 him, how could she resist? In truth, even without that 
 consideration, the secluded luxury of those wide, quiet, 
 rather low and richly-dim apartments, where she might 
 talk all unobserved wfth her friend for hours, and where 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 227 
 
 every object conspired at once to lull and to delight — 
 would of themselves have probably proved too much, as 
 Beveridge had always hoped, could he get her once to see 
 them, for Fanny's prudence. She easily persuaded her- 
 self that in gratitude for his generosity she ought indeed to 
 spend with him the *'one mornin' " that he pleaded, and 
 the appointment was accordingly made. The lunch he 
 gave her in his delicious little dining room was so exquis- 
 ite, the wines so delicate and so rare (Fanny was a natural 
 wine-taster; she inherited the tendency from her father), 
 the portfolios and cabinets to look through afterward 
 were so superb, that it was impossible for her to deny 
 herself the pleasure of coming ''just once more." Again 
 and again — once — twice — thrice — like the moth fluttering 
 round the candle, did she find herself within those 
 enchanted, those irresistible walls — did she leave them 
 with the wings of her conscience more scorched and help- 
 less, with her heart more on fire with now recognized and 
 acknowledged passion, until struck the inevitable hour 
 when right and wrong seemed mingled and dissolved in 
 one, and from having intended originally only "to have 
 a good time," and get out of life all the enjoyment she 
 could, the gay Fanny Howe walked beneath the sun, that 
 appallingly ruined thing — a faithless wife ! 
 
 That great leader of his fellow-men — the immortal 
 Jefferson, writing from Paris to a friend in 1787, said 
 that "our young Republic should besiege the throne of 
 heaven with eternal prayers to extirpate from creation this 
 class of human lions, tigers, mammoths called 'kings,' 
 from whom let him perish who does not say — ' Good Lord, 
 deliver us!' " — and in contemplating existing society, one 
 
228 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 wonders when a great woman-leader will arise among 
 women who in like manner will urge them '^ to beseige the 
 throne of heaven with eternal prayers to extirpate from 
 creation this class of human lions, tigers, mammoths called 
 'men of the world,' from whom she almost deserves to 
 perish who does not say — ' Good Lord, deliver us !' " 
 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 DESERTED ! 
 
 Being the character she was, it was a matter of course 
 that Fanny Howe did not feel her awful fall. Far from 
 it. Like all true criminals, she justified herself, and her 
 justification of conduct born of the love of dress, of 
 pleasure, and of flirting, was that she did not love David 
 Howe, and that she did love Ward Beveridge. She 
 refused to think, to trouble herself about the future, to 
 ask how this was going to end. She merely gave herself 
 up to floating on what was to her the top of the wave — the 
 devotion of a man who possessed everything that she was 
 capable of appreciating in his sex. Beveridge was gener- 
 ous, and gave her money by handsful ; but she was too 
 prudent to excite suspicion by unusual expenditure. 
 ''Vanity Fair" was her favorite novel, and she had not 
 read it for nothing. She wondered if there were no sav- 
 ings banks in London in Becky Sharp's day, that the 
 clever little woman was such a fool as to keep the Lord 
 Steyne's surplus in the writing-table where a jealous lord 
 and master might possibly rummage for it ! 
 
 She was in truth so happy and satisfied that she hoped 
 the state of things between herself and Beveridge would 
 never change, and she exerted herself to the utmost to 
 make what in the depths of her heart she was not quite 
 certain of — a genuine conquest. Cold, imperious and 
 
230 N£PV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 exacting to her own husband, to men in general she was 
 all graciousness, while to Beveridge — such was her coaxing 
 sweetness, that if she had been beautiful instead of pretty- 
 merely and very dependent on dress for her effect, he 
 might have ended by really loving her. 
 
 Even as it was, the silken chains were wound so round 
 and round him that he found some difficulty in resolving 
 to break them, though to break them eventually he had 
 intended from the first. 
 
 Many, and indeed most men, until they make up their 
 minds to accept the yoke of matrimony, have a chronic 
 fear lest some woman may feel she has a "claim," and on 
 this dare to base a *' demand" upon them; and in Bev- 
 eridge this fear was almost a mania. Wilful by nature, 
 and having had his own way all his life long, he was 
 fully resolved to have it to the end ; to be as free as air — 
 to dwell in the world doing simply as he chose and with 
 no one to call him to account. If, woman-like, Fanny 
 never allowed herself to reflect on what the end would be, 
 he, man-like, did reflect a good deal. Nothing would 
 have outraged him more than for her to abandon husband 
 and children and throw herself on his protection. He did 
 not think it probable she would. Still, it was possible. 
 He feared a certain dare-devil streak he was sure was in 
 her. He had never meant the afl'air to be more than a 
 part of his ''experience" according to the Gospel ot 
 Goethe, and as soon as he saw or fancied that Fanny was 
 feeling pretty sure of him, he began to want to put the 
 ocean between them. 
 
 An almost revulsion came over him. Rather than 
 bright and amusing, this woman now seemed mentally 
 vulgar and threadbare to him. He became keenly con- 
 
NEW YORK; A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 23 1 
 
 scious of her want of real beauty, of real refinement, of 
 real tenderness, and he positively hated the radiance of 
 satisfaction with which she greeted his lavish checks. 
 " She's common — common as she can be — and that's the 
 fact!" mused he to himself as he was staring out of the 
 window with his hands in his pockets one day after she 
 had left him; — "I must get out of this. I declare it 
 would even be refreshin' to see the droopy countess again! 
 She was at least a lady and had some genuine feelin' — 
 poor thing! I'd like to hear her play Chopin once 
 more; — rather pretty idea of hers to re-name her pieces 
 after 'Henri,' as she used to call me, if it zvas silly! — 
 ' Happy in Henri ' — * Apart from Henri ' — 'Longin' for 
 Henri ' — ' Prayer for Henri ' — and when she played them 
 in a room full of company, to look over to me with those 
 soft eyes at the end. Gad, — this Brooklyn (he often gibed 
 at Fanny in his thought as " Brooklyn") is a mud-pie to 
 Mme. des Roys — if she was too jealous and sentimental! 
 Bah! It's always somethin' v/ith a woman! Never jusl- 
 right ! "Why in hell were they ever made? Curse 'em all, 
 I say ! Bored with 'em and bored without 'em — either 
 way they make life a torment and a plague !" — the English 
 of all which discontent with and criticism of the little 
 pleasure-lover whom he had once found so "jolly" was 
 simply that he was tired of her, and a little afraid of her, 
 and consequently that it would be the part of prudence as 
 well as of pleasure, before there had been the least quarrel 
 or even misunderstanding, and while yet the affair was 
 undiscovered and unsuspected, to disappear. He had first 
 met her in October, and before the May leaves were out he 
 had written her a brief note, dated as well as mailed from 
 an ocean steamer, in which he enclosed a large draft and 
 
232 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 said that an uncle who was abroad had suddenly cabled for 
 him — that it was a grief to him to sail without seeing her, 
 but she must soon write care Munro & Co., Paris — that 
 probably he would not be gone long, and meantime he 
 should think of her as the dearest and sweetest friend he 
 ever had, and in like manner he hoped she would never 
 forget her ' ' grateful and devoted — H. W. By 
 
 Lightly begun, the affair therefore was as lightly 
 dropped on the part of Beveridge. But the pair left each 
 other not as they had met. They were no exception to 
 the rule of progressive depravity. Beveridge had large 
 ability. A certain foundation of grandeur and nobleness 
 was his. It is conceivable that some woman walking with 
 him as the best women best love to walk with men — on the 
 plane of the Mind, of the Soul — might have engaged and 
 uplifted his energies to good. 
 
 But two older matrons — oni because she wholly loved 
 him, the other because she wholly loved herself — descended 
 to that physical level whereon Beveridge, like so many 
 men, preferred his relations with the other sex, and his 
 training in evil was completed. His first crime against 
 marriage reduced his feminine ideals to a question-point. 
 His second gave a negative to the question even for those 
 of his own country. From Fanny's influence he came out 
 still more material, cynical, brutal — still better fitted to 
 wage merciless war on helpless animals and almost equally 
 helpless women and thus deeper to betray the interests 
 confided to him as a free and potent American — than 
 before. For him humanity had now no sacredness, and 
 God was blotted out. 
 
 As for Fanny, she had blackened to a moral Ethiop. 
 When Beveridge first met her she was simply a hard, 
 
JV£P^^ YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 233 
 
 worldly, determined pleasure-seeker like her mother. 
 When he deserted her, all her father had become devel- 
 oped in her as well. She was now a thorough voluptuary 
 — a woman honey-combed with evil. 
 
 I remember that in the Stowe-Byron controversy a 
 spinster defender of the profligate poet indignantly ex- 
 claimed in a newspaper protest: — ''If Byron was dissi- 
 pated, I had always supposed it was refined dissipation ! " 
 
 Paradoxical term and impossible idea ! There can be 
 no such thing as ''refined" dissipation. All dissipation 
 is desecration, and all desecration is gross, defiling and 
 degrading — and no less surely, if less overwhelmingly, to 
 men than to women. 
 
 " Ah I malheur a celui qui laisse la debauche 
 Planter le premier clou sous sa mamelle gauche. 
 Le coeur d'uri homme vierge est un vase profond — 
 Lorsque la premiere eau qu'on y verse est impure 
 La mer y passerait sans laver la souillure 
 Car I'abime est immense et la tache est au fond I "* 
 
 "Woe" indeed to such a one, — but woe, woe also to 
 her who from whatever motive, thus begins the deprava- 
 tion of younger manhood ! How awful — how hopeless to 
 the moralist is it that " The corruption of youth is by no 
 means confined to a single sex ; temptation comes as often 
 by the temptress as by the tempter; the generations in 
 fact alternating as the Messalina and the Don Juan of the 
 one following them ! " 
 
 * " Ah, woe to him within whose virgin heart Profligacy plants even 
 a single shaft! Such a heart is a cavernous vase — and if the first drop 
 spilled therein be impure, the ocean itself may pour through without 
 cleansing it; for the abyss is immense and the stain at its deepest depths." 
 
CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 LOST — THE LAST CHANCE ! 
 
 From her confidence and content in Beveridge Fanny 
 Howe was greatly startled by his abrupt departure; but 
 grieved and berett as she suddenly found herself, not for 
 some time dVd it even occur to her that she was deserted. 
 She had received from him so much — she had given him 
 so much more ! She could not dream that the bright 
 noon-day sun of all her happiness had in one moment 
 rushed down behind the horizon and left her in utter 
 blackness, and she sent one letter after another and 
 reckoned the dates for the returning mails as a matter 
 of course. 
 
 And in our modern time how many longing hearts 
 have to force themselves into patience and quietude over 
 the long delays of these same ''returning mails" — over 
 that vast, that awful break and silence in love and tender- 
 ness — an intervening ocean ! So many miles of relentless 
 water to be ploughed through, rod by rod ! So many more 
 to be ploughed back again before the throbbing pulses can 
 clasp the longed-for letter, can greet the adored char- 
 acters, cover them with kisses, perhaps sink to the knees 
 in worship and passionate gladness at being vouchsafed 
 them ! 
 
 No such lover as this was Fanny, but even so, she suf- 
 fered enough. At the very earliest she knew she could not 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 235 
 
 hear before four or five weeks, and unless Beveridge wrote 
 from Liverpool it might be six. '^ After getting to Lon- 
 don," she reflected, '*he would be rushing about and 
 seeing people — going to his tailor and attending to a 
 thousand things. In fact (it would not be very kind, but), 
 he might not even write even from London or Paris as he 
 went through them. He might possibly wait until he got 
 fairly to Vienna and had seen his uncle. Men were so 
 queer about writing — at least, some men were ; and Bev- 
 eridge, especially, was not one of the writing kind, etc., 
 etc." 
 
 Thus for some little time did Fanny, in her reasonable 
 way, forefend alarm and even anxiety. 
 
 And circumstances also helped her. The fancy had 
 seized Mr. Howe to rent for the summer a cottage on 
 Staten Island, instead of sending the family, as usual, to 
 Belmont ; and so it happened that while Beveridge was on 
 the water, Fanny was establishing her household in a 
 pretty little villa with woodbine-shaded porches, and with 
 grass and trees and a garden such as for the first days sent 
 the children wild. The looking-up of this home had 
 pre-occupied Fanny for a week. The moving in and 
 getting settled had taken a succeeding fortnight. Then 
 came a visit from Mrs. Dexter and Josephine, who had 
 lingered on to enjoy the new menage through the de- 
 licious Staten Island May and June, — the orphan, Clara 
 Calvert, being claimed by the other grandmother for the 
 summer. Mr. Howe was the soul of ho.spitality, and was 
 so ravished at being once more in his own house that he 
 brought home some business friend to dine and spend the 
 night once a week at least. Mrs Belnap was a constant 
 visitor, and so, in spite of the terrible loss of the one 
 
236 NEW YORK. A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 presence which was more to he^ than all these put together, 
 Fanny's life went bowling along with its usual animated 
 distractions. 
 
 But now not only the five, the six — but the seven and 
 the eight weeks for which she had prepared and schooled 
 herself, had slowly come and more slowly passed. 
 Steamer after steamer which had taken out each a letter 
 from her to her late lover, had returned, and still no 
 response — until finally began to dawn upon her dismayed 
 and astonished faculties the ghastly fear that Beveridge 
 had given her up ! Dreadful reflection ! Had he not 
 cared for her after all ? And if he had not, why, O why 
 had he invaded her happy, careless, innocent life? Why 
 had he led her on ? Why had he left her ? What had 
 she done? They had had no quarrel. Not the shadow of 
 a shade had come between their good — rather, as she had 
 supposed it, their thorough understanding. Their very 
 last good-bye had been a laughing one, as gay as it was 
 affectionate. She had enjoyed him so entirely. She had 
 valued him so supremely. He had seemed, at least, to 
 feel the same toward her. In fact, he had sought her, and 
 not she him. Was there then nothing in it? Had it all, 
 all vanished ? Heavens ! Had he but amused himself 
 with her? Oh, cruel, cruel, monstrous man ! Ah no ! — 
 Perhaps he was but ill ? 
 
 Thus the tortured groping of her thoughts ! 
 
 And yet, intense as became Fanny's misery of ignorance 
 and suspense, Beveridge' s stopping short in the affair 
 before any breath had sullied her reputation, was of 
 course, and as he hmiself well knew, the greatest kindness 
 he could have devised. It was Beveridge' s chivalry never 
 to seem to compromise a woman when he was really doing 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 237 
 
 SO. From the hour when he became this married woman's 
 betrayer, nothing could exceed the care he took to conceal 
 their meetings. He ceased calling on her and advised her 
 to complain laughingly to her family and to Mrs. Belnap 
 that he had ''turned out a snob and had dropped her 
 acquaintance." He was never seen on the street or at 
 any public place with her. Their meetings were at differ- 
 ent and distant points. To Beveridge it was part of the 
 bouquet of this forbidden pleasure that for hours at a time 
 a wife and mother disappeared as completely from all 
 human ken as though she were blotted out. In fact, so 
 thoroughly did he guard her that he did not feel as if he 
 harmed her at all I — and by the way, no man ever does 
 think that he lessens or lowers a woman. It is only when 
 some other man does it ! 
 
 Beveridge' s abandonment was therefore to Fanny one 
 of those undeserved rescues which the religious mind 
 believes are often the direct interpositions of Heaven to 
 save us from ourselves ; and had she truly loved him — had 
 she had even that plausible excuse for breaking the most 
 deep and binding of human obligations, she would now 
 have returned to her duties with a broken and a contrite 
 heart, grateful and amazed at having escaped the natural 
 consequences of her transgression, and seared forever into 
 insensibility to the approach of any other lover. 
 
 And the Providence that loved and brooded over this 
 wayward life as over all others, to win it toward its ideal, 
 still further essayed to save the wife and mother in her 
 place, by opening suddenly at her feet the dread reality 
 that sooner or later every human soul must face. 
 
 One sultry morning late in June, one of the children 
 awoke with a high fever and a sore throat. The doctor 
 
238 NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 who was summoned pronounced it malignant scarlet fever, 
 and in a fright Mrs. Belnap, who had never had the 
 disease, left the house imrnediately. The next day 
 another child came down with it, and Fanny wrote an 
 urgent note to her mother, who had not yet left New 
 York, never doubting, especially in view of Mrs. Dexter' s 
 enormous obligations to Mr. Howe, that she would send 
 Josephine on alone to Belmont and would herself return 
 and help nurse the little ones. 
 
 But in common with most selfish people, Mrs. Dexter 
 had a deadly, unreasoning fear of contagious disease. 
 For answer she returned the downright falsehood that 
 Josephine was far from well, and that, hearing the news, 
 both were in such a panic lest she too had taken the fever 
 during their recent visit, that they felt they must get 
 instantly home to Belmont. The thankless pair accord- 
 ingly did leave New York the same evening, and, as 
 generally is the case in scarlet fever, the Howe family was 
 deserted by everybody to fight the fierce disease alone as 
 best they might. 
 
 The first thought of the alarmed parents had been to 
 send away the well children with Jeannette. But on 
 reflection Fanny decided that she could never go through 
 a siege of nursing without her devoted sister-in-law ("to 
 bear the brunt of it" she might truthfully have added), 
 and so she insisted that all the children might as well be 
 exposed to the fever *' and done with it ! — Every child is, 
 sooner or later, you know, Davy ! Probably they have 
 already taken it, and if they leave home it might break 
 out among strangers." So she reasoned, and obediently 
 Mr. Howe procured a trained nurse, and together they all 
 endured the long days and nights of fatigue, anxiety and 
 
NEM' YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 239 
 
 suspense, and with an unimagined result. All of the chil- 
 dren had the fever, and three of them died — the oldest 
 boy and the two youngest girls, one of them the " baby " 
 of the family and Mr. Howe's idol. 
 
 To close these young and loving eyes in death was a 
 tremendous experience that would have converted any 
 mother but such a hardened pagan as Fanny. And it 
 would have left its mark upon even her, but through it all 
 burned the far intenser dread that she should not hear 
 again from Beveridge. W/iy didn't he write? In the 
 deadly chill of bereavement how did she long for the warm 
 caressifig atmosphere that now it seemed to her he bore 
 always about him ! , 
 
 But the selfish Lothario wrote not, and after four long 
 months of absence had passed without word or sign, 
 Fanny's common-sense accepted the situation. A splendid 
 aristocrat had stooped to her for a little while, had taken 
 all she could give, and then flung her aside. She did not 
 admit that it was heartless love of pleasure which had led 
 herself on to betray her husband. She did perceive that 
 heartless love of pleasure had made Beveridge betray her; 
 and as she slowly but surely realized the one unforgivable 
 perfidy — realized that she, Fanny Howe, a human being, 
 a fellow-creature, had by another poor human worm been 
 used, simply and merely used, rage took the place of 
 passion and contempt of tenderness. As in the flush 
 summer-time she stood in the garden in her black habili- 
 ments, her pale and diminished little flock about her, she 
 felt as in winter might some stripped and frozen but 
 rebellious tree. She would not, she could not, accept it 
 all — death and funerals and crape and the desertion of the 
 man to whom she fain would have clung ! It was all an 
 
240 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 evil dream and she must ind would forget it as soon as 
 possible. In future would she care for nothing ! She 
 was reckless, she would be reckless, perfectly reckless, 
 now ! 
 
 By the time the remaining Howe children were fully 
 recov^ered, the season was well-nigh over. After all that 
 strain, distress and woe, the bereaved mother dwelt upon 
 the necessity for them all of an immediate '' change," and 
 in his sympathy, the far more bereaved father, who, as 
 Fanny well knew, could not leave his business, consented 
 to the premature breaking-up of the pretty cottage, went 
 himself resignedly back to the Brooklyn hotel, and sent 
 his wife and little ones to spend the. autumn recuperating 
 in Belmont. 
 
 On the way thither some complication on the always 
 badly-managed Midland railroad detained the train for an 
 hour or two at a country station, and the superintendent 
 of the road, who happened to be on board, very obligingly 
 explored the little town for some suitable refreshments for 
 the Howe party. He was a tall and so-called "hand- 
 some ' ' man of about thirty-five, easy and pleasant of 
 speech like Mrs. Howe herself, and ''gentlemanly" in 
 precisely the same sense that she was ''ladylike." 
 
 Fanny, longing feverishly for a distraction — for a relief 
 from her ever-eating thoughts — so lavished thanks and 
 sweetness on the courteous official, that before the journey 
 was over he was infatuated with the fascinating New 
 Yorker in her mourning weeds; discerning which, the 
 latter, in exhilaration and even joy, launched a desperate 
 flirtation at once. 
 
 The road-superintendent was a married man, it is true; 
 but that was nothing to Fanny. He was not a swell like 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 241 
 
 Beveridge, of course, but for that very reason there was a 
 rapport between the pair such as can exist only between 
 persons in the same social conditions. Moreover, Fanny 
 had never felt sure of Beveridge, whereas the new flame 
 was a genuine, unmistakable conquest who would do and 
 dare anything for her. 
 
 Throughout her Belmont visit, and though it was sure 
 to excite remark, the road superintendent stopped over 
 at Belmont to get a glimpse of his divinity whenever 
 his duties permitted ; and equally regardless of her deep 
 mourning and of what Belmont people might think or say, 
 Fanny walked and drove about with this man and was 
 even suspected of taking short trips up and down the rail- 
 road with him. In the winter he ran down to New York 
 as often as he could manage it, and the next summer again 
 was devoted at Belmont. For two or three years this went 
 on, and then — it was some one else ! The pleasure-lover 
 had discovered the possibilities that lay in chance ac- 
 quaintance, and the great city was henceforth practically 
 all before her where prudently to choose. Her husband's 
 income grew no larger, but her own rich dress, her gay 
 and beaming looks, knew no eclipse. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 BELMONT. 
 
 The fifteen years following Fanny Dexter' s marriage 
 saw the culmination of the Dexter prestige in Belmont, 
 and rounded also its decline. Never at home in winter 
 from that time forward, Mrs. Dexter for long kept open 
 house for her daughters in summer, and their costly and 
 fashionable dress, their rides and drives about the place 
 and neighborhood, and their annual August sojourn at the 
 near-by Belmont Springs — all this, season after season and 
 for many in succession, produced an effect of such gayety, 
 luxury and ease of existence compared with the monoto- 
 nous round and unstylish garb of daily duty in Belmont, 
 that the inevitable end was the waking of deep searchings 
 of heart in many a once contented village breast. 
 
 The situation of Belmont is unique. It lies on the west- 
 ern slope of the last of many ranges of hills that run north 
 and south between the Green Mountains and Lake Cham- 
 plain, and these beautiful hills, all wooded but one, though 
 not abrupt are very high. At their base stretches westward 
 a little plateau parallel with themselves, which is bounded 
 at either end by bold single eminences advanced in front 
 of the main range, and called respectively North Top and 
 South Top. They are a mile or two apart, and between 
 them, and on either side of the main road which runs past 
 their feet, and a section of which forms its principal and 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 243 
 
 maple-shaded street, Belmont has grown. The plateau 
 spreads to a mile west of Belmont, then, a steep but short 
 descent drops the wayfarer down to the level approaches 
 of the lake-shore hamlet which takes its name from Bel- 
 mont Bay. 
 
 From Belmont proper, as it has built itself round its 
 central "green," and branches right and left from its main 
 artery, not much can be seen except the great blue backs 
 of the distant Adirondacks in the west, — for the width of 
 the plateau at this point quite hides the lake from view. 
 But North Top pushes its southward foot into the very 
 village, and a short walk up its steep slope astonishes and 
 rewards the stranger by a wide revelation of valley, lake 
 and mountain that seizes both eye and heart with a magic 
 and mystic charm. Should he leave the road, climb the 
 fence into the hill-pasture and mount to the real rocky 
 heights above, a vision unrolls itself before him which for 
 soft and exquisite and paradisaical beauty is probably not 
 surpassed in this world. 
 
 Blue sky, blue lake, blue mountains — all stretch simul- 
 taneously north and south round the western curve of 
 the earth in an enchanting perspective which hangs in 
 the summer air like a great soft shimmering picture. 
 Across the lake southward, the tallest and sharpest peaks 
 of the Adirondacks are fore-shortened into a poetic group, 
 while directly opposite Belmont rises the massive Lion 
 Mountain with so interminably long and gradual a de- 
 scent into the Canadian plain, that it seems as if the 
 haughty '' Empire State " were reluctant to let itself down 
 into such provincial neighborship. At the gazer's feet 
 little Belmont nestles in thick maple foliage, though in the 
 grassy fields about her stand many slender, graceful elms. 
 
244 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 At her farther end the abrupj and rugged South Top bars 
 the free untrammelled valley but a little way, then leaves 
 it open north and south to the searchings and influences 
 and tidings of all the winds that from the Atlantic and the 
 Hudson River rush up the long Champlain depression. 
 
 Nor is this all of Belmont's dower of natural beauty. 
 For should the visiting, stranger take a drive to the crest of 
 the Belmont hills themselves, and fastening his horse, make 
 his way to the highest or ''Bellevue" outlook — walling 
 the entire east the bold outlines and purple hues of the 
 Green Mountains rise before him. In paler and paler 
 tones they sweep southward until they seem to join the far 
 circle of the lower Adirondacks, while northward, both 
 picturesque chains sink to earth at the Canada border with 
 only the Montreal heights like a lost link between. And 
 now to the west the climax of the glorious panorama bursts 
 upon him ! Lake Champlain, broadest just opposite Bel- 
 mont, and with all her islands on her breast, lies enframed 
 in the long sapphire Adirondack range, a great sapphire 
 mirror beneath a sapphire sky, while beneath him North 
 Top and South Top have sunk into the wide and varied 
 plain which with its woods and fields and homes and Bel- 
 mont itself, fills up the middle distance. It is the famous 
 view from Mansfield Mountain on a reduced and perhaps 
 lovelier scale — a magnificent azure symphony that seems to 
 lean graciously toward you out of the ether — a coup d'oeil 
 of mingled sweetness and stateliness almost never vouch- 
 safed — and why has the Genius of America never yet in- 
 spired some serene master of American sky and distance — 
 some Frederick E. '^^urch — to paint its dreamlike splendor 
 and repose — its sup ^ yet celestial blues ? 
 
 With such extended prospects* within so short a walk or 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 245 
 
 drive, it was not altogether surprising that Belmont resi- 
 dents should be subject to a restlessness and an ambition 
 that towns with narrower horizons knew not of. Perhaps 
 it was that wide-spreading landscape which suggested flight 
 and emancipation from all limiting surroundings — though 
 to make this probable, I ought to be able to show that its 
 residents were frequently in the habit of walking or driv- 
 ing to their numerous ''coignes of (pictorial) vantage" 
 and imbibing all the wild and wayward influences that 
 "the bodiless airs — a wizard rout" might bring them; 
 whereas, if the truth must be told, the majority of the 
 Belmontese, or at least, the majority of its women (for all 
 men in Northern Yankee-land manage to recreate them- 
 selves more or less often with a ** horse and buggy "), almost 
 never left the precincts of the village ! Walking — except 
 that incessant phase of it known as "housework," was 
 unknown either as a necessity for health or as a possibility 
 for pleasure. Few had explored the gentle fascinations of 
 the Belmont shore; fewer still were familiar with the 
 gentle glories of the Belmont hills. 
 
 Whether or not "environment" had anything to do 
 with its subsequent career, certain it is that within twenty 
 years from the opening of the railroad in Belmont, in 
 spirit the village was transformed. For some time the 
 little community had been kept to its ancient moorings by 
 the elements which had dominated it from its founding. 
 
 The Ashursts, intensely sympathetic and outspoken in 
 the anti-slavery agitation, but foraging far and wide in all 
 fields of current English literature and keeping their 
 mental granaries full to overflowing, continued on their 
 tranquil way of generous but simple hospitality, and 
 laughed good-naturedly at the Dexter airs and pretentions 
 
246 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 and successes. The little circle surrounding them did 
 the same thing, and especially the family of their friend 
 and pastor, Mr. Gardner — by living still more simply and 
 adding love and skill in music and art to a kindred intel- 
 lectual culture, helped to maintain the Puritan prestige of 
 ideas over things, and therefore to prevent Dexterism from 
 being more than a tolerated exotic in the wholesome New 
 England soil. 
 
 Mrs. Gardner, indeed, could have kept, not a village, 
 but a city, a state, a nation, in the right path, had it been 
 committed to her to do. She was an apparition to be met 
 perhaps once in a century — a regal and complicated nature 
 combining power to lead and to command with the flam- 
 ing zeal of a missionary and the gifts, longings and ir- 
 rationalities of an artist, — something of a Queen Eliza- 
 beth, a Santa Teresa, a Marie Bashkirtseff all in one ! 
 The technical difficulties of neither painting, music or nee- 
 dlework daunted those wonderful hands which "touched 
 nothing they did not adorn ! " In music she even had the 
 '' absolute pitch " and would dash off a charming little 
 fantasia on any air given her ; she wrote prose or verse 
 with equal ease; books were her delight and gardening 
 her joy, while her remarkable medical skill was at the ser- 
 vice of all who came for it. In religion she was an ex- 
 alted enthusiast, judging every deed, even the smallest, in 
 the infinite balance of heaven and hell, and in her elo- 
 quence and fervor rarely failing to bring to God any heart 
 with whom she communed. 
 
 She was a beautiful and lofty and unsmiling woman, so 
 intensely in earnest and pre-occupied that people knew 
 not what to make of her, and were struck and awed rather 
 than attracted. Had she lived one generation later — 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 247 
 
 lived in this generation of ours which sees so many women 
 making careers for themselves, she would have won fame 
 and admiration as an artist or a musician — or fortune and 
 prestige as a great physician — or realms for Christ as a 
 thrilling evangelist. 
 
 As it was, born of the most conservative foreign parent- 
 age, and bred in the narrow confines of that Episcopal 
 church which to its own spiritual regress backwards, 
 holds over its women the procustean rigor of St. Paul 
 — she never drew the free breath of her own free coun- 
 try. Always a semi-invalid and rarely leaving the 
 house except to go to church (where as the organist she 
 improvised the most beautiful voluntaries and accompani- 
 ments), Mrs. Gardner spent her life in incessant hand- 
 sewing for her many little ones, and as she sewed, in 
 training them and a few young pupils in the rudiments of 
 the high aesthetic things she loved. 
 
 Let us suppose that the mothers of Belmont could have 
 seen Mrs. Gardner as doubtless her Maker saw her, and 
 could have said to her — '* Let us do the family sewing for 
 you which takes up all your time and is so cruel to your 
 delicate lungs besides — and do you, with your passion for 
 the right and the beautiful, teach our children the Bible, 
 and impress upon them your own deep sense of 'Thou 
 God seest me,'' which is the main spring of all noble 
 national as of all true personal life. Lay out the village 
 green and other pleasances for us as you could so artistic- 
 ally do, and interest our boys in gardening and in tree and 
 shrub-planting, our girls in house-plants and aesthetic hand- 
 iwork. In the winter evenings, train from them a village 
 chorus and orchestra, and give us monthly concerts with 
 your brilliant piano and organ accompaniments. In the 
 
248 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 V 
 
 summer days, take others out in sketching parties and in- 
 spire them to love and see nature with your own Ruskin 
 and Wordsworth-taught eyes." 
 
 Fancy what Belmont might have become with her rising 
 generation the pupils and disciples of this strangely dow- 
 ered and inspired woman ! Certainly it would have been 
 a nursery of high ideals and joyous endeavor — a happy 
 missionary centre for many best and loveliest things. 
 
 But the house-mothers of that day had no other thought 
 than the house-mothers of this — to keep each her own 
 family as best she could and leave her neighbors to do the 
 same, each totally regardless of the wealth of special talent 
 that might be going to waste among those neighbors, and 
 even though it were just what was needed to make good 
 her own deficiencies ! 
 
 And so the gifted aesthete and ministrant and religionist 
 who was meant for the wide halls of Art or Beneficence, 
 strove to content herself within the little hidden corner 
 which was her lot, and to transmit the stern creed which 
 the Protestant theology of her day was still echoing from 
 the Catholic and Jewish theologies of former ones. 
 
 It was, that by the doom of Genesis, men must rule, 
 — women must obey. 
 
 So little did she question it, that as Hawthorne's Hes- 
 ter elaborated the brand of the ' ' scarlet letter ' ' upon her 
 breast, so did Mrs. Gardner elaborate what she deemed the 
 brand of Eden upon her life. 
 
 *' Man," she would say, "■ is under one curse, the curse 
 of labor — ' In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread ' 
 but woman is under three. First, the curse of labor even 
 more than man, for 'woman's work is never done,' and 
 he, moreover, can choose any labor, but she can only 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 249 
 
 have domestic labor. Second, ' Thy desire shall be to 
 thy husband and he shall rule over thee/ — and this is 
 woman's curse of mind-yearning for the other sex, for 
 women always long to be the mental companions and 
 friends of men, while men chiefly want them physically, and 
 mentally they rule and ignore them. Third, ' In sorrow 
 shalt thou bring forth children,' — and thisis woman's curse 
 of physical suffering, for even if women have talents equal 
 to men their health will never permit them to develop 
 them." 
 
 In her invaluable portrait of ' ^ American Society ' ' pub- 
 lished in 1837, Harriet Martineau remarked how beneath 
 the American theory and boastings regarding personal 
 liberty was the position, not only of the negro slaves, but 
 of American women as the reasoning and reasonable wives 
 and daughters of reasoning and reasonable men ; and she 
 also recorded that at that date American women had but 
 two active interests in life — housekeeping and religion — 
 the latter of which they were accepting simply as taught 
 them, and apparently with neither question nor thought/ 
 
 Deep in Scripture lore though Mrs. Gardner was, it 
 never occurred to her to ask why the despotic ^' shall" 
 and ''shalt" of the Genesis doom ought not to be 
 rather translated by the prophetic ''will" and "wilt;" 
 nor, even interpreting it at its worst, did she wonder — 
 when Jesus declared that the "Spirit of the Lord was 
 upon Him to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliver- 
 ance to the captives and to set at liberty them that are 
 bound," — whether this emancipation was not as much in- 
 tended for the daughters of her who ' ' was first in the 
 transgression ' * as for the sons of him who so cheerfully 
 seconded it ! 
 
250 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 To submit, to suffer and fo work ; to be a function, i.e. 
 a ''wife and mother;" to live for your family and aim 
 and strive for nothing for yourself except strength from 
 above to bear your daily load — this was the universal 
 theory of womanhood of Mrs. Gardner's youth, and to it 
 she clung to the end. When her cultured and more lib- 
 eral husband taught their daughters Latin and mathe- 
 matics, and when she heard of the Antioch and Oberlin 
 '' co-education " colleges, she was alarmed and even 
 resentful lest her sex should be rebelling against the 
 " divine " decree of its limitations. Had not her own 
 stately bishop-father said to her at fourteen: — "My dear, 
 you must stop school now. You know enough for a 
 woman." 
 
 So credulously has the glorious human mind often bent 
 to the slanders against itself and its Maker which its 
 human rulers impose upon it ! 
 
 But the human heart never accepts these atrocities. It 
 never has and it never will believe that it was created for 
 anything but Freedom, Beauty and Joy, and when these 
 are denied it on earth, it sometimes sets itself to break in 
 order to kill the body and let the immortal spirit go ! 
 
 For many years — or what seemed many years when 
 measured by the slow pulsings of pain and of desire — Mrs. 
 Gardner was buoyed by a formless hope that somehow, 
 some day, a larger, fuller life would open for her ! 
 
 Infinitely more than the aspiring Mrs. Dexter, did she 
 feel that Belmont was not her proper sphere. Once for a 
 short period she had lived in Philadelphia, and she had 
 ever after that sick, pent longing for a city — for a great 
 wide place where she could hear music and see pictures, 
 and where she could meet artistic and sympathetic people 
 and have some scope for that stifled ardor for the beautiful 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 251 
 
 which seemed but to consume her the more, the less it had 
 to feed upon. 
 
 But when she had passed thirty-five and the piles of 
 sewing kept growing with the growing family ; when it was 
 forced upon her that her shattered health alone must be a 
 perpetual prison-sentence upon her — as she sewed, the 
 work beneath her eyes was dimmed by ever-welling tears. 
 
 It was so harrowing to think that she would never, never 
 be able ''to show what she could do" — no, not even to 
 her own children ! 
 
 It was so piercing to hear about the distant triumphs of 
 others and to know that with their " chance " she would 
 have equalled them ! 
 
 It was so killing perpetually to 
 
 " Dream what, were men more kind, I might have been, 
 How strong, how fair, how kindly, how serene, 
 Glowing of heart and glorious of mien ! " 
 
 Weeping she^ said one day to a friend : — "/ have noth- 
 ing to look forward to and nothing to expect ! ' ' 
 
 Imagine Marie Bashkirtseff without money, without 
 masters, without the culture of travel or of great cities, 
 buried in the remote estates of her people, and burdened 
 with the hand- sewing of a large family — what would her 
 ** genius" have done for that brilliant Russian consump- 
 tive more than did hers for this brilliant American one? 
 
 And so over the richly endowed creature passed the 
 Juggernaut of her generation, and not long after Fanny 
 Dexter' s marriage she died, leaving behind her a baby of 
 one year and other little ones of three, of seven, of nine, 
 to prove for the billionth time that women are not created 
 for the other sex and its posterity — otherwise they would 
 
252 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 be kept on earth to take care of their husbands and grow- 
 ing children — but for themselves / For a few seasons Mr. 
 Gardner and his eldest daughter continued the little 
 home school she had begun, and then the Gardner family, 
 with all its enthusiasm for music, art and literature, moved 
 away, and nothing but a lowly graveyard cross remained 
 in Belmont to witness that a high queen of the earth had 
 once dwelt unrecognized and uncrowned upon its wind- 
 swept slope ! 
 
 The Ashursts — alas indeed for Belmont ! — soon fol- 
 lowed the Gardners. For reasons of family health, Mr. 
 Ashurst sought and obtained from the Republican admin- 
 istration, which well owed it to him, an honorable foreign 
 appointment, and the family never again resided, and 
 indeed rarely visited, in Belmont. Other unfortunate 
 changes preceded or followed. The pastor of the Congre- 
 gational church, a strong and thoughtful and independent 
 man, was elected president of the State university, and 
 the personality of his successor by no means approached 
 his own. Mr. Ashurst' s near and favorite neighbor, after 
 marrying from his charming home his only child, suddenly 
 died, and his wife went to live in New York with her 
 daughter. The village schoolmistress, too, whose dark 
 eyes and interesting talk had for years enlivened the 
 Ashurst and similar tea-parties, was largely lost to public 
 and social usefulness under the extinguisher of rural mar- 
 riage, which in Belmont, as in all the villages of the 
 State, meant practically taking a place to do general 
 housework in return for a modest home and for still more 
 modest dress. Another winsome and cultured woman, a 
 lawyer's clever wife, became so ardent a Roman Catholic 
 as necessarily to fall out of rapport with her old acquaint- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 253 
 
 ance, and eventually she and her husband removed to an 
 out-of-town farm. 
 
 Thus by an untoward fate the higher New England 
 elements, the chief centres of its original *^ sweetness and 
 light," one by one abandoned beautiful Belmont, and left 
 it to the New York materialism and snobbishness which 
 the Dexters of the Episcopal, and a certain rich family of 
 Browns of the Congregational church, from the opening 
 of the railroad epoch, poured in upon it. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 AUSTEN BROWN. 
 
 The original Austen Brown of Belmont was a typical 
 rural Yankee who had accumulated what for a New Eng- 
 land village was a fortune, and by the usual Yankee 
 methods, — i.e.^ ceaseless industry and painful thrift on the 
 part of the wife — shrewd bargaining and ''financing" on 
 that of the husband. He had been a chief promoter of 
 the railroad, which, as we have seen, brought New York 
 and Boston within a day's journey of Belmont, and united 
 them also with Montreal. In its survey he and his associ- 
 ates had had the pleasure of leaving the chief city of the 
 little State on one side, and thus of compelling all the 
 travellers who were obliged to go through it to New York 
 or any intermediate point, to the exquisite inconvenience 
 of changing cars which were always behind time at a 
 ''Junction" where there were no houses to speak of, but 
 a great deal of land owned by their enterprising selves. 
 
 The "Midland" road — for so was it called — having 
 been initiated on the principle of doing unto others as 
 you would not they should do to you, the enemies of the 
 Austen Browns were wont to declare that the principle 
 was never after lost sight of. It was organized and sub- 
 scribed for in a poor little State which is the special home 
 of rigid personal economy, but the many bridges and steep 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 255 
 
 grades incident to a mountainous country made the build- 
 ing of it more costly than had been supposed, and after it 
 began running, its rails and rolling-stock wore out in one- 
 fifth of the time that had been expected. It could not 
 renew them ; it could not pay the interest on its bonds ; 
 finally, it could not pay the rent of the connecting Canada 
 railroad known as the'' Montreal," which it had leased in 
 order to take its trains into the city of the same name. 
 The directors of the latter road naturally brought suit to 
 recover their arrears, and then the Midland had to fail — 
 and alas, — it had cost eight millions ! 
 
 Consequent upon this bankruptcy, the Chancery Court 
 of Belmont County appointed a board of receivers under 
 whose direction both roads should be run, until their joint 
 earnings should have paid up the back rent due to the 
 Montreal. 
 
 The president of this board of receivers was Austen 
 Brown the second, now the inheritor of his father's money 
 and business interests. His business talent and training 
 he had also got from his father, and like him again, he 
 was a deacon in highest standing in the Congregational 
 church. But his were by no means the narrow rural mind 
 or the unpolished rural manner. He was a college and 
 also a law-school graduate, and his rugged features and 
 retreating eyes were pleasantly contradicted by a genial 
 address and a persuasive tongue which needed but to ask 
 of his fellow-beings in order to have. 
 
 This village magnate took the ground with his associate 
 receivers that the Midland property in their charge must 
 first of all be brought up to a state of working efficiency. 
 " If I am the guardian of a minor," he argued, '' and he 
 has a mortgaged farm, I must keep the barns and fences. 
 
256 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 the tools and implements, in proper number and repair, of 
 course, or I can't carry on the farm ; and equally of course, 
 the pay for such renewal and repair takes legal precedence 
 of all other claims, even of mortgage interest. Now this 
 board is under bonds to pay the rent of the Montreal road, 
 but we can't do it if our own road is so run down that it 
 won't earn it ! As you know, it is thoroughly run down 
 — is in want of everything. We must then, under sanc- 
 tion of the Court, borrow money whose payment shall take 
 precedence of every other claim against us, even to the 
 claim of the Montreal — though with the Midland in good 
 order there is no doubt but the Montreal rent can and 
 will be paid." 
 
 '' Able, far-seeing Austen Brown ! " — so said, so thought 
 his fellow-trustees, and in the exercise of their powers in 
 chancery, they, or rather, their clever president for them, 
 first placed on the city stock-markets several million 
 dollars worth of ' ' Equipment Bonds, ' ' the money from 
 the sale of which he declared was to go for the purchase 
 of the rolling-stock so much needed by the line. Next he 
 negotiated an equally generous issue of '* Construction 
 Bonds," whose price was to be spent on the road-bed and 
 bridges and in building more stations. In order to secure 
 these advances, mortgages were given on the already mort- 
 gaged Midland, and the bond-takers felt safe, because they 
 supposed themselves dealing with the honorable agent of a 
 high court of justice. 
 
 With its new resources the Midland bounded into a new 
 prosperity, and after a reasonable time the back rent of 
 the Montreal was indeed fully paid up. As this was the 
 purpose for which President Brown and his fellows had 
 been appointed the receivers of the road, legally their 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 257 
 
 trust was now expired and they should have settled their 
 accounts and asked to be discharged. 
 
 But our Belmont financier was ready for anything rather 
 than a discharge from his post of financial power as man- 
 aging trustee of a great quasi-public property. He was 
 deep in enterprises for the '' development " of the Midland 
 and of his own private fortune in connection with it, and 
 his associates were in more or less deeply with him. If 
 they retired they were all ruined, and the road, moreover, 
 would fall into the hands of the city capitalists to whom it 
 was mortgaged. Self-interest and State pride alike trem- 
 bled before such an alternative. 
 
 When there is a will there is a way. The chancellor of 
 the Belmont court which had confided to them their trust, 
 was a venal creature under whose purchaseable ermine a 
 daring policy might be pursued, and on his side President 
 Brown was ingenious and cool. He left it to his brother 
 receivers whether, instead of resigning their trust, a bet- 
 ter plan would not be to enter into a contract by which, 
 under authority of a chancery decree, they should call 
 themselves as a corporation name the * ' Board of Receivers 
 and Managers of the Midland Through Line," and then 
 — keep on just as they were ? 
 
 The other receivers discreetly refrained from questioning 
 too closely either the law or the equity of this alluring 
 proposition. It sufficed them to reflect that President 
 Brown was a trained lawyer who of course must know 
 what he was talking about, and that where he led it was 
 safe to follow. They did not resign the receivership, and 
 they did enter into the suggested corporation contract, 
 and their friend the chancellor signed it for them in the 
 form of a decree — although the highest legal learning in 
 
258 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 the State afterward maintained before its highest tribunal 
 that the chancellor's Court had no more right to 
 ''decree" the existence of such a contract than it had 
 '' to decree that one of the parties should marry the other 
 one's daughter ! " 
 
 Thence began a series of financial juggleries which in 
 skill and unscrupulousness have been compared to the cele- 
 brated game of ''Erie," — and with a like result of trans- 
 ferring into the deep pocket of the one the contents of the 
 shallow pockets of the many ! The railroad world was 
 deceived by the scheme just as the astute Midland presi- 
 dent intended it should be. The managers of the Mon- 
 treal, in particular, well pleased at having received their 
 back rent, continued to lease their road to the supposed 
 legal ' ' Board of Receivers, etc. ' ' on the same terms as 
 before, — i.e., for a rental of eight per cent, of its value 
 secured by a mortgage on the joint earnings of both roads. 
 In its own section the Montreal was a favorite investment 
 with farmers and persons of small means. It was fully 
 paid for and unincumbered, and when leased to the 
 Midland was in excellent working order. 
 
 For ten years the owners of this standard property had 
 every reason to be satisfied with the bargain of their 
 directors. Their rent was promptly received and therefore 
 their expected dividends as regularly declared — when sud- 
 denly their prosperity collapsed ! The Midland ceased 
 paying the Montreal any rent, and when for the second 
 time the latter brought suit for arrears against it, the 
 tables proved to be most extraordinarily turned. 
 
 Out of fifteen millions of capital known to have gone, 
 first and last, into the Midland, only about seven in actual 
 values could be found ! The road was four millions 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 259 
 
 behind in its accounts, and so far from paying up the back 
 rent of the Montreal, President Brown and his bogus 
 "Board of Receivers" brought a counter-suit against the 
 astonished corporation to compel its being handed bodily 
 over to the Midland in satisfaction of the huge ''joint 
 liability" of this, as they claimed, "joint concern! " 
 
 What had become of all the missing millions, and also 
 of the earnings of the two roads ? 
 
 Certainly it was not very hard for the opposing counsel 
 to guess ! 
 
 Very early in his receivership, Austen Brown got passed 
 by the State Legislature an act for the incorporation of a 
 manufacturing company in which he himself was the 
 principal stock-owner, and he then bought out and trans- 
 ferred to Belmont the various industries which supplied the 
 Midland system. This of course ruined the village which 
 had already grown up on them, but the enterprise proved 
 a mine of wealth to President Brown and his relatives — 
 the heads respectively of the Belmont Foundry, of the 
 Belmont Rolling-mill and of the Belmont Car-factory, for 
 these gentlemen sold to the railroads they themselves 
 were managing, and whose best interests Austen Brown 
 was under oath to defend, rails, car-wheels, engines and 
 cars at prices higher than those of any manufacturers in 
 the country. 
 
 Austen Brown, moreover, leased in his own name a 
 little road which was a shorter cut than a certain detour of 
 the Midland, sent all the Midland and Montreal freight 
 over it at enormous rates, and pocketed the profit ! 
 
 In order to obtain all the business possible, a feeder for 
 the main line was built north-eastward into Canada, 
 various cross-roads of the State were cajoled or threatened 
 
26o NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 into the system, and, largest^ venture of all, a New York 
 road with a terminus on Lake Erie was leased to the west- 
 ward, and to the south one was obtained in the Connecti- 
 cut valley with a terminus on Long Island Sound. Then, 
 with the co-operation of the propellers through the great 
 lakes and of the boats on the Sound, President Brown 
 could start his freights at Chicago and, by way of Ogdens- 
 burgh and over the Midland (including his own short cut 
 of course), finally unload them in New York. 
 
 It was really splendid — such ramification of energy and 
 triumph from an obscure and remote country village ! 
 Nor was the village itself forgotten — in a way ! In that 
 masculine joy of building which is the brother of the fem- 
 inine love of adorning, Austen Brown provided for the 
 prospective commerce of Belmont a station so large that 
 there were not at the time two of equal size in Boston 
 itself! A twin project was a modern hotel, the '* Austen 
 House," built facing the village green — for the beloved 
 railroad was certain at no distant time (so prophesied 
 President Brown) to pour a golden stream of summer 
 guests into the little place ! 
 
 If millions of the Midland capital were missing, and if 
 it were millions more in debt, surely here were outward 
 and visible signs enough to account for some of them — to 
 say nothing of the conspicuous development of the wealth 
 and prestige of President Brown himself, and apparently, 
 of some of the Brown connection ! 
 
 For from the time when the interlacing Brown fortunes 
 began to swell from the fact that, as a disgusted stock- 
 owner remarked, ''the Midland dumped its money car in 
 the Browns' back- yard " — as a family the Browns deserted 
 the common Belmont level, and planted their ample 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 261 
 
 square mansions on the brow of the before-mentioned rise 
 of North Top from the Belmont main street. They not 
 only planted them. As years went on they enlarged and 
 altered them over and over again with skilled labor from 
 the Midland work-shops, until these ostentatious homes 
 had quite out-grown any adequate use they were likely to 
 make of them. From the higher hills behind them they 
 brought water for their water-works and indulged in foun- 
 tains and Scotch gardeners and conservatories. They went 
 into fancy farming on a luxurious scale, and patted their 
 high-bred horses in stables far more costly than the houses 
 any of themselves had been born in. 
 
 With wealth came the natural appanages of wealth — . 
 political place and power. President Brown was elected 
 governor of the State several times in succession ; in 
 all local elections his work-people in Belmont voted to 
 please him, and as his ambition had come to include the 
 vast future of the Northern Pacific railroad, his cousin 
 and nearest neighbor, George Brown, was kept in Con- 
 gress for several terms, ostensibly to gratify Belmont 
 pride and public spirit, but really to lobby for the Brown 
 interest in the great enterprise. 
 
 Something far more precious, therefore, than public 
 ventures and private luxuries had been purchased with the 
 missing Midland millions, or like a beckoning mirage the 
 Brown wealth would never have arisen from the Belmont 
 soil to lure and dazzle the Belmont heart ! 
 
 What was it? 
 
CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 HOW "swells" are evolved. 
 
 When for the second time the Midland stopped paying 
 the rent of the Montreal road and the latter brought suit 
 against the ''Board of Receivers and Managers of the Mid- 
 land Through Line" — so clear and strong was the case 
 against them, that the simple-minded Canadians, accus- 
 tomed to Old, not New England justice, never doubted 
 of immediately winning their cause. 
 
 To their amazement, neither the local Court nor later 
 the Supreme Court of the State would grant them any 
 arrears of rent whatever. 
 
 ''Very well then, if we are to have no rent, we must 
 have our property back," said they — and they demanded 
 the restoration of their road into their own hands. 
 
 "Not so," answered the Midland in a counter-suit ; — 
 "our joint roads have been run for the common benefit. 
 They have shared and shared alike. The accounts show a 
 deficit of four millions, and the Montreal is justly liable 
 with the Midland for that deficit. Until it is made good 
 you practically belong to us, and we cannot, shall not, let 
 you go." 
 
 The Canadians resisted with stubborn energy this gigan- 
 tic "steal" only slowly to realize that the State bar was 
 practically bought up against them, — nearly every lawyer 
 in it, from members of Congress down, being " retained " 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 263 
 
 by the Midland ; that the press was bought up — the State 
 newspapers, with a few brave exceptions, being toadies of 
 the Midland president ; and that even the Legislature was 
 bought up — for by a majority of seven votes it made 
 the pliant tool whose corruption on the chancery bench 
 had been the very fulcrum of Austen Brown's career. Chief 
 Justice of the State ! 
 
 For years and years the stock-owners of the Montreal 
 road, together with the investors and capitalists who had 
 built and also those who had renewed the Midland line, 
 fought and fought, and hung like hungry wolves about the 
 bar and the bench behind which their anaconda enemy 
 had entrenched himself, and all in vain. They could 
 never get any justice — could never make good their most 
 righteous claims. A great lawyer once opened his argu- 
 ment for them with : 
 
 I do not know, may it please your Honors, that anything I shall 
 be able to say will be of any use. It is not of my own choice that I am 
 here to take any further part in this litigation. I am tired long ago of 
 this unhappy controversy and its endless retinue of misfortune and dis- 
 aster. It has besmirched almost everybody who has had anything to 
 do with it. It has sacrificed all the property that has gone into it. It 
 has been conducted for more than twenty years, in my judgment, en- 
 tirely outside of the principles and rules of the law of the land. 
 
 The contestants at last centred all their hopes in the 
 final tribunal of the nation, but so incredibly armed at all 
 points was President Brown, that to the end he even knew 
 how to prevent an appeal to the Supreme Court of the 
 United States ! 
 
 In Austen Brown's rural State, money is regarded with 
 a reverence proportioned to the difficulty of getting it, 
 and this man's acquisition of millions, whether fairly 
 
264 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 or Otherwise, made him ^ kind of fetich. Never was 
 a more pronounced case of one-man, one-corporation 
 power in a community ! His fellow-citizens seemed spell- 
 bound by his audacity. The small fry in the Midland net 
 fared as badly as the big fish. Midland transportation 
 and fares were high, and Midland trains chronically be- 
 hind. Impossible to get damages for delays or injuries to 
 freight ! As against the Midland no wronged customer 
 could find a lawyer to take charge of his case. Let him 
 ask whom he would, in his own village or any other, he 
 got the same answer: — '^I'd rather not touch it," — or, 
 *'I don't care about taking hold of it." This rich 
 *^ Governor Brown," in fact, was practically a State in- 
 stitution, and though men's curses were deep and women's 
 tears bitter over the bonds which through him had turned 
 to waste paper in their grasp, no hand was lifted and no 
 tongue wagged openly against him. 
 
 The futile years of litigation went by, and when the 
 law-guarded financier got ready, he made the contesting 
 Midland bond-holders a characteristic anaconda proposi- 
 tion. ** Come ! " said he, in substance, " let by-gones be 
 by-gones. Much of the property is gone. It can't be re- 
 covered. What's the use of further wrangling? Better 
 take what is left and re-organize. Let us form a new 
 company under the title of the ' Through Midland Line ' 
 instead of the 'Midland Through Line,' and let us all 
 take shares in proportion to our former investments." 
 
 So many of the original investors had died off that it 
 was almost a new generation to whom he made these over- 
 tures. The corporation quarrels of the fathers are seldom 
 those of the sons, and the compromise of little for much 
 was accepted. Midland and Montreal stocks and bonds 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 265 
 
 were alike almost worthless, and something was better 
 than nothing. As is so often the case, the wrong went 
 on and flourished while the right silently gave up the 
 ghost ! 
 
 One more spoliation wrought by the Midland managers 
 against their own and future generations, points to 
 the fabled dragon which ever blasted the entire region 
 upon which he lighted, as the true prototype of many 
 a modern corporation. Wood was plenty and cheap 
 when the Midland road was opened, and it was started 
 with wood-burning locomotives which were retained 
 for forty years later — though during this period they de- 
 voured forest after forest of the lovely little State, and 
 in consequence dried up many of its ponds and dash- 
 ing brooks, made languid streamlets of its exquisite rivers, 
 lowered its perfect lakes, and gave to it a frequent curse 
 of summer drouth with all its blighting accompaniments, 
 while powerless hearts could only look on and sigh over 
 the ruin of divine nature by the greed of ruthless man ! 
 
 In its last analysis superior wealth is frequently the 
 product of some one superior mind joined to superior 
 power of work and of self-denial, and fortified by a very 
 inferior conscience. 
 
 Primeval forests, weaker corporations, confiding bond- 
 holders, the law and also the gospel had gone down 
 before the remarkable organizing talent, the graspingness, 
 the industry and the patience of Austen Brown — for his 
 office-hours were often fifteen out of the twenty-four, and 
 his daily mail was one-half complaints and threats. 
 
 But so bound and involved together are human fortunes, 
 that, even if he would, a man cannot promote only 
 his own. 
 
266 yElV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 This financier's life wor^ was not merely that he built 
 himself up into a capitalist and a power. Owing to him 
 his native State possessed a complete railroad system 
 largely owned and officered within its own borders; nis 
 native village had trebled in population and importance; 
 while of its residents a few of his very ordinary relations 
 were able to surround themselves with more beautiful 
 grounds, to live in finer houses, dress more expensively, 
 drive smarter equipages and take longer journeys than 
 their neighbors, and, most absurd and unjust of all, for 
 these and no other reasons whatever, to look down on 
 those neighbors! 
 
CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 THE MRS. BROWNS. 
 
 Austen Brown had married a schoolmate whose father, 
 like his own, had been in the Yankee sense one of the 
 "smart" men of Belmont — so that this Miss Rebecca 
 Lyman was a prospective heiress. Husband and wife 
 were congenial in their Calvinism, in their pseudo-cul- 
 ture and in their thrift. Perhaps these wove the mys- 
 tic bond between them, for to their fellow-creatures they 
 were externally a singularly unbeautiful pair. 
 
 Like the brilliant and gifted Miss Ashurst, Mrs. Brown 
 had been a pupil of the same noted provincial ''semin- 
 ary " that afterward " finished " Fanny Dexter; but from 
 the Empire State she had not brought away a single one 
 of the graces which make its women so attractive. Thin, 
 joyless, in face prematurely old, in figure stamped with 
 unredeemable New England angularity, and moreover a 
 wretched, comfortless housekeeper, she was a woman his 
 enemies might have pitied Austen Brown for possessing, 
 were it not that he seemed thoroughly happy and satisfied 
 with her, and was ever a most loyal husband. The secret 
 perhaps was that with all her imperfect womanliness, she 
 was yet womanly enough to be entirely devoted to him. 
 In her eyes Austen Brown was beyond criticism, and from 
 the trust, reverence and adoration which are the tests of 
 genuine wifehood, a man can bear and forego a good deal. 
 
2 68 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 His cousin, George Austin, was to outside appearance 
 more fortunate. In a gay village across the lake he had 
 found a comely and pleasant young lady of gentle New 
 York blood, and after her marriage her family circle was 
 further made attractive, and in Belmont eyes distinguished, 
 by the frequent presence in it of a handsome widowed 
 sister and her fair young daughter, of whom the previous 
 home had been in New York city. Another Brown scion 
 — a nephew named Henry Austen — had taken to himself 
 a highly exclusive young woman and reputed heiress from 
 Hartford, Connecticut, and Austen Brown's sister was 
 married to Mrs. Austen Brown's brother, Edwin Lyman, 
 and this gentleman was the president of a savings bank 
 which the ''great" Brown had organized for Belmont. 
 
 From the lovely hillside to which they had betaken 
 themselves, these four families looked down not only upon 
 the broad valley and mountain-bounded lake, but, when 
 once the clever and unconquerable Ashursts had gone, 
 upon all their fellow-townsmen and women as well — and 
 with the most lofty and deprecating indifference. If Mrs. 
 Dexter excited the Belmont imagination, the Brown fam- 
 ily filled it. They were the real magnates of the place — 
 the rich material of its prosperity and pride. She was the 
 festive but unsubstantial trimming — the pleasant gauze and 
 frippery of the village triumph. 
 
 They were not a unit among themselves — the Brown 
 ladies. By no means. On their Olympian height there 
 was private war and feud between Mrs. Austen Brown and 
 Mrs. George Brown — a feud of hatred on the one side, 
 of contempt on the other. 
 
 Mrs. George never read anything but a semi-occasional 
 novel, nor pretended to be anything but domestic ; conse- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 269 
 
 quently, Mrs. Austen despised her as unintellectual and 
 narrow-minded, if not frivolous. On her side Mrs. 
 George heartily detested Mrs. Austen as a would-be blue 
 stocking, and a most ridiculous, stingy and futile woman. 
 
 Mrs. Austen had talent above the average, but so infin- 
 itely more bombast and conceit, that the talent served 
 only to make her absurd. At the State capital, during 
 the successive years of her husband's governorship, she 
 aspired to be a '' power," and made such a point of con- 
 versing oracularly on political and religious subjects with 
 the members of the Legislature, that she was a dread and 
 a laughing-stock to them all. She went often to Boston, 
 which she supposed was to dip into wells of culture, just 
 as Mrs. Dexter fancied that boarding in New York was 
 equivalent to being in the vortex of fashion, and when 
 Governor Brown definitely retired from the cares and per- 
 quisites of State, his consort, nothing abashed by the 
 fact that her only son was the unmarried father of two 
 children by different low-class mothers, opened in Bel- 
 mont a Bible class for young men, and enlightened them 
 with the deep results acquired in her sojourns near the 
 legislative halls of her own State and of Massachusetts. 
 
 Her religious lectures were chiefly a reproduction of 
 James Freeman Clarke's "Ten Great Religions," but she 
 really believed herself a profoundly illuminated and spirit- 
 ual person, and at her own expense issued these lectures in 
 book form for the benefit of the race. In the same way 
 she published also a religious novel called ''Iduna," 
 which in the depths of her heart, though it was in prose, 
 she valued as practically a continuation of Milton's '* Par- 
 adise Lost. ' ' The time was before the deluge ; the char- 
 acters were angels, mortals and gorgeous fiends, and the 
 
2/0 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 stage-setting was amid t)orphyry halls, golden thrones, 
 dazzling pageants — in short, adjectives and adverbs on a 
 spectacular and sensational " spree ! " 
 
 A little learning is a dangerous thing. While Mrs. 
 Austen Brown was trying to condense her undisciplined 
 and nebulous conceptions of Scripture and of history for 
 the benefit of the great outside world in which, for want 
 of originality and force, she could only be a cipher, the 
 little inner worlds whose vital centre as wife and mother 
 and leading social factor she was, and in which she could 
 have played a part of untold beneficent importance, went 
 year by year literally to rack and ruin. 
 
 Too proud to send her children to the village public 
 schools — too saving to pay for their tuition otherwhere, she 
 kept up an ostentation of '^directing their studies at 
 home," in consequence of which, not only was her boy 
 never prepared for or sent to college; he remained so 
 densely ignorant that his early choice of low companion- 
 ships, with its revolting results, was hardly more than 
 natural. His sisters, also, grew up absolutely too dull and 
 unattractive to marry in their father's now capitalist sta- 
 tion. But Mrs. ''Governor" Brown, as she was gener- 
 ally called, walked with her head so in the clouds, that 
 she could not perceive the exceptional deficiencies of her 
 offspring. Her goat was a lamb — her geese swans — and 
 she was quite as likely to allude enthusiastically to the 
 moral worth of her dissolute son as she was to the poetic 
 charm of her dowdy daughters. 
 
 As for her duty to Belmont — though she dwelt in an 
 enormous house, flashily decorated by the Midland car- 
 painters regardless of (Midland) expense — though it stood 
 amid velvet swards blooming with costly plants — rarely 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 271 
 
 did a single flower find its way to a Belmont neighbor — 
 more rarely did any Belmont guest cross its arrogant 
 threshold. The mean pretentious help-meet of the ex- 
 governor reserved her hospitality exclusively for her hus- 
 band's financial and political guests from elsewhere. 
 Once, indeed, her great vulgar mansion was actually 
 thrown open for a general reception to a distinguished Re- 
 publican statesman. All Belmont, in awe, trepidation 
 and expectation, spent money to dress and to go, and 
 nearly all Belmont went hungry and weary away. To a 
 favored few only, an humble relative of the opulent host 
 had been told to whisper — ''Stay and have some supper 
 after the others leave." 
 
 The very antipodes of her fantastic cousin-in-law, Mrs. 
 George Brown was nothing if not conventional. To a 
 soft and gentle manner she united a satiric tongue which 
 dearly loved to indulge in biting comment on her neigh- 
 bors, and she brought up her children not only to aspire 
 to the city world to which they did not, but to despise the 
 country world to which they did belong. 
 
 She was the niece of an eminent New York jurist, and 
 — true daughter of the Empire State in this, — " position " 
 was her idol. Before she came to Belmont nobody had 
 thought anything about "aristocracy" or the " best so- 
 ciety." Kindly New England fashion, everybody knew 
 everybody else as a matter of course, and "drawing the 
 line" was undreamed of. 
 
 But the new comer felt herself beneath the mantle of 
 her departed uncle's distinction, and her intense instinct 
 was that this distinction must be maintained and trans- 
 mitted. She returned her wedding calls, and after that, 
 dropping nearly all the list on the plea of the exacting 
 
272 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 cares of young-motherhood i she lived in and for her fam- 
 ily, and neither gave nor accepted invitations. If her 
 children's misfortune doomed them to an obscure Yankee 
 village, the obscure Yankee village should have nothing to 
 do with them nor they with the obscure Yankee village, 
 and she would have died rather than have them 
 fall so disgracefully below the Blackstone traditions as 
 Mrs. Austen Brown's children were falling below 
 '^ even'' — as Mrs. George said with a sniff, ^^\}[it Brown 
 traditions ! " 
 
 While young, therefore, her little ones had a governess ; 
 later, the boys were sent away to school and to college, and 
 the girls were "finished" in New York. When they were 
 all grown their mother considered they did her credit, for 
 though she had had to struggle with the difficulty of three 
 hundred miles from the metropolis, they could not have 
 been told from Fifth Avenue fashionables. In fact, they 
 were fashionables. The youthful family was not only 
 well-conducted, well-mannered, well-dressed — the boys 
 nice-looking, the girls pleasing. Theirs was the identical 
 stamp of refinement, of distinction, of superficiality — the 
 small head, small features, small, firm, unsympathetic 
 mouth — so often seen among our high metropolitans ! 
 
 Their pretty cousin, May Stanton, was married 'and es- 
 tablished in a pretty house in the heaven of Madison Ave- 
 nue, and this urban refuge, together with annual visits to 
 various friends of the mammon of unrighteousness like 
 themselves, gave to their aristocratic lungs breathing place 
 sufficient for existence at least. Their father's two con- 
 gressional terms in Washington did the rest, and so far as 
 their native village was concerned, placed the George 
 Browns on such a sky-piercing pinnacle, that to Belmont 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 273 
 
 eyes they were practically invisible, and the Belmont im- 
 agination almost ceased to follow them. 
 
 Crushing as were these Belmont swells at home, the 
 poor little town would have tasted a sweet revenge could 
 it have realized how drearily insignificant they seemed in 
 the national capital, even to themselves. Mr. George 
 Brown, pere, was never known to open his lips during his 
 whole'four years of service, and in fact he did not scruple 
 to be absent from his duties most of the time. He was a 
 political nobody, and his wife and daughters were social 
 ones. The charming and cultivated Ashursts, who had 
 never put on any airs in Belmont, but had loved and been 
 identified with it, now made Washington their home, and 
 it was with bitterness and perplexity that the George 
 Browns saw them sought for and invited everywhere, while 
 with twice their income and many times their preten- 
 sion, their would-be exclusive selves were left to the frigid 
 formalities of the outer congressional circle merely. 
 
 Yes, — the Browns had twice the money of the 
 Ashursts, but they did not know one quarter as well what 
 to do with it — and how many rich Americans are in a 
 similar sad predicament ! 
 
 A year or two ago I noticed one morning that a '' Mrs. 
 Blank of Newport, reputed worth twenty-five millions," 
 had been robbed of some family silver. I said to myself 
 — *• Who on earth is Mrs. Blank of Newport? " — for I am 
 a devoted newspaper reader, and I had never heard of her. 
 
 Tivenly-jlve inillions ! Surely — a woman so rich as that 
 ought to be so radiant a centre of everything that can give 
 happiness and joy, that she ought to be known all over 
 the civilized world! And thus known no doubt ''Mrs. 
 Blank of Newport ' ' would love to be, had she only a con- 
 
2 74 NEW YORK. A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 ception how. But in general^ the rich are unaware that it 
 takes as much thought and effort and a far more liberal 
 training to spend money than it does to make it ; and so, 
 instead of centres of light, they live centres of darkness 
 precisely on the principle of a heaped-up anthracite fire 
 with too little wood to kindle it, which for a time struggles 
 but blackly in ineffectual smoke, and at last goes black out 
 in ignominious death ! The Hon. Abram S. Hewitt's 
 phrase — ''the ignorant rich," especially as coming from 
 one himself of the rich, was magnificent. It simply indi- 
 cated the greatest social evil of this and of all previous 
 time ! 
 
 To the " ignorant rich" certainly belonged the potent 
 and influential people of Belmont we have been consider- 
 ing. Not a perception of what they might and ought have 
 been to their own village ever dawned upon either Mrs. 
 Austen or Mrs. George Brown. Like stony opposing 
 precipices they frowned at each other and watched at their 
 feet alike the turbid flow of Belmont business life and the 
 stagnant pools of its social existence, and exerted not one 
 energy to purify the one or animate the other. 
 
 They felt no womanly responsibility about the common- 
 est decencies of hospitality. Mrs. George Brown confined 
 her Belmont intimacies to the cousin-residents on the hill, 
 who, like herself, were of the "best society" from their 
 earlier provincial homes elsewhere. The three families 
 formed the high, almost inaccessibly "aristocratic" circle 
 of the little place, while Mrs. Governor Brown, shunned 
 by them all, dwelt alone in a self-satisfied glory, unbroken 
 save by the timid calls of the relatives and toadies who oc- 
 casionally crept up the steep incline to sun themselves in 
 the chill rays of her remote prosperity. She was much 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 275 
 
 out of town, and so self-absorbed when in it, that neither 
 her goings nor her comings were of any importance to 
 anybody. Nevertheless, in case she did show herself, so 
 enveloped was she in the glamor of her husband's mil- 
 lions, that she could go to the refreshment table at an Or- 
 thodox church fair, loftily put down half the price of a 
 rich cake that was being sold in slices, and carry the 
 rest of it off without anyone venturing to withstand her! 
 
 Thus getting all they could and keeping all they got, 
 and letting every hospitable and kindly, — still more, every 
 moral, artistic and intellectual interest of the little town 
 take care of itself — the Browns set a fearful example which 
 from their position and power was sure to be followed. 
 Selfishness was the root, the stem, the flower and conse- 
 quently the fruition of their lives, and the baneful seed 
 they remorselessly dropped into their neighbors' hearts 
 sprang up an hundred-fold. 
 
 What the Browns and the Dexters were, nearly every- 
 body '' who was anybody " in Belmont came more or less 
 seriously to wish and to strive to be. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 THE "shadows we PURSUE !" 
 
 To Mrs. Dexter's purblind vision, the pre-eminence of 
 the Ashursts had ever been a mystery. She acknowledged 
 it, because it was so evidently there, and no one could 
 have been more enthusiastic over Ashurst gifts and graces 
 than she, nor more punctilious in rendering them every 
 social homage. But she did not understand their leader- 
 ship enough either to envy or desire it. Only so much 
 fortune as they possessed, if she were to have any at all, 
 would not have satisfied her. 
 
 The prestige of the Browns, on the contrary, was en- 
 tirely comprehensible. 
 
 " Money and family " — of course ! What more did or 
 could constitute the '* best society ? " 
 
 True that both Mrs. Austen Brown and herself were 
 such wild moral eccentrics — ''cranks," we should now call 
 them — that each felt but scorn and repugnance for the 
 other. Mrs. Austen's musty, gloomy, half- kempt house- 
 keeping and tasteless dressing were a horror to Mrs. Dex- 
 ter; Mrs. Dexter's tinsel, make-shift prosperity a disgust 
 to Mrs. Austen. After their mutual rise to Belmont emi- 
 nence, Mrs. Austen rarely deigned to call on Mrs. Dexter, 
 and Mrs. Dexter declared in the family bosom (only) that 
 < ' she perfectly despised to have her. ' ' 
 
 * ' To think of such a woman having money-a-h ! ' ' she 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 277 
 
 would sigh, with her hand on her heart and in her eye a 
 mild reproach against an undiscriminating Providence. 
 
 Mrs. George Brown, on the other hand, commanded 
 Mrs. Dexter' s unqualified envy and deference. ''She was 
 highly connected in Noo Yawk with the very best people ; 
 and oh, was there ever a love-lier girl than May Stanton — 
 a-h ? ' ' Josephine Dexter had early taken the ' ' lovely 
 girl" for her principal model, and, as I have said, had 
 caught to perfection her contralto speaking voice and her 
 low, not musical laugh. Miss Stanton was a pink-and- 
 white masterpiece of high paste-board conventionality as 
 evolved by the unceasing ''deportment" admonitions of a 
 vigilant mama, added to the expensive privileges of Mad- 
 ame Maintien's French school for young ladies. At eigh- 
 teen she had married a Mr. Hoffman — a well-born New 
 Yorker of her own set and quite of her own intellectual 
 calibre ; but she and her mother continued to spend every 
 summer at the George Browns', when Josephine Dexter 
 invariably devoted herself to her, amiably regardless of the 
 fact that this darling friend and her maternal relatives with 
 difficulty brought themselves to bestow upon the Dexter 
 mansion a single ceremonious call per year in Belmont. 
 In New York they all but ignored Josephine and her 
 mother, though the Dexters and the Howes now boarded 
 together every season either in Fifth or in Madison 
 Avenue. 
 
 But naturally, for nieces of Chancellor Blackstone to 
 exchange metropolitan civilities with young women who 
 never so pretty and modish and their present prosperity 
 never so promising — was out of the question! 
 
 When one is getting up in the world one mustn't mind 
 
278 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 snubs. Mrs. Dexter shut her eyes to the town incivilities 
 of the Belmont grandees lest they should be repeated in 
 the country, and continued cheerfully on the coruscating 
 way that was gradually but surely rousing Belmont femi- 
 ninity to aspirations like her own. 
 
 Had she been really rich, like the ''hill" people, it 
 would not have been so hard to bear. But her means 
 were no more than those of her circle generally, and so 
 one after another began to wonder if she must always be a 
 grub when a Mrs. Dexter could soar into a butterfly ? In 
 proportion to their individual severity her acquaintance 
 spoke of her as ''mean," "insincere," "a fool," "a 
 snob," "a fraud," "a liar," and held up hands of holy 
 horror at the disgraceful habits into which she had gradu- 
 ally driven her husband by persistently depriving him of 
 home and family for about nine months of every year. 
 But it would not have been human nature not to emulate 
 such fascinating success — not to long to shine something 
 after the brilliant, jubilant Dexter manner ! 
 
 In one thing Mrs. George Brown and Mrs. Dexter were 
 perfectly agreed. They always spoke of Belmont with the 
 bitterest contempt, and the fashion set by these two lead- 
 ers everybody followed. "Yes, of course, Belmont!'^ 
 the Belmont women would exclaim to each other with in- 
 effable disgust at any little shortcoming in their neighbors, 
 and would then go on living wholly to themselves as the 
 Browns and the Dexters lived. 
 
 In large cities, families can more or less do this without 
 getting dull and bored, because there are so many outside 
 resources. But hospitality is the very breath of village 
 life, and as the new Belmont leaders refrained from enter- 
 taining, the pleasant ' ' high teas ' ' of snowy biscuit, deli- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 279 
 
 cate tongue, oyster scallop, golden coffee, ideal cake 
 and translucent preserves which in the friendly Ashurst 
 days people used often to give each other, became almost 
 things of the past. If women who had plenty of servants 
 would not take any trouble to make their neighbors happy, 
 certainly those who had but one, or none, were not going 
 to do it ! 
 
 When Display comes in at the door, Neighborliness flies 
 out of the window, and our village became a poor little 
 travesty indeed ! In every thousand persons there are al- 
 ways those who have a special gift for literature, for music, 
 for art, the drama and the dance. As Voltaire expressed 
 it: — ''Genius lies about the streets." If rural localities 
 would organize for it, they could develop within them- 
 selves all the delights of eye and ear and mind which now 
 are sought almost exclusively in the galleries and audito- 
 riums of cities, — country life, meantime, being deprived of 
 those endeavors to produce the beautiful and the inno- 
 cently joyous which are so necessary, not only to human 
 happiness but to human virtue, — since ' ' Man doth not 
 live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth 
 out of the mouth of God," — the good Evangelical preach- 
 ers to the contrary notwithstanding ! 
 
 The most genuine pleasures of human existence were 
 within reach of the Belmont women had they only been, 
 conscious of it ; in winter, talking and card parties, danc- 
 ing and musical parties in their homes, or lectures and 
 readings, amateur theatricals and concerts and subscrip- 
 tion balls in the Town Hall ; — in summer, driving, riding 
 and walking parties and picnics amid the loveliness of 
 their surrounding scenery. The musical talent of Bel- 
 mont, indeed, was something exceptional. It could boast 
 
28o NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 of several charming pianists, an excellent glee club and an 
 aspiring brass band, and once the young people did in 
 fact combine to give a quite surprisingly good perform- 
 ance of ' ' Pinafore ! ' ' 
 
 But as the Evangelical pastors of Belmont thought cards 
 and dancing and theatricals ' * sinful, ' ' and as the Belmont 
 social leaders cared nothing for Belmont pleasures and 
 Belmont home talent, so neither did the Belmont rank 
 and file care for them, and the anxious feminine aim grew 
 to be to enlarge and embellish their houses, to dress fash- 
 ionably at church and when paying calls, and above all, 
 to be often absent from Belmont — nay, if possible, to 
 leave "Behnonil" altogether. 
 
 Where was the money for these costly cravings to come 
 from? — for Mrs. Dexter' s unscrupulous financiering was as 
 impossible to the correct souls of most Belmont women as 
 to their timid minds would have been her bold push for 
 New York in the first place. But the brilliant Dexter 
 departure in the art of spending gradually impressed their 
 husbands much as it did themselves, and in time these 
 latter began to emulate the Brown departure in the art of 
 getting. Somehow, money must and should be had, and 
 plenty of it ! 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 ''THE DAY IS PAST AND GONE." 
 
 As we have seen, Mrs. Dexter influenced her daughter 
 Josephine to break her engagement with her youthful lover 
 so summarily, — even although he belonged to one of the 
 "first families" in Cleveland, because she had no faith 
 that the McCloud fortunes would soon recover themselves, 
 and she wanted Josephine to lose as little time in getting 
 engaged again as possible. But to her sorrowful surprise, 
 though flirtations were always on the tapis, no serious can- 
 didate for the young lady's hand loomed above the Dexter 
 horizon for several years. 
 
 In this prolonged agony of making bricks without straw — 
 for to the end of his life Mr. Dexter was more or less "un- 
 able to collect" — Mrs. Dexter's flatteries and suavities 
 toward the George Browns had always the possible end in 
 view that through Mrs. May Stanton Hoflhian's sponsor- 
 ship, Josephine might some day gain an entrance into 
 "real" New York society; and indeed, had the former, 
 by even the least narrow crack, set ajar the social door to 
 Josephine's little serpentine head — had this insinuating 
 youngest Dexter been invited only to one party where she 
 could have met a few New York eligibles — there is no tell- 
 ing upon what round of the social ladder she would now 
 be coiling. But Mrs. George appreciated the danger and 
 resolutely discouraged her niece's occasional kindly im- 
 
282 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 pulses to be the open New York sesame to '' Ma;/ woman 
 or any of her brood ! " One winter poor Mrs. Dexter 
 actually had rooms directly across the street from Mrs. 
 Hoffman's, and marked and speculated upon every carriage 
 that drew up before her house, — but all in vain. The 
 longed-for citadel never compromised an inch. 
 
 No loophole of hope, therefore, being found for Joseph- 
 ine in the direction of the charmed circles of the aristoc- 
 racy, her mother's ambition was relegated to the sphere in 
 which, unluckily for her after aspirations, it had first start- 
 ed, and which the haughty and clever little Julia had so 
 doubtfully entered — the purely and somewhat humbly com- 
 mercial. 
 
 Mr. James Harold Baldwin, though born in Connecticut, 
 was a very Parisian-looking foreign buyer for a wholesale 
 millinery firm. Flowers and feathers, laces and velvets, silks 
 and fancy straws — what associations could better fit a man 
 for intercourse and companionship with the Dexter mind? 
 In the casual interview of an evening party this kindred 
 spirit came, saw and conquered the pretty Josephine, and 
 was conquered in return. 
 
 The acquaintance before the engagement was brief, and 
 so was the engagement itself. There was, indeed, every 
 reason for hurrying it, as the young man had as much in- 
 come as he was soon likely to command, Josephine her- 
 self was close on twenty-six — (her mother told Mr. Bald- 
 win she was twenty- three) and her poor father's purse, 
 as well as her poor mother's invention, cried out for a rest 
 from their labors in her behalf. 
 
 The wedding was Mrs. Dexter' s last great effort for 
 Belmont. Her old friends had long ago been alienated by 
 her airs and pretensions, and they did not now come for- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 283 
 
 ward in neighborly fashion to provide the marriage supper 
 as on the two similar events of her life. But Fanny's ex- 
 ecutive ability and energy being there to help, the thing 
 was successfully managed. Julia was dead, and her beauty 
 and elegance, alas ! could not grace the occasion, but for 
 the first time in years Mr. Calvert succumbed to the family 
 pleading that he should come to Belmont and lend his 
 handsome, brilliant face to the wedding party. He was in 
 business for himself now, and was supposed to be growing 
 rich ; besides, he was soon to marry an heiress, so 
 that money-bitten Belmont gazed upon him with much in- 
 terest and respect. 
 
 Josephine was faultlessly costumed in heavy white silk 
 poetized by lace and orange-wreaths and a cloud of tulle. 
 She had no bridesmaids, but the festal New York robes of 
 Mrs. Dexter and Fanny, of Fanny's and Julia's little girls, 
 and of Mr. Baldwin's two married sisters, made a suffi- 
 ciently resplendent and crushing effect Flowers adorned 
 the altar and the chancel, and the Browns and the other 
 select friends whose cards invited them to the house after- 
 ward, were in the front pews in light silks and without 
 bonnets, just as they should have been. Instead of the 
 lovely American hour of twilight, Mrs. Dexter would 
 gladly have had the wedding at the fashionable but absurd 
 English one of noon ; but the hopelessness of getting 
 poor little rustic Belmont out in the middle of the day 
 in its best clothes, daunted even her devotion to the 
 highest social usage. 
 
 As in her misty veil Josephine glided down the aisle to 
 Mendelssohn's Wedding March on the organ (even that 
 had Belmont got to !) her black lashes on her crimson 
 cheek, her snowy draperies trailing behind her, she looked 
 
284 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 a charming vision of refineci grace that should have won 
 grace even from the graceless. But no. As Mrs. Dexter 
 laid her weary but triumphant head on her pillow after 
 this climax of weddings — so "elegant," so ''stylish" as 
 she felt it had been — and with Josephine, her last great 
 burden and care, her stone of Sisyphus, off her hands at last, 
 it was quite with the feeling, '' Lord, now lettest thou thy 
 servant depart in peace," — when, horror! her ears were 
 stricken by a hideous din of tin horns blowing and tin 
 pans beating, actually beneath the bridal windows ! 
 
 The boorish son of a rich neighbor, who years ago had 
 sunk below society in Belmont, but who had long medi- 
 tated vengeance on Mrs. Dexter for her upstart ways, had 
 assembled a masked group of congenial spirits on "the steps 
 of the Dexter mansion, and was calling a burlesque roll of 
 the ''aristocratic" invited guests to this exclusive, select 
 wedding, beginning with Mr. and Mrs. Austen Brown. To 
 each name a companion roared a jeering " Here ! " when 
 more blowing of horns and beating of pans, interspersed 
 with such remarks as ' ' Libby, why don' t you pay your 
 grocer's bill ? You know they wouldn't let you have any 
 butter when you sent for some last week." " Libby, we're 
 going to leave you a codfish, else you won't have any 
 breakfast." ''Say, Mrs. D., give us some crumbs from 
 the master's supper-table, if you have any left." "No, 
 she hasn't. She always counts noses too closely for that." 
 "Well, then, give us some of the old man's whiskey. 
 There's plenty of that left over for to-morrow. Trust 
 him — ha ! ha ! ha ! " — until at length the outraged bride- 
 groom himself appeared at the front door to ask what he 
 had done that he should be treated in such a way on his 
 wedding night? 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 285 
 
 Is it or is it not true that the misdoer has always an ad- 
 equate punishment even in this world ? If not the whole, 
 in her agony of mortified vanity over this, to her, terrible, 
 inconceivable, overwhelming insult and disgrace, poor 
 Mrs. Dexter certainly had a vivid foretaste of whatever 
 retribution she might deserve. All Belmont would ring 
 with it, and all her sons-in-law — even Calvert, who hated 
 Belmont so that he had kept away from it for ten years — 
 were witnesses to it ! She had intended that this lovely, 
 this artistic, this high-toned social event should be her 
 practical exit from Belmont — her exit in a blaze of glory ! — 
 for, Josephine married, she would never keep house again. 
 She was growing old, and so was Mr. Dexter. His re- 
 sources and her energies alike were running low. But 
 now ! — oh — oh — she could never overlive this — never do 
 anything to make people forget it ! Poor woman ! She 
 writhed on coals of fire that night and many a wakeful one 
 after. Pier Nemesis had come for a visit, at least, and she 
 could exclaim ^^ Belmont I'' with a bitterer accent than 
 ever. So unconscious are we all that the antagonisms 
 and rebuffs we meet with are rather due to our own defects 
 than to the native despite of our fellow-creatures ! 
 
 As Josephine's wedding was Mrs. Dexter' s last great 
 effort for Belmont, so Josephine's trousseau was her last great 
 effort for her children. To its demands everything, even 
 to risking in a pawn-shop George McCloud's much longed- 
 for, much-enjoyed, much-valued diamond ring, was sacri- 
 ficed — and what that and the now rather slender Howe 
 and Calvert contributions did not cover, Mr. Baldwin 
 -defrayed as a ^'privilege" while he was still in the 
 beatitude of young hus])and-hood — Josephine confessing 
 to him, weeping, her unspeakable mortification and 
 
286 NEW YORK. A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 surprise that her father had not the wherewithal to 
 do so, owing to the business failure of one of his largest 
 clients but two weeks before her marriage. "Indeed," 
 she continued, "mother has just written me that she 
 believes the revenge of one or two Belmont storekeepers 
 whom for the same reason she could not pay at that time, 
 was at the bottom of that wicked charivari on our wed- 
 ding-night. Belmont people are so avaricious ! Deprive 
 them of their money and they are like tigers ! But 
 father says he is going to be all square again by the 
 end of the year, so it will only be a loan — Jim — dear ! 
 You are so sweet to pay it ! " 
 
 "Jim" knew better, but he did not care. He was a 
 pleasant, shrewd, thrifty, commonplace nature who saw at 
 once through Mrs. Dexter, Fanny, and the whole of them, 
 but did not at all dislike what he saw. He fancied Jo- 
 sephine, and so he had married her. But he wasn't going to 
 trust her as Howe had trusted Fanny — not he. He was 
 obliged to go to Europe twice a year, and twice a year he 
 took Josephine with him, nolens volens. 
 
 After a few trips they understood each other perfectly. 
 She soon picked up French enough to make her way round 
 Paris, and as her whole mind was concentrated on clothes, 
 her dressing reached an ideal of fashionable and poetic 
 charm, which, for the money spent upon it, could not 
 have been surpassed. Her success in smuggling laces for 
 her liege was worthy of the mother that bore her, and 
 more cannot be said. Her card-playing, too, came in 
 splendidly on the steamers, and not merely pour 
 passer le temps j either! The national game of 
 draw-poker might have been hatched within her own 
 dainty little head — so perfectly did it fit every inlet 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 287 
 
 and outlet of her tranquil, treacherous, adventurous 
 spirit. 
 
 The pair lived on both sides at the best hotels, and were 
 the best friends in the world. When the fond husband 
 was not by, the Lamia-like wife would flirt with any well- 
 dressed man of any age that happened to be about, but as 
 Mr. Baldwin took good care never to be away too long, no 
 practical harm ever ensued. Mrs. Dexter gradually got 
 over the tingling mortification of that awful wedding- 
 night, and found herself happier in this last marriage 
 than she had in either of the others. Josephine, thank 
 goodness ! had no children, so she had no care nor anxiety 
 for her daughter on that score. She had no one's wants 
 to provide for except her own, and by the aid of Joseph- 
 ine's London and Parisian bargains for her, she was able to 
 assume a freshness and richness of attire that well became 
 her stately form and those silver hairs which had long left 
 off their raven dye. She was an impressive figure, even in 
 Fifth Avenue — such an incarnation of ' ' deportment ' ' as 
 is seldom seen ! 
 
 After Josephine's marriage she gave up housekeeping 
 forever, and as her spirit shook off" the base shackles insep- 
 arable from the prices of butter and beefsteak, the pucker- 
 ings about her eyes and mouth smoothed into the lofty 
 serenity of an unruffled existence. In winter she boarded 
 near or in the house with her youngest darling, and in 
 summer she staid at the Austen House in Belmont with 
 Mr. Dexter, the motherless Clara Calvert also being often 
 of the party. 
 
 Her delight in Josephine's Paris clothes was perennial, 
 as all the heart's deepest things ever are. Nothing in 
 America could go much beyond them, she was well con- 
 
288 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 vinced, and as she looked bapk to the sprawly-figured ten- 
 cent calicoes in one or two a year of which she used to 
 live and work all day in Belmont until the hour came to 
 dress for tea in a twenty-five cent delaine or well-worn 
 merino, and then contemplated Josephine's panoply of 
 costumes, one at least for every occasion — her embroidered 
 and be-laced peignoirs and negligees — her walking-dresses 
 and carriage-dresses — her reception and ball toilets, and 
 the lolling sofa-life that accompanied them all — her heart 
 swelled with a great and virtuous sense of what she had 
 done for her children ; — and how hard, too, it had been, 
 — gracious ! — how hard it often had been ! 
 
 So the weeks rolled into months, and the months glided 
 by into years, and after not very many of these years of 
 rest and release from scheming and care, it suddenly 
 appeared that Mrs. Dexter' s life-work was done. She was 
 spending the summer in Belmont, herself and husband 
 boarding, for once, with a married cousin, when the end 
 came with only a few days of warning, and those, days of 
 such deadly illness that a blur of physical sensation must 
 have been all the stricken one was capable of feeling. 
 
 The clearest possible possession of her faculties, how- 
 ever, would have wrought no difference in this death-bed. 
 She had no consciousness of wrong or sin in anything she 
 had done. She had ever lived in a world of her own 
 creating, and her *' right" was simply that which she 
 wished to do. Her old acquaintance, Mr. Ashurst, re- 
 marked when he heard of her death, — that he had no 
 doubt the consciousness that Josephine's clothes came from 
 i aris would be a comfort to her even in Paradise ! 
 
 In two or three years Mr. Dexter, poor, whiskey-ridden 
 old man, was laid beside her. To the astonishment of 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 289 
 
 everybody he left not many debts, and when these were 
 settled there actually remained over two thousand dollars 
 to be divided between his daughters. Had he kept a 
 small hoard in hiding as conscience-money against poor 
 Tim's possible re-appearance ? The secret perished with 
 him. 
 
 The spiritual is sure to express itself in the material, and 
 between two graves in the Belmont cemetery is a snowy 
 shaft on opposite sides of which, and each with its ap- 
 propriate name and date beneath, are cut simply the 
 words — '* Father " — *' Mother." 
 
 None others could have so plead the intense and all- 
 absorbing motive of the two lives so deeply sleeping 
 there, — their love, their deathless love for their children. 
 
^ 
 
THE HOWES. 
 
CHAPl^ER XXXIV. 
 
 If Fanny Dexter' s mother had been like other Belmont 
 mothers, her sprightly child would have been kept at the 
 village academy with the boys and girls of her own age 
 until she had learned all it could teach her. Following 
 this would probably have been the several years of local 
 bellehood to which her fascinations and talent for dress 
 predestined her. Among the rustic victims to her charms, 
 her native sympathy foi strength and " go " would prob- 
 ably have drawn her to the most energetic and, therefore, 
 the most promising of them all. The two would have 
 married and begun life in a cottage with one servant or 
 none. Before very long the irrepressible expansion of 
 young New England in the new-born railroad era would 
 have carried them, as it did others of Fanny's village circle, 
 to some upspringing Western town, possibly, let us say, to 
 the now mighty Chicago itself. 
 
 Starting in with the chances of success which the com- 
 manding position of Chicago poured down upon her earlj 
 citizens, our youthful pair, part and parcel of a society as 
 fresh and eager as themselves, would have made common 
 cause in the founding and building of their farnily for- 
 tunes. A man of her own age, of her own calibre, and 
 after her own heart — such a husband for Fanny Dexter 
 would from the first have made his alert helpmeet his 
 business confidante and counsellor, and she, responsive; 
 
.NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 291 
 
 and interested, would have been as thrifty and saving on 
 her side as he was hardworking and enterprising on his. 
 
 Together they would have won their way upward from 
 the foot of the financial ladder until he became one of the 
 moneyed magnates of his adopted city, and she one of 
 the luxurious, travelled, and intelligent dames who are its 
 recognized leaders whether in social functions, club pro- 
 jects, or church charities. Nay, in the *' Columbian" 
 year of 1893 we would probably have beheld her a power 
 on that celebrated "Board of Lady Managers" whose 
 uninstructed zeal got together so interesting though so 
 ineffective* a collection of the arts and achievements of 
 their sex. 
 
 But to our poor Fanny was not permitted such normal 
 American development. Her childish head too early filled 
 with pleasure visions of " Noo Yawk ; " sent for a brief 
 time to a popular boarding-school for ''young ladies" 
 only ; married at eighteen to a man ten years her senior 
 and already a partner in a long-established firm; as her 
 vocation, given the spending of money with no definite 
 confidences as to whence it came — surely it was not sur- 
 prising that little Mrs. David Howe floated irresponsibly 
 along the sunny tide of her life without much questioning 
 of her conjugal pilot, until suddenly she found her house- 
 hold bark a wreck and herself practically stranded on the 
 beach. 
 
 And why ? Largely because while David Howe had had 
 two pairs of eyes with which to watch for breakers, two 
 pairs of hands to help with the wheel, he had used only 
 one — his own. He lived his life and Fanny lived hers, 
 each quite ignorant of the other's methods of accomplish- 
 ing their respective daily ends. They had always seen 
 *"' Ineffective " because unscientific — i.e.^ incomplete and unclassified. 
 
292 NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 existence so arranged in tVie country villages of their 
 birth and rearing. The men spent the hours between meals 
 at their trades or their trading, and the women stayed at 
 home over their housekeeping. In the great metropolis 
 life was arranged on the same general lines, only much 
 pleasanter. The husband disappeared down town for the 
 entire day to toil for money, but this money was ex- 
 pended, not grudgingly on a plainly-dressed, hard-handed 
 matron who paid back more than its full value in care 
 and sewing and housework, but lavishly on the supreme 
 aesthetic of a pretty and exquisitely dressed wife, enshrined 
 in a home which was the expression of all her own dainty 
 and luxurious tastes. 
 
 So it never occurred to the chivalrous and devoted mer- 
 chant that his ** little housekeeper" was possessed of 
 remarkable business talent and perception which might 
 splendidly supplement his own. In his mind a woman's 
 sphere was her own family, her calling-list, her charities, 
 and her church pew. The man's sphere was all the rest ol 
 the world to exploit for her, himself, and the children, as 
 best he could. Thus David Howe worked blindly along 
 the old lines until the convulsions of the new era tore 
 these from under him, and hurled his domestic partner 
 from the place and the life she loved into conditions 
 so untoward that her boredom and disgust led her into 
 temptation first and ruin afterward. 
 
 In a splendid saying quoted by Ruskin, Sydney Smith, 
 that almost wisest of men, declared that '* the fire of our 
 minds is like the fire which the Persians burn in the moun- 
 tains ; it flames night and day, and is immortal and not to 
 be quenched! Upon something it w/zj-/ act and feed — 
 upon the pure spirit of knowledge or upon the foul dregs of 
 polluting passions." 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHOXIC STUDY. 29 ^ 
 
 Fanny Howe's mind was too untaught for its " fire " to 
 have been attracted by the '' pure spirit of knowledge; " 
 but a gift for business enterprise is also an intellectual 
 one. Nature never meant this woman for a sensualist. 
 She was, before everything, an intelligence, an activity, a 
 force, and anything administrative was intensely fascinat- 
 ing to her. 
 
 As we have seen, even housekeeping scarcely afforded 
 scope for her admirable executive ability. She could have 
 managed an institution, a big hotel, an extensive enter- 
 prise. She was born to plan and to give orders. She was 
 not used to economize by stitching or working with her 
 own hands. All that she hated. 
 
 For the sewing-machine had come, and the pretty con- 
 sort of the generous New Yorker, along with the upper ten- 
 dom of her sex generally, had been released from the stern 
 necessity of personal labor on family clothing which had 
 been her mother's and all her foremothers' chief occupa- 
 tion since Time began ; and yet 
 
 " To finger the fine needle and nice thread" 
 
 was all the ivork her new barnacle phase of fashionable 
 boarder offered her, though like the immortal Britomart 
 herself, rather than be tied down to its petty and weari- 
 some slavery, Fanny's adventurous spirit 
 
 " Liever would with point of foeman's spear be dead ! " 
 
 The true theory of marriage is that it is a friendship to 
 which are added the ecstasy, the exaltation, and the exclu- 
 siveness of passion. The essential factors of friendship 
 are sympathy and confidence ; yet few elements are oftener 
 absent from the attempts at married love than these. Little 
 
294 NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 V 
 
 wonder the civilized world is asking, and almost answering 
 in the affirmative, — *' Is marriage a failure ? " 
 
 " All love that has not friendship for its base 
 Is like a mansion built upon the sand ; 
 Though brave its walls as any in the land 
 And all the turrets lift their heads in grace," 
 
 So sings a popular authority on the subject of love, Ella 
 Wheeler Wilcox, and nothing in the Gospel itself is more 
 true. The infinite soul, with its infinite possibilities, must 
 mate with infinite soul, or it is not mated at all. The 
 plane of the sexes — that on which they were created and 
 were intended to abide, and to which eventually they must 
 return — is the plane, not of the senses, as men think, nor 
 of the affections, as women believe, but the plane of the 
 mind; i.e., the plane of responsible intelligences who 
 respect themselves and equally respect each other; hence 
 the plane of freedom and achievement and the only plane 
 of deathless joy and love. For we cling to no one as we 
 do to him or her who helps us to be or to do something 
 from our own proper gift and force ! 
 
 A self-made man of millions once told a friend of mine 
 that he had no belief in the stock stories of husbands em- 
 barrassed and ruined by the extravagance of their wives. 
 ''Ninety-nine times out of a hundred," he said, "men 
 fail owing to bad investments they never would have made 
 if they had advised with the woman side of the house. 
 My rule has always been to tell my wife as much about my 
 business as I know myself. I consult her on all business 
 ventures, and I rarely lose money except when I go con- 
 trary to her judgment." 
 
 And this, no doubt, not because the lady's judgment 
 was any better than her husband's, if, indeed, it were as 
 
NEir YOKA': A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 295 
 
 good; but bimply because it was another judgment. She 
 looked at things from an equally interested but different 
 point of view, and so she could not fail to throw light 
 upon every pending decision. 
 
 In the spirit of his country's institutions, this wise 
 millionnaire regarded marriage not as an affair of blind 
 unquestioning trust on the one hand, and gently absolute 
 despotism on the other, but as one of friendship, " sweet 
 reasonableness," and representative government — as in fact 
 that '' committee of two " which a prominent divine lately 
 declared is precisely what marriage can 7iot be — and his 
 reward and his happiness were in due proportion to this 
 the only true view of the infinitely difficult relation. 
 
 Would that plighted lovers could first be confidential 
 friends who freely exchange views, aims, sympathies and 
 antipathies on all the interests of their lives, and who, 
 becoming at last personally devoted through this frank inti- 
 macy, betroth themselves with the mutual understanding 
 which precedes every other important partnership of human 
 life. But many men incorporate with themselves that 
 complex, self-determining entity called a *' human being," 
 as they would fasten a plume on their crest or a flower in 
 their button-hole, as they would buy a fawn for a paddock 
 or a goldfish for a glass bowl, or as they would set up 
 a Madonna over a shrine. To David Howe a wife was a 
 combination of ornament, pet, and household divinity who 
 through him was to have everything she could possibly 
 need for her social station, and was not at all to trouble 
 her feminine brain as to where it came from. 
 
 ^Vhile he never questioned her domestic arrangements, 
 he made her understand perfectly that his quid pro quo was 
 that she should never question his business ones. So when 
 he found the wants of this ornamental charmer more exten- 
 
296 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 V 
 
 sive than he had expected, and for her sake began to dream 
 of outside investments that would enable him to gratify 
 them — to consult the person who was chiefly dependent 
 upon his success, and who would certainly be the greatest 
 sufferer should he make a mistake, never entered his mind. 
 
 Yet if David could seriously have consulted Fanny — 
 which IS, of course, the greatest tribute that man can pay to 
 woman, and also the rarest he ever does pay to her — if, in 
 the beginning, the proud and happy bridegroom had taken 
 the airy bride into his intimate business confidence, so 
 earnest a respect for her would have invoked an answering 
 one for him. Out of the jungle of petty ambitions and 
 low aspirations in which her youth had been cradled, 
 Fanny's heart would have shot up, straight and vigorous as 
 a young pine, to meet his own, and in the end David Howe 
 would really have won his wife, and with her, too, success 
 even in the arduous enterprise of founding a family in 
 their fiercely competing and difficult New York. Yes, 
 Fanny's hT5usehold economies alone would have saved him. 
 
 No doubt the American husband enjoys this role of 
 family autocrat who has a perfect right to do what he will 
 with his own ; of family deus ex machina, to whom no one, 
 not even the mother of his children, shall say ** yes, aye, 
 or no" about his bread-winning. But in my long and 
 weary pilgrimage I have not met one woman developed or 
 made better or happier by it, and how many wives and 
 daughters have I seen dwarfed and belittled, others humili- 
 ated and paralyzed, and not a few embittered, tortured, 
 and even crushed, from being obliged to force themselves 
 into whatever compass the *Mord and master" of their 
 destiny decrees ! 
 
 As for the undisciplined Fanny, from the time she lost 
 her one moral anchor, her housekeeping, the ** fire " of her 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 297 
 
 mind, *' immortal and not to be quenched," crept stealth- 
 ily about in search of something whereon it could " act 
 and feed," finding this first in dangerous and compromis- 
 ing pleasures, then in *' polluting passions," until in the 
 end its long-smothered flame conquered even her strong 
 natural prudence, and it was now ready to burst forth over 
 her husband's head, in one lurid hour to reduce his home, 
 his heart, and his life to ashes. 
 
CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 DISCOVERY. 
 
 This is a man's world, and, accordingly, society, by 
 which we practically mean those bonded slaves called 
 *' women," no matter how it may gossip about a wife, 
 will generally recognize her so long as her husband stands 
 by her. In Belmont, Fanny Howe was believed capable 
 of anything, but when she went there in summer, her old 
 friends still treated her much as they had before. For 
 David Howe's sake no one cast the first open stone. 
 People thought he was blinded, but they would not unde- 
 ceive him. 
 
 He was not exactly blinded. Husbands and wives rarely 
 are in such cases. Simply, the heart often refuses to draw 
 the conclusions which the reason points out. This pure 
 and high-toned man had lived through every phase of 
 wedded disillusion and disappointment — from the rapture 
 and exaltation of admiring and adoring love, through the 
 dawning fear that he had, after all, married a very imper- 
 fect woman instead of an almost perfect angel ; through 
 the freezing conviction that Fanny did not, and never had, 
 really loved him ; through the patient endurance of con- 
 sistent selfishness and wilfulness, down to a toleration of 
 the rivals (" friends " she called and he believed them) 
 who each in his day was the real interest of her existence. 
 
 But never did he look his fate in the face, nor ask him- 
 self what was the meaning of the web of mystery that hung 
 
■NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 299 
 
 always about his wife — of these notes and souvenirs, these 
 flowers and attentions, that infested the atmosphere wherein 
 she dwelt, and which certainly were not from him. He 
 quieted himself with the theory that though thoroughly 
 trustworthy at bottom, Fanny was an exceptional being, 
 not to be bound by ordinary rules and conventions nor 
 judged by ordinary standards, and consoled himself in his 
 blank of wedded sympathy with his children, and with the 
 devotion of his sister Jeannette. 
 
 The secret was that in his heart he still loved the worth- 
 less but to him magnetic woman. Fanny had personality 
 — which means that she drew others to her without being 
 drawn equally in return. Her able way of doing every 
 thing- she undertook, her good looks, ch rp inf^ toilet, her 
 self-dependence, her animation — in short, deep as was 
 David's disappointment in Fanny Dexter, to him she was 
 still the most interesting of her sex. If she could have 
 loved him as he did her, he could have found in her his 
 earthly heaven. She had taken root in his life and flour- 
 ished there, and to discard her would tear the best part of 
 it away. And then, most quivering ner\'e of all, she was 
 the mother of his children. David Howe had indeed 
 tremendous reasons for closing his eyes. 
 
 After the scarlet fever episode the pair never kept house 
 again. They could not afford to* do so in New York, and 
 Fanny simply wouldn't anywhere else. In winter they 
 lived in hotelsor fashionable boarding-houses, and in sum- 
 mer, after Mrs. Dexter's farewell to housekeeping, David's 
 little family alternated between the new hotel in Belmont 
 and the old one at Belmont Springs, which, greatly enlarged 
 from the days of Fanny's first flirtation as a married 
 woman, furnished now an endurable cuisine, and was the 
 special summering place of Belmont swelldom. 
 
300 NEW YORK': A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 V 
 
 While her parents lived, Mrs. Howe preserved some 
 respect for appearances during these country sojournings 
 away from her liege ; but in the very next season after her 
 father's death, she seemed to lose all sense of social 
 responsibility, and her conduct became such an offence to 
 the guests of the Austen House that the landlord was forced 
 to ask for her rooms. She drove over to engage others at 
 Belmont Springs, and the proprietor refused to receive 
 her. "Miss Howe," said frankly the former of these 
 men to the horrified Jeannette, " your sister-in-law is not 
 what she should be. Belmont folks have ben sayin' it for 
 a long time, and ef you and Mr. Howe don't know it, it's 
 time you did." 
 
 And so the poor little victim of Fanny's daily selfish- 
 ness was fated to be the instrument of her oppressor's 
 exposure. She was packing her trunk in order to take the 
 next train away from the disgraced woman, when the latter 
 came in, and on her knees begged and prayed that Jeannette 
 would not turn family informer against her. But to her 
 surprise andfright Jeannette would promise nothing. " I'm 
 going straight to Philip," she answered, '*and he shall 
 decide whether it is right to keep our poor brother in igno- 
 rance of your true character. / have never been able to 
 reconcile your conduct with that of virtuous women; but 
 it was not for me to make trouble when David seemed to 
 feel no jealousy of your admirers. Now that the world 
 has turned upon you, it is different." 
 
 "So, Miss Immaculate!" sneered the baffled Fanny 
 just before banging out of the room, " you see a good 
 chance now to oust me and take my place at the head of 
 your injured brother's family, don't you ? Poor old maid ! 
 You'd never be the head of a family in any other way, and 
 I don't wonder you're going to grab for it ! " And then 
 
A'EIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. Z^l 
 
 Mie added to herself, " But may be I have a card or two to 
 play yet, my precious prude ! " 
 
 An aunt of the Howes had died in an insane asylum, 
 and this fact suggested the following letter, despatched 
 by Fanny to her husband as soon as possible after her 
 stormy parting with Jeannette : 
 
 Dearest David : 
 
 You will be surprised to hear that Jeannette has just decided to 
 join the Philip Howes at the seashore and to remain there during 
 August. She leaves for Boston on the night train, and on my part 
 I shall take the morning express back to you. I've had some such 
 strange scenes with Jeannette, you can't think ! Do you suppose it 
 possible that the insanity which is in your family can be coming 
 upon her ? I assure you I was only too glad to encourage her notion 
 of going to Philip and Lucy at Nantucket. She said she couldn't 
 stand the children any longer and must rest. As if I ever wanted 
 her to do anything she didn't insist on doing ! In fact, she's been 
 so jealous of the children that long ago I gave up the management 
 to her. And the other day she quite raved over my "imposing" 
 on her ! I feel completely used up over it all, and very lonely, too. 
 Belmont is awfully changed to me with father, mother, and JuHa all 
 gone, and even Josephine across the water. Davy, dear, I feel I 
 can't spend any more summers away from you, and I reproach my- 
 self that I have spent so many. After all, who can be so near to a 
 woman as her own kind and good husband, and why should the 
 wife and children be off pleasuring while the husband and father is 
 working? After this, dearest, if you are willing, we will pass our 
 summers together. Counting the hours until I see you, 
 Your devoted and homesick 
 
 Fan. 
 
 '* I must say a great deal if I say anything at all," 
 thought she, grimly. 
 
 A thrill of purest joy went through David Howe's love- 
 starved soul as he read these affectionate words. '*Is it 
 possible," so ran his thoughts, ** that my gay and restless 
 
302 NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 Fanny has at last come round to my standpoint, and sees 
 that all these outside distractions can't compare with the 
 quiet love and sympathy of one devoted heart ? If she 
 has, then I have done well to trust her as I have. Darling 
 little woman ! How glad I shall be to see her ! To me 
 there's no one like her, nor ever will be." 
 
 In his life David Howe had never been so happy as he 
 was during the month that followed. For the first time 
 Fanny turned fully upon himself the alluring, caressing 
 side so natural to her with other men. She was mortally 
 terrified at having been tabooed in Belmont, and lived in 
 shivering fear of the postman, not knowing what an hour 
 might bring forth. As her only hope of salvation, there- 
 fore, she bent her whole mind to the re-conquest of her 
 husband, and not only was the effort not difficult, to her 
 surprise she found herself actually falling in love with 
 him. David had suddenly become indeed her lord and 
 master, her superior, the absolute arbiter of her fate, and 
 to this strong soul, power in any form was ever the supreme 
 attraction. ** Why," she asked herself, '' why had she not 
 thought of it before ? Her very own husband was a man, 
 a gentleman ; talented, refined, generous ; not so rich as 
 she would have liked, nor so tall; but still he was very 
 nice-looking, and he had enough ; so much, in fact, that 
 she might have made it far more if she had exerted herself 
 to save instead of longing always to spend. In future she 
 would do so with all her might. She would interest her- 
 self in his business. She had a head for business, she 
 knew she had. Davy had been hinting lately that he was 
 getting out of the woods. As soon as she was sure she was 
 safe, she would insist on perfect frankness in money mat- 
 ters, and by uniting their energies she shouldn't won- 
 der if they got rich in ten years. Yes, Davy certainly 
 
NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 303 
 
 combined as much as any man she had ever known. If he 
 had his drawbacks, so had all the others. Ah, why had she 
 not been satisfied ? These outsiders had been nothing, 
 worse than nothing, after all. Oh, if Jeannette only did 
 not tell on her, she would never look at another man again 
 — not even Herman Hardy." 
 
 Thus the surface optimism of her suspense, though con- 
 tradicted ever by a deep, hollow dread that in her folly she 
 had honeycombed the strong and solid ledge which had 
 held her skyward, and that it was but a question of days, 
 perhaps moments, when it would roar down beneath her 
 feet to some fathomless abyss below ! When her husband 
 came home to her every evening, still joyous, radiant, 
 eager, so tremendous was the reprieve of another twenty- 
 four hours that she could have fallen down and worshipped 
 him. David Howe had never dreamed that any woman's 
 eyes could dwell on him so fondly ; that from this woman's 
 gaze such appealing softness r^///^/meet his own ! 
 
 Fanny further intoxicated him with daily declaring that 
 she had but one wish, to have her own little home, she 
 cared not where — Brooklyn, Staten Island, Orange, even 
 Jersey City or Harlem — she would go anywhere David 
 could afford if she could only keep house once more ; yes, 
 even if with but one servant. "And, David, dear," she 
 coaxed, '' I do think it would be sweeter, don't you, to be 
 for a year or two entirely alone ? I do love Jeannette 
 most dearly, and you know how I have always leaned on 
 her as the older; but still I'm conscious that, without at 
 all knowing or intending it, she did come between us. I 
 never acknowledged it before, but I always felt a bit jeal- 
 ous of her. She seemed to suit you better than I did, and 
 so I used to feel I'd just let her suit you. You were always 
 so. contented with her, and it made me want to flirt just to 
 
304 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 tease you. But now I want you all to myself. Why 
 couldn't she stay with Philip for a year, or even take a 
 governess's place ? She would be invaluable to anybody. 
 I shouldn't wonder if she is thinking of it herself. You 
 see she doesn't write, and that is so strange for Jeannette. 
 The truth is she has lived with us too long, and she requires 
 a change for her own good, if for nothing else." - 
 
 And so sped his fool's paradise along until September 
 brought the Philip Howe family back to Brooklyn, where 
 they lived, and soon after brought to David Howe a large 
 envelope addressed in Philip's hand and marked ** Per- 
 sonal." He found it among a Saturday morning mail on 
 the table in his inner office, and in the brief following 
 sentences his fate at last descended upon him : 
 
 My Dear Brother : 
 
 If you were surprised at Fanny's sudden return to you without 
 Jeannette, and at the latter's continued silence, the dreadful expla- 
 nation is to be found in the fact which it is my unhappy office to 
 announce to you, viz.: that in Belmont your wife's conduct, in consid- 
 erable disrepute for several years, reached this season to such an open 
 recklessness that the landlord of the Austen House was forced to ask 
 for her rooms ; and when she tried to engage others at Belmont 
 Springs, they were refused her. Jeannette was so overwhelmed with 
 the disgrace, and with the thought of what it would be to you, that, 
 not knowing what else to do, she took the first train to us. Her news 
 was hardly a surprise to Lucy and myself, but, knowing your chivalric 
 devotion to Fanny, I decided to procure the most absolute proofs in 
 the case, before risking the love and harmony that as a family we 
 have hitherto maintained. So I sent one detective to Belmont, and 
 have had Fanny shadowed here by another for the last month. I 
 enclose with this the reports I found awaiting my return. They seem 
 to leave no doubt as to the propriety of the action of the Belmont 
 landlord. 
 
 Be strong under this, my brother. T will call round shortly to find 
 
 wherein I can serve you. 
 
 Philip. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 305 
 
 As David Howe read this awful missive his veins con- 
 gealed to ice, but when he had finished the documents 
 that went with it, his heart burst into flames. In one 
 moment his life had gone down in a molten chaos amid 
 which but one black thought stood out. The horrible 
 pages dropped from his grasp to the floor, and at first he 
 sat staring, motionless; then with a cry sprang up, and 
 with hands clutching the hair above his bursting brain, he 
 began pacing the room like a maniac, all unconscious of 
 what he was doing. 
 
 His brother entered, stood, sat down, and still the 
 maddened husband kept on in his wild walking. At last 
 for a moment he stopped opposite the pitying Philip and 
 whispered hoarsely : 
 
 ''She ought to be killed." 
 
 ** Divorced, you mean." 
 
 Lxjudly, '' I said killed r' 
 
 Philip Howe was astounded. He had expected to find 
 his brother stunned with grief and shame, not frantic for 
 vengeance. Always playful and joking in his family, no 
 one had ever heard David Howe hint a misgiving or a 
 reproach against his ill-regulated wife. Whatever his suf- 
 fering or disappointment, he had kept both to himself, and 
 only the watchful Jeannette had ever caught a smothered 
 sigh or suspected an indignant hour. We have all known 
 them, these seeming passionless, single-minded American 
 husbands, whose silent loyalty to wife and children is the 
 inmost core of themselves, and David Howe was one of 
 them ; but now in his agony poured fiercely forth the 
 lava-wrath of many pent-up years. 
 
 "■ That woman ! " he raved in the intervals of his fierce 
 striding, " whom I made the axis of my life, at first because 
 I believed in her, and kept on because I wouldn't — I — 
 
306 A'EW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 would — not — disbelieve in her ! For whom I've sacri- 
 ficed myself — toiled night and day for years — deprived 
 myself of everything — allowed our gentle sister to suffer 
 from her selfishness and petty tyranny — and all that she 
 might live in the softness and idleness she loved. Who 
 brought me nothing — not a heart, for she has none ; not 
 sweetness, for behind the scenes she's a vixen ; not beauty, 
 for she requires dress to be even pretty." (Howe forgot 
 the rose-leaf youth she brought him, and the charming 
 smile — the latter the greatest of all beauties!) "Years 
 ago I saw it all, I felt it all. I knew I'd got nothing 
 in return for everything. Yet I kept a cheerful face and 
 forgave all, even to the men continually about her, because 
 she was so cold and calculating that — ha ! ha ! — I thought 
 she must be, she couldn't but be, my own ! If I had drawn 
 a blank in the lottery of life, no one should be the wiser. 
 I would be true to it, and contented with it, no matter 
 how I'd been sold on it. But instead of a blank I drew 
 that sum of all human villanies — a wanton ! Oh ! why 
 does God make such cockatrices — such beasts! God? 
 There is no God I ' ' 
 
 " She was her mother' sown daughter," observed Philip, 
 '' and what could you expect ? " 
 
 " Yes — Mrs. Dexter — vile humbug and fraud and 
 cheat ! " gnashed David. ** And all the thousands I spent 
 on her, too, even to saving her once from an absurd dab- 
 bling in Wall Street ! Ugh ! those flatteries and crocodile 
 tears 1 Blind blockhead that I was, trusting them both as 
 I did myself !" 
 
 ** I tried to warn you against Mrs. Dexter when you were 
 first married," murmured Philip. 
 
 *• I hope she's in hell, where she belongs ! " retorted 
 David, for the moment his comfortable Universalist belief 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 307 
 
 scorching and shrivelling like tow; "and her daughter 
 ought to be sent there after her. /ought to send her." 
 
 " Oh, David, David," cried his brother, " you're fear- 
 ful ! You're beside yourself. You don't know what you 
 are saying." 
 
 *' I do ! I do ! " insisted the frantic husband ; " it's you 
 who don't know, who don't understand. For I say," the 
 judge and master which every man naturally is over every 
 woman still raging within him, '' who is to avenge such 
 wrongs if the sufferers from them do not ? The law and 
 the courts stop short before them with that very expecta- 
 tion. Is there no power, anywhere, to purify society ? 
 Would you not put under ground a rotting body that was 
 filling the air with disgust and disease ? And is this cor- 
 rupted soul to be kept among its fellows, tainting and 
 ruining everything it touches ? What use under heaven 
 has this world for an adulteress ? Penitent, what place is 
 there for her ? Impenitent, what a moral plague-spot ! 
 Oh, if it were not for the cursed newspapers that would 
 spread it far and wide, and so brand my children's lives, I 
 would out with this damned spot ! I say Fanny Dexter 
 ought to be wiped out of existence. She can never be 
 made clean. In this world God himself can't make her 
 clean." 
 
 "You a murderer, David Howe? You merciless to a 
 woman ? " returned Philip, gently. " Thank God, you're 
 too much a man, too much a Christian, too much an Ameri- 
 can for that. Come, control yourself, my brother. Be 
 yourself. Bear this thing man-fashion. We're not 
 in the dark ages, when a husband could drop his wife 
 down an oubliette if she were unfaithful to him, and no one 
 be the wiser. Women don't belong to their husbands now- 
 adays, but to themselves, and what they do is between 
 
3o8 NEIV YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 V 
 
 themselves and a Higher Power. If it were my wife, I 
 would shake her off into the fire of her own lusts as I would 
 a scorpion, and never think of her again. Do you the 
 same. Get a divorce from the infamous creature, and 
 begin life over again. A divorce will be her social death, 
 and to a Dexter that will be a worse punishment than a real 
 one, I fancy." 
 
 Philip Howe's wife was a *' good " woman, not an 
 enthralling one to him as Fanny had ever been to David, 
 or perhaps he would not have imagined it quite such a 
 simple thing to '* shake her off " in similar circumstances. 
 All the same, his cooler view had its effect upon his 
 brother, and the glare began fading from David's face, 
 his step to slacken. 
 
 " Yes," he assented, " position is the very god of very 
 god to the Dexter mind; " and after a few quieter turns 
 about the room he continued, bitterly, " and when she has 
 lost the position I gave her, little as it filled her ambition, 
 and when even my little world has turned its back upon her, 
 she'll— she'll— Phil— she'll— ha I ha! ha! ha!" And 
 David went off into hysterical laughter, which presently 
 burst into rending sobs — sobs drowned in those tears 
 that flow not to relieve but to devastate; that '' flow but 
 once a life," and that leave no possibility of future tears 
 behind. 
 
 ** Don't cry, David; dear, dear David," implored his 
 brother in a broken voice, his own eyes brimming over. 
 ** For God's sake, don't cry. She is not worth your tears." 
 
 "Oh," murmured the unhappy man, *Mf I had been 
 spared only that ! " 
 
 " Spared what ? " asked Philip. 
 
 But David only shook his head, and sobbed and sobbed 
 in utter uncontrol until the first storm of his despair was 
 
' A^EW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 309 
 
 spent. Then he again began walking up and down the 
 room, drying his eyes and recovering himself, until, when 
 he could steady his words, he said, simply : 
 
 *' Too bad, Phil, to put you through this. I'm ashamed 
 of myself. I have been beside myself. But I've done 
 now, for good and all. Please get Pierson round here so 
 I can arrange about an immediate divorce, and then come 
 back and help me think how to get Grace and Harold over 
 to your kind Lucy this afternoon, if possible. Thank 
 heaven, Edward has just gone back to school ! " 
 
 Was it the thought of his children which had sent that 
 scalding flood so agonizingly forth ? Nay, the smiling, 
 perfumed kiss which had dismissed him that morning to 
 his business ; the sweet softness, the appealing tenderness 
 of the last bright weeks \ the fond docility, the uplooking, 
 adoring wifehood for which all men sigh, but of which 
 he had only dreamed. From the one woman from whom 
 David had ever wanted these they had come, and, to his 
 simple apprehension, so perfectly, that he had had nothing 
 to add to that more than bridegroom bliss ; and, O God 
 of Heaven, it was all, all but the cajoling of the finished 
 courtesan against the swift-coming day of her exposure ! 
 
 It is ever so. Human ruthlessness is never content to 
 stab, merely, the, generous heart. The knife is always 
 turned in the wound, and every pang of excruciation, every 
 detail of ignominy is calmly meted out. To the reserved 
 and sensitive and romantic Howe, that month of Judas- 
 cheat to which he had abandoned himself was the intoler- 
 able climax of all the hideous wrongs which had gone 
 before. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 SENTENCED. 
 
 Late in the afternoon of the same day, and in a mood 
 cold and calm as the death within his heart, David Howe 
 was awaiting the return of his wife from a theatre matinee. 
 As far as he was concerned, life was over. All he had lived 
 for, everything most sacred to him, had vanished in agony 
 and shame. In future, existence would be not only a blank 
 but a brand. There remained but to pass judgment on the 
 guilty author of such measureless crime and woe. 
 
 Knowing Fanny's habits, and in order to make it possible 
 for his brother to remove his two younger children without 
 the scene their mother was certain to make, immediately 
 on leaving David, Philip Howe had sent her a telegram 
 signed ** H. H.," and reading, *' Matinee ticket for you, 
 box office, Wallack's. Will meet you." Philip had 
 further set a watch on the house, so that if the children 
 should leave it before Fanny did, they could be followed 
 and brought back by a message from their father. Fanny 
 being well out of the way for two or three hours, he and 
 David would have time to put some of their things together, 
 and get them started with himself for Brooklyn before her 
 return. 
 
 Philip's plot succeeded perfectly. All unwittingly the 
 reckless betrayer was herself betrayed, and while she was 
 sitting in a very bad humor at having an empty seat beside 
 her throughout a long play, instead of the " H, H." she 
 
. A'EW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 31 1 
 
 had expected, her home and her family vanished from her 
 forever. 
 
 *' Well, my own dear ! " she cried blithely, as she entered 
 their rooms, and her husband turned toward her from the 
 window at which he had been standing, " so you're home 
 until Monday ! How nice ! But how pale and tired you 
 look, poor little popsy ! Let me get my things off and I'll 
 make you a good stiff egg-nog to revive you for dinner. 
 S'pose you skipped your lunch, as usual, bad boy ! Have 
 you seen the children ? They ought to be back from the 
 Park by this time. Harriet Foster sent me word to meet 
 her at Wallack's this afternoon, so I gave them leave to 
 go and see their beloved animals — feed the monkeys and 
 the elephant. Harriet wasn't there, after all, and the play 
 was stupid, and I was bored, and sorry I hadn't stayed at 
 home, darning my Davy's stockings ! " And as she ran on 
 she removed her walking things, and was flitting about, 
 putting them away. 
 
 *' Fanny," returned David, and his strange and stem 
 tone made his wife stop and look earnestly at him, 
 " Philip says I must divorce you, and I think the same 
 myself. So I intend to do so at once. The papers will 
 be served on you Monday." 
 
 ''Philip? — divorce me?" echoed Fanny, blanching 
 like death. '* What on earth do you mean ? Have you 
 been listening to lies about me from people that hate me ? 
 Your brother and that prim wife of his have always hated 
 me, and Jeannette too. I always knew it. I suppose 
 Jeannette has been filling them with Belmont lies. She 
 got her cue from Belmont years ago. Belmont was always 
 envious and jealous of us Dexters, and couldn't say too 
 much against us. The idea of your believing her ! I told 
 you a month ago I thought she was going crazy. Wait till 
 
312 A'EJV YORK: A SYMPHOiYIC STUDY. 
 
 V 
 
 yoii see for yourself how changed she is. She's not 
 responsible." 
 
 '* Not a word against Jeannette, F'anny, if you know 
 what's good for yourself. There's no lie nor craziness 
 about it at all. You were turned out of the Austen House 
 and refused rooms at Belmont Springs. That is enough, 
 even if " 
 
 *' Lies, I say ! Damned, devilish lies ! " cried Fanny, 
 the inward coarseness of the true demi-mondaine coming 
 out in her excitement. "' I wouldn't take the rooms the 
 landlord offered me at Belmont Springs, and in revenge he 
 is telling lies about me." 
 
 " Of course you deny it. Tying is your native element. 
 But that can't alter the facts nor my determination. We 
 must part, and by law, too. As quick as the law can do 
 it, I divorce you." 
 
 *' The law can't do it," retorted Fanny, at once viciously 
 and triumphantly. '* You can't get a divorce from Fanny 
 Howe in this State. I defy you to try. You've got to 
 prove an act, and you can't prove it. It isn't there to 
 prove." Then, changing to a solemn air and an impressive 
 tone, " I may have been imprudent, but I've never been 
 untrue to you, David Howe. As God is my judge, I never 
 have." 
 
 " So you think you've got me for life, do you ? " returned 
 the husband ; " that I can't divorce you, and that you can 
 go on dragging my name and honor in the gutter to the 
 end of the chapter, while I foot some of the bills, eh ? 
 But you little guess whom you're dealing with. Knowing 
 my blind, and, as I now see it, criminal, confidence in you, 
 my brother Philip didn't take Jeannette' s word for it, and 
 gave me no hint of your infamy until he had your record 
 down in black and white. He sent one detective to Bel- 
 
Ar£JV YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 313 
 
 mont, and has had you shadowed here by another ever since 
 you got home. With a fraction of the damning evidence 
 any court would make me a free man in ten minutes." 
 
 ** David ! " shrieked Fanny, as she realized that she was 
 in the toils, '' you can't be serious ! You can't mean to 
 divorce me ! What, send me away from you and from my 
 children ? " 
 
 ** Much you care for me and for your children ! Don't 
 call them yours. You're not fit to take their innocent 
 names on your lips. They are yours no longer. I never 
 thought to thank heaven that half my children are dead, 
 but I do. I only wish the rest were, and I with them." 
 
 *' But I will not leave my children ! " shrilled Fanny; 
 '* I cannot live without Gracie ! I won't, I won't, I 
 won't ! " 
 
 Laconically, " You'll have to. Philip decoyed you to 
 the theatre by a telegram this afternoon, and while you 
 were gone they were taken to Brooklyn." 
 
 Fanny uttered a piercing scream, threw herself on the 
 floor, and dashed her head against it. 
 
 " Keep quiet, woman," said Howe, sternly; " do you 
 want to bring the house in here to witness your disgrace ? 
 I hear Clara Calvert's name is coupled with yours all over 
 Belmont, and do you think I'll let Grace be contaminated 
 too ? Calvert's been a fool to trust you with Clara as he 
 has." 
 
 *' Oh, Davy, Davy, have pity!" cried Fanny, rushing 
 madly to him on her knees and clasping his. He tried to 
 disengage himself, but she clung tightly, and dragged her- 
 self round the floor after him. '' David, forgive me ! 
 Oh, for God's sake, forgive me ! And Clara's never done 
 anything wrong. I swear she hasn't. Do you think I'd 
 lead away my dead sister's child — ^Julia's child ? I was 
 
314 A'EIV YORK: A SYi^ PHONIC STUDY. 
 
 always good while Julia lived. She was more to me than 
 any one on earth. And I'll be good again if you'll only 
 try me, Davy. I know I'm not worthy. I know I'm the 
 scum of humanity, that I'm not fit to kiss your shoe. 
 But I will kiss it — I do kiss it ! " trying to abase her lips 
 to his feet. ** PI) worship you ! I do worship you ! I'll 
 be the most perfect slave man ever had if you'll forgive 
 me and not drive me away — not take away my home and 
 my children, and send me out into the great wide world 
 — not disgrace me, David ! You ought to make some allow- 
 ance. You know you bought that mine, and you had to 
 sell the Harlem property to pay for it ; and you never asked 
 me, but just brought a lawyer and a deed of sale for me to 
 sign ; and I never knew till afterward that as your wife I 
 had a right to refuse to sign it if I chose ; and the mine 
 didn't pay as the houses did, and so we lost our house 
 in New York. It wasn't my fault, but yours, and it 
 changed all my life. When we were married I never 
 thought of such a thing as hoarding in Brooklyn ! You 
 ought to consider how hard it was on me, and how I suffered 
 over it, cooped up in three rooms. Oh, do, for God's 
 sake, David, try me once more, somewhere in our own 
 little home ! Didn't I make you happy this last month ? 
 You know I did. And I was so happy ! I never loved, 
 I never worshipped any one so before. God ! God ! make 
 him have pity ! " 
 
 Her hair had loosened about her shoulders; her eyes 
 were upturned ; her face was terror-stricken ; she looked 
 the pleading Magdalen she was. 
 
 But Howe gazed down unmoved. '' You act splendidly, 
 Fanny," he said, his thin nostrils growing thinner with 
 contempt and aversion, " and I admit that for the last 
 month you've acted for all you were worth. You'd have 
 
iVElV YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 3^5 
 
 made a fortune on the stage, but for real life it doesn't fill 
 the bill. As for disgracing you — for the children's sakes 
 I will do all quietly ; nor will I leave you penniless, as 
 you deserve ; not leave you a beggar in purse as you have 
 me in heart. For the rest, I utterly wash my hands of you. 
 I must, of course, give a week's notice for these rooms, 
 until when you can occupy them. After that " 
 
 '' Since you are determined to disgrace me, kill me! 
 Kill me at once and done with it. Better that than to 
 turn me out ! " she cried. 
 
 *' True, it would be better. You really ought to be 
 killed, P'anny. I said so to Philip this morning. But 
 I don't purpose to turn executioner because you are an 
 adulteress, and worse. Why God Himself doesn't strike 
 such as you with lightning and put you out of a world you 
 help to ruin, I don't understand. But let Him see to it. 
 Live to repent — to be yet a good woman, Fanny." 
 
 '' I'll never live to be disgraced ! " shrieked Fanny. 
 '' I'll kill myself!" 
 
 *' Oh, no, Fanny ! You would not dare, wicked as you 
 are, to go before your Maker. The only thing for you to 
 do is to hide yourself in some farm-house and try to be a 
 comfort to some farmer's hard-working wife." 
 
 '' Josie ! Josie ! " screamed Fanny. '* Where is Joseph- 
 ine ? Get Josephine ! Take me to Josephine ! Where is 
 my sister ? Get me my sister ! I must have my sister ! 
 I can't be left alone ! I can't act ! I can't think ! I 
 shall go mad ! I shall— I shall ! " 
 
 "I sent a note to Josephine just before you came in," 
 said David, as he took up his hat to go, " and when she 
 gets it I presume she will come to you. Meantime," with 
 his hand on the door-knob, *' shouting won't bring her any 
 quicker, Frances Dexter, but it may make your landlady 
 
3i6 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 treat you as the Belmont landlords did ; " and with that 
 David was gone. 
 
 " I ' ought to be killed/ ought I ? " cried Fanny, as with 
 blazing eyes she stood staring at the door whence her hus- 
 band had departed ; then she spranj^ toward her closet, and 
 seizing a bottle of laudanum that stood there, she drank 
 off its contents. 
 
 An hour later David had reached his brother's house in 
 Brooklyn. i\fter dinner he was closeted with Philip for a 
 little time, and then he sought his anxious and trembling 
 sister. 
 
 *' Where are you going ? " she cried, her face one terri- 
 fied interrogation ; for his hat was on his head, his over- 
 coat on his arm, and he held a travelling-bag in his hand. 
 
 ** I'm going to the seashore for a few days. I must get 
 away from all this. And, Jeannette, please don't take it 
 hard if I decide to send the children to boarding-school 
 for the present and pay your board here with Phil and 
 Lucy, or wherever you may prefer. I can't be a family 
 man this winter. Perhaps I may never be again. How 
 would you like a season in Washington ? A thorough 
 change would be as good for you as for me. But these are 
 only suggestions. I'll be back soon and talk things over 
 at length. Meanwhile you can be inquiring about a good 
 New England school for Grace. Harold, I suppose, had 
 better go to Edward's. Take care of yourself, my own true 
 sister," kissing her on the brow, "■ and God bless you for 
 all your love to me and mine." 
 
 As David closed her door, poor Jeannette sank upon a 
 chair and pressed her hands to her heart and then to her 
 brow. Her release from the long bondage that had eaten 
 into her soul had come, but was it only because the earth 
 had opened beneath her feet ? Fanny's taunt, that in her 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 317 
 
 downfall Jeannette would win the chance to preside over 
 her brother's family had found a timid echo in her heart. 
 In its inner shrine had been the voiceless vision of a quiet 
 home in some New York suburb with David and the children 
 until the latter grew up. Now, instead of this, as it had 
 seemed to her, sweet natural consummation, these precious 
 ones were to be confided to strangers, though they were 
 dearer to her than life, and she herself was to " board 
 wherever she might prefer," but not with this adored 
 brother ; that was very evident. Ah, how could this shy 
 and passive soul, at this stage of the game of life, make 
 for itself out of the great cold world a new warm environ- 
 ment of love ? Youth was utterly gone, and without youth 
 what woman has hope ? Jeannette Howe was but the shell of 
 her former self. All that she had been, all that she might 
 have been, had been used up by her brother's wicked wife. 
 
 And thus do the strong and the selfish batten and thrive 
 on the loving and the weak, and drain their very lives 
 out of them, from generation to generation. 
 
 The good David, all unconscious of having, man-fashion, 
 swept down his sister's little trembling cobweb of hope, 
 sped on his midnight train toward a seashore upon whose 
 sands for a few days he walked or sat alone with '*Gcean, 
 the only handmaid of eternity," until by that mighty 
 companionship he was in some measure restored and able 
 to face calmly his altered fate. 
 
 Meantime, it had been after dinner before Josephine 
 Baldwin got to Fanny's rooms in response to David's note 
 outlining the situation. Not one minute, however, when 
 reached, did she remain in them. ' Flying down stairs to 
 the landlady, she gasped, ** A doctor, quick ! My sister's 
 asleep on the floor, all alone, and I can't rouse her. Go in 
 a carriage — anything — only be quick, for God's sake ! " 
 
3i8 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 V 
 
 A doctor came, and assistants with him, and together 
 they spent long hours in putting the would-be suicide 
 through the merciless ordeal of an opium rescue. At 
 last the death-sleep was conquered, and bruised, aching, 
 and agonizingly exhausted, the reckless one found herself 
 still in the, to her, now terrible land of the living. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 AN ADVENTURESS. 
 
 Brought back to life against her will, Fanny Howe 
 accepted its changed conditions with all her native energy, 
 stoicism, and pluck. She had always dwelt intensely in 
 the present, never thinking about the past and very little 
 about the future, and this temperament now came bravely 
 to her aid, and armed her cap-a-pie for the struggle which 
 was henceforth to be hers in the frowning world whose 
 deepest laws she had defied. After some days of utter 
 prostration and misery, she suddenly felt briskly herself 
 again, and, meantime, as Josephine sat by her bedside, she 
 had ample opportunity, amid the solemnity and also the 
 pathetic weakness of her hairbreadth rescue from the grave, 
 to impress upon her sister her own version of her story. 
 
 She protested that her husband's simply insane jealousy 
 had finally driven her to desperation. For years quietly 
 poisoned against her by Jeannette, he had latterly made 
 demands that no self-respecting woman could or would 
 accept. He had insisted that she should have no callers 
 nor correspondents of the other sex whatever. On her 
 refusal to accede to conditions which would have been to 
 admit herself guilty of his vile accusations, he had de- 
 clared her unworthy of her children, and had taken them 
 away preparatory to getting a divorce. Without her chil- 
 dren she could not live. She had tried to die, and why, 
 oh, why, had they brought her back? But since they had, 
 
320 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 never would she return to k man who was a Turk and who 
 wanted a slave for a wife. If he chose to divorce her, 
 well, the whole West was open to him to get a divorce in. 
 She shouldn't hinder him, even if he didn't give her a 
 cci:^. She ^ould keep boarders, she supposed, if he could' 
 stand by and see it. He might do as he liked. Men 
 made the laws to suit themselves. Women were at their 
 mercy. Every woman knew that. But he'd better not 
 touch her good name. If he did, she'd fight. He 
 couldn't prove anything, not a single, solitary thing. She 
 had been gay and flirtatious and free — yes, imprudent even. 
 She would not deny it, and she admitted it was a mistake. 
 Married women ought to respect prejudices and be careful 
 about appearances. If she had her life to live over again, 
 she would do differently; or, rather, she wouldn't marry at 
 all. She would go on the stage, which is what she should 
 have done in the first place. She would have made a for- 
 tune, and no thanks to any man. But she had myt gone 
 wi'ong ! 
 
 How much Josephine and her husband believed of all 
 this, Fanny couldn't guess. The Baldwins themselves were 
 little more than Bohemians. Crossing the water twice a 
 year as they did, they were birds of passage who had no 
 foothold in New York in any fixed circle whatever. 
 Whether they came or went, nobody cared. And like most 
 people who live equally on both sides of the Atlantic, 
 they had lost all love of and hold on Americanism, whether 
 of patriotism or principles. They were never shocked. 
 Baldwin said that if people were i)leasant and minded their 
 own business, they might do as they liked, for all him. 
 Josephine had almost no callers among her own sex, but 
 she saw a great deal of the free and easy New York busi- 
 ness men who were her husband's associates — polite, well- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 321 
 
 dressed, well-mannered jobbers, brokers, schemers and 
 semi -sports, who with equal equanimity spread all sail on 
 the surface one day and struggled beneath it the next. 
 
 Moreover, the loyalty of the Dexters toward each other 
 had been one of their marked family characteristics. To 
 the outside world their little circle of five — father, mother, 
 and three daughters — had ever presented a solid front of 
 mutual sympathy and admiration. These now had all 
 been taken from Josephine but Fanny, and she herself was 
 childless. In this wide world she had few relations, 
 very few friends. She was quite unprepared to throw over- 
 board her only sister while it was possible to countenance 
 her. To her lazy little brain, wrapped from its birth in 
 cotton-wool, it was easier to let the able Fanny manage 
 her own affairs in her own way than to try to fathom the 
 realities of the situation. She, therefore, seemingly ac- 
 quiesced in Fanny's own view of herself, spared her both 
 reproaches and advice, and made no objection when the 
 audacious woman proposed to take rooms in the expensive 
 new apartment hotel on Fifth Avenue where she herself 
 and her husband were spending their present three months 
 between trips. 
 
 Fanny ensconced herself in the cheapest corner in the 
 Surrey, and at first sat at Josephine's table, where there 
 was but one vacant place. Meals in the Surrey were ci la 
 carte. The Baldwins ordered and paid for their own, and 
 Fanny found she had to do the same for hers, as the hus- 
 band privately insisted the wife should make no offer to 
 pay for her. For though Baldwin had consented to bridge 
 over the proprieties for his way\vard sister-in-law, he was 
 perfectly willing that she should be compelled to show her 
 hand. She was not long in doing so. A week or two 
 after her arrival at the Surrey, the two young men who had 
 
0-- jvi:,yy YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 been the cause of the scandal at Belmont also took rooms 
 there. Fanny proposed that the Baldwins should move to 
 a larger table where they could all sit together. Mr. Bald- 
 win absolutely and firmly refused. 
 
 ** But what am I to do?" queried Fanny. ''Hardy 
 and Gibson have come here principally to be at the table 
 with ladies whom they know. They thought it would be 
 so much more home-like than at the restaurant they've 
 been going to. I'm sure I don't know how to disappoint 
 them. Don't you really believe Jim will change his 
 mind?" 
 
 *' I know positively he won't. He likes our table 
 because it's by the window, and the only vacant table that 
 is large enough for five or six is in the darkest part of the 
 room." 
 
 *' Well, I never ! " exclaimed Fanny, as if in innocent 
 astonishment at such selfishness. *' The idea ! To break 
 up the pleasure of four other people for his own — for, of 
 course, it would be pleasant for you to have the dear boys 
 at the table as well as for me. Such nice fellows — perfect 
 gentlemen ! " 
 
 ** La, no. Fan," returned Josephine, virtuously; *' I 
 don't care for your ' dear boys ' one way or the other. My 
 husband is enough for me. Pity yours hadn't been enough 
 for you ! Besides, travelling all the time as we do, to keep 
 to ourselves is the only home we have." 
 
 ''All right," said her sister, cheerfully; "but as my 
 friends came here to join our party, and Jim won't 
 'jine'," laughing, "I'll have to desert your table for 
 theirs." 
 
 ''Fanny."' exclaimed Mrs. Josephine, "and let peo- 
 ple talk, as of course they will? You know you said your- 
 self you'd been too reckless of appearances." 
 
XEl^V YORK: A SYMPHOXIC SI I'D Y. 323 
 
 ** But the people here are all strangers to me," persisted 
 Fanny, "and to you, too, aren't they? You don't know 
 any one in the Surrey, so why should they talk? And, any 
 way, it won't be for long, for, of course, I shan't stay here 
 after you sail. You must admit, yourself, that with my 
 beggarly allowance from David Howe, it's rather absurd 
 my paying for soup and a chop and potato at your table, at 
 these awful Surrey prices, when at Hardy and Gibson's 
 I can get six or eight courses with wine and champagne 
 for nothing." 
 
 *' But how can you let young men who are no relation 
 to you — whom you didn't even know six months ago — pay 
 your board, Fanny ? For that's just what it amounts to." 
 
 ** They wouldn't pay one cent for me. You know, your- 
 self, the portions for one here are large enough for two. 
 Jim only orders ' for one ' for both of you, and their 
 two portions are more than enough for three, and why 
 shouldn't I help to drink up wine that would only be 
 finished by the waiters? " 
 
 ** I suppose you'll do as you choose," said Josephine, 
 reddening; ** you always have; and I should think you'd 
 realize by this time where it has brought you. If you 
 expect to get support or alimony out of David Howe, this 
 is a queer way to begin ; " and she added to herself, *' it's 
 her infatuation for that curly pate, Herbert Hardy. She'd 
 walk on her head if he asked her to, a boy of twenty-two, 
 and she forty ! " 
 
 Fanny did do as she chose, and evening after evening, 
 conspicuously and beautifully dressed, she sailed into the 
 dining-room with the two youths, and, going to a table far 
 removed from the Baldwins, gayly discussed and helped 
 decide the menu and the wines, lingered long with her 
 friends over the repast, and, after leaving the apartment, 
 
324 NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 perhaps strolled through the ^hotel parlors, still in their 
 society. 
 
 Even the passive Josephine was confounded and shocked 
 at such utter obtuseness, to say the least, while Baldwin 
 was simply scandalized. '' After our consenting she should 
 come here under our wing ! " he exclaimed. ** Outra- 
 geous ! Disgusting! Thank heaven, we don't know any 
 one!" 
 
 But though the Baldwins and Fanny had no acquaint- 
 ance at the Surrey, the experienced eye of the Surrey pro- 
 prietor had been fixed upon the latter very soon after her 
 advent, and when he discovered that besides her camaraderie 
 with the aforementioned opulent youths, an old gentleman 
 was a frequent caller at her room, and that orders "for 
 four ' ' often floated down to the hotel bar from late poker 
 parties in her number, he laid the case before Baldwin for 
 instant action. The latter would not trust his wife to deal 
 with it. He went straight himself to Fanny and told her 
 indignantly that if she didn't leave the Surrey at once, 
 they certainly would; and, as it was, he wasn't sure he 
 should ever let his wife speak to her again. 
 
 ** Jim ! " cried Fanny, springing forward and clutching 
 his arm, ** don't turn Josephine against me ! Don't, for 
 mercy's sake ! If you do, I'll jump into the East River ! 
 I will, and no mistake about dying this time ! You 
 wouldn't be my death, would you? " 
 
 ** What in thunder are you so imprudent for, then, 
 woman ! " cried Baldwin ; '' so shameless ! Can't you real- 
 ize, yourself, that you're not respectable — that you violate 
 all decency? If you won't even keep up appearances, of 
 course Josephine and I can't stand by you. Nobody can 
 stand by you ! Why won't you look things in the face? " 
 
 *' I'm sure I don't know," murmured Fanny, sinking in 
 
i 
 
 NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 325 
 
 a heap in the middle of the floor, and hiding her face in 
 her hands; *' I believe I'm crazy." 
 
 ** I believe you are!" said Baldwin, turning on his 
 heel. 
 
 For some time after he left her, Fanny remained crouched 
 together in a bottomless daze of misery. " Can't \ou real- 
 ize, yourself, that you're not respectable ? " This awful truth 
 echoed and reechoed, reverberated, thundered through every 
 remotest corner of her heart. This was the third rebuff 
 from a hotel-keeper. David Howe, all the Howes, had 
 rejected her. The Baldwins were on the point of doing 
 so. Was she indeed an outcast — really and truly cast out 
 from her own sex ? 
 
 A great wave from the lerrLn occcin of Retribution that 
 welters round all our lives, had rolled in and dashed even 
 this stout heart to the ground, (ireat God ! What should 
 she do? Where should she go? 
 
 A straighter, simpler nature would have acknowledged 
 to itself what it was, and would either have repented and 
 reformed, or have sunk unresistingly to its proper level. 
 But to Fanny's tortuous soul neither alternative presented 
 itself. The two opposing instincts — her mother's passion 
 for position, her father's thirst for indulgence, still warred 
 within her ; and when at last she rose and roused herself to 
 action, it was again to attempt the all but impossible — to 
 keep within the pale of respectability, even if but just 
 within, and yet to enjoy in secret that good fellowship 
 with men of pleasure without which life to her was not 
 worth living, but which such men extend only to women 
 as lawless and as pagan as themselves. 
 
 Fanny's common-sense, however, tried to take to heart 
 her brother-in-law's outburst — that she must indeed be 
 more careful of appearances if she wished to preserve the 
 
326 NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 remnant of social recognition implied in the toleration 
 even of strangers. She found herself rooms in one of the 
 large New York boarding houses which are formed out 
 of several connecting private dwellings, but each with its 
 own front door and latch-key, and which, with the major 
 part of their patrons careful to avoid intimacies with their 
 fellow-boarders, afford a certain margin of unchallenged 
 liberty to those whose inner life is for good reasons their 
 own private affair. In the second floor front of one of 
 these establishments, and extremely convenient, therefore, 
 to the entrance just beneath, Mrs. Fanny undertook the 
 interesting role of femme separe'e who was more sinned 
 against by a harsh and tyrannical husband than she herself 
 was sinning. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVIIl. 
 
 THE WORM AT THE ROOT. 
 
 Had David Howe's wife succeeded in her attempt upon 
 her life, it would have been the best thing that could have 
 happened to her; but since it was her fate to live on, 
 equally was it the best thing for her that she had tried 
 it. This self-condemnation to death, and her all but suc- 
 cess in attaining it, invested the sinning one with an 
 appealing pathos and even awe against which the noble 
 and tender man, who could never forget how he had loved 
 her, was not proof. He pledged his brother and sisters to 
 silence upon his wrongs, within a month pro'cured his 
 divorce privately before a referee, and so well succeeded in 
 keeping it out of the papers, that it was two or three years 
 before any one outside the families concerned was aware 
 that it had actually taken place. It was supposed to be 
 but a separation. 
 
 The court gave Fanny no alimony whatever, but David 
 continued the hundred dollars a month at first begun, and 
 permitted her the privileges of corresponding with her 
 children, and of spending four weeks of every summer 
 with them at a seaside boarding house near his native town 
 of Marblehead. It is almost incredible that he should 
 have allowed such a woman even this margin of mother- 
 hood, but Fanny had pleaded with him so desperately for 
 it, she had protested such passionate repentance and refor- 
 mation, the children themselves were so devotedly attached 
 
328 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 V 
 
 to their "little momma," as they fondly called her, and 
 their father was so unwilling to lower their mother in their 
 eyes, that he had not the heart to refuse it. But in spite 
 of this annually recurring glimpse of her old life, and of 
 her severe lesson at the Surrey, Fanny found herself un- 
 able to avoid descending into a bohemian. 
 
 At first her fellow-boarders were charmed with her win- 
 ning manner and easy talk. The inexperienced and the 
 simple were impressed with the array of well-known names 
 with which she seemed familiar. They invited her to their 
 rooms and were seen in hers. But after a time wives 
 became shy of her, and husbands felt uncomfortable at her 
 notice. Her rich and perfumed dress, always in the 
 extreme of the fashion, the evening touch of rouge on her 
 cheek, her want of women callers, the various men who 
 after dinner appeared in the parlors to escort her some- 
 where, her unexplained absences for days at a time — grad- 
 ually all this was put together, inferences were insisted 
 upon, and in the end, notwithstanding her prompt and 
 liberal payment, the reluctant landlady was obliged to 
 ask for her rooms or lose important patrons. 
 
 Poor Fanny ! The first time this ignominy happened to 
 her, she managed a trip to Paris to forget it. The second 
 time, she went away for a winter in New Orleans. The 
 third, it was with bitter tears she packed her trunks and 
 acknowledged that it was no use; that in New York, at 
 least, the gates of the world wherein are womanhood and 
 home had forever closed behind her. The educated and 
 refined of her own sex, its wives, its mothers, its " ladies'* 
 in their place, to her must now be thing's of the past. 
 Henceforth, between the narrow walls of some nameless 
 flat must be all the human circle she could hope to 
 have, and of that circle it was certain there would never 
 
k 
 
 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 329 
 
 be one whom she could wholly trust, or look up to, or 
 respect. 
 
 How soft and fair and smiling seemed it now, how rav- 
 ishing and sweet, that gentle realm which once she had 
 found only stale, flat and unprofitable 1 How peopled, 
 how warm and rich with all human interests and aims, 
 compared with the stalking solitude, the hideous monot- 
 ony of this under plane of vice to which she had fallen ! 
 That dear atmosphere of love in which she had lived, 
 husband, babies, parents, sisters, friends — all close, close 
 about her ! If she were ill, they were so tender. If sad, 
 they were so solicitous. Even were she cross, they would 
 respect and give way to her mood. Now, nothing but 
 these men, men, men — hard — selfish — gross — to please and 
 to coax and to flatter ; and if she did not — Oh, terror ! If 
 the time should ever come when she could not, what then? 
 And this welded prison of despair, whose walls must soon 
 begin to contract upon her, was what she had gained by 
 reaching wilfully and persistently after what she had fan- 
 cied was the free and joyous outer firmament in which 
 all pleasures were permitted. ''Pleasures?" Oh, woe, 
 woe, double-weighted, double-distilled ! Horrors, rather, 
 revolting, unspeakable ! 
 
 In the apartment of doubtful location but of modest 
 rent to which Fanny's limited means compelled her (there 
 being no modest rent in New York, except in such loca- 
 tions), there were no amateur detectives of fellow-boarders 
 to wonder over her goings and comings, over her un- 
 named visitors, over her incessant notes and letters. But 
 housekeeping, alas, according to Fanny's standard, and 
 even in a small flat with but one servant, cost twice as 
 much as boarding. She wrote to David that her health was 
 breaking down, that she needed a more delicate cuisine 
 
330 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 and more personal care than she could command in a 
 boarding house, therefore she had been forced to take a 
 flat. Could he increase her allowance by another hundred, 
 or even by fifty more a month? She was utterly unworthy 
 of it, she knew; yet he always ha(/httn so kind, so good 
 to her, and she was so grateful, and ever would be so 
 eternally grateful to him, etc., etc. 
 
 But now for four years David Howe had been a free 
 man. His romance for his once wife had entirely van- 
 ished. He was not very rich, and he was, in fact, very 
 tired of paying even the twelve hundred a year, to say 
 nothing of the doctor's and other bills which his Magda- 
 len contrived occasionally to get out of him. Before 
 replying, he set a detective to find out the real meaning of 
 Fanny's new departure, and when he did write, it was but 
 to ask : " Why should I give you more money to be spent 
 in suppers with profligates? " 
 
 So, as Mrs. Fanny was fast losing her youth, as the lines 
 and wrinkles which had been so deep in her father's small 
 brown face threatened to be the early inheritance of her 
 little blonde one, life might have gone hard with her but 
 for one of those brilliant turns which for the able and the 
 cool are always among the possibilities. 
 
 A recent '* friend " was a professional and flourishing 
 city politician. At an after-theatre supper in a private 
 room one night, Fanny heard this man and one or two con- 
 federates discussing a plundering contract scheme which 
 they were lobbying through at Albany, and swearing over 
 some doubtful votes which they feared they could not 
 secure, whereupon she had an inspiration and immediately 
 gave voice to it. 
 
 " Why can't /go to Albany and ' fix things,' as you call 
 it? Just let me tackle your ' hayseeds ' and see whether 
 
NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC S7UDY. 331 
 
 they can resist me. You know I come from the hayseed 
 country myself. Promise me my expenses and the com- 
 mission you'd give any one else, and I'll get your contract 
 through for you. ' 
 
 No sooner proposed than accepted with enthusiasm. 
 The party drank deep to the sluccess of the new lobbyist, 
 so much so, in fact, that it did not break up until her 
 friends had persuaded Fanny to celebrate the occasion by 
 dancing amid their wild applause her Paris edition of the 
 Highland fling of her childhood. 
 
 Behold, now, this thoroughly depraved and unscrupulous 
 demi-mondaine launched as a determined influencer of 
 law-givers, as an active factor in public affairs. Before 
 starting for Albany, she was carefully instructed in her 
 role, and so apt a go-between did she prove, that after an 
 extremely entertaining month at the State capital, she 
 was enabled to telegraph the passage of the desired bill 
 by the narrow majority for which she had intrigued and 
 cajoled. She returned triumphant to New York, and for 
 her valuable services to the corruption! sts relentlessly 
 demanded and promptly received every dollar these ser- 
 vices were worth. 
 
 The first taste of political intrigue and association had 
 been supremely fascinating to little Mrs. Dexter-Howe, as 
 she now called herself, its profits truly gratifying. This 
 important world of wheels within wheels, of all sorts and 
 conditions of men, and nothing but men, which compose 
 the legislature of a great State, with its haggard ambi- 
 tions, its deadly jealousies and hatreds, its envyings and 
 antagonisms, deep plots and tense excitements ; the total 
 negation of conscience in so many of its members; their 
 simple principles, so sympathetically Fanny's own, of 
 spending other people's money as lavishly, and their own 
 
33^ NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 time as agreeably and profitably as possible ; their abys- 
 mal ignorance of the Bible, of history, and of letters 
 — ah, on her own plane, and after her own heart, Fanny 
 had indeed found at last a topsy-turvy world in which she 
 could hope for even chances ; a purposeless oCean across 
 which her little bark needed only her native skill and 
 coolness to be safely piloted at length into the haven of 
 financial independence where she would be. 
 
 No more ennui, no more regrets henceforward for this 
 energetic spirit ! From that on, during the sessions of the 
 legislature, Fanny was often in Albany. Several times 
 she was at the sessions of other legislatures. Once she 
 was even in Washington. In congressional halls I have 
 seen them, these specious and persistent harpies, hover- 
 ing round their inexperienced prey from the ignorant 
 or the rural districts of this great land, pulling the wool 
 over the eyes of the honest legislator, pandering to the 
 passions or the greed of the baser one. Fanny became 
 so enmeshed with politicians, that she attended every 
 political convention of the Empire State, while as for 
 New York City politics, her little circle of friends and 
 confidants arranged and rearranged their deals and slates 
 in her very parlors. 
 
 Contrary to the typical *' fallen sister," this one pre- 
 served the attractive neatness and order of her original 
 ways. Her flat was not only tasteful with the Pompeian 
 red and '' old gold " that came in with the Philadelphia 
 Exposition; in it the air was always balmy and fresh, not a 
 speck of dust was to be seen, the chairs and couches could 
 not be more comfortable, and the little suppers she served, 
 though simple, were perfect of their kind. So what Fanny 
 lost for the other sex in looks, she made up to it in com- 
 fort. She made men ** at home." They would sit with 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 333 
 
 her and smoke, sip her inspiring cocktails and punches, 
 and open sometimes the heavy burdens of their business 
 fears, sometimes the Hghter budget of their sporting ven- 
 tures, always the latest club and society scandals — nay, 
 when they were very confidential they would even laugh 
 at or cry down their own wives; and to the social outcast 
 this was the sweetest revenge of all. The pillar of the 
 little establishment came to be a so-called " County " 
 Democrat, who also at that time was filling one of the high 
 municipal offices of New York. He was a bachelor, and 
 he lived at home with a pious old Episcopalian mother, 
 who, like so many mothers of bachelor sons, congratu- 
 lated herself that her boy " did not care to marry and 
 leave her ! " 
 
 But the axis upon which it all revolved, the real cyno- 
 sure of Fanny's heart, remained the same Herman Hardy 
 as before. He was the wine and sunshine of her life, and 
 her ever-present fear was that he would fall in love, marry, 
 and be lost to her forever. Yet she felt she could bear 
 anything rather than not see him constantly about. 
 
 This son of a rich father was lazy, witty, and devoted to 
 sport and soubrettes. Fanny was too wise to show any 
 jealousy ; on the contrary, it was her policy to befriend the 
 stage favorite of the hour, and to be ready with a delicate 
 after- theatre collation whenever Hardy chose to bring in 
 a small party to enjoy it. The hunger of her heart was 
 never appeased, but at least she saw him constantly. 
 Sooner or later every one pays toll to the infinite force 
 and beauty of the opposite sex, and her sentiment for 
 Hardy was Fanny's toll. It was infinite, like its source, 
 and her suffering from it was infinite too. What was there 
 in this careless youth that clutched her soul with an iron 
 and unrelenting grasp? She could not tell ; and neither 
 
334 ^£1^ YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 can you tell, reader, when yo\i shall feel it on your own. 
 But yield not to it, whether it come to you in youth, in 
 middle life or in age; die rather, or "pine in sad expe- 
 rience worse than death," unless it come to you in the 
 image in which it was created — in the divine and only 
 of image of wedded and exclusive love. 
 
 The home which Fanny Howe had wrecked through her 
 pursuit of sensations never again permanently united its 
 sundered elements. Its once devoted house-band, or 
 '' husband," carried out the plan of life which had flashed 
 before his agonized brain during the first chaotic days 
 of his undeceiving. He kept his children at boarding- 
 school and Jeannette remained with his brother Philip. 
 As the boys grew old enough, they were sent to a Western 
 college, and after their graduation, their father arranged 
 business openings for them in a distant city. His daugh- 
 ter developed much of the musical talent of her aunt 
 Josephine. At her own earnest desire, she was sent to 
 Germany to complete her musical education. Her pro- 
 fessor fell in love with her ; the attraction was recipro- 
 cal ; she married him, and forgetting in love and music 
 " her own people and her father's house," she contentedly 
 reverted into a European. 
 
 Her aunt Jeannette, from the first absolutely inconsol- 
 able at the sending away from her of the child-life which 
 had become the greater and better part of her own, made 
 no complaint, but subsided into a voiceless despair which 
 in the course of a year or two took actual shape before her 
 fancy as a white and chilling fog perpetually enveloping 
 her. When asked how she was, she always answered : 
 *' Well, but very cold." By and by she would sit for hours 
 before a window, looking out, and if addressed, she would 
 answer: ''See the snow fall! How fast it comes down, 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 335 
 
 and how white and still it is, and so cold!" At last 
 she was removed to Bloomingdale, where, after a few years, 
 death found and released her from her imaginary prison of 
 freezing mist ; and strange and sweet must have been the 
 first restoring sunshine of that Divine Love of which 
 her own gentle spirit had been so true and so tender a 
 reflection ! 
 
 David Howe did not console himself with a second 
 attachment. At first he lived at a hotel, but later his club, 
 a very famous one, became his home. He devoted him- 
 self largely to art and philanthropic associations, and 
 
 for some years before his death was afifectionately held and 
 respected by a wide and influential circle. His life was the 
 breathless New York life of many responsible citizens — 
 breakfast and newspaper from eight to nine; walk down 
 town between nine and ten ; concentrated '' business " from 
 ten to three ; back in his room at four ; between four and 
 six, social calls or committee meetings ; in the club reading 
 oom or smoking-room from six to seven ; then dinner, often 
 a dinner party, sometimes the opera, the theatre, a social 
 function, or another committee meeting; the midnight hour 
 at the club in friendly chat or at the whist table ; and then 
 to his bed, there often to lie with a wakeful brain that was 
 getting on in years, and so could not readily sink away into 
 oblivion from its interests and its cares — an active, 
 pleasant, useful existence, indeed, and yet with the entire 
 substratum of his kindly heart a black and barren lava 
 crust through which it seemed to him no human flower 
 again could ever pierce. At any rate, none ever did 
 pierce there. Loving and tireless toward all his friends, 
 he could not feel for them — he could not feel even for his 
 children — as he had done. Nothing was real or intense 
 
336 
 
 NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 any more. Always trim, alert, genial, and helpful, to the 
 end he was welcome as a young man is welcome ; and his 
 sudden death at his club, about twelve years after his 
 divorce, was a painful shock to his club associates. Sadly 
 and silently they grouped about his coffin for a last fare- 
 well ; but they left it less sad, for the smile on his face 
 told them he was glad — oh, how glad — to go ! 
 
 Fanny was terrified when she heard of David's death, 
 but she need not have been. His will provided that his 
 estate should not be divided during her life, and that the 
 first charge upon it should always be the hundred dollars 
 a month which from their separation he had allowed her. 
 
THE BROWNS. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 " THE EVIL THAT MEN DO LIVES AFTER THEM." 
 
 The deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Dexter, and the exclusion 
 of Fanny Howe from the Belmont hotels, closed forever 
 the relations between the Dexter family and its native 
 place; but the ideals they had introduced, and the stand- 
 ards they had set up, remained to work out their logical 
 results. 
 
 Outward display, social prestige, sensuous pleasures, and 
 a laborless life — these were the golden calves based on 
 their golden altar of Money which Mrs. Dexter had found 
 the ruling gods of her sex in the American metropolis of 
 New York, before which she joyfully fell down and wor- 
 shipped, to whose cultus she brought up her children, and 
 into whose idolatry various Episcopalians in her own 
 Belmont circle insensibly let themselves be drawn, until 
 finally the whole tone and method of the open prudent 
 and conscientious little town were transformed. 
 
 True, that the railroad people on the hill were equally 
 responsible for it; for if the Belmont matrons abused, 
 while emulating Mrs. Dexter, so their husbands, unless 
 their business success depended on them, were very apt to 
 denounce the Browns confidentially as " sharp," " un- 
 scrupulous," " hypocrites," " cheats," " scoundrels," 
 " thieves," according to their envy of or their losses by 
 them, and then went on, in precisely the Brown manner, to 
 enlarge their own operations and to try to make money 
 
338 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 \ 
 
 fast — yes, faster than in little Belmont it could legitimately 
 
 be made. 
 
 They wanted this adored money partly to gratify their 
 own longing for power and position which should ap- 
 proach those of the Browns, and also that they might have, 
 not the books, the pictures, the music, or the higher 
 education for their offspring which money can buy; still 
 less that they might purchase with it a library, a museum, 
 a park, a fountain, or a statue for Belmont. No. They 
 simply wanted for themselves and their families larger 
 and handsomer houses, more comforts and luxuries, and 
 many more outings to the great cities. During the Bel- 
 mont money-making craze not a single boy was prepared 
 for college in the place. The two or three who were, 
 were obliged to get their training elsewhere, as the 
 academic department of the public school was almost 
 abandoned. 
 
 No doubt, the inflation of prices that prevailed during 
 the Civil War had everything to do with men's heads 
 being turned in Belmont as they were everywhere else ; so 
 true it is that when a nation's entire public energies are 
 bent upon maiming, killing, and robbing as many human 
 beings as possible, its private ones rapidly get to be not 
 very much better. Certainly, in rural Belmont the finan- 
 cial pace was as eager and unscrupulous in proportion as 
 in the greater business centres, and, as usual, the sanguine 
 men, and the short-sighted men, and the *' outside " men 
 were those who eventually lost through the cool men, and 
 the long-headed men, and the *' inside " men. 
 
 At first everybody prospered with the tremendous golden 
 harvest which the farmers were reaping for their produce 
 of every description. Within ten years after the outbreak 
 of the Rebellion, Belmont drapers and grocers who once 
 
NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 339 
 
 made their modest livelihood out of the slow and steady 
 ways of country trade had either given up their retail 
 shops in order to buy and sell on commission, or by bor- 
 rowings and credits had greatly extended their business. 
 Following this trade-expansion, they either enlarged their 
 old houses or built new ones, and their scale of living 
 then rose to correspond. Of course, the lawyers battened 
 on these flush and venturesome financiers, so that besides 
 the great perennial law-suit of the Midland and the Mon- 
 treal, various other causes celebres snugly lined the legal 
 pocket, and in vindictiveness and cost mimicked the awful 
 war throughout which so lately the whole brood of evil 
 passions had been unleashed. 
 
 A specially fierce hater and would-be rival of the Browns 
 was an able but vulgar Belmont speculator named Folsom, 
 who obtained a valuable government contract for trans- 
 porting mails and passengers in stage-coaches across the 
 western plains, and made out of it a large fortune. The 
 life of this man was one of well-known dissoluteness, but 
 he twice ran for Congress in his district to succeed George 
 Brown, who was no longer needed there by Austen, and 
 the second time his money elected him. His affairs kept 
 him much in Washington ; but opposite the Ashurst home- 
 stead in Belmont he built the handsomest house on the 
 main Belmont street, and hither the densely ignorant 
 women of his family, converts from the Episcopal to the 
 Roman church, returned every summer to fire still more 
 fiercely the village heart by a daily parade of their Wash- 
 ington toilettes, landau, horses, and colored coachman. 
 
 The rigid Puritanism of the " hill ladies " never recog- 
 nized these, as they considered, benighted renegades from 
 Protestantism at all, but in the Episcopal church were sev- 
 eral youthful matrons as eager as the Folsoms to divide 
 
340 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 \ 
 the shreds of the once Dexter mantle. Two brothers, who 
 had a little money of their own, came from a neighboring 
 hamlet and settled in Belmont. One went into law and 
 married the richest heiress of Fanny Dexter's set. The 
 other chose banking, and won as his bride the second 
 richest, the first one's intimate friend. After the deaths 
 of the respective parents of these young wives, they set out 
 to enjoy life as nearly as possible on the Brown and the 
 Dexter basis. One of them bought the old Ashurst man- 
 sion , added to it all the ^' modern improvements , " fitted 
 it with portieres, rugs, and bric-k-brac , made its wide lawn 
 a charm of verdure and bright flowers, and then kept it 
 mostly to herself. The other leased her own childhood's 
 home for a term of years, and divided her time between 
 New York in winter (where her husband flirted with Wall 
 Street), Saratoga in summer, and the Austen House in Bel- 
 mont during the spring and autumn. 
 
 Counting the Browns, their numerous relations, and the 
 '* fashionable " Episcopalians, it was, after all, but one or 
 two dozen families who among them were unconsciously 
 making little Belmont enact the fable of the frog and the 
 ox; but in so small a community this was more than 
 enough to leaven the whole lump. And why not? Do 
 not New York's exclusive ** Four Hundred" leaven the 
 seventy millions of the rest of their country? Of course, 
 the majority in Belmont, as everywhere else, were artisans, 
 laborers, and shop-keepers, who went on precisely as 
 people in their condition everywhere must, earning by 
 daily toil just enough to satisfy daily wants, and in their 
 preoccupation little heeding the frothings and agitations of 
 the tiny social whirlpool above their heads ; but the fever- 
 ishness reached down even to them, and a far greater pro- 
 portion of their youth of both sexes gave themselves to 
 
NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 341 
 
 excitement and dissipation than had been the case in the 
 earlier time. The swarms of them about the shops and 
 the railroad station in the evening were surprising. The 
 little place was like a bee-hive of restlessness and indus- 
 try. Everybody dressed in the fashion in Belmont, and 
 everybody tried to *' get away " at least once a year — the 
 swells to the far shops and theatres of New York, the 
 scrubs to the nearer shops and theatres of Boston. 
 
 As the fathers could not too early put their impatient 
 sons behind their counters to begin the race for wealth, 
 the ignorance and unculture of even the better-class young 
 men became something melancholy, their pleasures so 
 low and degraded, that sad-eyed matrons shook their heads 
 over the occasional betrothals of these literally '' whited 
 sepulchres" to the unsuspecting Belmont maidens. It 
 seemed profanation too terrible, risk too inhuman to be 
 suffered. The large influx to the Brown workshops of 
 French Canadians — said to l^e the most unteachable of all 
 our aliens, except the Chinese — had so increased the illit- 
 eracy and the demoralization, that its residents were fain 
 to admit, and almost with a touch of pride, that '* Belmont 
 was as bad as New York." 
 
 The slanders of the place became malignant beyond 
 belief. Every character in Belmont, from the ministers 
 andtheir families down, was pulled to pieces and subjected 
 to the most outrageous suspicions and imputations by the 
 loafing lawyers and gossipy merchants. They judged others 
 by themselves ; for among themselves they were not ashamed 
 to maintain principles that would better have befitted a 
 coterie of Paris roti^s than the sons of their Puritan fore- 
 fathers. Let country matrons tremble when their hus- 
 bands travel citywards on '' business." A forest full of 
 pitfalls and serpents is not an exaggerated image of the 
 
342 NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 snares and seductions placed in their way by the ^* hos- 
 pitality " clerks of the wholesale firms who strive to get 
 and to keep their trade. 
 
 The evil must have been startling when the rector of the 
 Episcopal church stood before his people and openly pro- 
 tested against it. So ignored by the Protestant pulpits of 
 this land is the special besetting sin of humanity, that but 
 few persons in their whole lives have heard so much as one 
 sermon against it. Rarely, indeed, does even an allusion 
 to it occur in a passing admonitory sentence. Yet this 
 man felt compelled to tell his Belmont flock to their faces 
 that " licentiousness is eating out the very soul of this 
 community." Did the community take the warning and 
 reform? Nay, the next year that clergyman was not there ! 
 
 Mind precedes and moulds matter; and if the aims and 
 morals of the little town thus echoed those of New York, 
 even as the roaring, unswept, and unwashed marts of the 
 metropolis perfectly expressed the recklessness and ungod- 
 liness that schemed therein — " cleanliness " being ever one 
 of the first products of '* godliness " — so did the business 
 aspect of Belmont come in kind, if not in degree, to a 
 similar complexion. Never were central streets and side- 
 walks more dirty and frowsy, nor weeds by the roadway 
 more rank and unseemly. The village green was a gener- 
 ous oblong, planted by the village founders with a double 
 row of maples. Nearly forty years after the completion 
 of the railroad to Belmont, these trees had grown into a 
 magnificent leafy arcade, but the verdant slope itself, upon 
 which fronted the principal stores, the banks, the hotels, 
 the schoolhouse, the courthouse, and the churches, and 
 past one end of which Austen Brown went once or twice 
 every day of his life, remained through the forty years ab- 
 solutely unkempt, bordered on three sides by the original 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 343 
 
 unsightly ditches, the grass either uncut, or worn bare with 
 baseball playing, not a single walk laid out, and the whole 
 area seamed in every direction with the footpaths which 
 individual convenience had trodden across it. 
 
 The delicious brook that serpentined on the outskirts of 
 Belmont, the children's joy and wonderland — for the one 
 thing in the universe that exactly befits the childish mind 
 and fills the childish imagination is a brook, and this was 
 a perfect one ; a baby river for baby man to play with, and 
 really a phenomenon from the fascinating variety of rip- 
 ple, cascade, rocky dell, and quiet pool that it presented 
 within the compass of a furlong — this brook. Nature's 
 love-gift to the Belmont little ones, the Brown magnates 
 should have reserved as a precious treasure to their 
 children's children to the farthest generation, if for no 
 better reason. But, dull, stupid, besotted beings that they 
 were, they allowed the hill-forests that guarded its sources 
 to be cut down ; they let the secluded field through which 
 it wound its darling way be cut up into building lots, 
 and the helpless stream to be spanned by streets until, 
 like another Undine, from- a ruthless community all 
 unworthy of its playful sweetness it vanished, never to 
 return. 
 
 A near neighbor of the brook was the most magnificent 
 elm in the township. Though it stood on the field border, 
 it flung its immense dome of drooping foliage across the 
 entire roadway. But its original owner died, and his 
 successor thought that the giant shaded and also weakened 
 the surrounding soil too much. He cut it down, and even 
 Belmont groaned. Yet how easily might the Browns have 
 started a small subscription to buy the begrudged bit of 
 land, and, moving back the farmer's fence, and placing a 
 few resting-stones about its roots, have recessed the 
 
344 NEM^ YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 mdnarch there '' for glory and for beauty," and for the 
 comfort, too, of the wayfarer through another century ! 
 
 Besides the ancient maples along her oldest street, Bel- 
 mont is embowered in elms and lindens throughout her 
 newer ways as well. Did the Browns inspire their plant- 
 ing? Not so. It was begun by the aesthetic energy of a 
 college-bred young man, who got up a little '* Tree-Plant- 
 ing Association " which lived long enough to set an exam- 
 ple, and then, for want of encouragement, perished. Its 
 organizer would have cared for the brook, for the green, 
 for the elm, and for all the other charms of Belmont, had 
 it been given him to do. For business he was unfitted, 
 but he had the tastes and talents to make him the decorator 
 and historian of his native place ; possibly, as his experience 
 enlarged, of his native State. 
 
 Nobody saw it. As with the wasted Mrs. Gardner, no- 
 body cared that this type of artist-citizen should find his 
 appropriate niche. He could not create such a niche for 
 himself; he had neither the means nor the force. So, 
 after making one business effort after another amid the 
 hard Belmont competitions, and failing in all, as he found 
 himself and his family coming to want, his mind gave 
 way and he killed himself. Only the elms which he 
 planted wave their long arms and sigh a requiem for the 
 gentle spirit which called forth their leafy brotherhood, 
 and which, encouraged, might have secured so many other 
 attractions for his lovely birthplace. 
 
 The active witnesses for culture in Belmont at last 
 dwindled almost to a solitary one, a refined and highly 
 educated woman, who, after the Gardners and the Ashursts 
 had gone, tried to establish a school there. Success re- 
 warded her for a time, but in the end she had to leave 
 the place for want of patronage. Owing to the zeal of 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC SI UDY. 345 
 
 several converts from the Episcopal church, Belmont had 
 become a Catholic headquarters. To the large and 
 hideous church for the Irish already in one of the most 
 conspicuous positions, another was added for the numer- 
 ous French population. A corps of Ladies of the Heart 
 of Mary, from Montreal, then opened a girl's boarding 
 and day school at the low prices possible only to recluses 
 who are allowed but the barest necessaries of life, and 
 various of the " best " Belmont people forthwith doomed 
 their young daughters for several years to the cooping 
 influence and to the flimsy and false instruction of these 
 inevitably ignorant women ; for how can a Roman Catho- 
 lic nun, be her skill in French, music, and embroidery 
 never so great, be anything but ignorant? The very 
 terms of her profession vow her to the densest ignorance 
 — the ignorance of prejudice and fear against everything 
 that is out of sympathy with the ruthless. masculine hier- 
 archy which closes round not only her spirit, but also the 
 poor flouted body that contains her spirit. One wonders 
 whether this hierarchy, if it could indeed wave a magician's 
 wand, would, against the divine painting of the Creator, 
 command the colors of the rose and the tulip to fade into 
 ashen and blackened tints? Yet, with far more impious 
 rashness, it does say to the feminine souls who trust it : 
 " Violate all the instincts for joy and beauty that your 
 Maker has implanted within your women's hearts ; make 
 yourselves as uncouth and ghastly to yourselves and your 
 fellow-creatures as you can ; shut down on every tie and 
 sentiment by which your Father in Heaven has bound you 
 to your kind ; then we, the priests who have placed our- 
 selves between your God and you, will exalt you as * The 
 Religious .^ ' " 
 
CHAPTER XL. 
 
 THE BUBBLE BURSTS. 
 
 Although two or three failures occurred rather early 
 in the social tran'sformation of Belmont by which long- 
 respected names went under a cloud, for years the great 
 fish of the pond, the Browns, swam nobly on, and all the 
 lesser ones kept pluckily after them. Some wondered 
 whether the bottom would ever fall out, or whether there 
 were any bottom; but so long as credit was as good as 
 cash, and promises almost equivalent to payment, what 
 difference did it make? The stock-holders of the Mid- 
 land certainly had got nothing out of it, while the officers 
 were as certainly rolling in wealth and were also the pil- 
 lars of the Orthodox church. To the average Belmont 
 mind it was all a moral and financial hocus-pocus, but the 
 average Belmont mind abstained from a too deep study of 
 causes, and in the cheerful American spirit *' guessed 
 things would come out all right." 
 
 But one day, within twenty years after the rise of the 
 Belmont ambition, our topping and self-confident little 
 community was convulsed at the announcement that noth- 
 ing less than the Belmont Rolling-Mill and the Belmont 
 Foundry, managed respectively by George Brown and by 
 his relative and next neighbor, Henry Austen, had sus- 
 pended payment. Village speculation was awe-stricken 
 in wondering what such Olympians would do in such dis- 
 asters. The failures were so utter, that, as a specimen, one 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 347 
 
 poor woman who had saved fifteen hundred dollars by rais- 
 ing and selling eggs and poultry, and who had entrusted 
 the whole to George Brown for investment, was told, 
 when she implored him to give back at least some of her 
 money for the support of her old age, that he had nothing 
 wherewithal to pay her, because all that was left was his 
 wife's. Foreseeing his fate, the pious deacon had trans- 
 ferred everything he could lay his hands on to Mrs. George. 
 
 The gossips looked in vain, however, for any change in 
 the spirit of the George Brown dream. On the contrary, 
 to their infinite scandal, that very same summer the family 
 drove serenely about behind a handsome new pair of car- 
 riage horses. A few years previously, the eldest Miss 
 Brown had married the son of a millionnaire mine-owner 
 somewhere, and after the failure, the millionnaire kindly 
 stepped in as the buyer of the rolling-mill, and thus saved 
 its head from the social and financial extinction that must 
 otherwise have been his. 
 
 His neighbor and cousin, Henry Austen, was less for- 
 tunate. He had to sacrifice everything — horses, carriage, 
 the lovely hill villa, yes, even the semblance of a home — 
 and betake himself to the far West ; while his exclusive wife, 
 her dowry nearly annihilated, and, what was worse, with 
 a beggared heart as well — for she discovered that she was 
 not the only woman upon whom her money had been squan- 
 dered — went back to her relatives in Connecticut. 
 
 All this was but the beginning of sorrows. With his 
 handsome fortune of two or three hundred thousand dol- 
 lars, Folsom, the successful stage-contractor and Con- 
 gressman, had founded a bank which would easily have 
 maintained his prosperity, had he been satisfied with 
 government bonds as his securities. But a new railroad 
 in Canada made dazzling promises, and, as he thought. 
 
348 NEIV YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 opened a prospect of his becoming a peer of the hated Aus- 
 ten Brown. To this road he surrendered all his precious 
 bonds in return for two or three times their nominal 
 value in stock, and for a period all too short dreamed of 
 himself as a millionnaire. He forgot that Canadian rail- 
 road managers might not have looked on at the career of 
 the Midland and its dependencies in vain, and little by 
 little the fatuous speculator realized that the bonds for 
 which he had exchanged his all were as worthless as the 
 owners of the Midland mortgages had long ago found 
 theirs. His bank foundered like a scuttled ship, and his 
 flaunting pomp and ostentation shrank soon after into 
 a modest room for himself and his wife at the village 
 hotel. His once beautiful and dashing daughter became 
 so poverty-stricken that she had \fy milk her own cow; 
 and when, a few years later, his granddaughter grew to 
 womanhood, she married an Irishman. With money, 
 occupation, health, and self-respect all gone, the broken 
 profligate at last listened to his " better half," and, enter- 
 ing the Roman church, devoted the remainder of his list- 
 less days exclusively to saving his soul after the Roman 
 manner. 
 
 The Folsom tragedy brought hosts of others in its train 
 — in fact, proved the knell of Belmont as it then existed ; 
 for, from that on, various of the hitherto " booming " busi- 
 ness houses went down one after another like a row of 
 bricks. Soon a terrible fear shivered through the little 
 community that the Savings Bank, of which Austen 
 Brown's own brother-in-law was the president, was not 
 sound. A run began upon it, which was abruptly stopped 
 by the closing of its doors and the flight of its guilty 
 president, a defaulter for fifty thousand dollars. Crash- 
 ing down upon this disaster and disgrace the Bank of Bel- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 349 
 
 mont itself, established two generations before by a cau- 
 tious and honorable citizen, first suspended payment, then 
 collapsed altogether. The chief managers, the cashier 
 and his lawyer brother, who had married the two Episco- 
 palian heiresses, had speculated in Wall Street, until this 
 inexcusable catastrophe was the result. As both families 
 kept their homes and made little change in their living 
 beyond giving up their long New York visits every year, it 
 was evident that at least the men had not robbed their 
 wives. They continued to sit at the doors of their pews, 
 and to be received at the Communion Table, nor did their 
 social recognition suffer in the least; though it was per- 
 haps true, that if the honest people of Belmont had decided 
 to cut all the dishonest bnes, ''society" might have be- 
 come a vanishing point ! 
 
 For several gloomy and sullen years our beautiful Bel- 
 mont, the county town and the county centre, was actually 
 without a bank. Enterprise and ambition were paralyzed ; 
 boasting cowed and silenced. Property fell pitifully, and 
 rents in proportion. The dishonesty which had become 
 its atmosphere was well exemplified when the proceeds 
 of a fair, which was held to save the once flourishing 
 Belmont band from extinction, — for even in its humilia- 
 tion Belmont loved music, — were stolen before they 
 reached the band treasury! The town was crowned with 
 its last and darkest infamy when the Chief Justice of the 
 State, the whilom chancellor who had lent his bench and 
 his ermine to Austen Brown's flagitious schemes, and who 
 still resided in Belmont, was dragged through the mire of 
 a legal trial for gross and almost open immoralities. Clad 
 in sackcloth and ashes, Belmont had ample leisure to 
 reflect whether, for the small fry of business, at least, 
 honesty is not, after all, the best policy. 
 
35° NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 \ 
 
 For the great ones, the moral, doubtless, has never been 
 to the sad Belmont apprehension quite so clear; for, amid 
 the humiliating ruin of so many contemporaries, the 
 monopolistic, mountain-like wealth of Austen Brown still 
 towered over his native village, seemingly as secure as the 
 hill on which his great house was built. The poor and 
 the obscure, as Belmont found to its cost, have but a short 
 tether to run before they realize all too vividly that " the 
 wages of sin is death." With the very rich the arc of the 
 circle is so much larger, that it can out-span one and some- 
 times many succeeding lives. 
 
 The potent and far-grasping Austen Brown was, there- 
 fore, eventually gathered to his fathers in the full enjoy- 
 ment of the money that he and all Belmont so passionately 
 adored. As he grew old, his chief care, like that of 
 most old rich men, became his health; his last ambition 
 still the long-cherished one of being sent as Senator to 
 H'ashington. But the grim summons came and laid him 
 down to his long sleep in his triple steel casket, with this 
 one honor from his sycophantic little State denied. His 
 death was soon followed by that of one of his daughters, 
 and after this double bereavement, his wife, to her own 
 infinite satisfaction, ascended, as she felt, from the tram- 
 mels ot " orthodox " Congregationalism into the congenial 
 clouds and mystifications of Theosophy. The revelations 
 of Mme. Blavatsky superseded the revelations of Calvin, 
 and, for some years before her own departure, she ceased 
 to eat meat lest she unwittingly partake of the latest 
 incarnation of her lamented lord. 
 
 The ocean is salt, and the countless streams which keep 
 it full are fresh, and yet they say that in reality it is these 
 latter that carry down, from the soils through which they 
 
NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 35 1 
 
 wind, the saline particles which all infuse the briny deep. 
 And so we think of the great man-made town as vile, and 
 the sweet God-made country as pure ; but can it be that it 
 is the polluted moral drainage from countless rural ham- 
 lets which in reality makes and keeps the vast metropolis 
 so deeply corrupt? 
 
 If modem Christianity be not a sham, how, in a little 
 place full of Protestant churches, — a Congregational, a 
 Methodist, a Baptist, a Universalist, and possessing also 
 an Episcopal and two great Catholic churches, — could such 
 a career as that of Belmont, with its Browns and Dexters 
 and their following, nearly all of them church members, 
 begin, culminate, and end? How could the single coal, 
 brought by a shajlow woman from the great altars of 
 Mammon and Fashion that flame ever skyward in New 
 York, kindle in the simple village a conflagration such 
 that the ancient morals and standards and aims were drawn 
 as by a whirlwind into a fiery vortex of emulation and 
 speculation until all were consumed; until for a time little 
 remained, little was felt, but blackness, desolation, and 
 shame ? 
 
 The clergy of all those churches, no doubt, faithfully 
 preached the gospel of Christ as they conceived it. Can 
 it be that they left something of that perfect gospel out — 
 that since the days of Luther the Protestant clergy have 
 left something out — that since the days of Christ Himself 
 the Universal Church has left something out, and that 
 thence largely come these human wanderings and tragedies ? 
 
CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 MAN AND NATURE. 
 
 Beautiful New England ! Exquisite New England ! 
 Special poetic heritage given by the Divine Father to 
 the human children who of all the world in the seventeenth 
 century loved Him the best, — to those sober English Pil- 
 grims and Puritans who with all their hearts believed in 
 *' Duty the aim of life ; the Bible its ruky 
 
 The Puritan descendant has perchance noted how the 
 great religions of the world have in turn expressed them- 
 selves in more or less sublime and beautiful forms of art, 
 and has felt .mortified that thus far no new art departure 
 has glorified the intense religion of his ancestors. 
 
 But, after all, are many things more original, more fair, 
 more iiisthetic, than the perfected New England village, 
 such, for instance, as Deerfield, Massachusetts, with its 
 lofty aisles of streets in over-arching green and the em- 
 bowered homes on bloomy unbarred lawns which open 
 upon them? 
 
 Is not this, as it were, cathedral-village, which the New 
 Englander initiated and has carried with him all over the 
 country, as satisfying an ideal in its way as the grand 
 Gothic fanes themselves? I think so; and if that 
 Consummation of the Beautiful, the "White City" of 
 the Chicago Exposition, was largely planned and carried 
 out by men of New England antecedents, who shall say 
 whether the Puritan soul, ramifving silentlv for two cen- 
 
NEW YORK . A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 353 
 
 turies until it had reached a thousand miles west of 
 Plymouth Rock, did not there suddenly up-blossom, and 
 like a mighty rose unfold, not alone for its Columbian 
 World's Fair mission, but also as an earnest of the new 
 and multiform beauty into which this Puritan civilization 
 — the progressive, the ever-learning, the ever-Christian, 
 and hence the only true ** American " civilization — shall 
 yet embody itself ? 
 
 But if New England has thus blessed and led the land 
 in the Ideal, not less, but more, does the responsibility 
 rest upon her opulent sons, upon her able and successful 
 Austen Browns, to cherish and preserve her precious dower 
 of natural beauty ; and we must not be deemed over-harsh 
 to them, but simply heart-true to Her, if we demand this 
 of them. 
 
 In the providence of God, the chief reason for the ex- 
 istence of the ri( li would seem to be the promotion and 
 maintaining of Beauty — beauty in their manners, beauty 
 in their dress, beauty in their homes, beauty throughout 
 the bounds of their possessions. Without them, beauty, 
 except Nature's beauty, in this our age of mechanical 
 industry, would hardly exist ; for the rich alone among 
 men and women have that margin of income which first 
 gives them the education and travel that cultivate the sense 
 of beauty, and then enables them to indulge it. There- 
 fore they should be, and therefore they must be, unless 
 they desire eventually to be taxed off the face of an indig- 
 nant earth, the exemplars and leaders in the creation of 
 beauty, not alone for themselves, but equally for the vil- 
 lages, the towns, the cities, the counties, the States — nay, 
 the wide land itself — in which they dwell. 
 
 Nature, which some one has well called the *' art of 
 God," has done so much for beauty, and intelligent man 
 
354 NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 \ 
 needs do so little to preserve and enhance it ! Yet even 
 that little in his Ijlindness or liis self-absorption he neg- 
 lects, and so beauty perishes ; the joy which is alone 
 beauty's child cannot be born ; life saddens and sullens^; 
 for relief it often descends to vice, and from vice rolls 
 down to death— the death of the body to youth and health, 
 the death of the soul to happiness. On this unhappy 
 theme the wonderful but tragic Ibsen drama rings half its 
 changes. 
 
 And for this are any so responsible as the rich ? Such 
 is their prestige, such the glamour and fascination of the 
 beauty with which they surround their lives, that mankind 
 is only too anxious to imitate them — is only too glad to 
 follow where they lead. As Goethe observed, we love the 
 rich if only they are " half-kind," if only they are '* not 
 brutal ; " so natural is it to look up to, and to lean upon, 
 and to work for those who ' are strong and preeminent 
 and magnificent. And for the creation of public beauty 
 they need not give more than their share, their propor- 
 tion. If the rich would give of their tens, of their hun- 
 dreds, of their thousands, the poor would cheerfully spare, 
 in like ratio, of their units ; and thus all-pervading beauty 
 and its resulting joy be the possession and heritage of all. 
 
 To be able to create, to be able to leave behind one, 
 something beautiful ! To cooperate with God in His 
 universe so as to swell the harmony of that universe instead 
 of striking a discord in it ! Oh, what a privilege ! What 
 a dignity ! What an ecstasy ! To think that mere human 
 beings, things of a day, should have it in their power thus 
 to help Omnipotence, and that it does not occur to them 
 to do it; that, like Austen Brown, they can plod on, week 
 after week, month after month, year after year, with ugli- 
 ness beneath their feet, ugliness by their side, ugliness 
 
NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC S'/IDY. 355 
 
 before them, and ugliness behind them ; escaping from 
 ugliness only when they are within their own gates, and 
 never turn and say to their lesser brethren : '' Come, let us 
 border our glaring roads with overhanging trees, and 
 change these wayside weeds to wild flowers and grass. 
 With our own home talent let us carve a seat here, lift a 
 statue there, fling an arch yonder, that consolation and 
 delight may spring to the hearts, and smiles and gayety to 
 the lips of the passers-by." 
 
 In Newport, where every house of the ''summer col- 
 ony" is set in velvet and also surrounded with flowers 
 everywhere that the trained gardeners can find excuse to 
 put them, not so very many years ago I marked on the 
 stately Ocean Avenue, where drive the great ladies every 
 afternoon, roadside stretches actually dense with thistles, 
 to say nothing of other uncomely and melancholy weeds. 
 Yet nowhere do the wild roses and the honeysuckles grow 
 for the mere permission as they do in Newport. How easy 
 for the gardeners, in the winter time, when the cottages are 
 closed, and they only are left in charge of the lawns and 
 conservatories, to plant along the fences slips of wild rose 
 and of honeysuckle, and in a few years every road leading 
 out of Newport would be lined on either side with wreath- 
 ing and fragrant blossoms ! Are not thistles as distressing 
 on the outside of one's gates as within them, and flowers 
 as lovely ? To myself, even in childhood, all the angles 
 of the rail fences seemed little homes made for some- 
 thing charming ; and as for the New England stone fences, 
 how often beyond any art is the alternation of tree, bush, 
 plant and vine that springs up along their lines when they 
 are left simply undisturbed ! 
 
 The wild rose, by the way, ought to be our national 
 flower, for the following reasons : 
 
3S^^ Nl'^W YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 First, its perfume — perfume being strangely lost sight of 
 by the advocates of various flowers for this great distinc- 
 tion, though that element is, of course, the very basis of 
 the flower idea : and no scentless flower should be thought 
 of for a moment. 
 
 Second, its imiversaiity ; wild roses being native every- 
 where in the United States, even to the snows of Alaska. 
 
 Third, its co/o?- ; there being very little rose color in 
 nature, and consequently when the eye catches sight of a 
 patch of wild roses the pleasure is vivid. In the autumn 
 the scarlet of the ripened berry is also very effective. Were 
 the wild rose our national flower, it would not be twenty- 
 five years before our roads would be bordered extensively 
 with it, and thus a very great color ornament be added to 
 every-day out-door nature. 
 
 Fourth, its symbolism ; for just as culture has taken the 
 multitudinous but monotonous stamens of the wild rose, 
 and, by turning them into petals, has evolved the hundreds 
 of varieties of double roses of every degree of splendor 
 and beauty, so do American institutions take the pas- 
 sive, indistinguishable masses that land on our shores, and 
 train them into conscious and responsible citizens, each 
 and every one of whom may, and many of whom do, con- 
 tribute a special petal of fragrance, form, and color to the 
 progressive unfolding of the millennial American ideal. 
 
 An American Catholic editor once wrote — and it is one 
 of the very few suggestions of value to the American 
 people that I remember from the Catholic press — *' The 
 people should have the river banks ; roads and paths should 
 wind by all the streams; playgrounds and parks should be 
 placed along them." 
 
 Let us amend this wise and just demand by saying that 
 not areas of ''parks," but areas of forest, of wild and 
 
NklV YORK: A SYMPHOAWC STUDY. 357 
 
 genuine woods, should be preserved along the streams, so 
 that the successive generations of Americans may in their 
 childhood come close to nature, as before them their 
 fathers did, and as it is possible for children to come *' in 
 the woods " only I No one who had as a child the inex- 
 pressible privilege of playing daily in a forest for even a 
 few summers, can feel content that all American children 
 should not have this delicious experience ; and among the 
 oversights of our hitherto national record, none is more 
 sorrowful than, when the " forest primeval " could be had 
 for the taking, each settlement did not reserve for its little 
 ones their own portion of the mystic shade. Not to 
 receive that early baptism and deep spiritual embrace 
 from our beautiful Earth -Mother is to go through life an 
 orphaned soul indeed, and will Oregon and Washington, 
 those superb, forest-clad, final States, make a similar 
 mistake ? 
 
 Miss Harriet Martineau visited this country in 1833-34, 
 and travelled as far south as Charleston and as far west as 
 Chicago. She recorded that the land could never again 
 be as beautiful as it was then, because every town and set- 
 tlement were surrounded by forest. In fact, she said it 
 was not possible to get out of the sight of those forests all 
 living with birds and with their rivers and streams so 
 brimming and so enchantingly lovely beneath their brood- 
 ing boughs, — yes, those mighty " forests of America " 
 which, as Mr. John Muir declared recently in his noble 
 threnody upon them in the Atlantic Monthly * " however 
 slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God ; 
 for they were the best He ever planted." 
 
 Besides Cooper, Irving, Drake, Lowell, Holmes, and 
 Whittier, the American forest-era that Harriet Martineau 
 * August, 1807. 
 
35^ NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 saw in all its glory less than three-quarters of a century 
 ago, produced the lambent romance of Longfellow and 
 the three absolutely original and matchless American 
 idealists, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Edgar Poe. 
 
 In like manner, children of the early English forest were 
 none other than Chancer, Spenser, and Shakespere. The 
 Italian forest nourished Dante. The Greek forest brought 
 forth Homer. The Palestine forest, David. 
 
 Often have there been trees without song-birds, but have 
 there often been song-birds without trees ? 
 
 The genius of a gifted Vermont sculptor was first 
 manifested by his making a seated female figure in snow 
 at a street intersection of his forest-surrounded native 
 village. If, now, his townsmen in the hour of his first 
 inspiration, had bought some white granite and commis- 
 sioned the lad to hew out his lovely conception and 
 place it where his art instinct had demanded a statue, 
 would not the work have conferred a special distinction 
 upon the little place, and even if less technically per- 
 fect than his later achievements, would there not have 
 been upon it a bloom and a freshness themselves im- 
 mortal ? 
 
 Similarly, during his long and eager life, it never oc- 
 curred to Austen Brown to call upon the latent art-gifts of 
 the Belmont young people for public Belmont adornment. 
 He had set an aesthetic example in two lawns bright with 
 geraniums and adorned each with a little fountain. One 
 of them was the ample surrounding of his ample home, 
 and the other a little oasis amid the baldness and grime of 
 the railroad station. The example bore extensive fruit in 
 the well-kept grounds of many of his acquaintances and of 
 his employes. In the newer back streets where dwelt the 
 latter, fences went out of fashion, and the residents mowed 
 
NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 359 
 
 the grass not only within but without their fence limits, 
 even to the very roadway itself. And here for a genera- 
 tion Austen Brown's art-mission rested and perhaps would 
 have closed. 
 
 But several years before his death, a gentleman visiting 
 a son who had come to Belmont to live, was struck with 
 the many beauties of the village, and with the contrasting 
 shabbiness of its central green. He offered to head a 
 subscription paper with a thousand dollars for putting the 
 green in order. No one took it up. All waited for the 
 village magnate. At last, when he got quite ready, Austen 
 Brown fixed a sum for the other citizens to give, and if 
 they would, he, on his part, promised a fountain for the 
 park adornment. Belmont was enthusiastic at once. The 
 money was raised, the green graded and turfed, and by 
 another year a large bronze woman was installed in the 
 centre of a water-basin, into which, from an urn under her 
 arm, flowed a slender rill. 
 
 The design was not original with any Belmont or other 
 American sculptor. It was simply chosen from the cata- 
 logue of a bronze '* art " factory where such things were 
 turned out by wholesale. But Belmont thought it beauti- 
 ful, and was proud and happy over it, while Austen Brown's 
 conscience was peaceful and self -approving. He had 
 given the last touch, set the final seal to his many benefac- 
 tions to Belmont — the others being the workshops he had 
 founded, the population he had attracted, tlie railroad 
 prominence and prestige he had bestowed, the skilled gar- 
 dening and scientific farming he had inaugurated in it. 
 His town was the idol of this modern captain of industry, 
 and he gave it what to him was his best. 
 
 But Belmont was equally the heart's idol of the bril- 
 liant Mr. Ashurst who had left it so many years before j 
 
360 NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 and when he came to die, he bequeathed '' t« the children 
 of Behnont " the whole of the rocky and wooded ** North 
 Top," with its all-heavenly view, which had been left to 
 him by his father, and had been his own favorite haunt 
 when a boy. The only condition attached to the priceless 
 gift was that the hill should be renamed *' Ashurst Hill," 
 and should never be " improved " or touched by the hand 
 of man in any way whatever, on penalty of instant rever- 
 sion to the Ashurst family. 
 
 Which of the two was the greater ccsthetic and moral 
 ])enefactor to Belmont ? And why, since both were col- 
 lege-bred men, was Mr. Ashurst so broad and Austen 
 Brown so narrow ? 
 
 Was one secret of the contrast in the women of their 
 families ? Mr. Ashurst's sister, and also his wife, were 
 as emancipated and enlightened as he, and through life 
 their spirits, like two wings, uplifted and bore aloft his 
 own. 
 
 Not only he, but his father before him, had lovingly 
 taken their wives and daughters with them to whatever 
 intellectual heights they had reached themselves, and then 
 these illuminated women doubled their masculine range by 
 the feminine one. 
 
 But Austen Brown, while scaling his chosen financial 
 peaks, had left Mrs. Brown in the narrow financial valley 
 where he had found her. Thus he was a typical American 
 capitalist, which is to be a motherless, wifeless, daugh- 
 terless Colossus — an industrial demiurge, whose head is in 
 the skies, whose stride measures the continent, who " weighs 
 the hills in a balance" and considers the islands "a 
 very little thing" — while at the end of a longer or shorter 
 tether, the woman with whom he stiirlerl in life, declaring 
 that with all his worldly gooJ:j he uer endowed, enacts a" 
 
NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 361 
 
 his feet some pigmy role of society or charity, or sits pas- 
 sive like some hypnotized Buddha " every drop of whose 
 blood" (as Emerson so terribly but so unjustly said of 
 Daniel Webster) " has eyes that seek the earth / " 
 
 '' But would you have the capitalists take their wives and 
 daughters into their offices and make them practical part- 
 ners in all their business enterprises ? " some one may ask 
 me; or another may inquire whether I would "give 
 woman the ballot ? " 
 
 Neither. Men and women must be free. They must 
 not be hampered in their development or in their endeav- 
 ors by the fears or the ignorance or the jealousies of each 
 other. But I would have the capitalists who know that their 
 own wealth and power are the results of their corporate 
 industrial action explain to womankind that its great in- 
 dustrial function of housekeeping is purely a business func- 
 tion, and should be organized by women themselves on 
 business — that is, corporation — principles. Both sexes 
 would then be free. Organizing and executive man on the 
 grand scale would l)e matched by organizing and executive 
 woman on a similar scale. She would grow up to the con- 
 ception that the universe is large and joyous, and that she 
 must do and must inspire large and joyous things there. 
 Both halves of humanity would be prosperous ; both would 
 be self-sustaining; both would have plenty of spare time 
 for self-culture and recreation, and plenty of spare money 
 wherewith to encourage Art and thus make existence 
 beautiful. The wife would not then, as Mrs. Austen 
 Brown did to the end of her days, feel she must not give 
 away or subscribe more than five dollars to anything with- 
 out her husband's leave : American towns and cities would 
 not long remain so pitiably destitute of art evidences as 
 thev are now; New York itself would not be, as a recent 
 
362 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 V 
 
 Englishman characterized it, '* magnificent and hideous" 
 — her magnificence being the work of her capitalists, her 
 hideousness the negations of the wives — of the cramped, 
 of the undeveloped, of the infantile-minded wives of the 
 same capitalists. 
 
 Where the feminine spirit is free, where it is consulted, 
 where it is considered, it does and must ''make for 
 beauty," because beauty is the native feminine atmos- 
 phere. The American has allowed his wife to make of her 
 home and her toilette what she likes ; and the whole world 
 bears witness that there are no homes so aesthetic and com- 
 plete as the American homes, no women so well and be- 
 comingly dressed as the American women. Where beauty 
 is not, therefore, is where the feminine is not or is in 
 abeyance. The external and the political city of New 
 York is purely a masculine product. What a fathomless 
 lie, what an unforgivable wrong, in the famous Protestant 
 minister who, in his contempt and despite toward woman- 
 hood, always takes care to designate the " Tammany 
 tiger" — the most absolutely masculine thing in this Re- 
 public save the ruthless and remorseless Celibate Hier- 
 archy which spiritually nourishes ii — as '' She ! " 
 
CALVERT. 
 
CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 A "business" AMERICAN. 
 
 After being a widower — in the sub-world a very gay 
 widower — for several years, Frank Calvert married, chiefly 
 for her money, the dashing daughter of a rich capitalist in 
 western New York whom he met one winter when she was 
 living, like himself, in a fashionable New York hotel. 
 
 They began their life together by a year or two in Eu- 
 rope, travelling everywhere, even to Moscow, Jerusalem, 
 and the Nile, and seeing everything. Julia being dead, 
 and there existing no occasion to play the usual husband 
 role of declining to be influenced for fear of being gov- 
 erned, Calvert had at last admitted to himself the claims 
 of that culture which, to his intense disgust, Julia always 
 so pointedly declared was her particular " admiration." 
 His frequent trips abroad had given him much French and 
 a little German, and his week or two on the steamers four 
 times a year had driven him to reading to kill the time ; 
 also, these ocean crossings, by bringing him more or less 
 in contact with men and women of breeding and edu- 
 catio'i, gradually lost him the various inelegancies of 
 speech and manner which belonged to his original station. 
 In the end, his really strong and discriminating mind 
 found great pleasure and satisfaction in learning and 
 knowing about things other than business, politics, thea- 
 tres, and horses. After the hitherto national fashion, he 
 went to the depths of nothing, but by travel and the 
 
364 JVAPF YORK: A. SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 perusal of the lighter current literature, he had become at 
 forty-five precisely one of those ready and agreeable Ameri- 
 cans, panoplied with a vast amount of information on men 
 and countries and books and pictures, to whom poor Julia 
 would most have loved to talk. 
 
 While on the wedding tour, which he was really making 
 educational, Calvert's plan had been to rent some desir- 
 able house on returning to New York, live as nearly like 
 fashionable people as he knew how, take any opportunity 
 of getting in with them that presented itself, and end, 
 finally, by being one of them. It was just about the time 
 that a rich hotel-keeper's widow from Boston was estab- 
 lishing herself in the gay city with the same object; and 
 as that clever woman long flourished as a topmost twig of 
 the metropolitan bough, why should not an equally clever 
 man have done the same thing had Fate favored the pro- 
 ject? But Fate did not favor it. 
 
 Calvert's was a youthful firm, with financial roots as yet 
 not very strong nor very deep. During his long absence, 
 his partners became intricated with a certain wide-branch- 
 ing house more extensively than his own shrewdness would 
 have approved. Hardly had his new wife shaken out of 
 their trunk-folds her Paris dresses, when he was forced to 
 tell her one evening, after the theatre, that the aforesaid 
 house was about to fail, and that his own would inevitably 
 have to follow it. 
 
 Financially, the Calverts did not fall very far nor very 
 hard. Besides himself, Calvert had not contributed much 
 to his firm, and his millionnair-e father-in-law, appreciating 
 his ability, at once offered him the management of a great 
 publishing house which he owned in the important lake 
 city of Buffalo, and which issued both a morning and a 
 weekly paper. 
 
NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 365 
 
 The New Yorker promptly accepted the exile, resolved 
 upon a success that would enable him sooner or later to 
 put an end to it. His energy, enterprise, and business 
 training swiftly mastered every department of his new and 
 untried sphere, and having to do with books and with jour- 
 nalism, gave a wider outlook to his aims and efforts than 
 might have been the case had he remained in the densely 
 material atmosphere of New York financiering. He was 
 still preeminently the man of affairs, but with now a broad 
 margin for all sorts of other interests, that stamped him a 
 personality out of the common. He made so great a busi- 
 ness success out of the publishing house, that in a very few 
 years he was able to buy out his father-in-law, and then 
 the sole proprietorship and editing of its two newspapers 
 passed over to him as well. 
 
 Frank Calvert, the once retail dry-goods clerk, the 
 owner and head of two influential journals ! Who could 
 have prophesied it? It was almost enough to lure Julia 
 down from paradise, in case she were there, to share with 
 him the prestige of a position that, perhaps, of all others, 
 she would have chosen for her husband. 
 
 With Calvert's fiery Democratic convictions, here was 
 something to satisfy the flame of violent ambition kindled 
 within him years before by his wife's sarcasms, but which, 
 covered close by his ignorance and by the importunate 
 details of business, had never had free air and chance for 
 life until now. To control an influential daily was pre- 
 cisely what would make him the power in the city, in the 
 State, perhaps even in the nation, that he desired. Cal- 
 vert never was a writer. He did not himself attempt the 
 editorial "we," but he selected his journalistic corps so 
 well, that he placed his Buffalo News and Farmer's 
 Weekly in the front rank of provincial journalism. 
 
66 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 In measure as he rose to be the head of an immense and 
 growing enterprise, the dictator and despot of two success- 
 ful newspapers, with his wife's and his father-in-law's 
 money behind him, and his own rolling up before him, so 
 did Calvert rise to be also a personage in Buffalo society 
 and a force among men throughout the western section of 
 the Empire State. He was the president of one leading 
 club, a " governor "in another, the founder of the Buffalo 
 Trotting Club, a director in a powerful bank, and a vice- 
 president of the Merchant's Exchange. Most important, 
 though least observed of all, he was so active in city and 
 county politics, that in 1877 he was elected to the Demo- 
 cratic State Committee, and soon became one of its 
 strongest and most influential members. 
 ■ Meantime, the marriage whirh had so generously helped 
 him to wealth and position had proved most unhappy. 
 His wife was a woman of so violent a temper, that, on 
 looking back, Julia seemed quite an angel in comparison. 
 Like so many mistaken widowers, one of Calvert's motives 
 in marrying again had been to give his little girl a home. 
 Julia had begged that Clara should not be sent to board- 
 ing-school, but from the time of her mother's death, Clara 
 had been sent to boarding-school, because no home of 
 either aunt or grandmother was available for her. Cal- 
 vert's warm heart yearned over his child, and he wanted 
 her with him. 
 
 But a wife is and must be closer than a child, and the 
 woman that poor Calvert had taken to his breast had the 
 traditional step-mother's dislike and antagonism to her 
 predecessor's offspring. She had no children of her own, 
 and she was jealous of the half-orphan's place in her 
 father's affections. The wife wanted her husband all and 
 wholly to herself. Consequently, she contrived that Clara 
 
. NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 2,(i1 
 
 should still be kept in Xew York at school, and that even 
 much of her summer vacations should be passed with her 
 grandmamma Dexter and her aunts Fanny and Josephine. 
 What these ladies and the fifteen-hundred-dollar Fifth 
 Avenue boarding-school did for the girl may be inferred 
 from the letters at sixteen to an intimate friend, \vritten 
 in a delicate, flowing, perfectly formed hand, and accu- 
 rately spelled, but punctuated and artless as the following : 
 
 New York, May 30, 1871. 
 Dearest Belle, 
 
 Your letter has just been sent to me from school. I am staying 
 with my mother at 224 Fifth Avenue on account of the dentist. I 
 think it simply absurd for me to go back to school for three weeks, 
 however I had all my clothes put in working order and feel quite 
 relieved, one of my summer suits is too sweet for anything^, a blue 
 silk underdress and waist and light gray overskirt and a kind of 
 jacket, it is too stylish for anything. 
 
 There is just the nicest fellow possible here a graduate of old 
 Harvard, the most beautiful teeth I ever saw and so stylish, he 
 and his friend have a suite of rooms next to me beautifully furnished 
 he plays the guitar and sings delightfully, every evening I go in 
 his room and we have a concert, I like him immensely, there are 
 a multitude of nice fellows here almost every evening and I am 
 just about old enough now to enjoy their society Belle I never 
 expected I would be liked so much by the males but I am a real 
 favorite, do not think me egotistical, I suppose perhaps I can 
 talk well, and am full of life and have just a few personal attrac- 
 tions, you would not know me, I am so changed, taller somewhat 
 on the form and eyes that can talk a little, any way I have all the 
 fun I can possibly desire that is saying a good deal for me, because 
 like my own mother I am fond of admiration, but enough of / 
 You will think I am no longer C'aire but a disagreeable vain girl 
 such however is not the case, I love you Blue-bell just the 
 same and am just the old self of bygone years wait till I have a 
 house won't you spend long months with me. I had a long letter 
 from Hally Brown yesterday she is too sweet to live she writes 
 
368 NEW YORK. A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 me the loveliest letters and so often I am going to see her this 
 summer her brother is so nice. Belle 1 have been to a champagne 
 \nnch, pdte de foie gras et and I am just used up. Write soon and 
 
 believe me with all my heart's love 
 
 Your own 
 
 Claire. 
 
 New YoKYi, June 9, 1871, 
 My Dearest Belle 
 
 Your ever welcome letter was received yesterday morning, and you 
 see as usual I hasten to answer it. You surprise me very much 
 when you speak of my going into a young gentleman's room ol 
 course my mother would be present — I flatter myself I understand 
 the rules of propriety quite well enough not to commit a breach, 
 besides one's reputation in New York is as dear to them as the 
 breath they draw for it is hard to find a young girl perfectly right — 
 What a nice treat darling you are to have this summer I am 
 so glad I hope you will enjoy every moment. I have just finished 
 a long letter to a friend of mine who was married four weeks ago. 
 She is lovely I expect her over to see me every few days, she 
 married a very wealthy fellow, and they live in New Jersey — Never 
 fear Belle dear I shall marry well, although never perhaps the 
 man I desire to, you know we never marry our idol — and I will 
 have a lovely house and you shall make me such lovely lo)ig visits — 
 this all I hope yet how little we know our future. But I must go to 
 the dentist's so I must close with all my heart's love I am darling 
 Yours ever so truly 
 
 Claire. 
 
 Whatever its surface ignorance, so sweet a nature and 
 so warm and generous a heart as this could not be spoiled 
 even by the examples of a Mrs. Dexter and a Fanny Howe ; 
 and in response to the ardor that went out to him also, 
 the one thing that Frank Calvert deeply and passionately 
 loved, was his only child. Had his second wife given him 
 a home of love within which his Clara was embraced, he 
 would have lavished himself upon her, and her alone, for 
 gratitude, if for nothing else, As it was, after waiting as 
 
NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 3^9 
 
 long as he cared for the legitimate happiness which did 
 not come, Calvert consoled himself for the disappoint- 
 ments of the present as he had done for those of the past. 
 Even in Julia's day he had gone over to that large major- 
 ity of his sex who laugh to themselves at the idea of " one 
 woman being enough for one man," and his second dis- 
 cordant union was in his eyes justification enough for 
 almost any scandal. 
 
 The second Mrs. Calvert, however, was rich in her own 
 right. Consequently she was not obliged to tolerate find- 
 ing herself one of two or more, as are so many wives who 
 are ''supported" by their husbands. His own fortune 
 once secured, Calvert rather counted on this, and so 
 little concealed his preferences, that after ten or twelve 
 years of dispute and storm, to his relief and pleasure, the 
 exasperated woman procured a divorce. 
 
 Calvert was now free to make himself a home such as he 
 liked, and he did so. For himself and his Clara he fur- 
 nished a spacious and charming house, and in it they lived 
 romantically eji camarade together, riding, driving, en- 
 tertaining, going to places of amusement, keeping open 
 house for all Clara's girl friends and for all Calvert's 
 political and business ones : no end of men about, of all 
 ages, smoking and drinking as freely as in bachelors' halls. 
 And " Liberty Hall " in fact it was, with a free-handed 
 connoisseur in wines, in cuisine, in pictures, in draperies, 
 in dress, for its master ; and for its mistress, a cordial and 
 exquisitely-costumed young lady, whose pretty and expres- 
 sive face was not too much discounted by a figure some- 
 what short and stout, who had inherited her mother's 
 fluent and interesting speech, who even ventured a little 
 into verse and dramatic criticism for her father's paper, 
 and who, withal, was certain to be some day an heiress. 
 
370 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 Father and daughter travelled together, north, south, 
 east and west, as the former could spare a week or a 
 month from his engagements, and he was always promis- 
 ing himself a longer vacation, when he should enjoy with 
 his Clara the Europe he knew and loved so well ; and alas, 
 every few days he drove, besides, to the tree-embowered 
 suburban cottage he had given to the handsome de'classee 
 on whose account his wife had finally divorced him. 
 
 These genial, energetic, high-strung Calverts, — were they 
 happy in their American whirl of enterprise, excitement, 
 and change? Clara was now twenty-eight, and though 
 
 " In her heart's most secret cell 
 Had been innumerable lodgers," 
 
 its ** idol " had not yet come to stay. Moreover, her 
 social position in Buffalo was not perfectly satisfactory. 
 Her father's free way of living reflected disadvantageously 
 upon her. The leading people did not care to have their 
 daughters intimate with her. Naturally, therefore, she was 
 not at rest ; and as for him, is a sensitive and enlight- 
 ened man ever at rest, ever at peace and unity with him- 
 self, who is striking that most hideous of all discords in 
 the harmony of the universe, — who is wronging a woman ? 
 Calvert was sedulous that the newspapers under his con- 
 trol should be *' clean " and "high-toned." Could he 
 know the right so well and yet practise the wrong and be 
 happy? Ah, no 1 In the heart of any such man, let the 
 poison tree thrust in secret as deep, and to outward seem- 
 ing flaunt as high and bravely as it will, the worm of remorse 
 is ever gnawing at its roots. However gay or brilliant the 
 life before the world, " a deep river of sadness," as 
 George Eliot admitted about her own inexcusable second 
 marriage, '* runs below it all."- 
 
NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 371 
 
 All the same, Calvert was the envy of many men of his 
 own age and the ideal of all the youths to whom he extended 
 his frank hospitality. He gave liberally to the needy, to 
 charities, and to religion; paid for an expensive pew for 
 his daughter in the fashionable Episcopal church and 
 subscribed handsomely to the clergyman's salary, — though 
 why Christian ministers should let themselves be partially 
 supported by the flagrant adherents of Satan, they may be 
 able to explain to their Master in a less complicated 
 world than this. 
 
CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 A DEMOCRATIC LEADER^ 
 
 Why was Frank Calvert a Democrat? — for in those 
 days the great party as founded by Thomas Jefferson was 
 still in existence. 
 
 In my youth a brilliant Democrat once said in my hear- 
 ing: "The Democratic Party is the party of freedom; 
 consequently it is the party of the least educated and of 
 the most educated." 
 
 The political conviction of Jefferson was that the best 
 government is that which governs least, and consequently 
 the great party which he founded held that the govern- 
 ment must be intrusted with as few functions as possible. 
 The terms of its executive officers must be short; they 
 must be chosen by the people from the body of the people ; 
 their salaries must be small ; they must not indulge in 
 pomp and pageantry ; the people themselves must be every- 
 thing, and individual energy and effort must initiate and 
 carry out whatever industrial enterprises were needed for 
 the public welfare. 
 
 The four great doctrines of Local Self-Government, Un- 
 fettered Commerce, Hard Money, a Strict Interpretation 
 of the Federal Constitution, were the political bulwarks 
 behind which many high typical Americans, trained and 
 stainless and eagle-eyed men, intrenched themselves as 
 " Democrats." They were leaders in the Democratic 
 Party, and they stood for the principles of Jefferson be- 
 
N£IV YORK . A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 373 
 
 cause they honestly believed these involved, and more 
 nearly than any others would promote, " the greatest hap- 
 piness of the greatest number.'' 
 
 But why, when so splendid were the principles and 
 when so true and noble were many leaders of the Demo- 
 cratic Party, did its rank and file include that host of 
 purveyors to and devotees of ignorance, oppression, vice, 
 cruelty and crime which for so many disgraceful years 
 made the orj.anization a by-word to Republican Amer- 
 icans? 
 
 Why were sports, saloon-keepers, wife-beaters, drunk- 
 ards, gamblers, profligates — why were the haters and op- 
 posers of education, the believers in priestly authority 
 and lay submission, the despisers of the aspirations of 
 women, almost invariably of the party which owed its 
 existence to the chief author of Americanism ? " All 
 Democrats are not horse-thieves,'' said Horace Greeley, 
 " but all horse-thieves are Democrats." 
 
 The Magna Charta of Americanism — that " all men are 
 created equal and have equal rights to life, liberty and the 
 pursuit of happiness" — still flames in our national sky 
 where its Immortal Scribe first placed it; but for two ge*:- 
 erations the majority of the party which boasted itself his 
 child had ignored or denied its underlying principle. 
 
 How did such an association of the generous and the 
 base, of the free and the tyrannical, of the pure and the 
 corrupt, come about? 
 
 Was it not because the Democratic Party, being the 
 pledged upholders of Jefferson's favorite doctrine, that 
 the best government is that which least limits the self- 
 direction and free activity of the individual, was by that 
 very fact the pledged party of Let- Alone? Oppressors 
 and spoilers of every type require a large margin of lib- 
 
374 A'^W^ YORK': A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 erty and let-alone wherein, unchecked, they may use their 
 fellow-creatures for their own ends, and in the United 
 States that margin was found in the boundless platform 
 of Jefferson. 
 
 It was for no other reason that Southern slave-owners 
 became so unanimously Democratic. All they asked, as 
 even they themselves expressed it, was to be " let alone " 
 in their management of the negro man for their profit 
 and of the negro woman for their profit and their pleasure 
 both. 
 
 Mormons, Roman Catholics and High-Church Episco- 
 palians also were, and are, mostly Democrats, and for the 
 same necessity for large independence for one's self when 
 one would lord it over one's fellows. As organizations, 
 these hierarchies, all more or less to their own advantage, 
 exploit humanity and undermine its self-reliance and self- 
 respect by making its eternal salvation depend upon mys- 
 terious priesthoods of mysterious powers. The weaker 
 sex especially do they use for their own hierarchical pur- 
 poses. Toward women, Mormons, Romanists and 
 " Churchmen " are despots — autocrats — a law unto them- 
 selves; ruling their feminine contingent through councils, 
 conventions and vestries without representative conference 
 or consultation with the ruled, and expecting and accept- 
 ing the most tremendous services and sacrifices with 
 scanty recognition or none at all. The Mormon and the 
 Roman creeds, in fact, like the Mohammedan, erected 
 and still maintain themselves on the ruins of the feminine 
 intelligence and self-respect, nor seems the Episcopal 
 Church averse to a similar role. So blighted and para- 
 lyzed down to narrowness and slavishness is this fashion- 
 able church by the bishops and priests of its so-claimed 
 " apostolic succession — " little popes in their dioceses and 
 
XEIV YORK: A SYMPHOXIC STUDY. 
 
 375 
 
 parishes as the majority of them are — that I know of no 
 one of the movements for the enlarging and uplifting of 
 women whose origin in the United States can be traced 
 to its haughty and exclusive communion, nor can any be 
 credited to the Democratic Party. 
 
 The former metropolis of New York, now the Borough 
 of Manhattan of New York, is the overwhelming Amer- 
 ican stronghold at once of Episcopacy and of Democracy — 
 and how are women treated there? The answer is that 
 in proportion there is more dishonor and ruin planned and 
 carried out against them by the " pleasure classes " — in 
 proportion there is more abuse, cursing, starvation, beat- 
 ing and killing against them by the working classes than 
 obtains in any other city of the Union. For many years 
 the Episcopal business men and the Catholic working- 
 men of the former New York upheld the Party one of 
 whose determined cries is: "No sumptuary laws! 
 Hands off from our indulgences — let suffer from them 
 who will!" In fact, it was the Catholic Irishman who 
 introduced wife-beating into this country, and the country, 
 instead of beating him in return and so stopping the 
 practice in its inception, allowed him practical impunity in 
 his brutality toward womanhood, until now, on the 
 principle that "evil communications corrupt good man- 
 ners," the country has itself become more or less bru- 
 talized. 
 
 Birds of a feather flock together. Where women were 
 concerned, Frank Calvert was practically a lawless man. 
 True, it was lawlessness tempered by much generosity, 
 by much tenderness, by the chivalry and respect for 
 womanhood which pervaded the American atmosphere 
 when he was young, and of which reminiscences yet lin- 
 gered about him. But still, as far as he cared to go in 
 
370 ^'^ I'i'' YORK : A S YAIPH ONI C i>l oVY. 
 
 gratifying his impulses, he wanted to go without hin- 
 drance or reproach. He regarded his private life as ' no 
 one's business " but his own, and the liberty he loved and 
 took for himself he consistently extended to other men. 
 
 Self-deceived, however, like most of us, Calvert never 
 suspected that he was so morally at home in the Demo- 
 cratic Party because of its high pagan disregard of the 
 liberty, of the happiness, of the more than life of the 
 opposite sex. He believed he belonged to it because of 
 its noble stand for the best happiness of his own. His 
 mercantile interests had for years been those of the im- 
 porter, therefore he was naturally a low-tariff man. His 
 thorough business training, again, had made him proof 
 against all departures from the gold basis of the currency ; 
 while his sympathy for the South in the agonizing and 
 incalculable sufferings of her post-bellum or " carpet-bag " 
 era, decided him that that unhappy section should aad 
 must have back again its " inalienable " American right 
 of Local Self-Government. For the rest, he hated Re- 
 publicanism and wanted to oust it. " Damned hypocrisy 
 and cheating," as he characterized it to his friends. 
 " What they want is to hold on to the power and to fill the 
 offices and their own pockets ! That's what their ' love 
 of the Union ' and ' devotion to the flag ' that they are 
 always flaunting in our faces and thrusting down our 
 throats amount to. That is the inspiration, the true in- 
 wardness, of this * Grand Old Party of high moral ideas ' 
 — nothing more, under God's heaven." 
 
 Calvert, moreover, as I have said, loved the State and 
 city of New York with a true New Yorker's jealous love 
 and wished them to be on top. And, finally, his own 
 energy was something tremendous. He panted for a wide 
 field, a national field, an international field for its exer- 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 377 
 
 • 
 cise. He felt it in him to rise far above both his present 
 and his former associates, and he was consumed with the 
 desire so to rise. Like nearly every man and every woman 
 of exceptional force and talent, he burned to " show what 
 he could do." That terrific Americanism of being " as 
 good as anybody " boiled in his veins. He would be 
 among his peers — yes, even among the " great " of the 
 land! 
 
CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 SOMETHING MEN HATE. 
 
 If there be truth in the Bible, the relation of man to 
 woman is the bottom relation — that whereby humanity 
 images and expresses the Divine and through which also 
 it is to climb ever nearer to the Divine. 
 
 This the Enemy of the Divine perceived so clearly that 
 at the outset of human history he brought about, and has 
 ever since maintained, a misunderstanding, nay, an en- 
 mity between man and woman which, in spite of the ef- 
 fort of early Christianity against it, substantially rules the 
 world unto this hour. 
 
 Where one husband is betrayed by a wife as David 
 Howe was betrayed by Fanny, probably ten wives are 
 betrayed by their husbands ; add to this the almost universal 
 desecration of the sex-relation by unmarried men — a sac- 
 rilege that Tolstoi rightly branded as the betrayal by hus- 
 bands of their wives " years before they even make their 
 acquaintance," and we need seek no farther why the 
 human race has not yet realized its ideals — is in fact so 
 infinitely below them. 
 
 For the source of human life itself is here, and if the 
 source be poisoned how shall the life emanating from the 
 source be otherwise? It can not be otherwise, and from 
 thence alone crumble down the descending abysses of all 
 our woes; our slow-spreading, deep-eating diseases; our 
 ugliness; our physical and mental feebleness whose ulti- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 379 
 
 mate deposit is pauperism ; our " dying nations " of suf- 
 fering and abject masses ruled by despots and corruption- 
 ists for their own selfish ends; and final, deepest depth of 
 all, our barbarous and savage races so spiritually dead 
 that they are but little higher than the animals and have 
 literally no word for " love " — for any kind of love, 
 not even maternal love — in their languages. 
 
 Jesus Christ declared as the purpose of his ministry to 
 " give deliverance " — to make the race " free "; but this is 
 possible only through personal obedience to the one con- 
 dition of freedom — the wedded fidelity of one man to one 
 woman, and of one woman to one man. 
 
 How can the womanhood of a country give birth to and 
 train up the self-respecting, self-governing and spirited 
 manhood without which republican institutions are impos- 
 sible, unless itself is respected, self-respecting and free 
 within its own orbit of being? 
 
 How can men instruct and guide the state as Frank 
 Calvert through his newspapers was now daring to do, 
 when they themselves are breakers of the foundation law ? 
 
 In the time of Jesus, organized society was literally a 
 quagmire of profligacy, slavery and cruelty. 
 
 " On that hard pagan world 
 Disgust and loathing fell. 
 Deep weariness and sated lust 
 Made human life a hell ; — " 
 
 and He, the one sun-ray of supreme wisdom, gentleness, 
 purity and power that it had ever known — after a brief 
 sojourn, and far briefer teaching, was about to leave it. 
 He consoled his dismayed and sorrowing disciples by 
 assuring them that in his stead He would send them the 
 " Spirit of Truth," Who should " guide them into all truth " 
 
380 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 and " bring to their remembrance all the things that He 
 had told them " — as the result of this knowledge having 
 previously declared: "Ye shall know the truth, and the 
 truth shall make you free'' 
 
 The " Spirit " came indeed, and by that Spirit the child- 
 ish disciples of Jesus were transformed into his bold 
 apostles; but in their first and only united apostolic pro- 
 nunciamento what did they impose upon their Gentile con- 
 verts as the sine qua non of the Christian life? 
 
 Did they reiterate the Ten Commandments or catalogue 
 the virtues? Like the mediaeval Catholics, did they tell 
 men and women not to eat meat on Friday, or like the 
 latter-day Protestants, not to drink anything fermented ? 
 
 Nay. Temperance was not mentioned. Honesty was 
 not mentioned. Kindness was not mentioned. Only one 
 virtue was mentioned — the virtue of Chastity ! 
 
 " It seemeth good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, that we 
 lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary 
 things — that ye abstain from pollutions of idols and from 
 pollutions between the sexes, and from things strangled 
 and from blood." * And if we inquire why the two lat- 
 ter, the answer is that possibly the eating of blood was 
 forbidden throughout the Bible because disease germs 
 haunt the blood and also because no diet so inflames the 
 circulation, and therefore so militates against chastity, as 
 this diet. 
 
 Every baptized Christian, whether Jew or Gentile con- 
 vert, was now obliged to promise and to carry out chas- 
 tity. The purity and mutual respect of the sexes was 
 thus the adamantine floor commanded by Divine Wisdom 
 to be laid down that the Kingdom of Heaven might be 
 built up ; and from that day to this personal and political 
 freedom have come to, and have remaind with races, 
 
 * Acts XV., vs. 20, 28, 29. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 381 
 
 nations and communities in proportion to the number of 
 those accepting this command of " the Holy Ghost — the 
 Comforter." 
 
 But in all these nineteen hundred years how many men 
 have accepted this basic teaching of the Holy Ghost? 
 How many accept it to-day? Certainly Calvert did not, 
 nor, indeed, did he at all trouble himself " whether there 
 be any Holy Ghost or no." The whole subject of relig- 
 ion was to him, as to such hosts of American men, as 
 if it were not in the universe. 
 
 In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus declared that " the 
 pure in heart shall see God." Conversely, it should and 
 does follow, that those who are ywt "pure" do not and 
 can not " see God," or the things of God. Countless 
 gifted and in their day and generation triumphant men 
 like Calvert, men of experience and power, have flattered 
 themselves that they can profane womanhood and their 
 own manhood and at the same time can " think clear and 
 see straight " regarding any given problem of public con- 
 cern. But they cannot, and they do not. Constantly 
 their statesmanship decides wrong, and posterity has to 
 pay the penalty. These be the false guides, the false 
 prophets, the men who lead a country down and not up, 
 whose ideal is a " strong " government administered by 
 a " strong " man, whose heroes are the Julius Caesars and 
 Napoleons and Bismarcks — whose evangelists the Carlyles 
 and Kiplings — of the race ; and may our Father in Heaven 
 in His mercy for ever deliver the noble American man- 
 hood from such heroes and from such ideals ! 
 
CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 AN AMERICAN EDITOR 
 
 The compact of American journalism with the Father 
 of Lies has long been the great bewildering influence of 
 the American people. The coat of arms of the typical, 
 of the representative editor of this land should be the 
 proverbial pedestal of the proverbial rooster, and his crest 
 should be the rooster himself — since to laud to the skies 
 the editor's own town. State, party and personal opinions, 
 and to cry down every other, no matter what cause may 
 be injured or what individual sacrificed, is his first, last, 
 middle duty to — ^his country? — or to his readers? Nay, 
 but to his private fortune and his pride; for money and 
 power are all that he runs his paper for. 
 
 Such an editor was Frank Calvert. He was exultant 
 when he was made a member of the New York Demo- 
 cratic State Co:nmittee. He had worked for the position 
 — for the successful capitalist and journalist that he had 
 now become could command agencies which would help 
 him to realize a passionate wish of many years, and one 
 with which his swift-advancing fortune was entwining 
 a personal ambition as well — the restoration of the Demo- 
 cratic Party to national power, with the great State of 
 New York in the van of the movement and himself in 
 the van of the great State of New York. 
 
 " A worker first ; a power last," was his motive-thought, 
 as possible visions of himself as an "Honorable" floated 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 2>^t^ 
 
 before his mental vision. But no mere member of Con- 
 gress. That, as he would have said himself, was " too 
 small potatoes" for him I A United States Senator, or 
 a magnate of the Cabinet — possibly even the minister to 
 England or to France; such was his aspiration, and in 
 American politics many stranger things had happened. 
 
 Through its namesake metropolis the State of New 
 York is numerically a Democratic State ; through the 
 same metropolis it is also the Empire State of the Union — 
 the most populous, the richest, the most forceful, the 
 great commercial heart which sends its mighty trade- 
 currents all over the country, and gathers to itself again 
 the aggregate of that country's million rills of produc- 
 tion. That New York is by right the political and every 
 other centre of the Republic — its vital axis — is the in- 
 born, burnt-in conviction of all New York journalists 
 and citizens, and one which Calvert shared to the full both 
 as man and as editor. If the ^Calvert will and ambition 
 could have any voice in the matter, New York must and 
 should assert herself. His mighty adopted State should 
 dictate policies and nominate presidents. 
 
 Clearly, something was the matter with the supreme 
 commonwealth. In campaign after campaign the presi- 
 dential cup had seemed predestined to her lips, only to 
 be dashed inscrutably away. The chivalrous McClellan, 
 the trusted Seymour, the philanthropic Greeley, the astute 
 Tilden, the sterling Hancock were nearly all residents of 
 the State at the time of their respective nominations. In 
 succession New York had striven for them as the na- 
 tional standard-bearers of the Democratic Party. Each 
 one in turn had seemed as though he must win, so strong 
 was his personality, so seemingly impregnable the Jeffer- 
 sonian principles he had stood for — yet each had failed. 
 
384 ^^^ YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 " By the Lord Jehovah ! " shouted the profane Calvert, 
 as he sat with his fellow-workers at the Democratic head- 
 quarters in Buffalo, smoking and drinking and swearing 
 as the returns came in declaring Hancock defeated, " our 
 men are too good ! They are too much above the popular 
 level, too high-toned, brilliant, and conspicuous to suc- 
 ceed. We must do as the Dernocratic Party did before 
 the war and as the Republican Party has in their last two 
 nominations — take an average man if we want to hit the 
 average voter." 
 
 " Ye-e-s," drawled reflectively a rich old down-easter 
 who had never changed his native dialect, " and t'aint 
 only that nuther. We want a noo man. The party needs 
 noo blood. Them old names in the east of the State, old 
 party stand-bys, Seymour and Tilden and the rest on 'em, 
 don't do to kunjur with any longer. We've got to bring 
 for'ard some one noo, I tell ye ; scar up a dark horse 
 somewhar before '84 — somebody the people don't know 
 abaout and that they've got to take on trust." 
 
 " Goot eedaya ! goot e'edaya ! " puffed an old German, 
 nodding his head. " I'm vid you dere." 
 
 Another smoker removed his cigar from his mouth, 
 and emitting a leisurely cloud said quietly : " Take a no- 
 body and lie him up, eh ? " 
 
 " Why not, if it's a choice between taking a somebody 
 and have the other side lie him down ? " retorted Calvert. 
 " And the fact is," he continued, " a president has got 
 to run with his machine, anyway. He's obliged to be 
 the expression of the party that put him in, and one man 
 is about as good for that as another. I could pick out 
 a dozen men, a hundred men, right here in Buffalo, who 
 could approve or veto bills, write long-winded messages, 
 receive delegations, shake hands at receptions, and be 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 385 
 
 just as good a national figurehead in every way as most 
 of those who've been in the chair since I've been a voter." 
 
 " I wish a quarter of 'em had been as good presidents 
 as you would make," cried an admirer. " Don't we wish 
 we had the chance to vote for Frank Calvert, boys ? I say, 
 let's drink to President Calvert ! " And they all laughed 
 and echoed " To President Calvert," and drained their 
 glasses. 
 
 " Thanks," said Calvert, laughing too, " but you wouldn't 
 kill me before my time, would you? A presidential cam- 
 paign often does kill the unsuccessful candidate, you 
 know. I don't mean politically only, but literally. The 
 steady abuse, the long tension ending in disappointment, 
 breaks their hearts." 
 
 " I hope this won't be the death of Hancock," sighed a 
 young lawyer who had taken the stump enthusiastically 
 for the general ; " he's too noble a man to be sacrificed to 
 a campaign." 
 
 " In his shoes, I think it would be mine," cried Cal- 
 vert. " Such a lump of pure human gold to be beaten 
 by a Garfield ! " 
 
 " Ves," echoed Calvert's devotee, " by a piece of moral 
 punk ! Think of a man being paraded from one end of 
 the Union to the other by damn Republican lies and 
 hypocrisy as a model domestic character when, if he'd 
 been showed up as he ought to have been, Hancock would 
 have shot in by half a million votes." 
 
 " Don't care anything about his private life," said Cal- 
 vert, "that's' none of the public's business; but why the 
 devil the American people wanted to make a man their 
 president whose own constituents once asked him to re- 
 sign because they believed he took bribes in Congress, 
 and who can't prove conclusively that he didn't, is what 
 
386 NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 beats me. Only shows what the precious public will 
 stand when once you get a firm hold on it," continued he 
 scornfully; "put counterfeit money into circulation and 
 you may get your twenty years for it ; but palm any other 
 counterfeit off on the public — religion — art — statesman- 
 ship — and, by thunder, they'd rather have it than the real 
 thing ! " 
 
 And so sat the disappointed men, and smoked and drank 
 and passed from mouth to mouth the cold or angry cyni- 
 cism which in so many of the native-born voters had 
 taken the place of the bright, trusting patriotism of the 
 first three generations of the Republic. 
 
 A man simple and strong and true had been beaten by 
 one specious and weak and false — nor was it the first time. 
 
 " After all, friends," cried Calvert, as they were separat- 
 ing, " never say die ! The meaning of it is that next time 
 we must take a candidate not too bright or good for human 
 nature's daily food, and see what we can do with him. 
 The Democratic Party kept in power fifty years with just 
 such men, and I guess we'll have to revert to the old 
 policy." 
 
 This was not altogether true, but it was as near his- 
 torical truth as Calvert's ideas in general were, and his 
 fellow-workers accepted it as people always do the state- 
 ments of any one who has the brains to lead them. 
 
 As Calvert walked home alone at two o'clock in the 
 morning all his inventive and executive faculties were 
 seething within him. One man had suggested him — him 
 — Francis Calvert, for the Presidency ! Vast horizon ! 
 The thought fired his imagination as the " old rye " was 
 firing his brain, and together they made him feel like a 
 god. Involuntarily he drew deeply in the crisp November 
 air and looked up toward the sparkling stars. That lofty 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 387 
 
 altitude ! That dizzy pinnacle ! How could any man 
 ever dare to dream of a possibility so remote — so difficult ! 
 As he turned on his sleepless pillow he said sadly to 
 himself that he, at least, could not. Frank Calvert might 
 avail to put some one else in, but who would work for 
 Frank Calvert as any man inaugurated a Democratic 
 President must beforehand be worked for ? The " noo 
 man " idea, however, was the true one, and he would 
 begin upon it in good time. He would yet win a victory 
 for the Democratic Party, that great party which he loved 
 because it was his; but he himself must be satisfied to be 
 the power behind the throne. His divorce record would 
 never stand the scrutiny of a political campaign — perhaps 
 not even for governor or mayor. His ex-wife alone 
 would take good care of that; yet ah, beside the one 
 supreme, tremendous office how paltry was everything 
 else! Neverthless, "Worker first; ruler last," was the 
 old dauntless attitude of his mind as toward the gray of 
 the morning he at length fell asleep. 
 
CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 *'' HIS LITTLE GAME." 
 
 Since the Tweed regime and the Grant administration, 
 the country had been growing more and more disgusted 
 with the undoubted municipal greed and corruption of all 
 city politicians and with the theoretical greed and cor- 
 ruption of the Washington ones, and after the presidential 
 campaign which in 1880, in spite of the bribery charge 
 against him, had nominated and elected Garfield, no cry 
 could approach in popularity the opposition cry for re- 
 trenchment and reform. Ridicule and denunciation of 
 machine politics were the stock-in-trade of many leading 
 newspapers. For months and years " Turn the rascals 
 out ! " " The Republican Party must go ! " echoed and 
 re-echoed from one great daily to another whenever na- 
 tional interests were under consideration; while, if it were 
 a question of local politics, practical minds were asking 
 themselves what was the mystery of a municipal corpora- 
 tion that it should not be conducted on the basis of any 
 other corporation? What had Democracy or Republican- 
 ism to do with keeping a city in decent material or moral 
 order, or with filling capably a local or a national clerk- 
 ship? From the close of the Civil War Mr. E. L. Godkin, 
 the Anglo-Irish agnostic whose paper. The Nation, was 
 the favorite weekly of the American college graduat^, had 
 insisted that the only American political salvation was in 
 a Civil Service after the British model, and the American 
 
AEIV YORK . A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 389 
 
 college-graduate, everywhere an influential factor, aud 
 anxious above all things to be like England, instead of in- 
 quiring why American virtue and talent had adequately 
 filled the local and national Civil Service for the first sixty 
 years of the Republic but was now too degenerate to do 
 so without competitive examinations, had come to believe 
 that Mr. Godkin was in the right. 
 
 One American thinker alone of the period that I ever 
 heard of, was holding that the true root of the American 
 political degeneracy so perpetually denounced was simply 
 the adverse working of the Ward and District Elective 
 Systems inherited from the Mother Country, and which 
 ^re no longer suited to the racial and religious hetero- 
 geneity which the American People has become. " Let 
 each voter have one vote for one candidate as he has 
 now," said this Harvard philosopher, " but instead of 
 limiting him to a ward or a district let him cast it for 
 whom he will, and then let the man or men receiving the 
 highest number of votes be the man or men elected. This 
 would be ' Personal Representation,' which is, and in a 
 Democracy like our own alone can be, the true manhood 
 representation. Thomas Hare's * Preferential Voting ' is 
 too complicated and fine-spun for our huge constituencies. 
 Our voting system should be the very simplest possible, 
 and it is absurd to object that with it voters would fail to 
 mass their votes upon men who could be elected. That 
 would not be human nature." 
 
 The shallow Godkin Civil Service crusade, however, 
 fell in marvellously with Frank Calvert's principles and 
 with his aims. In the first place, it was the war-cry of 
 the educated, of the " best " people, of the social ^lite. 
 Pie was now of that elite, and was, therefore, instinctively 
 drawn to stand with his class. 
 
390 NEW YORK: A S,YM PHONIC STUDY. 
 
 But in the second place, as with most men of the world, 
 honesty and industry were to. him the Ten Command- 
 ments, because without honesty and industry business 
 could not exist, and without business the fortunes which 
 alone make life valuable to the Calverts of the earth would 
 be impossible. To such, these are the cardinal, the foun- 
 dation, the only vital virtues; all the others are compara- 
 tively unimportant. Under his guidance, therefore, the 
 editors of his newspapers maintained that the " people " 
 were longing and sighing for a return to the honesty and 
 economy of the Democratic administrations before the 
 war, and that they were certain soon to arise in their 
 might and secure such an administration. But Calvert 
 had no intention of leaving " the people " to work out 
 their own salvation. Embodied intelligence, virtue and 
 will though his journals declared them to be, he would, 
 if necessary, bring them blindfolded to the ballot-box and 
 make them take their leap in the dark — otherwise the fools 
 might balk. 
 
 The year succeeding the Garfield-Hancock struggle was 
 largely over, and the local autumn elections were ap- 
 proaching. Buffalo, the great lake town in which Cal- 
 vert lived, was of course suffering from her city govern- 
 ment, and also, of course, was in the temper at once in- 
 dignant and passive over it that nearly all American cities 
 chronically are. Yet neither her judges and leading law- 
 yers, her solid bankers and merchants, nor her trusted 
 clergymen, physicians and schoolmasters were meeting in 
 serious consultation as to who should take charge of her 
 mterests for the ensuing year. In the September of 1881, 
 as in all previous Septembers, they were keeping cheer- 
 fully on with their private affairs, and were leaving their 
 important municipality, the third largest in the State, to 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 391 
 
 be looked after by Providence, by the politicians, by the 
 press and by the Catholic Church. 
 
 For weeks the various leaders, bosses and workers of 
 the Democratic and Republican camps, with their con- 
 fidants and echoes, the reporters, conferred in offices, 
 saloons and bar-rooms, smoking and drinking, joking and 
 swearing, arguing and bargaining, until their respective 
 tickets were evolved as much as possible to the satisfac- 
 tion of the Irish politicians who, owing to this fatal and 
 benighted *' ward system " of American municipalities, are 
 able so cleverly to divide the voters of our cities, that at 
 will they trade and deal all city offices and representatives 
 for the benefit first of themselves and next and last of that 
 ancient One-Man Power on the bank of the Tiber which 
 is their adored and only real government. 
 
 Throughout the busy caucus and consultation days the 
 newspapers and the schemers pulled well and skilfully the 
 wires. The " primaries " were all " fixed," and went 
 through smooth as oil. Next came the regulation public 
 meetings, at which, with effusive speeches and responsive 
 plaudits, the cut-and-dried nominations of the sub-surface 
 " machines " were ratified above-board by the " people." 
 Crowning act of all, the party newspapers displayed the 
 names of the party candidates in big capitals at the tops 
 of their columns, the street banners and posters were got 
 out, and with editorials and paragraphs pro and con the 
 campaign was really begun. 
 
 At the head of the " reform " ticket championed by the 
 Democratic and the Independent newspapers, appeared 
 the name of one of Frank Calvert's own political and 
 moral set, " For Mayor — Grover Cleveland!* 
 
CHAPTER XLVII. 
 
 STATESMAN. 
 
 A WELL-KNOWN Tdmiiiany leader and ex-State Senator, 
 Hon. George W. Plunkitt, of New York City, said once 
 to a reporter : " Civil Service Reform is a humbug, and 
 if it is kept up the country must go to ruin. But the 
 politicians, thank God, will live as long as the country. 
 The boy who folds the ballots and works around the poll- 
 ing places is the true politician. He gets a nomination, 
 is elected; he recognizes the people that made him, and 
 they raise him up step by step until they make him a 
 statesman. You can't become a statesman by going into 
 these citizens' movements." * 
 
 If the speaker had had Calvert's nominee in mind he 
 could not more accurately have sketched his political 
 origin and later career. In 1881 Stephen Grover Cleve- 
 land, of Buffalo, was a middle-aged lawyer and still un- 
 married. The son of a Presbyterian minister of New 
 England descent, but of a mother born in Ireland, by the 
 death of his father he had been early left to make his own 
 way in the world. Coming a penniless youth to Buffalo, 
 he entered a law office, but also, before he was of age to 
 vote, he began " to fold ballots and work around the 
 polling places." Eventually he " got a nomination " — that 
 for Assistant District Attorney, and " was elected." After 
 
 * New York Times, February 26, 1897. 
 
NEH' YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 393 
 
 that his party put him forward for other things, and by 
 the time he was thirty-seven years old he had served 
 through two consecutive terms as the Sheriff of Erie 
 County. 
 
 He was not a college-bred man, nor a well-read man, 
 nor a travelled man. Hence he was not an educated man, 
 and that he was not an able man is self-evident from the 
 fact that he could accept a position so little desired by 
 American lawyers as that of Sheriff; but he was intelli- 
 gent, honest and untiring in everything he und«rtook, 
 and these qualities had not only helped him to his public 
 positions, but had given him also, at forty-two, a respect- 
 able though not brilliant place in his profession. Now 
 he was candidate for Mayor. 
 
 Thus, " step by step," Mr. Cleveland was being " raised 
 up " into a " statesman " by " the people that made him " 
 — that is, by his party backers and associates. Outside 
 of his work, his haunts and his pursuits were those of 
 the politician and the sport. He was rarely seen in any 
 lady's house; he was never seen in any church. Pleasant 
 in manner to his friends, in office he had proved a stern 
 disciplinarian — which was perhaps one motive for put- 
 ting him forward in the present " reform " campaign. 
 
 More than half the Buffalo residents didn't know 
 " Grover Cleveland" from Adam (contemporary Amer- 
 icans seldom do know their city candidates from Adam), 
 but in his address accepting the nomination he made a 
 remark that pleased them and which in shorter form his 
 adherents were destined to re-echo for him round the 
 world. He said : " When we consider that public officials 
 are the trustees of the people, and hold their places 
 and exercise their powers for the benefit of the people, 
 there should be no higher inducement to a faithful and 
 
394 A'A^F YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 V 
 
 honest discharge of public duty. These are very old 
 truths. . . ." 
 
 *' Old " indeed — only about as old as the hills, and until 
 the advent of the Irish Catholic vote in the affairs of 
 American cities universally accepted and lived up to by 
 federal and local officials throughout the United States. 
 The sentiment had been much more tersely expressed in 
 the Tilden Democratic platform of 1876, and the biting 
 New York Sun once amused itself by tracing the pedigree 
 of the axiom previous to Mr. Cleveland as follows: 
 
 1790. — Lord Loughborough: "Public office a place of public 
 trust." 
 
 1835. — Daniel Webster: "Offices created for the people are 
 public trusts." 
 
 1864. — Mr. Justice Stephen J. Field : " Public offices are trusts 
 held solely for the public good." 
 
 1876. — Democratic National Platform : " Offices are not a private 
 perquisite ; they are a public trust." 
 
 1876. — Mr. Justice Swayne in Trist vs. Child : " The theory of 
 our government is that all public stations are trusts." 
 
 1876. — Rutherford B. Hayes : " Public office is a trust." 
 
 1877. — Judge Cooley of Michigan : " Public office is a public 
 trust." 
 
 1881. — Postmaster-General Thomas I^. James: "The public 
 service is a public trust." 
 
 1 88 1. — Grover Cleveland : " Public officials are the trustees of the 
 people." 
 
 1888. — An American Senator : " Public office is a private snap." 
 
 I have verified none of the authorities cited, but 
 whether Mr. Cleveland had derived the now famous say- 
 ing from any of these sources; whether as a clergyman's 
 son he had early read in the Scriptures of the great leaders 
 of Israel — of Moses, fifteen hundred, and Samuel, eleven 
 hundred years before Christ, who took neither " ass," 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 395 
 
 " ox '* nor " bribe " from the chosen people ; whether as 
 a schoolboy he had learned that Washington accepted 
 from his country only his expenses for his forty-seven 
 years of arduous and incomparable -service, or whether 
 it was simply a shrewd politician's instinct that a procla- 
 mation of honesty is the best policy, certain it is that the 
 truism of political honor then uttered by Mr. Cleveland 
 opened his campaign most auspiciously. More than half 
 the city journals so puffed and lauded him to the skies 
 that his fellow-citizens concluded he must be some un- 
 known Daniel come to judgment for the confounding of 
 the Buffalo rings and politicians, and wh^en the election 
 day came round, with all the enthusiasm of hope they 
 made him their chief magistrate by a larger majority than 
 they had ever accorded a mayor before. 
 
 In his new and greater dignity the whilom Sheriff fol- 
 lowed faithfully the counsels of the newspapers which 
 had advocated him, and really proved, therefore, the 
 municipal "purist which these journals had promised. 
 After their advice he saved the public treasury three 
 quarters of a million by intrusting the construction of a 
 sewer to a commission of citizens instead of to the private 
 bidder favored by the city's Hibernian aldermen. On 
 another occasion, a street-cleaning contract which had 
 been secured from the same aldermen on their usual 
 Hibernian terms, and which was denounced on all sides 
 by the Buffalo press, received from his Honor a veto so 
 sternly couched that the taxpayers were enthusiastic and 
 all his friends in ecstasies. 
 
 I withhold my assent from the action of your honorable body, 
 because I regard it as the combination of a most bare-faced, im- 
 pudent and shameless scheme to betray the interests of the people and 
 to worse than squander the public money. 
 
396 ^y^^y YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 V 
 
 It was the first appearance of those then unwonted epi- 
 thets — " bare-faced,'" " impudent," " shameless," etc., etc. — 
 which Mr. Cleveland made so popular and which carried 
 their author so far. In this suave American land where, 
 since the Civil War, we've all been so afraid of the 
 Catholic Irishman that nobody dares call a spade a spade, 
 but, like the Spartan boy, we allow this foreign fox to 
 gnaw our very vitals rather than be so impolite as to men- 
 tion him — such bold, uncompromising adjectives fell re- 
 freshingly on the plundered and brow-beaten American 
 consciousness. But their truly portentous result was that 
 like an inspiration it flashed upon the astute Francis Cal- 
 vert that the needed " new man " had appeared, and that 
 the next presidential campaign could immediately be 
 begun. 
 
 In this mood he invited a few bright and trusty re- 
 porters to a champagne supper, and when the cigars and 
 cigarettes were lighted he talked to them. He declared 
 that with that message they could make '' Gro^e " Cleve- 
 land Governor of New York. If they did it, and if as 
 ^ \cinui he pleased the people as well as he was pleasing 
 Buffalo as mayor, why, the next and in fact natural step 
 would be his nomination for president. An honest, faith- 
 ful and careful executive of their great State, not so bril- 
 liant as to make local enemies and with no national ones, 
 would be almost a sure thing as presidential candidate in 
 1884. The country was tired and sick of the Republican 
 Party and by 1884 would be utterly worn out with it. 
 The Democratic Party was bound to win on the principle 
 of " time for a change " alone. But, besides that, Civil 
 Service Reform was the coming issue, and on that reform 
 Cleveland would prove simply a rock. What did they 
 think of the scheme? For the honor of Buffalo, and of 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 397 
 
 the party, and of their profession, which by right was the 
 president-making profession, wasn't it one worth con- 
 sidering ? 
 
 The impecunious youths were flattered by the confidence 
 of the rich and potent and fascinating leader, and were 
 fired not only by the reach and daring of his suggestion, 
 but even more by the important lole thus offered to their 
 very obscure selves. They agreed to meet often for con- 
 sultation, and to do their utmost both personally and 
 through the press, to create a public opinion in the western 
 half of the State in favor of Mr. Cleveland for governor. 
 Resolutely did they go to work, and so successfully, that 
 before the latter's year of office was over, various car loads 
 of politicians — jovial, eager, confident — were actually roll- 
 ing eastward toward Syracuse to nominate the popular 
 Mayor of Buffalo as the next executive of the Empire 
 State. 
 
CHAPTER XLVIII. 
 
 A " PARTY " NOMINATION. 
 
 Calvert had arrived at Syracuse for conference with 
 other Democatic leaders a day or two before the con- 
 vention, and almost the first person he met at his hotel 
 was his sister-in-law, Fanny Howe, in her usual beaming 
 smile and becoming toilette. She was there apparently 
 alone, but really as the companion of the noted " County " 
 Democrat and office-holder of the metropolis before al- 
 luded to — who, however, had not yet appeared on the 
 scene. 
 
 " Hullo, Fanny ! " cried Calvert, good-humoredly. " On 
 hand, as usual, for the good of your country?" 
 
 " Of course," returned Fanny, nonchafently. " Con- 
 ventions are great fun, I think. Mind you come in and 
 tell me all about it when you get time. H you say so, 
 I'll sit up for you to-night." 
 
 " All right, I'll come." 
 
 Though of all men on earth the man most indifferent 
 to any given woman is her brother-in-law. Frank Calvert 
 had never felt quite this icy calm in regard to his wife's 
 sister Fanny. Men live in the present. Women generally 
 live in the past or in the future — or rather, as Mrs. Julia 
 Ward Howe put it, " At the banquet of life men do the 
 carving and women take the helpings." But, after all, this 
 is to be a mental drag on the men, if not a silent reproach. 
 When, therefore, a woman is capable of making the best 
 of things — of instantly forgetting the past and living in- 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY 
 
 399 
 
 tensely and energetically in the present — and even, if ne- 
 cessary, of taking care of herself, an intense and energetic 
 man likes and enjoys that woman. She may not be his 
 ideal, but she is a kindred spirit, a hon camarade, and in 
 this aspect Frank Calvert had always enjoyed and been 
 drawn to Fanny. 
 
 The Civil War had entirely alienated himself and David 
 Howe. The latter couldn't help regarding Calvert with 
 horror as a " copperhead," and on his side Calvert es- 
 teemed Howe as a bloodless prig and a political ianatic. 
 He despised him, moreover, for not recovering faster from 
 his financial troubles, and he pitied the gay and pleasure- 
 loving wife for being tied for life to a plodder who 
 couldn't give her plenty of money and a larger instead 
 of a lesser swing as time went on. 
 
 When the end came, and the noble David's side of their 
 story was left unbreathed, Calvert's sympathy remained 
 with Fanny, and though he accepted her version of affairs 
 with a good deal of allowance, he wasn't sure that, in her 
 place, he would not have been equally reckless. Every 
 Christmas he sent her a hundred dollars, and her plaint 
 for an occasional fifty never went unheeded. He did not 
 live in New York, and the Baldwins kept quiet about the 
 Hotel Surrey episode. So he forbore to trouble himself as 
 to whether Fanny's vivid and persistent interest in politics 
 had any special underlying reason. This interest amused 
 him, and when in New York he would drop in upon her 
 if he had time and talk matters over from her point of 
 view. 
 
 Late on the night in question he appeared at her rooms. 
 " Wh-e-ew ! " he sighed, as he threw himself upon a 
 lounge. " How tired I am ! These State nominations 
 are the very devil. Ticklish business. You never know 
 
400 NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 whose toes you're treading on until up starts an enemy 
 and opposes all your plans. But let's have some cham- 
 pagne," looking round for the bell, then rising and ring- 
 ing it. " I've been pouring out the fizz like water to 
 other men all day, and naturally haven't taken much my- 
 self. Nothing fetches 'em like champagne, Fanny, eh, 
 and lots of it. Now I'll indulge in a bottle, and I sup- 
 pose you won't object to helping me?" with a roguish 
 twinkle and laugh. 
 
 Fanny was effectively arrayed in black lace, with a 
 touch of pink upon the bodice and a little also upon her 
 cheeks. By gaslight the bedimned sight of Calvert's fifty- 
 five years did not perceive too sharply the touch of time, 
 and when he was comfortably ensconced on the lounge, 
 cigar in mouth, with Fanny and her cigarette on the other 
 side of a little table, and between them their fairy-bub- 
 bling glasses, from under his half-closed lids his gaze 
 rested upon her with content. Still was she that pleasing 
 vision of which the wise Dexter daughters never de- 
 frauded the masculine eye. 
 
 " Well, Frank," she said, as a light smoke-wreath es- 
 caped her lips, "what's up?" 
 
 " What's up is that I was so mad when Hancock was 
 defeated that I swore I'd try what could be done to build 
 some one up for the presidency solid from the founda- 
 tion. My Buffalo friends and I are tired being whipped 
 with phcenixes and ' favorite sons ' for candidates, and 
 for a change thought we'd go back to first principles and, 
 as old Jack Whitcomb expressed it, ' scar up a dark horse 
 somewhar' and get him in training. Where should he 
 turn up but in Buffalo itself — right in our own set — that 
 is, if I'm any judge. We elected Grove Cleveland mayor 
 last fall, just as a good local executive, you know, but, 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY 
 
 401 
 
 by Jove, he's come out so strong that we've booked him 
 for governor. We're going to nominate him, and we're 
 going to elect him, and — don't you see — that'll bring us 
 out all right for 1884." 
 
 " So that's your little game, is it ? And you really be- 
 lieve New York City is going to be dictated to by Buf- 
 falo?" 
 
 " By Buffalo and by Albany and a few other little 
 places, Mrs. Fanny, If I and some other men lived in 
 your town, perhaps she wouldn't be going to bring up the 
 rear this week. As it is, we propose to show you New 
 Yorkers what the rest of the State can do. You're so 
 loaded down there with Irish that you'll never bring the 
 party out on top. The Republican Party is the American 
 Party and thats why it beats. It's got the American 
 brains," (Calvert quite forgot that it also had the Amer- 
 ican — i. e., the Puritan — principles.) " * Paddy from 
 Cork ' can't get ahead of Brother Jonathan when Jonathan 
 is awake; you may bet your life on that. Until we get 
 more American blood into the Democratic Party north, 
 the party '11 have to take the back seat every time. Before 
 the war it was managed by Americans. Southerners, you 
 know, are simon-pure Americans, and that's why they 
 kept the party in so many years. They were smart. 
 Since secession the party has been the football of New 
 York Tammany politicians, and, damn 'em, they sell out 
 the nation for the city offices about every time — just as 
 they did Hancock in '80. They will run the party, and 
 yet they can't do it, thieves and blackguards that they 
 are ! They only disgrace it, and make the decent natives 
 afraid of it right along." ' 
 
 " If your Irish friends could hear you go on, I wouldn't 
 give much for your candidate's chances," returned Fanny. 
 
402 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 " Don't I know that ? Most mercenary, most ungrate- 
 ful, most treacherous and revengeful race on earth ! 
 Think I'd dare talk so to any one but you? Look what 
 the country's done for those beggars, bog-trotters and gas- 
 bags, that could never manage even their own little Island; 
 and yet there isn't an American of us they wouldn't stab 
 in the back politically if they could. By gad, when it's 
 been forced on you all day that their only view of politics 
 is a grab game for the Irish, it does make you sick and 
 tired and mad. And the public is sick of it too — this ever- 
 lasting stealing." 
 
 " Stealing ! " demurred Fanny. " Oh, Frank, you don't 
 mean that ! Stealing is too strong a term." 
 
 " Not at all too strong. What's bribery and blackmail 
 and corruption but stealing? Why, bless you, if a man 
 wants to start any kind of an enterprise for his own or 
 the public good, it's lobby with an alderman, or lobby with 
 an assemblyman, or lobby with a congressman, and sooner 
 or later sneaks out like a snake and coils in your path 
 'What's there in this for me?' But, as I said, the pub- 
 lic is getting sick of k. It's going to draw the line there. 
 Politics may not demand any other virtue, but it does 
 demand honesty. What did the people always call Lincoln 
 as he was rising into prominence but 'Honest old Ahe'f 
 That was what really took the country in the first place. 
 And Grove Cleveland is a chip of the same block. He 
 won't steal. That's as certain as the sun. And he won't 
 let anybody else steal either — not if he knows it. He's 
 made just the record we want — this last year — just the 
 record to go before the State with ; clear, simple, straight- 
 forward; everybody can understand it." 
 
 " I'll hear you talking Civil Service Reform next," 
 laughed Fanny. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 403 
 
 " Yes, you will. I'm talking it now, and I'm going to 
 talk it from this on. It's been dinned into the public so 
 long that we've got to recognize it." 
 
 " Funny to hear you going in for honest politics," re- 
 turned Fanny. " 'Tisn't two years since I heard you 
 sneering at ' Snivel ' Service Reform." 
 
 " Can't help it. I'm a convert now. And it is a good 
 thing. An honest, efficient Civil Service is a very im- 
 portant thing, and the party's got to promise it whether 
 it can perform it or not. We'll be with the reformers 
 in precept if we can't in practice. Fan, eh?" and Cal- 
 vert laughed. 
 
 " It'll make Tammany raging not to have the say this 
 year," said Fanny earnestly. " I hear Roswell Flower 
 wants the nomination, and they want to give it to him — 
 he's so rich. Great big ' bar'l,' isn't there? And I don't 
 know about my friends the ' Countys' working for pure 
 virtue either, though they do pretend to be reformers and 
 to hold up holy hands at Tammany. ' To the victor be- 
 long the spoils ' is just about Gotham gospel, Frank, 
 whether it's Tammany Democracy or County Democracy 
 or the old Republican frauds themselves, and you know 
 that as well as I do." 
 
 " Get the party in first, Fanny, and the loaves and fishes'll 
 take care of themselves. The only thing now is to make 
 the good cause win. No party in the saddle ever forgets 
 who placed it there. It can't afford to. If the college 
 chaps want to fool themselves with thinking the con- 
 trary, we must simply humor 'em. So long as presidents, 
 governors and mayors have the appointing power, you 
 might as well expect them to stand on their heads as not 
 to bestow office on the workers who get them into their 
 own." 
 
404 A'i^^^ YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 '* Then you don't believe in Civil Service Reform after 
 all," cried Fanny exultingly. " I thought it was queer if 
 the leopard had changed his spots." 
 
 " Yes, but I do believe in it," insisted Calvert ; " it's an 
 excellent thing. I'd like to see it adopted myself, or, at 
 least, tried. But it's a British system, and the head of 
 the British government doesn't change every four years 
 as our does. Whether it is practicable in American poli- 
 tics is the question." 
 
 " I knew you'd back down," persisted Fanny gaily. 
 " And why," reproachfully, '" should you pretend before 
 me, Frank? You're not parading on a platform or in 
 your editorial columns; so there's no call for goody- 
 goody." 
 
 " Pshaw, Fanny, you don't understand me. Women 
 never do understand men. They always think we've got 
 to be one thing or the other." 
 
 " Like ourselves," laughed Fanny, tossing ofif a bumper. 
 " We despise half-way people on the principle of 
 
 ' There was a little girl 
 Who had a little curl 
 Right in the middle of her fore-head. 
 When she was good 
 She was very, very good, 
 But when she was bad she was hor-rid ; ' 
 
 — for ' girl ' read ' female sex.' Did you know Longfellow 
 wrote that ? " 
 
 " No, nor you either." 
 
 " He did." 
 
 " Don't believe you ! " 
 
 " Tell you he did ! A friend of mine got it from his 
 children's governess in Cambridge years ago." 
 
CHAPTER XLIX. 
 
 vox POPULI. 
 
 By the next twenty-four hours after the above confi- 
 dential chat, the streets and hotels of Syracuse, to abridge 
 from a graphic reporter, " were full, and the brightly-lit 
 bar-rooms were swarming with delegates from every part 
 of the State, three-quarters of whom had already drunk 
 deep to their respective candidates. Everybody was argu- 
 ing and shouting for somebody. The noise was deafening, 
 the heat intense and the turmoil something terrible. 
 Mayor Cleveland's five hundred townsmen spread them- 
 selves judiciously, and began their work by enthusiastic 
 laudations and by inviting delegates to go over to his 
 hotel and see ' the next governor.' 
 
 "If the delegates accepted, in a crowded room in a 
 second-class hotel they found a very stout personage with 
 a phenomenally thick neck and shrewd eyes, who greeted 
 them affably and said he was ' in the hands of his friends,' 
 whereupon some of the * friends ' stepped forward and 
 asked the visitors * what they would take ' from a big 
 tub full of bottles in ice which stood conveniently in the 
 background. 
 
 " * But who is he?' inquired a delegate of one of the 
 Buffalo politicians. 
 
 " * Grove Clev2land. He's Mayor of Buffalo, and he's 
 one of us. Wait till you size him up,' was the answer. 
 
 " ' But if he gets the nomination the people will want 
 
4o6 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 V 
 
 to know something about him. They have never heard 
 of him, and they will be put to it to find out who he is.' 
 
 " * Dot is de reason he is going to vin,' exploded an old 
 Buffalo German who overheard the objection ; ' 'cause 
 nopody knows him, and dose vat don't know him likes 
 him. Dot is de trouble mit you Ny York bolidicians. 
 Everypody knows 'em, and de more dey knows 'em de 
 more dey don't likes 'em.' 
 
 '' Besides the persuasive work of personal interviews, 
 the town was flooded with Cleveland circulars, beginning 
 with his parentage, birth and religious training (his father 
 being a Presbyterian minister), and ending with his in- 
 valuable services to Buffalo." 
 
 On the following day Mayor Cleveland's denunciatory 
 veto of the unpopular street-cleaning contract was read 
 in the convention as proof positive of his wisdom, virtue 
 and courage, and it gained him an enthusiastic nomina- 
 tion. 
 
 It was not suggested nor pretended that the city of 
 Buffalo had been any better behaved, better taught or 
 better kept during this momentous mayoralty than before 
 it — that it was likely to become more moral, more intel- 
 ligent or more beautiful as its result. But since the set- 
 ting in of Irish rule in this country, the virtues which, as 
 a matter of course, are expected by the least exacting em- 
 ployer of the lowest and poorest employ^ — first, that he 
 will not steal, and second, that he will do the work he is 
 paid to do — have quite generally become the only ones 
 demanded by Americans for the highest offices within 
 their gift. Because through the previous twelvemonth a 
 certain Stephen Grover Cleveland had not stolen the Buf- 
 falo public money nor let any one else steal it, and also 
 had faithfully performed the official routine that he was 
 
A^A^F YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 407 
 
 paid to perform, and that he had taken oath to perform, 
 on the night of this Syracuse convention he laid his head 
 on his pillow the candidate for the governorship of five 
 millions of his fellow beings; five millions, or about two 
 millions more than those ruled during their epoch-making 
 lives by the astute Elizabeth or by the sublime Wash- 
 ington. 
 
 The ensuing campaign was perfectly managed by Cal- 
 vert and a few politicians of Albany and New York City 
 as rich, able and resolute as himself. The people of the 
 State knew still less about their Democratic candidate for 
 governor than the year before the people of Buffalo had 
 known about their Democratic candidate for mayor — that 
 is, they knew absolutely nothing. But enthusiastic para- 
 graphs and editorials, which penetrated everywhere, 
 quickly informed them, and illuminated the New Man 
 just enough to make him amid the obscurity that still 
 surrounded him almost romantically interesting. What 
 might 'not be as a whole the personality of which this 
 little was so fine ! 
 
 What made the campaign particularly brilliant and 
 memorable, however, was the coming over to the Demo- 
 cratic candidate of the so-called " Independent Repub- 
 licans." 
 
CHAPTER L. 
 
 AN ANGLO-IRISH LEADER. 
 
 Beyond a doubt the most priceless gift of the Emerald 
 Isle to this benighted land upon which it has bestowed 
 so many, was the agnostic editor of the Nation and the 
 Evening Post, E. L. Godkin, Esq., of New York, nor 
 could anything more '* Irish " be imagined than this jour- 
 nalist's ambition to " boss " the American political " job " 
 as compared with his Celtic unfitness to do it. 
 
 When, at the close of the Civil War, this youthful 
 aspirant began the Godkinization of the United States, 
 he was an abolitionist and a woman suffragist. He was 
 probably the former because the high-class Britisli pro- 
 gressives were such, and the latter because he fancied 
 the high-class American progressives were as eager for 
 the political equality of white women as they had been 
 for that of black men. He found, however, that the lit- 
 erary and social elite from whom on this side he sought 
 recognition, drew the line at woman suffrage, and so, 
 after the Civil War, he exchanged the rash concessions 
 of his green and salad days for the cynical de haut en 
 has toward the weaker sex which is the native air of all 
 born subjects of that peculiarly mediaeval personality — 
 the late Victoria Regina Dei Gratia. 
 
 Mr. Godkin's missionary yearning over his adopted 
 country growing with his years, however, and strengthen- 
 ing with his strength, he eventually hit upon a congenial 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 409 
 
 field for its exercise in preaching Civil Service Reform. 
 This, no less than Abolition, Free Trade and Contempt 
 for Women, " is English, you know," and therefore must 
 be an all-sufficient way of political salvation for any other 
 form of government. 
 
 For some years the United States didn't mind Mr. God- 
 kin much, but at last, because the book-notices of the 
 Nation were confident and clever, its foreign resum^ in- 
 teresting and its art and music criticisms more or less 
 able, his readers, who, as has been said, were chiefly uni- 
 versity men, grew first to respect his political views, next 
 to agree with them, and then to echo and rally round the 
 Celtic regenerator. His assumption of editing an " in- 
 dependent " organ pleased their self-respect — since every- 
 body likes to believe himself " independent " — and when to 
 the conducting of the weekly Nation he joined that of 
 the old and valued New York Evening Post, he found 
 himself on the adored pinnacle of the immigrant foreign 
 mind, that, namely, of being a factor in American na- 
 tional politics. He was the creator and practically the 
 chief of the influential " Independent Republicans," and 
 really, though of course not avowedly, in his train were 
 such powerful journals as the Boston Herald and the 
 Springfield Republican, together with the favorite and 
 widely-read New York weeklies, Puck, Life and Harper s, 
 the authoritative New York Times, and even the at that 
 time all-assuming and supercilious New York Herald 
 itself. 
 
 Without a ray of James Russell Lowell's genius — his 
 life and sparkle — Mr. Godkin adopted toward those he 
 deprecated the inexcusable Lowell method — namely, sar- 
 casm and ridicule. The Nation and the Post were al- 
 ways immensely " amused " with the tergiversations of 
 
4IO yVi5:^F YORK: A SY^I PHONIC STUDY, 
 
 American politics, both national and local, especially 
 local. Their readers were constantly told how " funny " 
 or " absurd " or " curious " or " droll " were the political 
 antics and intrigues and plunderings of the " Pat " or 
 " Mike " or " Jimmy " or " Dick " of the day and their 
 fellows — what a huge " joke " all round was their clutch 
 upon and their administration of the New York City 
 government. And the rushing New Yorkers laughed 
 with the sardonic editor, took his vitriolic jesting literally, 
 thought it all was " funny," very funny indeed, and went 
 on " attending to business," while their foreign journalists, 
 foreign bosses, foreign saloon-keepers and foreign eccle- 
 siastics attended to their metropolis. 
 
 More than any single influence Mr. Godkin created 
 the " Anglo-maniac " and made educated Americans 
 ashamed of their own country and eager to reverse its 
 traditions, even the holiest. As time went on, his British 
 contempt for women deepened into hatred of the Amer- 
 ican reverence for them, and by the centennial year of 
 the Republic he was so sure of a complaisant audience 
 that he ventured upon the following, the italics being my 
 own: 
 
 We do not know when the family was founded and the rearing 
 of children became the first social duty of parents ; but, whenever it 
 was, personal purity became the first and most imperative duty of 
 the mother, because, without that, whatever the father's conduct 
 might be, the family would be impossible. The family rests wholly 
 on the husband's certainty about the paternity of his wife's children, 
 and his certainty can only come from confidence in his wife's char- 
 acter. Consequently, all that portion of the moral code of all civil- 
 ized communities which touches on the relation of the sexes, places 
 feminine purity highest in the scale of feminine virtues and points in 
 the clearest manner to the preservation of the family as its first if not 
 its only object. ... 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 411 
 
 Society, however, has found it by no means an easy task to im- 
 pose this burden on women. All attempts to regulate the relations of 
 the sexes have been the very hardest part of the tight of civilization 
 against savager)', and of course, it has been only partially successful. 
 But to succeed in it at all. in never so slight a degree, the sternest 
 and most far-reaching discipline has been and is absolutely neces- 
 sary. . . . Society has reasonably enough said that the struggle 
 was too severe to allow of exemption, and that ivhatever restraints 
 were found necessary for the fortification of Jemale character should 
 be submitted to by all, whatever their aims in life ; that in or out of 
 matrimony there should be but one code of morals for women, and 
 that in this code the virtue most useful to society should stand first, 
 Accordingly, even when it is admitted that the preservation 
 of the family is the object of female purity, it has never been per- 
 missible even for the women who lay aside all intention to enter into 
 matrimony to escape the common law. * 
 
 And the foreigner who could thus insult and besmirch 
 the mothers and wives of all Christendom, including his 
 own, American gentlemen and clergymen accepted as a 
 moral and political guide and standard for nearly a gener- 
 ation, and by the years 1882 and 1884 were ready to 
 mass themselves together to exalt to their highest political 
 honors a candidate after such a heart and conscience as 
 his! 
 
 Mr. Godkin's newspapers, and with them the aforesaid 
 powerful " Independent " press, had long been echoing 
 the Democratic Party in its demands for Local Self-Gov- 
 ernment for the conquered South and for Specie Resump- 
 tion and Reduced Tariff for the whole country; but these 
 Independents had not brought themselves to enlist under 
 the Democratic banner. For many and difficult years the 
 noble Democratic leaders — Thurman, Beck, Bayard, Hen- 
 dricks, Randall, Hew^itt, Seymour and others — had stood 
 
 * The Nation, May 30, 1876. 
 
412 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 in the Democratic van and against overwhelming Re- 
 publican odds had fought the- battles of the foundation 
 articles of Jeffersonian faith. Amid the fierce after-re- 
 sentment and revenges of the Civil War these pillars of 
 Americanism had boldly upheld for their conquered 
 brothers the " inalienable " rights of the Federal Consti- 
 tution, nor had any shadow ever fallen upon the bright 
 personal record with which they had fulfilled alike every 
 private and every public trust. 
 
 Yet, when the Independent Republicans came round 
 finally to the logic of Americanism, and, acting together 
 with the great Democrats, thereby forced the then Repub- 
 lican administration to withdraw the United States troops 
 from the conquered section — still they would not frankly 
 join hands with the Democrats; still did these wise and 
 incorruptible and patriotic men hear only the same 
 old Independent Evening-P ost-N ation accusation, *' The 
 Democratic Party cannot be trusted" 
 
 Suddenly an obscure provincial, an ordinary lawyer, a 
 local Democratic " worker " from his very youth, one 
 who was socially and morally unknown either to the 
 cultivated or to the religious elements of his own city, 
 whose evening haunts were bar-rooms and clubs, who 
 as Sheriff had hanged fellow-creatures with his own hand, 
 thereby proving that he could not possibly be a gentle- 
 man,* and concerning whom baleful personal things were 
 now being whispered through their own newspaper offices 
 — this man the Independent editors joyfully concluded 
 they could — this man they enthusiastically did " trust." 
 
 The secret of this holding off of the Independents from 
 the Democratic Party was the fear that they could not 
 
 * It was usual to hire a workingman as substitute in the awful oflSce, 
 and pay him $25. 
 
NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 413 
 
 impose upon it the special Godkin fetich of Civil Service 
 Reform. They doubted whether the experienced states- 
 men whom they had not led but had been obliged to fol- 
 low on the burning post-bellum questions would accept 
 their chosen shibboleth — and this though they owed the 
 first Civil Service Reform bill that was passed in Con- 
 gress to the pronounced Democrat, Pendleton, of Ohio. 
 A '' new man," however, who would be under great poli- 
 tical obligations to themselves, must certainly be their 
 creature. 
 
 It was their chance, and they seized it. With glowing 
 ardor they arrayed themselves under the Cleveland ban- 
 ner. The Republican candidate, a high-minded, honor- 
 able, conspicuous citizen, to his amazement and agony 
 found himself assailed and denounced not only by the 
 Democrats, but also by the Independents of his own 
 party, as the tool and exponent of the administration 
 " machine " at Washington. The voting Americans, as 
 Americans always do (but as voting Catholics never do), 
 listened to the newspapers and believed. Republicans by 
 tens of thousands either abstained from voting or voted 
 for the Democratic Mayor of Buffalo, and on the election 
 day Calvert's candidate was swept into the governor's 
 chair by a majority lour or five times larger than had 
 ever seated a New York governor before — by the enor- 
 mous, the unprecedented majority of 192,000 votes ! 
 
 On the first act of Calvert's vast and daring drama 
 Time's solemn curtain descended amid a whirlwind of 
 delirious joy. 
 
CHAPTER LI. 
 
 A TRAITOR TO JEFFERSON. 
 
 But for the bold and brilliant party-strategist " trouble 
 was hard at hand " — the deepest. Though the star of 
 Calvert's political power and prestige was rising with 
 accelerating rapidity, his darling, his Clara, lapsed into 
 semi-invalidism, then sank, the prostrate victim of one 
 of those insidious maladies whose cause an autopsy can 
 make clear enough, but whose baffling symptoms medicine 
 ^s powerless to control or even affect. In spite of every- 
 thing that money and tenderness could do, in piteous 
 weakness Clara Calvert faded away before her father's 
 despairing eyes, and was buried a few months before the 
 opening of the presidential campaign of 1884. 
 
 In the privacy of his own heart Calvert's grief was 
 wild, his home-desolation a horror. Why, oh, why, could 
 he never, never be at rest? Why would happiness ever 
 flit before him, and just when he thought he had attained 
 it mock him again from a still remoter height? 
 
 But his agony did not divert him from the main pur- 
 pose of his life. Rather was it doubly necessary to him, 
 that its external claims might distract him from his inner 
 tortures. On the Democratic State Committee he con- 
 tinued to be deeply engaged with his influential coadjutors 
 from Albany and New York in organizing their party 
 forces for the struggle which they were all hoping would 
 at last seat in the presidential chair at once a Democrat 
 and a New Yorker. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY 
 
 415 
 
 As Governor, Calvert's political discovery pursued an 
 industrious, painstaking, earth-bound way, sustained by 
 the uninterrupted plaudits of the Democrats of the State, 
 and nearly so of its Independent Republicans. In Albany, 
 as in Buffalo, he was " in the hands of his friends " (i. e., 
 managers), and their experience, together with his own 
 acuteness, kept him well in touch on the one side with 
 the politicians to whom he must owe a presidential nomi- 
 nation, and on the other with the fearful power of the 
 press to which he must owe a presidential election. He 
 signed bills which it was " good politics " to approve, and 
 vetoed bills which it was " good politics " to reject, and 
 for the remaining claims of his lofty station — for those 
 which society, art, culture and philanthropy do and must 
 make upon the conspicuous and the powerful in the 
 land — Governor Cleveland, though a member of a liberal 
 profession, either had no consciousness or manifested 
 none. In fact, he specially plumed himself upon his con- 
 ception of high administrative office as a fuifction of 
 " business " merely, and to be carried out on ** business " 
 principles. 
 
 I think the real business man, Frank Calvert himself, 
 travelled, experienced, aesthetic — strong and influential 
 also through his own gifts and efforts rather than through 
 the political wire-pulling of his fellow-partisans — would 
 probably have made a more brilliant figurehead for the 
 great State than did either the provincial Cleveland or 
 his provincial successor Hill. 
 
 For Calvert's enterprising spirit might not have over- 
 looked, as they did, the glory and power to be reaped 
 through holding a World's Fair in New York on the 
 hundredth anniversary of the inauguration in that city 
 in 1789 of the First President of the United States. 
 
4i6 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 It was the most august oi the great cycle of American 
 centennials, and a governor's message from Mr. Cleve- 
 land betvi^een 1882 and 1885 would doubtless have roused 
 the Metropolis to the measure of this centennial oppor- 
 tunity for the Union, for the State and for Herself. Mr. 
 Depew said once that, judging from the experiences of 
 Paris, a World's Fair in New York would cause the ex- 
 penditure there of three hundred millions of dollars, and 
 leave deposited in her banks fully sixty millions. 
 
 So little does it " pay," even from a " mere money " 
 point of view, to put small men into great positions, that 
 in 1890 the master minds of Chicago stepped in and car- 
 ried off the prize of the Columbian Exposition from under 
 the very grasp of unready Gotham, and thus by one mighty 
 effort lifted their city into a metropolitan rival such as 
 otherwise she might not have become for a generation. 
 
 The Empire State of New York had, therefore, nothing 
 for which to thank Mr. Cleveland and make him Presi- 
 dent above the many forgotten governors who had pre- 
 ceded him. 
 
 But the empire city of New York, besides his unfor- 
 tunate World's Fair negation, actually owed him a fear- 
 ful affirmative grudge for the annihilation of American- 
 ism itself within her boundaries. 
 
 For the political genius of England and America, the 
 soul, the essence of " self " government, of " free " insti- 
 tutions, always has been and only can be embodied in a 
 legislative council chosen by the voters of that council's 
 jurisdiction, and in an executive who is practically the 
 servant of the council so chosen. 
 
 Yet the one memorable act of Mr. Cleveland while 
 governor was his signing of the " Mayoralty Responsi- 
 bility " bill, which took away from the City Council of 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 417 
 
 New York the power of appointing and confirming to city 
 office, and vested it exclusively in the mayor. 
 
 " Jefferson " was always and ever in Mr. Cleveland's 
 mouth, but of course nothing could be more retrogade, 
 less American, above all, less according to Jeiferson, than 
 this return to European paternalism. It was simply to 
 create a one-man power and hand the metropolis bodily 
 over to it. 
 
 On account of the notorious corruption and incom- 
 petency of the Irish aldermen who had so long been a 
 majority in the City Council of New York, this vital blow 
 at representative institutions was clamored for by the 
 same " Independent " press whose support had given Mr. 
 Cleveland his tremendous majority for governor. 
 
 It was carried through the Legislature by Theodore 
 Roosevelt and other young and shallow politicians of both 
 parties on the specious plea, '' Give the Mayor the appoint- 
 ing power to all the Departments, and then hold him 
 responsible." 
 
 But to whom will he be responsible? 
 
 Clearly and only to the men who put him in, as the 
 experience of New York signally proves. 
 
 In 1888, the New York Tammany machine elected as 
 mayor one of the machine leaders, in 1890 re-elected him 
 and in 1892 again put in one of her own " grand sachems." 
 In reward, these men confided every Department of their 
 great charge without exception — Police, Streets, Parks, 
 Public Works, Judiciary, Docks, Schools, Charities and 
 Corrections — to " Tammany," which is New York for 
 " Catholic " Irish. The cost of running the then city of 
 New York was as great as the cost of governing half the 
 States of the Union. The taxes to meet this cost were 
 practically paid by non-Catholics. For many years they 
 
4i: 
 
 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 were practically pocketed by Catholic-Irish officials, 
 judges, contractors, school-teachers, school trustees, 
 policemen and city employes, sprinkled with a few Ger- 
 mans and Jews in the upper ranks and a like proportion 
 of Italians in the lower, and not even the equivalent of 
 tolerable government, of tolerable teaching or of tolerable 
 street-cleaning was rendered for them. The best authori- 
 ties estimated that five millions of the city money were 
 annually stolen outright, and five millions more looted-in 
 by every form of bribery and blackmail. 
 
 If this Irish Tammany had been in the numerical ma- 
 jority in the city of New York — since the basic principle 
 of the American polity is the " rule of the majority " — the 
 remaining New Yorkers, suffer how they might, would 
 have had no political right to complain. But the Irish 
 have always been a minority in the American metropolis — 
 the utmost voting strength of themselves and thtir allies 
 not exceeding two-fifths. Thus, in the face of the prin- 
 ciple which is the life-breath of American political exist- 
 ence, the greatest American city was usually ruled by a 
 minority, and, worse still, by such a minority as had never 
 before been a governing power since the world began. 
 
 In other times or races, when we find a population 
 ruled by a minority, it is a minority which embodies the 
 organized wealth, or intelligence, or energy of the popu- 
 lation — or of all three. 
 
 The old city of New York for the greater part of 
 twenty-five years allowed itself to be mastered and plun- 
 dered by a largely foreign-born minority which was the 
 ignorance, the self-indulgence and the poverty of the 
 population welded into a political solidarity by its com- 
 mon membership in the Catholic Church ; and the head of 
 this solidarity was naturally the Irishman ; first, because 
 
NKIV Y'ORR': A SYMPHONIC STUDY 
 
 419 
 
 intellectually he is of all men the most abject devotee of 
 that church; second, because he was first on the ground; 
 third, because he spoke the language; fourth, because 
 " something for nothing " is the motive force of his race ; 
 fifth, because he loves to intrigue for office, and to boss, 
 bully and plunder in office better than to work. 
 
 In the Forum, in 1890, the Hon. Andrew D. White de- 
 clared that one must travel as far as Constantinople to 
 find a city so misgoverned as New York. Six months be- 
 fore the anti-Tammany uprising of 1894, the indignant 
 leader of that uprising, Dr. Parkhurst, declared before 
 the Baptist Social Union : 
 
 There is no city administration on the face of the globe so 
 thoroughly rotten as ours. I have not been able to strike one health- 
 ful influence in it. There is nothing there to regenerate. Our only 
 hope is its utter displacement. Tammany Ilali is the historic im- 
 personation of the Evil One. I wish I had time to enter into the 
 details of the crookedness and the knavery which are the stock in 
 trade of our city administration. An instance was brought to my 
 knowledge this afternoon by a woman who had been suffering under 
 the malicious, foul and damnable abuse she has experienced from the 
 hand of a man prominently associated with the District Attorney's 
 office. We are ground under the nasty tyranny of these men. It is 
 the most humiliating posture conceivable. We are ground under the 
 feet of these men, who, if the actions of their lives were known, 
 would not be tolerated in respectable houses. 
 
 Yet, in spite of the fact that the paternal mayoralty bills 
 of 1884 had made Tammany more absolute when in office 
 than before, and far more difficult to dislodge, the tri- 
 umphant New York reformers of 1894-95, in order to 
 enable the reform mayor, William L. Strong, to oust as 
 many Tammany appointees as possible, got the Legisla- 
 ture to endow him with the power not only to appoint the 
 
420 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 heads of all the city departments, but also to remove 
 them. 
 
 Thus the Mayor of New York, within the limits of his 
 great jurisdiction, became an absolute political despot — a 
 little czar, and when in 1896 the existing city was con- 
 solidated with many surrounding cities and villages into 
 the Greater New York, the charter which was drawn up 
 and adopted for the hugely expanded municipality, still 
 clung to and provided for this towering supremacy of the 
 Mayor. The dreadful four years of corruption and de- 
 cadence under the Tammany tool who first ruled the 
 Greater City was but the of-course result of this baleful 
 anti-American principle ; yet a number of our other Irish- 
 ridden cities have since followed this czar-mayor lead of 
 the sea-board metropolis simply because, as a college presi- 
 dent once said from the platform,* " What New York 
 does, all do." 
 
 The result of this movement, should it become a na- 
 tional one, it is not difficult to foresee. But as I have 
 said before, the inspiration of Thomas Jefferson, and 
 that with which he so potently moulded the American 
 Republic, was that the " best government is that which 
 governs least." How then can we reconcile it with intel- 
 ligent Jeffersonian statesmanship that in 1884 Governor 
 Cleveland, a professed follower of Jefferson, should have 
 signed a one-man-power mayoralty bill so totally opposed 
 to the life teaching of that great political genius? To 
 me it seems witheringly to dispose of any pretensions of 
 Mr. Cleveland and his supporters to even the A. B. C. of 
 Jefifersonian statesmanship. 
 
 * President Gilman of Johns Hopkins University. 
 
CHAPTER LIL 
 
 A PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION. 
 
 Whatever be the rank in statesmanship to be accorded 
 by history to the " man from Buffalo," as Governor of the 
 State of New York so well did he fulfil the hopes of the 
 party managers and editors who had placed him in power 
 that all the newspapers under their control began giving 
 the rest of the Union pretty clearly to understand that 
 since the next presidency hung on the vote of the State 
 of New York, that great State would neither nominate 
 nor work for any Democrat whatsoever save her own 
 trusted Executive. 
 
 From every corner of the nation the Democratic press 
 protested that a candidate with a national reputation 
 would be more acceptible to the party than this little- 
 known provincial. So far as the national eye could dis- 
 cern, '■ Grover Cleveland " was no better than any other 
 John Doe or Richard Roe who might have served some 
 city as mayor or some State as governor. In fact, the 
 editor of the Louisville Courier, the influential Henry 
 Watterson, even said that "to nominate Mr. Cleveland 
 would be the height of tomfoolery." Nevertheless, the 
 refrain of these protests always was, " H New York must 
 have Cleveland, since we cah*t win without New York, 
 Cleveland we will have to take." 
 
 But by signing the czar-mayoralty bills, aimed directly 
 
42 2 A-J^tr VO/HA': A SyMPHOXIC STUDY. 
 
 at the Irish Tammany aldermen of New York, Governor 
 Cleveland had roused the resentment of Tammany Hall 
 and all its State affiliations; besides which, he was the 
 coming candidate of Tammany's special and deadly ene- 
 mies, the Godkin Civil Service Reformers. For Tam- 
 many Hall to accept and to work for Grover Cleveland 
 as President would be, in the judgment of its leaders, to 
 court political death indeed. 
 
 Consequently, when the Democratic State Convention 
 met to elect and '' instruct " delegates to the Democratic 
 Presidential Convention which was to assemble in Chi- 
 cago the coming July, " Cleveland *' and ** anti-Cleveland " 
 factions at once declared themselves. Both were so strong 
 that neither ventured to force a vote, and the body ad- 
 journed after electing seventy-two delegates to the 
 Chicago Convention, and pledging them to the " unit-rule." 
 That is, they were all to vote for the same man, but who 
 this should be they were to decide when they met again 
 in caucus in Chicago the day before the opening of the 
 presidential convention. 
 
 The Tammany managers, as they afterward admitted, 
 did this because they thought themselves sure of a ma- 
 jority; the Cleveland managers because they were deter- 
 mined to have it. The latter succeeded. For in the in- 
 terim Calvert and his co-workers quietly secured every 
 doubtful mind of the delegation who could be won over. 
 When they all met in Chicago the Cleveland advocates 
 proved to be in the majority, and though the Tammany 
 Tiger " roared his protests," they held him hard and fast 
 under the previously agreed unit-rule. With their dis- 
 gusted boss, John Kelly, and their rebellious orator, 
 Bourke Cockran, the " wearers of the green " were forced 
 to take their seats in the Convention pledged to vote for 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 423 
 
 the man they dreaded (though, as was afterwards proved, 
 quite unnecessarily), "first, last and all the time." 
 
 It was a representative assemblage — that vast Demo- 
 cratic gathering. Most of the great names of the party 
 were among the delegates or in the monster surrounding 
 audience — the wise statesmen, the experienced leaders, 
 the devoted patriots — with hearts aching and yearning 
 over their country, perhaps throbbing — as how should 
 they not? — with unspoken hopes that their own deep love 
 and service for her might be remembered hy her; and 
 elbowing, nay, swamping them, the crowds of mere par- 
 tisans and " workers " — pupils, many of them, of the Sa- 
 loon and the Scarlet Woman, and bent as earnestly upon 
 a personal " high old time " in the great city as upon 
 nominating a man that would " win." 
 
 The spokesmen of the various State delegations pre- 
 sented with all their eloquence the claims of their re- 
 spective candidates. The noblest Roman of them all, the 
 beloved and trusted and famous ex-senator, Allan G. 
 Thurman of Ohio, who, as the New York Times once 
 declared, " for years after the Civil War bore in Congress 
 upon his single shoulder the whole burden " of the broken 
 and discredited Democratic Party, and who far more than 
 any other man had won again the confidence of the nation 
 toward that party, — this large and illustrious spirit was 
 evidently the favorite of the occasion. 
 
 In the shortest, but weightiest, speech of the Conven- 
 tion, Thurman was nominated by a delegate from Cali- 
 fornia as the " lofty and intrepid statesman who for more 
 than twenty years has been the boldest public advocate 
 of Democratic doctrine and Democratic principles," and 
 the storm of enthusiasm which greeted the honored name 
 seemed almost decisive of the candidate. 
 
424 A'i^AF YORK: A SYMPHONJC STUDY 
 
 Bitter lot to his party and to his country that so splen- 
 did a nomination could be made and not be ratified ! But 
 the Cleveland managers, alas, had too thoroughly re- 
 hearsed their " dark horse " — " new man " — role. The 
 spokesman of the New York delegation, an active Buffalo 
 " worker," in presenting Cleveland's name and reciting 
 his services and virtues, begged the Party to give *' the 
 young men " of the country a chance to enroll themselves 
 under this new banner — *' fresh from the pure bosom of 
 the people." 
 
 The clever bit of demagoguery made a palpable hit 
 which the Hon. Bourke Cockran of New York, Tammany 
 representative of that city to Congress, desperately at- 
 tempted to turn against its object. Describing himself 
 as a delegate who. owing to the " unit-rule " of his dele- 
 gation, could speak for his convictions but could not vote 
 for them, he cried on behalf of Thurman : 
 
 I name a man who has never been concerned in a single act which 
 could be termed as savoring of corporate influence — a man whose hairs 
 have grown white in the service of his country — who, as each hair 
 has glistened with age, and as the hoary locks have become more 
 numerous on his brow, has added an additional page to the glorious 
 history of our land — whose spirit breathes out from the statute books 
 of the United States — whose name is a word that will rally to the 
 support of the party all those who desire to see the country adminis- 
 tered by one who has some knowledge of the principles of statecraft. 
 . . . The gentleman who has preceded me said a great many 
 things, some of which were true ; but when he declared that it was 
 necessary for the Democracy to turn their backs upon those who 
 have long and illustrious lives to which to point as an argument for 
 the confidence of the country, and that the unknown and untried 
 political quantities should be selected as the leaders and the guides 
 of this campaign, he said to you what the common sense of this Con- 
 vention ought to condemn , . . 
 
^■£^V YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 425 
 
 It was fatal for Thurman that this deserved and elo- 
 quent tribute came from the Tammany source it did — 
 for though the country as a whole was ignorant then, and 
 is ignorant still, that Tammany Hall of New York em- 
 bodies all that is foreign in birth and inimical in spirit 
 to Ainerican civilization, the whole country was and long 
 had been aware that " Tammany " was synonymous with 
 bossism and corruption, and was to be suspected and 
 dreaded accordingly. A swift Wisconsin politician 
 adroitly seized and played upon this dread in order to 
 neutralize the Cockran eulogy of Thurman. "In Wiscon- 
 sin," he shouted, at the end of a plea for Cleveland, " our 
 young men love Cleveland and respect him for his char- 
 acter, his integrity and his iron will ; but most of all," he 
 rang out, "they love him for the enemies he has made!" 
 (/. e., Tammany Hall.) 
 
 That settled the nomination. Between Thurman, advo- 
 cated by Tammany and Cleveland, hated by Tammany, 
 who could hesitate? At once a tornado arose, swelled, 
 roared throughout the mighty but shallow throng, whirl- 
 ing the Convention from its senses and its base toward 
 the stubborn standard of the men from New York. With 
 the balloting the delegations began going, nay, rushing 
 over to them and shouting one after another in the wild- 
 est excitement their choice to be ''Cleveland!" until the 
 New York candidate had a majority. Instantly came the 
 customary proposition to make the choice unanimous, and 
 with even more than the usual mad and frantic hurrah 
 the then Governor of New York was proclaimed the 
 Democratic Nominee to the Presidency of more than fifty 
 millions of human beings ! 
 
 In the game of politics the bold and resolute editors 
 and wire-pullers of Governor Cleveland's State had scored 
 
426 JVEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 V 
 
 a truly extraordinary inning. Upon another act of Cal- 
 vert's great world-drama Time's solemn curtain fell amid 
 tremendous and thrilling jubilation. 
 
 But what thought the patriots and statesmen about it 
 as they dispersed to their various spheres to try with 
 voice and pen to lift so tremendously above themselves 
 this political new-comer, who had done absolutely noth- 
 ing for the nation and worse than nothing for his State, 
 but who " couldn't steal " ? — yes, " only this and nothing 
 more." In their disappointed and disgusted hearts did 
 they acknowledge themselves what in truth they were — 
 slaves, held by party claims to the chariot-wheels of a 
 machine-made party puppet? 
 
 Compare President Cleveland's sesquipedalian lumber- 
 ings and gropings about ideas that were rarely anything 
 but platitudes, echoes or pretenses, with the gentlemen 
 and statesmen not only of American history but of his 
 own time — with Blaine's magnetic affluence, or Harrison's 
 magic aptness, or Hewitt's lucid charm ; with the Boan- 
 erges blows of a Thurman, the scathing brilliance of an In- 
 galls, or the playful elegance of a Depew — and " O the pity 
 of it, Horatio," that the editors and the politicians can so 
 fatally come between the people and their natural chiefs 
 and can so often bewitch them to exalt a Bottom in a 
 jackass-head when a winged Oberon is standing by ! 
 
 It was not the first time that the noble Thurman had 
 been ousted from his rightful honors by the potency of 
 money over the daily Press. In 1876 he was the foremost 
 Democrat of the land and should have had the Democratic 
 presidential nomination instead of the crafty New York 
 millionaire lawyer who so subtly spread his nets to get 
 it. In 1880 expired Thurman's third term as Senator to 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 427 
 
 Washington from Ohio. Matchless in his own State and 
 with few peers throughout the Union, people supposed he 
 would succeed himself as. a matter of course. But a certain 
 Standard Oil magnate wanted the position, and so the 
 trained and luminous intellect was retired that the pluto- 
 crat might be exalted — the plutocrat, be it observed, never 
 doing anything with the dignity after he got it! 
 
 In spite of this the beacon-light shone on, and in 1884 
 Thurman was still the bright particular star of his great 
 party, and his party loved, trusted and wanted him. But 
 as we have seen, the rich Calvert of Buffalo, with his 
 rich co-adjutors Manning of Albany and Whitney of New 
 York, willed otherwise, and so for the third time his 
 country was made to turn her glorious veteran down. 
 
 As Senator Ingalls expressed it in Congress in 1886: 
 
 The Democratic party was not wanting, when its Convention 
 assembled in Chicago, in many renowned and illustrious characters ; 
 men who had led the forlorn hope of its darkest and most desperate 
 days ; men for whose character and achievements, for whose fame and 
 history not only that organization, but the countr}', had the profound- 
 est admiration and respect. There were Thurman and Bayard and 
 Hendricks and Tilden and McDonald and others perhaps not less 
 worthy and hardly less illustrious, upon whom the mantle of that 
 great distinction might have fallen ; but a man who at the mature 
 age of thirty-five had abandoned an honored profession to become 
 the Sheriff of Erie — a man also without known opinions and destitute 
 of experience or training in public affairs — outstripped them all in 
 the race of ambition ; and when, a little more than a year ago, he 
 entered this chamber as the President of the United States, he en- 
 countered the curious scrutiny of an audience to whom he was a 
 stranger in feature as in fame — a stranger to the leaders of his own 
 party as well as to the representatives of the nations of the earth who 
 had assembled to witness the solemn pageant of his inauguration. 
 
CHAPTER LIII. 
 
 THE MINISTERS AND THE MAN. 
 
 The Democratic Party having put forward for the 
 presidency - a nominee so purely local that he couldn't 
 possibly have made either national mistakes or national 
 enemies, its next task was to elect him; and in view of 
 the grave charges against the Republican candidate in the 
 direction in which the " honest " Cleveland was strongest, 
 it looked at first as if the latter were destined to a practi- 
 cal walk-over. 
 
 To this end his party managers made a specially lucky 
 hit in their campaign watch word, " Public Office is a 
 Public Trust," as supposedly original with the Demo- 
 cratic candidate. A campaign pamphlet with Mr. Cleve- 
 land's picture on the cover, and beneath it the famous 
 words in quotation marks with his name affixed, was 
 compiled by an ex-newspaperman who was now the Gov- 
 ernor's private secretary, was distributed broad-cast over 
 the country, and made the tens of thousands of converts 
 to the virtuous " new man " that it was designed to make. 
 
 With a line of disinterested patriots so long and so 
 illustrious as that of the United States, surely it is a 
 serious thing that a bait capable of deceiving only the 
 ignorant should have been so generally swallowed by a 
 nation which incessantly boasts of its " education " and 
 " intelligence." 
 
 Nevertheless, for so many years has the Catholic 
 
A EH' YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 429 
 
 Church, in its determination that the American people 
 shall know nothing definite about the Protestant Refor- 
 mation, stealthily devoted its influence to reducing the 
 public-school study of history to the memorizing of a dry 
 skeleton of merely "American" events and dates, that most 
 Americans are in fact unconscious of the patriots and 
 patriotic records not only of the human race in general, 
 but largely so of their own youthful branch of that race. 
 Steeped in this almost mediaeval ignorance, the discon- 
 tented voter of 1884 seized with enthusiasm upon the 
 "Public office is a public trust, Grover Cleveland," as in 
 very truth a " new, novel and original " political revela- 
 tion, and staunch Republicans in hosts were sadly resolv- 
 ing to desert " the trickster and jobber, Blaine," and to 
 unite with the Democrats and Independents in securing 
 for this almost solitary honest citizen since the world 
 began an overwhelming national triumph. 
 
 But besides the Godkin purists in politics there were 
 some purists in morals — some " evangelical " ministers 
 of the gospel settled over churches in Buffalo, who most 
 unexpectedly chose to take the view that their " public 
 office " was also " a public trust " for the " benefit of the 
 people." 
 
 The faithlessness of these Christian preachers in keep- 
 ing silent as to one side of the character of Grover Cleve- 
 land when he was up for the suffrages of their city as 
 Mayor and of their State as Governor had now come 
 bitterly home to them. 
 
 For every man has two sides — the side he turns toward 
 his own sex and that which he turns toward the other. 
 In Grover Cleveland the first of these, even if common- 
 place, was without reproach, and for the second — these 
 good pastors were Republicans in a Democratic State, 
 
430 NEW YORK; 4 SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 and so long as it was a mere question of a Democratic 
 mayor or governor more or less, their attitude had been 
 the usual shirking, touch-me-not clergyman's attitude to- 
 ward the great cancer of the world — '' My soul, come thou 
 not into his secret." 
 
 Now, however, that this two-sided personage was nomi- 
 nated for President of the entire country, and with every 
 prospect of winning, they were dismayed. 
 
 Leaving out the State of New York, the Union was 
 equally divided between Blaine and Cleveland. New York 
 ther».held the balance of power. She was the real battle- 
 ground of the campaign. As she voted would go the 
 election. The only hope of carrying her for the Repub- 
 lican Party in which these pastors so fervently believed 
 was to keep the old strength of the party intact. But 
 the independent Republicans had already voted for Cleve- 
 land as governor, and they were about to hold a con- 
 vention of their own in New York City to second his 
 nomination for president. Should they do this, and thus 
 divide their party, it was equivalent to a Democratic 
 election. 
 
 What if the Buffalo ministers should appeal con- 
 fidentially to these good, virtuous men against the Demo- 
 cratic candidate? 
 
 It was the only chance for the Republican Party, and 
 the ministers decided to try it. 
 
 As we have seen, Mr. Godkin of the Nation and Even- 
 ing Post was the chief leader for Civil Service reform; 
 but a very strong and potent second was George William 
 Curtis, author, orator and editor also of Harper's Weekly, 
 and this gifted and accomplished man was perhaps our 
 most popular exponent of everything purest, sweetest, 
 highest and best in American citizenship. 
 
NEW YORK; A SYMPHOXIC STUDY. 431 
 
 Very few were aware that late in the sixties an anony- 
 mous " gentleman " of this Republic had written a book 
 in defence of polygamy, and that in a preface over his 
 own name George William Curtis had commended his 
 facts and his arguments to the " thoughtful reader " as 
 worthy of serious attention. 
 
 It is of course impossible that a moralist who could 
 take such a position, even speculatively, should be uncom- 
 promising on the Old Testament basic truth of the rela- 
 tion of the sexes — " they twain shall be one flesh " — and 
 its New Testament corollary of "chastity" equally for man 
 and woman. 
 
 Moreover, Mr. Curtis, like Mr. Godkin and their fol- 
 lowing generally, belonged to the sea-board aristocracy 
 as developed by the agnostic and materialistic Harvard 
 University of President Eliot, by the English club-system 
 of the Atlantic cities, and by the incessant travel and resi- 
 dence abroad of city-bred Americans. 
 
 The able professor of Political and Social Sciences at 
 Yale * has said in his little work, " What Social Classes 
 Owe Each Other " — " There are two chief things with 
 which government has to deal. They are the property 
 of men and the honor of women. These it has to de- 
 fend against crime. . Aristocrats have always had 
 their class vices and their class virtues. They have al- 
 ways been, as a class, chargeable with licentiousness and 
 gambling. They have, however, as a class despised lying 
 and stealing. . . . The middle class has always ab- 
 horred gambling and licentiousness, but it has not always 
 been strict about truth and pecuniary fidelity." 
 
 If these generalizations be true, the Buffalo ministers 
 
 * Professor William Graham Sumner, 
 
432 A'ii^ YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 V 
 
 should have expected precisely what they got as the result 
 of their appeal to the Independent Convention. 
 
 Before that body met, a committee from the Clerical 
 Association of Buffalo laid before George William Curtis 
 and his associates a private " memorial," in which they 
 besought the Independents, as fellow-Republicans by 
 whom they had a right to be heard, and on the basis not 
 of rumors but of positive statements by reliable witnesses, 
 " not to second the presidential candidacy of a man whose 
 moral record throughout his manhood life was peculiarly 
 indefensible." 
 
 Poor lambs! Little did they realize the exigencies of 
 ** reform " politics in the Godkin sense. 
 
 The ministerial remonstrance could not have been re- 
 ceived with more contempt by the cultivated, " high- 
 toned " and high-placed Independents had it been the sen- 
 timental outbreak of so many boarding-school misses. In 
 the choice English parlance of these thorough men of the 
 world, it was so much " rot." Civil Service Reform was 
 the only thing that could save the nation, and Grover 
 Cleveland was the only man who could be trusted to 
 bring it in. The Republican candidate stood charged 
 when in Congress with bribery and corruption. True 
 that the charge could not be proved, but neither could it 
 be disproved. A comic paper had caricatured Blaine as 
 a " tatooed man," and what a " spoilsman " was he sure 
 to prove if elected President ! Only the brave and " hon- 
 est " Cleveland would stand impregnably on and for Civil 
 Service Reform. 
 
 And so the Independents, with the preux chevalier of 
 New York, George William Curtis, at their head, not 
 ignorantly, but knowingly, went before their country with 
 an ex-hangman and a free liver as their standard-bearer, 
 
NEiV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 433 
 
 and on that standard the effrontery of these words : " The 
 paramount issue of the Presidential Election of this year 
 IS moral rather than political." 
 
 All over the land intelligent Democrats, little guessing 
 at the true inwardness of the nomination, were surprised 
 at this exaltation of the unknown over the known, of the 
 untried over the tried. One such asked a very active and 
 cultivated Independent and Civil Service Reformer: 
 " Why, on your own Civil Service principles, did you 
 take a comparative nobody like Cleveland instead of one 
 of the trained and acknowledged statesmen of the Demo- 
 cratic Party? You protest against even the humblest 
 office being granted except to the thoroughly qualified, 
 and you nominate to the greatest and most difficult a man 
 almost absurdly without claim to such a position." 
 
 " Oh," was the answer, " we Independents have already 
 voted for Cleveland for Governor, you know, and it will 
 be easier to vote for him as President than for any of 
 the Democrats we have opposed so long." 
 
 George Sand once said that '* pretenders are always 
 lavish in promises," and when in his letter accepting the 
 presidential nomination the New Man declared he " recog- 
 nized a most serious danger in the eligibility of the Presi- 
 dent for re-election," and even suggested " an amendment 
 to the Constitution disqualifying the President from re- 
 election," the Independents were more sure than ever 
 that they had got hold of a paragon such as American 
 history had never yet boasted. The " rascals " were in- 
 deed going to be turned out and all their long-entrenched 
 " corruption " exposed ! 
 
CHAPTER LIV. ' 
 
 A PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN. 
 
 The confidential protest of the Buffalo ministers to the 
 Independent Convention had ignominously failed, and 
 their " sacred profession " would probably have been as 
 conspicuous by its absence from the ensuing presidential 
 campaign as from all those that had gone before it, had 
 not several inland newspapers, two of them Democratic, 
 none of them Republican, seen fit to publish the social 
 record of the Democratic candidate as a choice bit of 
 journalistic " sensation." 
 
 If his Independent champions had now been politic 
 enough to drop their personal crusade against the Repub- 
 lican candidate, the great easy-going public would doubt- 
 less have concluded that the accusations on both sides 
 were but the usual campaign slanders, which if read by 
 loyal partisans one moment were very properly forgotten 
 the next. 
 
 In fact, we Americans have such absolute confidence 
 in the universal lying of our newspapers that we each 
 generally believe about every character mentioned in them 
 simply what we each want to believe. 
 
 But as the Independent " moral " javelin continued 
 daily to be hurled at Mr. Blaine, though the evidence 
 against him was purely inferential, the devotees of that 
 brilliant and beloved leader naturally felt that since per- 
 sonal character and not political principle was being made 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 435 
 
 the pivot of the struggle by the Godkin following, it had 
 become necessary to show that the Democratic pot had 
 better not call the Republican kettle " black." 
 
 An old and standard Republican daily, the Boston 
 Journal, sent a reporter to interview one of the Buffalo 
 protesting ministers regarding the now broadcast Cleve- 
 land scandal, and the reverend gentleman gave his name 
 to the paper as evidence of his own belief in its truth. 
 
 A revolting charge from a pastor in good standing of 
 the great Baptist communion fell like a bombshell into 
 the moral and political arena. 
 
 The South, being solidly Democratic, knew nothing 
 about it, for their papers took care not to mention it. But 
 the North from the Atlantic to the Pacific was in a fer- 
 ment. Clergymen and religious journals of all denomi- 
 nations except the Episcopal, came out denouncing the 
 candidacy of Mr. Cleveland as an affront to Christianity 
 and to the moral standards of society. Among them were 
 such high scholars and leaders as Dr. Howard Crosby 
 and Dr. Richard Storrs of the Presbyterian, Dr. Edward 
 Everett Hale of the Unitarian and Bishop Spalding of 
 the Catholic Church. Thousands felt that Cleveland's 
 name should be withdrawn. Tens of thousands hoped 
 that a public uprising would nominate a third candidate. 
 
 The great anti-Tammany preacher, Henry Ward 
 Beecher, one of the chief creators of the Republican 
 Party, but who, the negroes being freed, had come round 
 to the Democratic doctrines of Local Self-Government 
 and Unfettered Commerce, and who was now also an 
 ardent Civil Service reformer — this splendid but unstable 
 genius, when he first heard the deplorable tale, voiced a 
 wide popular sentiment when he declared to an inter- 
 viewer : " The President of the United States not only 
 
436 NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 administers the affairs of the government, but he also be- 
 comes a model for the young men of the land, and we 
 must see to it that he is every way clean. He might not 
 give any the less a clean administration, but the precedent 
 of such a man in the presidential chair would not alone 
 be harmful but positively demoralizing," 
 
 The Irish leader of the Independents, however, did not 
 share the misgivings of his reverend and very eminent 
 follower. In Mr. Godkin's view, fatal indeed would it 
 be to that Civil Service Reform which alone could save 
 the country to relinquish the man who, if elected, was 
 certain to make it the special feature of his administra- 
 tion. True, Mr. Cleveland's moral record could not be 
 denied, but it could easily be made to appear of no real 
 importance. It was only necessary, first, to repudiate 
 the accepted standards, and, second, to maintain that no 
 one had ever observed them. 
 
 No matter that the founders of Christian civilization, 
 speaking, so they claimed, by divine command, and men- 
 tioning no other moral virtue, had demanded Chastity as 
 the especial and indispensable mark of the Christian — of 
 the anti-pagan ! * 
 
 No matter that for a hundred years American women 
 had fondly and proudly trusted in Washington as having 
 walked in this "law of God" with a "perfect heart" as 
 he had in every other. 
 
 Let the Sex-Foundation of Christendom sink out of 
 sight — let Patriotism, which is love of country as identi- 
 fied with reverence for its Fathers, collapse into a sneer, 
 if only a supposed Civil Service Reformer, no matter how 
 obscure, ignorant and reprehensible, could thereby be 
 elected to the Presidency of the United States ! 
 
 • AcU XT. 27, 28, 29. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 437 
 
 For the Evening Post, in an editorial at once the most 
 memorable and the most infamous ever printed on this 
 continent, having been called on by the Boston Journal 
 to keep its promise " not to support a libertine and a 
 profligate as a candidate for the Presidency of the United 
 States " — instead of keeping its promise, first admitted the 
 charges, and then declared itself — 
 
 . . . shocked and amazed to hear that there are scores of 
 clergymen all over the country advising people who care for morality 
 to choose the trickster and jobber because he is chaste, before the 
 honest man, faithful to every public trust, because he has been weak 
 before a passion of which everybody knows the force. 
 
 . . . Cleveland's virtues are those which bind human society 
 together, and in which states are founded and maintained. There 
 has been no great benefactor of the human race who has not been 
 truthful, faithful to his trusts, disinterested, self-denying. There are 
 very few who have been chaste. Blaine's vices are those by which 
 governments are overthrown, states brought to naught, and the 
 haunts of commerce turned into dens of thieves. The standard by 
 which some ministers now propose to exclude Cleveland from high 
 place would have prevented Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamil- 
 ton, not to go any farther, from taking any prominent part in the 
 foundation of the American republic. It would have excluded from 
 office in England nearly every great statesman and reformer of the 
 last hundred years, except, perhaps, Romilly, Wilberforce, and Glad- 
 stone. It would have visited nearly every prominent politician in the 
 Republican party since i860 with popular odium. It would, had the 
 Democrats chosen to apply it, have defeated one Republican can- 
 didate for the Presidency by charges worse by far than Cleveland's, 
 in that they added the sin of broken vows to the sin of incontinence. 
 
 We are not defending incontinence. Chastity is a great virtue, 
 but every man knows in his heart that it is not the greatest of vir- 
 tues, that offences against it have often been consistent with the pos- 
 session of all the qualities which ennoble human nature and dignify 
 human life and make human progress possible. It ought to be 
 preached and practised by every man to the utmost of his ability, but 
 
438 NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 no one ought to preach it with any other motive than the spread of 
 virtue, and least of all for the purpose, as in the present case, of 
 making some of the basest of vices — the vices which sap every thing 
 that is valuable in society and politics — seem respectable. Preaching 
 of this sort, at this time, is cant, and cant in its most loathsome form, 
 for it fills every household in the land with filthy suggestions and 
 insinuations, turns the press into a common sewer, and converts 
 scores of editors into hypocrites, who must blush in secret over their 
 own ridiculous sermons and their simulated righteousness. ... * 
 
 This Satanic slander against English and American 
 statesmen had no sooner crossed the water than it was 
 sharply denied on behalf of the former by the London 
 World. \ 
 
 An American journal, in defending Mr. Cleveland from the 
 accusations which have been brought against him, asserts that if 
 such ' indiscretions ' are to exclude from high ofiice, ' every great 
 English statesman or reformer of the last hundred years would have 
 been tabooed, except Romilly, Wilberforce, and Gladstone.' The 
 Americans must be singularly ignorant of the private lives of the Ejig- 
 Hsh statesmen and reformers of the last century if they can believe 
 such arrant nonsense. There never was even a whisper against Mr. 
 Pitt, Lord Grenville, Mr. Percival, Lord Liverpool, Lord Eldon, Mr. 
 Canning, Lord Grey, Lord Althorp. Sir Robert Peel, Lord Russell, 
 Lord Aberdeen, or Lord Beaconsfield, who are our most prominent 
 names during the last hundred years. The truth is that the ' great 
 English statesmen or reformers ' who were sometimes brought into 
 hot water by their private affairs can be counted on one's fingers. 
 
 But in this country, so far as I know, neither the press 
 nor the pulpit challenged Mr. Godkin for proofs against 
 the lofty dead, nor did Congress exile the foreign Ther- 
 sites who had profaned the most sacred human name 
 that Americans know. 
 
 * Evening Post, August 5, 1884, and Nation, August 9, 1884. 
 t August 27, 1884. 
 
NEW YORK A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 439 
 
 In fact, for so many years the newspaper jokers, taught 
 originally by Mark Twain, had made " George Washing- 
 ton and his little hatchet " the butt of their perennial 
 laughter, that the halo of almost adoring reverence which 
 originally surrounded the Father of his Country had 
 largely darkened into doubt and indifference. 
 
 And on the other hand, so congenial is it to Americans 
 to be bullied, that the incessant scoff and sneer of the 
 Nation and the Evening Post against American politics 
 and politicians and their hardly concealed contempt for 
 American institutions, had given their Irish editor a 
 very high place indeed among our simple selves. The 
 naive American mind was slow to believe that any 
 man would be so hard upon others who was not unassail- 
 ably right himself. If Mr. Godkin — who from a self- 
 assumed pinnacle of virtue had been hectoring us for 
 years — said so, it must be so! The accusation was awful, 
 but from such an authority its very awfulness guaranteed 
 its truth. Educated as in this Republic we all are to re- 
 spect and spare each other's feelings and prejudices, what 
 decent American could suppose that a responsible journal- 
 ist who was accepted as peculiarly responsible because 
 he posed and was accepted as " a gentleman and a 
 scholar," could, even though a foreigner, stoop to the 
 century-old malice of an irresponsible one, and fling a 
 second time a wretched newspaper scribbler's long-for- 
 gotten mud at a WASHINGTON in order thereby to 
 whiten a Graver Cleveland? 
 
 If a lie be only tremendous enough, it is sure to be 
 more or less believed and to spread. 
 
 Various journals of large circulation copied Mr. God- 
 kin's shocking defence of his candidate, and so gave it 
 an immense circulation — notably the then powerful New 
 
440 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 V 
 
 York Herald, which not only quoted it approvingly, but 
 added jauntily: 
 
 Adam was the first man who ever got into a scrape about a 
 woman, and there have been a great many since. There have been 
 some warm-blooded fellows ready to maintain that a woman is the 
 only thing in the world worth getting into a scrape about. . 
 Governor Cleveland evidently followed in the footsteps of father 
 Adam. . . . 
 
 A comment on the part of the proprietor of the Herald 
 so appropriate to the man that one is reminded of the 
 scene from Goethe's great drama wherein Mephistopheles 
 coolly remarks to the remorseful Faust regarding the 
 destruction of Margaret: 
 
 " She is not the first." 
 
 "Hound! Execrable monster! Not the first? Woe! Woe! 
 By no human soul is it conceivable that more than one human 
 creature has ever sunk into a depth of wretchedness like this, or that 
 the first, in her deadly writhing agony, should not have atoned in the 
 sight of all-pardoning Heaven for the guilt of all the rest ! — The 
 misery of this one harrows up my soul. Thou art grinning calmly 
 over the fate of thousands ! " 
 
 So grinned Messrs. Godkin and Bennett and their fol- 
 lowing of " gentlemen " over the fate of the reputable 
 saleswoman ruined through the Sheriff of Erie, deserted 
 when she became a mother, and her hapless child placed in 
 a foundling asylum. One half of this equation of human 
 sin was in the depth of human scorn where she belonged. 
 The other these reformers would endeavor to raise to the 
 utmost dizzying height of American prestige, and thus 
 forever break from the neck of American manhood that 
 long too-heavy yoke of honor, tr^nderness and chivalry 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 441 
 
 toward womanhood which in their view the schoolboy 
 sentimentaHsm of previous generations had so foolishly 
 forged. Why keep up the pretence of what as a sex they 
 did not believe and no longer wished to practise? The 
 ridiculous prudery of American morals and manners had 
 got to go. Now was as good a chance as any to give it 
 a final kick, and thus declare candidly to American 
 womanhood that American, like European manhood, 
 would not submit to the moral standard which the out- 
 worn Creed of a discredited old Book had tried to bind 
 equally on both sexes, but which was practically only 
 necessary for one ! 
 
CHAPTER LV. 
 
 MORE GODKIN ETHICS. 
 
 No one, therefore, saying Mr. Godkin nay in his un- 
 speakable attack, and thus being encouraged in his crusade 
 against the waning ideals of the nation, the foreign edi- 
 tor finished the campaign in the spirit in which he had 
 begun it by taking care that from time to time should 
 continue to appear in his editorial and other columns 
 flings against Washington, against womanhood and 
 against the Christian ministry just often enough to keep 
 up and deepen the impression he had made by his first 
 onslaught, such as : 
 
 Some sins, like some sorrows, are sacred. 
 
 It is the duty of the voters to put as good men as they can get 
 in this place (the presidency) as in all others — a perfect man, if pos- 
 sible ; but government has to go on whether perfect !ren can be got 
 for office or not. Bad men are often put into all the offices, from the 
 presidency down, for precisely the same reason that bad men * are 
 admitted into the United States — viz., that it cannot be helped. 
 
 There never has been a man absolutely unexceptionable on 
 moral or other grounds in the presidential chair ; there probably 
 never will be. 
 
 By refusing to vote because there is no candidate in the field 
 who comes up to his standard, the voter simply brings morality into 
 contempt with the plain people, who know that there never was and 
 
 * LiH Mr. Godkin, for example ? 
 
NEli' YOIiA': A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 443 
 
 probably never will be, a ruler on whom the eye of the lover of human 
 perfection could rest with absolute content. 
 
 O Father of our Country — who served that country 
 without pay and impoverished and discomforted yourself 
 and your devoted wife in long homesick years of war and 
 administration away from Mount Vernon ; whose entire 
 cost to your countrymen for facing the serried might of 
 England with the fitful resources of the colonies was but 
 ten thousand dollars a year;* who as military leader 
 resigned your honors and slipped back among the un- 
 named masses only to be forced forward in yet larger 
 grandeur as a political chief, because the blessings you 
 had won for the land were in danger of being lost in the 
 weaker hands which were administering them — is it pos- 
 sible that in 1884 there was not throughout that boundless 
 land one " lover of human perfection " whose '* eye could 
 rest " on you with such " absolute content " that he could 
 take up the gauntlet flung down by a pagan alien and 
 challenge him for proofs, if not at the peril of his life, 
 of that which is dearer than life — his character? 
 
 So far as I am aware, there was not on"e; and so the 
 Evening Post and Nation editor went on to defend still 
 more venomously the Democratic candidate by attacking 
 those who chiefly teach and who chiefly accept " chas- 
 tity " as their rule of life. 
 
 The Republican managers knew well, too, that this kind of lies 
 would rouse a certain class of ministers who could never be induced 
 to wade throug^h the details of ofiFicial dishonesty, and who could not 
 understand them if they tried . . . and a class of women who 
 seldom think of a man in any capacity but that of a male animal. 
 
 * Even this included the cost of the secret service required by the 
 general-in-chief. 
 
444 ^^/^ YORK: A S,YM PHONIC STUDY 
 
 To these last, scholars, soldiers, heroes, statesmen, are simply or 
 chiefly males, and their valor, wisdom and learning count for very 
 little against their career as males. 
 
 Needless to record that in 1884 thp crushed worm of 
 all the ages did not turn against the masculine scorn so 
 vitriolically poured out any more tha7 it had against the 
 similar chivalrous misrepresentations of the preceding six 
 millenniums. On the contrary, since women generally pin 
 their political faith upon the newspapers patronized by 
 the men of their families, even the most intelligent women- 
 readers of the Evening Post merely remarked, "If Wash- 
 ington was just like other men, I don't see how we can 
 blame Cleveland," and then went enthusiastically on to 
 side with their college-bred husbands and sons in favor 
 of Cleveland's election. Nay, two white-haired matrons 
 — Mrs. Henry Ward Beecher and Mrs. Delia Parnell 
 (mother of Charles Stewart Parnell of adulterous mem- 
 ory) — actually went on the platform to advocate the 
 national elevation of this — according to the Catholic 
 Bishop Spalding — " habitual enemy of woman's virtue." 
 
 A friend of the writer, a devoted Episcopalian, wrote 
 with an agonized heart to the two leading "priests" (as 
 they now call themselves) of her denomination in New 
 York city, both of them Republicans, imploring them 
 from the height of their pastoral prestige with the rich 
 and the powerful to do or say something against this ter- 
 rible candidacy. In reply, one of them " hoped that the 
 Church Congress which was to meet in October would 
 utter an appropriate protest " — which of course it did not 
 do nor even thought of doing; the other "feared that 
 we needed humiliation for our sins, and perhaps were 
 being permitted to go on until through retribution and 
 suffering we should be brought back to better things ! " 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 445 
 
 Various influential divines — notably the Right Reverend 
 Bishop Huntington of the Episcopal, Dr. Edward Mc- 
 Glynn of the Catholic and Dr. James Freeman Clarke of 
 the Unitarian Church — appealed to the American people 
 to do evil that good might come, and to elect to their 
 presidency the man too honest to misappropriate a dollar 
 but not too honest to worse than beggar a woman ! Es- 
 pecially did the celebrated Dr. Beecher publicly abandon 
 the moral ground he had at first assumed. In the pres- 
 ence of a great audience he raised hand and eyes solemnly 
 to heaven and said : " Should Mr. Cleveland be elected, 
 I am willing to stake my reputation and my influence and 
 everything dear to me in life that he will make one of 
 the best presidents we have ever had ! " Dr. Beecher 
 even out-Godkined Godkin by reproaching the young men 
 of Brooklyn because when they went dissipating during 
 the campaign they called it " spending the evening with 
 Cleveland," and he sent a shudder through the com- 
 munity by declaring that so little right had men to reject 
 Cleveland for president on account of his moral record, 
 that " if all the husbands in the State of New York who 
 were faithless to their wives should vote for Cleveland 
 he would carry the State by two hundred thousand ma- 
 jority." 
 
 In Buffalo, the old home of the Democratic candidate, 
 the battle raged with intensity from the top to the bottom 
 of society, and if the Buffalo pastors who had secretly 
 approached the Independents had now manfully banded 
 together and in the name of the Church of Christ had 
 openly appealed to the American People, the moral sur- 
 render of the nation would have been averted. But they 
 were so dismayed by the blasts of denunciation let loose 
 on them from the Democratic and Independent press for 
 
446 A'EW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 "clerical meddling in politics, etc.," that they simply 
 cowered and shrank back into silence — all but the daunt- 
 less Baptist, Pastor Ball, who came out a second time in 
 the Boston Journal, and not only reiterated the original 
 accusation, but added worse to it. 
 
CHAPTER LVI. 
 
 OCTOBER, 1884. 
 
 The scandal only excepted, everything favored Cleve- 
 land and crippled Blaine on their special battle-ground of 
 the great State of New York. The abandoned Benjamin 
 E. Butler, in order to keep himself before the public, 
 undertook to run as that contradiction in terms, a " Pro- 
 tection Democratic" Presidential Candidate of a *' Peo- 
 ple's Party " gotten up by himself for this campaign, and 
 in his own interest he came to the pivotal State and ad- 
 dressed great rural audiences throughout its borders. His 
 New York organ was the Sun, the most brilliantly edited 
 sheet in the country, but which, on the celebrated principle 
 of the devil always choosing the cleverest instrument to 
 do his work, was not only, while pretending philosophical 
 independence, the special organ of Tammany Hall and 
 the Catholic Church, but also consistently lent itself to 
 any other evil thing so it were evil enough. This pagan 
 Daily advocated with its hundred thousand purchasers 
 and their families the presidential claims of the man 
 whom years before it had characterized as follows: 
 
 The life and career of Ben Butler fitly illustrates Danton's 
 maxim — "Audacity, more audacity — always audacity." . . . 
 Hated by some, condemned by many, and distrusted by all, this bad 
 man with his crooked ways, foul methods, distorted mind and wicked 
 
448 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 V 
 
 heart, glories in these moral deformities, flaunts them constantly 
 before the public eye and traffics in them as political merchandise. 
 The notoriety which decency shrinks from he seeks as so much 
 capital added to the stock of ill-fame that had already made his name 
 odiously conspicuous in and out of Congress. Rejoicing in his own 
 shame and coining money from open venality, discarding any 
 pretense of principle, bound by no ties of honor, scoffing at religion, 
 making politics a trade, despotic when clothed with authority, 
 cowardly by nature, mercenary from habit and destitute of one en- 
 nobling quality or manly attribute to lift him up above these charac- 
 teristics, he is to-day the leading candidate for the highest honor in 
 enlightened and moral Massachusetts. To this complexion have we 
 come at last. * 
 
 The result of Butler's personal canvas of the State of 
 New York, together with the backing of the Sun, was 
 seventeen thousand votes, of which so many must have 
 been protection votes taken from Blaine, that after the 
 campaign the Sun found it " very funny " that though 
 editorially it had opposed Cleveland with the most wither- 
 ing contempt, yet that by influencing votes away from 
 Blaine to Butler, itself, the Sun, had really elected him ! 
 
 Besides the Butler defections, the Prohibitionists ran 
 their own candidate, St. John, and this took twenty-five 
 thousand more Republican votes that otherwise would 
 have gone to Blaine. 
 
 In deadly co-operation with these was the revenge of 
 Blaine's bitter enemy, the powerful New York Republican, 
 ex-Senator Conkling. 
 
 The " Man from Maine," in spite of the counteracting 
 " rallies " and mass-meetings on behalf of his three rivals, 
 had made a personal progress through the great Empire 
 State, which from beginning to end was a wild and extra- 
 ordinary ovation. Such was the enthusiasm for Blaine 
 
 The Sun, June 26, 1873. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY 
 
 449 
 
 and the disaffection toward Cleveland, that Blaine's get- 
 ting the needed New York majority seemed certain. But 
 in the last fortnight of the campaign, Conkling's hundred 
 thousand admirers throughout the State — " Stalwarts," 
 as they were called — received each a circular urging that 
 the objections of the Independent Republicans to the 
 regular Republican candidate were unanswerable, and that 
 " he ought not to be trusted with the presidency." As a 
 body the Stalwarts said and did nothing against their 
 party candidate, but at the ballot box a fatal number 
 struck silently home by either scratching Blaine's name 
 or by voting for Cleveland. 
 
 In spite of this internecine war among the Republicans 
 the Democratic managers were vividly alarmed, for Blaine 
 was personally popular among the Irish, and the Tam- 
 many managers, still resentful on account of the nomina- 
 tion of Cleveland, were obstinately declining to command 
 the Irish to the party banner. A powerful New York 
 Democrat whom Calvert and his friends had ignored, 
 afterwards said : " I came home from Europe in the fall 
 and found the Democratic Party beaten, and I had to take 
 off my coat and go to work." Presumably at the sugges- 
 tion of this gentleman, the vice-presidential candidate 
 himself, the able and popular Governor Hendricks, was 
 sent for to come his thousand miles from Indiana to in- 
 terview and placate the Tamamny boss, John Kelly. The 
 conference lasted for hours, and it was deep in the night 
 when the chief at last said : " Governor Hendricks, for 
 your sake we will do it. You may go home with my 
 assurance that Tammany Hall will do its duty." * 
 
 That the Republican Party should triumph for the 
 seventh consecutive time was not written. Even " the 
 * Scribners Magazine, 1895. 
 
45 o NEW YORK: A S.YMPIIONIC STUDY. 
 
 Stars in their courses fought against Sisera." The trem- 
 bling hearts of the Blaine managers were all but permit- 
 ting themselves to feel assured when, the very last week 
 before the election, the spokesman of a delegation of 
 Protestant ministers congratulated Mr. Blaine upon being 
 the opposition candidate " to the party of the three Rs — 
 Rum, Romanism and Rebellion." 
 
 The ready parliamentarian seemed not to hear the un- 
 lucky remark, but the opposition press pounced upon it 
 with ecstasy, trumpeted it and dwelt upon it in the hope 
 of bristling up the Irish Catholics who held the balance 
 of power; for as the Irish voted so would go that " Em- 
 pire " State which this time was also the " Umpire " 
 State of the Union. 
 
 So far from being opposed to Catholics, Blaine's own 
 mother was one; his daughter married one and became 
 one, and it is probable that his own inner sympathy was 
 more or less with this grandiose and picturesque, but 
 utterly un-American legacy of pagan imperial Rome to 
 the Christendom which succeeded Rome. But of the 
 Irish mind the first and foundation principle is, "Not a 
 breath against the Church." Cards were swiftly printed 
 and widely distributed by the Catholic priests which quoted 
 the Protestant speech about the " three Rs," and urged 
 Catholics to vote against the candidate in whose honor it 
 had been uttered — so that if the " magnetic Blaine " fan- 
 cied he held fast the Irish heart he was soon most drearily 
 to be undeceived. 
 
 The November Tuesday dawned that was so big with 
 fate, and the same evening the managers of the two 
 great parties knew for fact what beforehand they had 
 counted on — namely, that leaving out New York, the 
 Union was equally divided. 
 
NEIV YORK': A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 451 
 
 And New York — the pivotal State? 
 
 Ah, Governor Cleveland's enormous majority of 1882 
 was so nearly or altogether wiped out that the Republi- 
 cans were loudly claiming the great Democratic Common- 
 wealth ; nay, such was the moral reaction against Mr. E. 
 L. Godkin's " honest " candidate that he was defeated in 
 the city of Albany v/here he was Governor, and he was 
 also defeated in his ow^n county of Erie, in his own city 
 of Buffalo, in his own ward of that city and in his own 
 election district of his own ward ! 
 
 Very late on the election night Fanny Howe's city offi- 
 cial friend, the *' County " Democrat, dropped into Fanny's 
 flat. 
 
 She listened to his news of the returns with blanching 
 cheek. " If Cleveland is defeated," she cried. " it will 
 kill Frank Calvert ! Do you really mean that his hundred 
 and ninety-two thousand surplus of only two years age 
 is gone — really and truly gone ? " 
 
 " That's about the size of it," was the gloomy answer. 
 
 " But," insisted Fanny, " it can't be that the Republicans 
 have the true majority — that they've actually out-votec 
 this great Democratic city ! " 
 
 " Damn it, they claim too much of this ' great Demo- 
 cratic city.' They've too many city votes along with their 
 country ones." 
 
 " But are you going to admit it?" 
 
 " Of course we're going to demand a recount of certain 
 districts." 
 
 " Of course you are ! " retorted Fanny. " I can't see 
 what w'e Democrats are running the city government for 
 if our candidate for the presidency itself has got to be 
 voted down under our very noses ! Don't we bring in 
 aldermen and assemblymen whenever we choose, and the 
 
452 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 V 
 
 Other side can't help itself, because, as I've heard you 
 boast more than once, the Democrats have got the police 
 and the ballot-clerks and all the rest of it? How many 
 majority do we want?" 
 
 " What a fool's question," growled the County Demo- 
 crat. " A thousand would do the business, Madam 
 Fanny, or a hundred, or even one vote would do — pro- 
 vided it was honest." 
 
 " * Honest,' " sneered Fanny. " Ha ! ha ! I like that. 
 How * honest ' were the Republicans when they defrauded 
 Tilden, the rightful president, of his election ? The boot's 
 on the other leg now. They owe us a president, any- 
 how ! " 
 
 " By hell, they do ! " cried the County Democrat, " and 
 they shall pay him, too ! " And Fanny soon after got 
 out her chafing dish, and with hot venison in currant 
 jelly and a cold bottle of champagne, speedily had him in 
 better humor. 
 
, CHAPTER LVII. 
 
 COUNTED IN. 
 
 Among the Democratic " workers " in the moral jungle 
 of the " east side " lurked a youthful leader who had 
 graduated into manhood from the dens and dives of the 
 Bowery — a typical and finished specimen of the young 
 Irish " tough " as evolved under the sinister combination 
 of the Catholic Parochial School and The American Ward 
 Election System. 
 
 Chief even then of a " Whyo " gang as vile and wicked 
 as himself, he has since loomed into high place and power 
 in Tammany Hall, and in the Reports of the City Reform 
 Club has been catalogued equally for every crime known 
 to politics as for every vice known to morals. His special 
 field of operations was the Eighth Assembly District — 
 famed as " de bloody Ate " — for from this and the ad- 
 joining districts were elected or defeated candidates for 
 the State Legislature, for the City Council and for the 
 City Judgeships according to orders from headquarters — 
 yes, even to casting more votes, when necessary, than 
 there were registered citizens on the polling lists ! 
 
 But to secure the co-operation of this young Irish- 
 American patriot and his friends, funds were needed, and 
 the New York Democratic campaign treasury was empty. 
 Until a large sum could be obtained from another State, 
 therefore, and placed where it would " do the most good," 
 the New York City returns were held back for an " offi- 
 
454 ^ElV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 cial " recount in the " doubtful " districts — the country 
 elsewhere, meantime, being kept in a maddening suspense 
 which in several localities almost rose to mob violence. 
 
 At last, after three or four days of agony, it was an- 
 nounced that the revised New York returns gave to the 
 Democratic candidate — and chieHy fronf the Eighth As- 
 sembly District — eleven hundred and forty nine votes 
 over Blaine — hardly more than a thousand votes in the 
 total of more than ten millions which had been cast; yet 
 these thousand fraudulent votes in a foreign (and pre- 
 sumably Catholic) city district .availed to lift to the head- 
 ship of the great Protestant nation which is one of the 
 four great sovereignties of the globe, instead of the peo- 
 ple's darling — the forbidding official ; instead of the 
 " plumed knight " — the ex-sheriff and hangman ; instead 
 of the ornament of Congress — the plodding provincial at- 
 torney; instead of the brilliant and beneficent thinker and 
 leader in great world-issues — the political poll-parrot who 
 ever cried " Party," but to save his life could never clearly 
 define what his party stood for; instead of the family and 
 the social idol — the bar-room smoker, the intimate of 
 " fast " men, the " habitual enemy of woman." 
 
 " When I think of Grover Cleveland as the President 
 of the United States," said, after the election, a well- 
 known Buffalo lawyer to his wife; "a man whom for 
 years I've seen standing on the corners at six o'clock 
 ogling shop-girls — I think I must be in a dream." 
 
 Yes, the adored Blaine was indeed " counted out " of 
 the mighty office ! For the similar unprincipled slaughter 
 of the able Democrat Tilden in 1876 on behalf of the 
 insignificant Republican Hayes, the party of Jefferson 
 had taken its deep and dreadful revenge. 
 
 Blaine knew it at the time, and years afterward the 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 455 
 
 impeccable Evening Post calmly admitted it in its editorial 
 columns ! The truth was, the stake was too tremendous, 
 and the New York editors and capitalists playing for it 
 were too rich or too ambitious, or both, to brook its loss. 
 
 The late Ward McAllister recorded in the New York 
 World that one of the ablest men in Wall Street once 
 declared to him, " Why, my dear fellow, such is the power 
 of wealth in this country that I assure you if I willed to 
 the contrary you could not reach your home this night 
 in safety. Money is not only, king in Wall Street and 
 in Congress, but in society. There is no such thing as 
 equality among men. The great financial minds and capi- 
 talists rule this city — that is, they exercise all the power 
 they care to assume, and they direct the Legislature of 
 the State for their own protection." 
 
 The nomination and election of Grover Cleveland was 
 a case in point of the rule in this country of the " great 
 financial minds and capitalists," who besides its mines and 
 manufactures and transportation interests own or con- 
 trol its newspapers. It was the combined work of the 
 rich editors and of the rich men who buy the .editors ! 
 
 And so for the third time descended Time's solemn 
 curtain upon Frank Calvert's momentous world-drama — 
 descended amid joy and acclaim far wider and wilder and 
 more delirious than before — but mingled now with the 
 party cheers and shouts from one end of the land to the 
 other was the mortal groan that rose, were the burning 
 tears that fell over all that this victory included and im- 
 plied ;over the thrusting aside from the helm of State of the 
 great Republican Party — over the defeat of its passionately- 
 loved leader — and, far worse than all to the women-watch- 
 ers on the battlements, over the triumph of masculine 
 scorn for their sex with its inevitable forcing of woman- 
 
456 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 hood down to a lower plane of honor, reverence and con- 
 sideration in the national future — while far, far above 
 them all tolled from the dread Belfry of Eternity the 
 " knell — knell — knell ." of the doomed party of Jefferson ! 
 
 For when Grover Cleveland took office in 1885 there 
 were yet great Jeffersonian Democrats and a great Jeffer- 
 sonian Party. 
 
 When he left it in 1897 those leaders and that party 
 had vanished forever ! 
 
CHAPTER LVIII. 
 
 THE APEX. 
 
 Calvert's giant labor was over. The supreme effort 
 of his long years of strenuous activity was crowned with 
 success. The Democratic Party was again ascendant in 
 the nation, with the State of New York in the van of 
 the movement and himself in the van of the State of 
 New York. The national position toward which he had 
 worked so long* was now securely within his grasp. 
 
 I say " securely " because the powerful politicians in 
 the east of the State who with this Buffalo magnate had 
 so splendidly generalled the great result, were rewarded 
 with high place by the President they had made, and why 
 should he not have proven equally grateful to his still 
 earlier friend and backer, especially since, like Manning 
 of Albany and Whitney of New York, Calvert was rich? 
 
 For one of the paradoxical features of the Cleveland 
 cult was the way its object always talked for the " peo- 
 ple," the " working-man " and the " wage-earners " and 
 invariably acted with and for the capitalists. He had 
 his reward. Not only did he twice enjoy the presidency, 
 but from an average lawyer with average earnings he 
 rose into a capitalist himself, and this in twelve short 
 years, eight of which were spent in an expensive office 
 upon a salary. 
 
 Calvert then felt no inward misgiving as to the public 
 honors that awaited him. But what are public honors, 
 
458 NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUD I 
 
 even if a man attain them, without some one with whom 
 they can be openly shared, especially if, like Calvert, he 
 have previously possessed both wife and child and the 
 warm surrounding circle these generally bring with them ? 
 
 I once heard a woman triumphantly exclaim, " Men 
 may have everything else in the world without good 
 women, but they can't have a home or legitimate children 
 without them ! " Or, as a New York broker wrote on 
 the eve of his suicide a few years ago, " To a man of 
 birth, education and refinement, three things are essential 
 to happiness — health, wealth and domestic relations. Any 
 of these lacking, life is not worth having." The first two 
 Calvert possessed, but in his wide, luxurious dwelling 
 was no cherished and pervading feminine presence. It 
 was intolerable. He must marry again.' Yes, even at 
 fifty-eight he would try for home life once more. 
 Throughout the keenest preoccupation of the campaign 
 the resolve had been present with him. Largely through 
 himself, so he believed, the country was about to take a 
 new departure. He waited to be sure of it to take a new 
 departure himself. 
 
 Among his dead Clara's intimate friends was a slender, 
 animated young lady who had been constantly with her, 
 and not without many deep-hid thoughts concerning 
 Clara's rich, handsome and influential father — gray-haired 
 and twice her age though he was and divorced " for 
 cause," as everybody knew. In earlier girlhood she had 
 broken off an engagement because, after calm study of 
 the character and prospects of her betrothed, she had 
 decided that he was unlikely to become as rich in this 
 world's goods as he was in hopes of them. She regarded 
 Clara Calvert, with her delightful home, her freedom, her 
 royal command of money and of her father's devotion, as 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 459 
 
 the most enviable of human beings. That romantic crea- 
 ture was sure to marry some day, and then might she, 
 Bertha Macdonald, perhaps succeed as the mistress of 
 Clara's ideal realm ? Such was her questioning of Fate 
 even before Clara's death, and after it the master of that 
 realm became the object of her all-absorbing and by no 
 means concealed interest. 
 
 " Love begets love." To her contemporaries of the 
 opposite sex Bertha Macdonald, though attractive, cer- 
 tainly was not compelling, since at twenty-nine she was 
 still unappropriated. Had he been near her own age, 
 Calvert would not have thought twice of the pallid, almost 
 passee maiden, well-placed, well-educated and clever 
 though she undoubtedly was. 
 
 But to an elderly man all feminine charms are easily 
 involved in the priceless, triumphant charm of youth. To 
 be the object of romance — of passion — to a woman young 
 enough to be one's daughter ! Intoxicating, life-renewing 
 idea ! Of course an elderly man rarely is such an object, 
 youth being nearly as necessary for kindling the genuine 
 flame in the feminine breast as it is in the masculine. 
 Yet how can either man or woman interpret sympathy 
 and solicitude otherwise than as one would fain believe? 
 At the time of Clara's death. Bertha's unrestrained grief, 
 part of it genuine and part of it for Calvert's benefit, was 
 the only human feeling that seemed to echo his own, and 
 not many months had passed before it flashed upon the 
 bereaved father that 
 
 " The world was not so bitter. 
 But a smile could make it sweet." 
 
 The campaign had brought them still closer together. 
 Bertha was all enthusiasm for the success of Calvert's, 
 
46o NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 and, therefore, of " her," candidate. She indignantly de- 
 nounced the latter's " traducers " — wouldn't " hear one 
 word of the disgusting clerical scandal " ; " Cleveland 
 was one of the noblest men on earth " ; " if the story 
 were true, it was the woman's fault '' ; '' men couldn't be 
 judged by women's standards," and so on. Like many 
 of her sex before her, in thus siding with Man vs Woman 
 the subtle girl found her reward — for when the deciding- 
 New York count was telegraphed which announced Cleve- 
 land President, the intoxicated Calvert rushed with the 
 despatch to her presence and threw it and himself at her 
 feet. Kneeling beside her, he wound his arms passion- 
 ately round her, and silent, motionless, his face hidden 
 on her shoulder, he almost swooned with the conscious- 
 ness that triumph, home, haven, everything, were his at 
 last. 
 
 About two months before the Cleveland inauguration 
 they were married. The State of New York allows the 
 innocent but not the guilty party to a divorce to marry 
 again, and the president-maker was, therefore, obliged to 
 go out of the State for a legal wedding ceremony. After 
 it the pair made a tour of the great Atlantic cities, and 
 everywhere they were treated by the Democratic leaders 
 with the marked distinction due to a man whose high 
 place in and whose potent influence with the incoming 
 administration were absolutely certain. 
 
 The engagement had not been announced, and Buffalo 
 only learned of the marriage through its evening paper. 
 A handsome, richly-dressed woman of about thirty-seven 
 thus first knew of it, and with the sheet clenched in her 
 hand walked in a life-agony up and down her dainty par- 
 lor ejaculating, "My God! My God! My God!" 
 
 Her mother, a woman old and feeble, came in, and see- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 461 
 
 ing her daughter haggard and distraught, cried: "Matty, 
 what's the matter ? " 
 
 " Mother, he's married." 
 
 "Married? Who's married?" 
 
 " Frank." 
 
 " Child," said the old woman solemnly, " what did I tell 
 you years ago when you began flirting with him and he 
 a married man? Didn't I warn you it would come to no 
 good? " 
 
 " But he swore in the sight of heaven " — beginning to 
 sob and gasp — " that I — that I — and not she — was his 
 true wife. He said she made life a hell for him. You 
 know I've always held it a marriage. Have I ev — have 
 I ever — looked at a man but him ? " 
 
 " But when he was divorced he didn't marry you. 
 That showed whether he held you as his wife ! " 
 
 " Mother — he had to " — sobbing — " to make a home for 
 his daughter. She had to keep house for him un — un — til 
 she should marry. He couldn't turn her out." 
 
 " But she's been dead a year ; and why didn't he marry 
 you then if he wasn't a villain — a lying villain?" 
 
 " Oh — he swore he wanted to — to — to marry me — but 
 how could he when he was so deep in public affairs, wi — 
 with public men coming to see him all the time and stop- 
 ping to any and every meal? I couldn't have sat a — at 
 the head of his table without making a scandal, and if 
 he had married me, not one of the 1 — la — ladies he knew 
 would have called on me. It would have ruined his life. 
 But I did think^oh, I did think " — the tears pouring like 
 rivers — " that for my sake he would live single before the 
 world — let me feel that behind it all — in God's sight, and 
 his, and yours, and my own — I was his wife ! And now — 
 O mother, mother, what is your child now?" — and she 
 
462 A^iS^F YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 dashed herself to the floor and lay face downwards with 
 her poor dishonored head upon her arms. 
 
 " Thank God," at last said the mother, " that you have 
 no child ! " 
 
 Lifting passionately her face to heaven, " Curse God 
 that I have no child ! " she cried. " It might have kept 
 him true." 
 
 ** Never — my poor, deluded girl," sighed the mother ; 
 " never ! never ! " 
 
 Meantime the gray-haired bridegroom was so blissfully 
 happy that it seemed to him he had never known happi- 
 ness before. The bride, while coaxing and playful as 
 women often are with much older men, was yet so warmly 
 affectionate and caressing that even Calvert's yearning 
 heart was fully satisfied. His gifts to her were prodigal 
 — delirious. He simply adored her. 
 
 After a radiant honeymoon the pair came home to Buf- 
 falo, to be at once inundated with cards and invitations 
 from the entire elite of the town. The mission to Eng- 
 land or a seat in the Cabinet was considered by Calvert's 
 friends the inevitable meed of his priceless services to 
 the party and its " new man." At his desk in the morn- 
 ing he was the centre of plans and combinations bolder 
 and more far-reaching than any he had yet attempted, and 
 at his evening fireside he was enchanted to make out with 
 his smiling bride lists for the series of dinners, ending 
 with a grand ball, with which he proposed to fill up the 
 ensuing month. Immediately after, they would go on to 
 Washington to be present in splendor at the presidential 
 inauguration in March and its accompanying festivities 
 — and of course by that time Calvert's national appoint- 
 ment would have been made public. 
 
CHAPTER LIX. 
 
 DUST TO DUST. 
 
 But the February weather was phenomenally bitter, 
 and our confident, vigorous American was heedless, as 
 always heretofore, of exposure. Though the clerks in 
 his office wrote muffled in their outer wraps, Calvert rasWy 
 sat at his desk clothed only as usual. He took cold, be- 
 gan to feel strangely unlike himself and complained laugh- 
 ingly to that effect. Nevertheless, being summoned to 
 Albany on political business, he nerved himself to go 
 and to spend there a day or two. Returning, he found 
 himself so ill that the family doctor was sent for, and 
 the doctor, secretly alarmed, at once put him to bed in 
 charge of a trained nurse. 
 
 By the next twenty-four hours brain fever had declared 
 itself. Another nurse was engaged — other physicians 
 were called in. Everything that money, science, devo- 
 tion and love could do was done, but Frank Calvert was 
 wanted elsewhere in the universe. His earthly course 
 was run, nor could he be longer retained in the sphere 
 of its triumphs. Within three weeks that daring and con- 
 quering spirit, that beloved, inspiring presence, had van- 
 ished forever from the scene — the first of that remarkable 
 list of the promoters of Grover Cleveland to his first presi- 
 dency who were soon to bend either to intimate bereave- 
 ment, to intimate misfortune, or to untimely death itself. 
 
 Calvert's physicians declared that he perished of abso- 
 
464 NEW YORK: A" SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 lute nervous exhaustion caused by over-work. Though 
 this v/as his first real illness, it proved his last, because 
 the strain and anxiety of the presidential campaign added 
 to his always incessant business labors, had drawn too 
 heavily upon his vitality. When attacked by disease there 
 was no resisting force left. From the beginning there 
 was practically no hope. He plunged straight down into 
 his grave — his mission done. 
 
 And what a mission ! The elevation of a '' dark horse," 
 a " new man," an " unknown quantity " to one of the four 
 great head-ships of the globe, in order to advance — not 
 Calvert's party, nor Calvert's country, but merely Cal- 
 vert's State and Calvert's self; for it is impossible that 
 a Democrat who cared for his party should have worked 
 to intrust it to an executive capable of anything so sub- 
 versive of its principles as the signing of the *' czar " 
 mayoralty bill for New York City, or that one who cared 
 for his country should have placed at its very head a life- 
 long local politician rather than a great and tried states- 
 man like Thurman, known, honored and trusted of the 
 whole nation, and who, had the editors and wire-pullers 
 of the State and city of New York so willed, could have 
 been nominated with genuine public instead of with manu- 
 factured convention enthusiasm, and could have been 
 elected by an honest American majority far more easily 
 than was Cleveland by his bought Tammany one ! 
 
 Ah — in the spaces of eternity — when Calvert's dis- 
 embodied spirit met that of the chaste Julia, did she re- 
 proach him bitterly with the dishonor he had brought 
 upon her sex by the elevation of its *' habitual enemy " to 
 highest place and power? 
 
 And in return did he as bitterly retort : " Proud girl, 
 if in one whom you despised as the mere dry-goods clerk 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 465 
 
 you could have foreseen the future president-maker — in- 
 stead of the cold, supercilious wife you proved, would 
 you have felt bound to try and realize the ideal of your 
 lover-husband, and thereby so secure his adoring rever- 
 ence to the womanhood you embodied as to enroll him 
 forever as its knight and champion? What did you, or 
 your mother, or your sisters, or in fact any women I 
 knew on earth — orphan boy that I w^as left — do to make 
 me realize that I owed anything to womanhood except 
 my manhood's homage to its visible charms and fascina- 
 tions? Had you been a better wife I should have been 
 a better man. I worshipped you. You had the making 
 of me. But you disdained the task, and now millions 
 must take the consequences, myself included." 
 
 ****** 
 
 In the community which was his home Calvert's death 
 caused a profound sensation, and his funeral, held in the 
 Episcopal cathedral, was correspondingly impressive. The 
 spacious edifice was unable to contain the crowds that 
 sought admission. From far and near flowers and floral 
 devices poured in, and they made a display such as the 
 " Lake City " had never seen. To the thrilling words of 
 [he Anglican service, high music and the deep-toned organ 
 added their solemn pomp. The officiating clergyman de- 
 livered — so said the newspapers — " an eloquent and feel- 
 ing tribute to the memory of the deceased," and the young 
 men who thronged the aisles and the porches doubtless 
 drew the logical moral from the poetic veil thrown by 
 Religion over this brilliant, triumphant, but most thor- 
 oughly pagan life — " Let me die the death of the un- 
 righteous, and let my last end be like his." 
 
 In the will made by the doomed man in a conscious 
 interval he did not leave unprovided for the Anonyma 
 
466 NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 who for years had been so near to him. It also remem- 
 bered generously a surviving sister, gave modest legacies 
 to his Dexter sisters-in-law and devised a large one to 
 his young prot^g^ and business manager, Carl Hiller. 
 Most ample and tender provision was made for the bride- 
 widow, and all the remainder of the estate was to go to 
 the unborn child, if such there should prove; if not, or 
 if the child should not survive, Mrs. Calvert was to have 
 the whole. 
 
 The youthful wife who was made so ruthlessly a rich 
 and youthful widow was now for months the centre of 
 romantic solicitude from every quarter, and society was 
 one day in agitated suspense indeed while her life hung 
 in the balance on behalf of the son for whom throughout 
 his manhood Calvert had so passionately longed. Only 
 for a few feeble hours, however, did the infant heir linger 
 upon the earth that promised him so much, and then all 
 that was his became his mother's. 
 
 The latter might now have been doubly desolate were 
 it not that her sole co-executor in her husband's large 
 estate was none other than Calvert's young legatee, Carl 
 Hiller. Him the interesting widow was obliged to con- 
 sult incessantly, and the intercourse could have but one 
 finale. True that she was six years older than he, but 
 until a man is over thirty-five a seniority of anywhere 
 from three to ten years only makes a fascinating woman 
 more fascinating — her dependence more endearing. That 
 these two lives should flow — nay, rush — into one was in- 
 evitable. Calvert's latest and fondest love soon felt the 
 adoring confidence in her co-executor that proclaims the 
 advent of the genuine husband-king — and he was as 
 irresistibly drawn to be her life-long protector and shield. 
 In one year and one month after the imposing Calvert 
 
NEW YORK : A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 467 
 
 obsequies, the people who had so expended their sympa- 
 thies over his widow's romantic sorrows were stupefied at 
 receiving the wedding cards of " Mr. and Mrs. Carl Mil- 
 ler"; but as the joyous pair were already on the ocean 
 en route for Paris, society was left to reconcile the real 
 and the ideal as best it might, and to wonder whether 
 the German thrift of the enterprising bridegroom would 
 encourage " Mrs. Hiller " to " entertain " as lavishly as 
 " Mrs. Calvert " would certainly have done under the 
 princely American inspiration of her original liege. 
 
 In Calvert was literally fulfilled the Psalmist's wish 
 against the ungodly — " His heritage let another take." 
 
 Poor Calvert ! Was he then never truly loved — loved 
 for his own sake? Among the women he had felt for 
 and worked for had he met no true wife — not one whose 
 soul was as his own — not one to play the inter-penetrat- 
 ing r6le throughout the gamut of his being that the Scrip- 
 ture seems to say God designed when He said : " Let us 
 make man in our image and after our likeness. . . . 
 So God created man in his own image : in the image of 
 God created He him : male and female created He them " ? 
 
 Surely, since romantic, that is, ideal love, is the uni- 
 versal aspiration — the universal longing — of the human 
 spirit, it must have been universally intended; but how 
 seldom is any one truly loved, how seldom does any one 
 truly love ! 
 
 " Man crouches and blushes, 
 Absconds and conceals, 
 He creepeth and peepeth, 
 He palters and steals. 
 Infirm, melancholy, 
 Jealous glancing around, 
 An oaf, an accomplice 
 He poisons the ground. 
 
468 NEI^f^' YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 Out spake the great Mother 
 
 Beholding his fear, 
 
 At the sound of her accents 
 
 Cold shuddered the sphere : 
 
 ' Who has drugged my boy's cup ? 
 
 Who has mixed my boy's bread ? 
 
 Who, with sadness and madness, 
 
 Has turned my child's head?'" 
 
 Shall we find tlie answer in the portentous saying of 
 the lamented Frederick Robertson, of Brighton, England, 
 whose life-work was mutilated and shortened by his own 
 unsympathetic marriage ? — 
 
 " There is a rock on which every human soul must 
 anchor or he split; it is the sex opposite to its own.'' 
 
CHAPTER LX. 
 
 DID IT PAY r 
 
 Whatever else may be demanded of a candidate for 
 the tremendous prestige, powers and responsibilities of a 
 President of the United States, his moral character, like 
 Caesar's wife, should be above suspicion, and it is a great 
 pity, as it was a great oversight, that this prerequisite 
 was not embodied in the Federal Constitution. 
 
 Since it was not, the year 1884 was blacker than any 
 year before it in American annals, because in that year 
 two men were respectively the standard-bearers of the 
 great parties, one of whom, gifted, beloved and believed 
 in as he was, could not positively disprove the Democratic 
 charge of bribery when in Congress, nor the other deny 
 the clerical accusation of profligacy — and the latter, 
 through the alliance of the Republican Civil Service Re- 
 formers with the Democrats, was elected. 
 
 The important inquiry is — Did it pay either the men 
 who put Grover Cleveland in or the great Democratic 
 Party itself thus to do evil that good might come? Was 
 the party justified by the logic of events or the men per- 
 sonally by the smile of Heaven? 
 
 As for the latter, within a few years of Cleveland's first 
 election, of the prominent Democrats who either promoted 
 or suffered it, the following died — several of them early 
 in the Presidential term : Vice-President Hendricks, John 
 Kelly, Samuel Tilden, Horatio Seymour, Daniel Manning, 
 Samuel Randall, National-Democratic-Chairman Barnum 
 
V 
 
 470 NEiV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 and Senator Pendleton, the latter's wife previously having 
 been killed while driving. Senator Bayard's daughter 
 killed herself and his wife died. Editors Dorsheimer and 
 Pulsifer, of New York, and Henry Grady, of Atlanta, Ga., 
 died ; Editors Pulitzer and Ballard Smith of the New York 
 World nearly or quite lost their eyesight, and Albert 
 Pulitzer of the New York Journal became a hypochon- 
 driac; two high New York officials, Hubert O. Thompson 
 and Rollin Squire, became discredited in their great posi- 
 tions, and the former soon after died; the Rev. Henry 
 Ward Beecher and the Rev. James Freeman Clarke died 
 early in the first Cleveland administration and George 
 William Curtis just before his second. 
 
 The prominent Catholic, Father Edward McGlynn, 
 antagonized the Vatican on the Single Tax and the Public 
 School questions, was ousted from his important New 
 York parish, was disciplined, remanded to the country and 
 died. William C. Whitney was bereaved of a young son 
 and of his devoted first wife; later in life his beautiful 
 second one met with a horrible accident and for fifteen 
 months lingered in living death, and he himself was but re- 
 cently cut untimely off in his very highest flush of plu- 
 tocracy and social and sporting prestige. E. L. Godkin 
 remained the head of the Evening Post nniiX the Cuban 
 war, when his envenomed daily comment against the 
 popular President McKinley, whom, with his advisers, 
 Godkin considered " the most dangerous lot of scoundrels 
 by which any civilized country was ever beset," so threat- 
 ened the circulation as to compel his withdrawal from the 
 editorship he had held so long. Taking his discomfiture 
 to England, he died and was buried there — Providence 
 thus sparing to the noble Republic he had despised and 
 misled the desecration of his alien bones. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 47' 
 
 Besides these prominent personages, death or evil for- 
 tune pursued a number of other equally devoted but less 
 known Cleveland w^orkers, while the hitherto lights and 
 leaders of the party that remained were either, like the 
 great Abram S. Hewitt, left in political obscurity by 
 Cleveland's arrogance and jealousy or, as his appointees, 
 were belittled by his littleness. Worst fate of all, the 
 splendid ex-Senator Thurman was tacked on to the 
 second Cleveland nomination in 1888 as the Fic^-Presi- 
 dential candidate; but this last blow proved too much; the 
 patriot heart of the " Old Roman " (as he was popularly 
 called) broke during the campaign, and soon after he 
 perished from the newspaper-blinded country which had 
 first taken away from him his senatorial toga to bestow it 
 upon a " Standard Oil " money bag,* and afterward, in- 
 stead of the " gold tried in the fire " of his twenty years' 
 national service, had exalted to the presidency the thinly- 
 gilt lead of a newspaper-made " new man." 
 
 * Senator Payne, William C. Whitney's father-in-law. 
 
CHAPTER LXI. 
 
 THE FIRST CLEVELAND TERM. 
 
 As to the benefit to the Democratic Party of this ex- 
 altation of the untried over the tried to its highest honor 
 — " The possession of power," declared Balzac, " no mat- 
 ter how enormous, does not bring with it the knowledge 
 hew to wield it. Power leaves us just as it finds us. Only 
 great natures grow greater by its use." 
 
 The monumental fiasco of Grover Cleveland as for 
 twelve years the standard-bearer of one-half of a great 
 nation and for eight years the Executive-in-Chief of the 
 whole of it proved for the ten thousandth time the truth 
 of the Balzac saying. 
 
 Terrific problems confronted the Democratic Party on 
 its accession to power after its long deposition — not only 
 the restoration of its own foundation policies and the pro- 
 motion of Civil Service Reform, but also the rehabilitation 
 of the trampled and suffering South, the finding under our 
 form of government of their true places for womanhood, 
 for the foreigner and for the negro, and that assumption 
 by the United States of closer trade relationship with and 
 the political leadership of all other republics toward which 
 the great Blaine was already steering his country. 
 
 What room was here — as Senator Hoar of Massachu- 
 setts in inspired language once pointed out to his own 
 aspiring party — " for sympathy with liberty and repub- 
 lican government at home and abroad, for Americanism 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 473 
 
 everywhere, for leadership along loftier paths by minds 
 ever open to the sunlight and the morning, ever open to 
 new truth and new duty as the new years bring their 
 lessons ! " Alas ! Buffalo's " new man " not only failed to 
 see or even to suspect the " new truths " and " new 
 duties " of these " new years " in which he was at the 
 helm of the Republic; such was his inadequacy to the 
 position that he could not even bring his vessel into the 
 old port along the old time-honored lines ! 
 
 Elected by the defection of the Independent Repub- 
 licans from their own party to his in order that he might 
 carry out their special policy of Civil Service Reform — 
 so far was he from fulfilling the laws either of honor or 
 of principle in this regard that in little more than two 
 years from the date of his first inauguration, in 1885, 
 about forty-two thousand of the fifty-five thousand officials 
 removable by the President had been removed and their 
 places filled by Democrats — a proportion which Senator 
 Hale of Maine declared in Congress to be unexampled in 
 American history. 
 
 In fact, the only notable achievement of the first Cleve- 
 land term was the development of the Navy by the able 
 Secretary of the Navy, William C^ Whitney, along the 
 lines, so it is claimed, of his brilliant Republican prede- 
 cessor in the Department, the Hon. William H. Hunt — 
 the President's own energies being expended chiefly in 
 bestowing office and in examining pension bills. As the 
 latter averaged fifty dollars a year each, and as he vetoed 
 about three hundred of them, he saved to the United 
 States Treasury by his laborious and time-consuming 
 scrutiny the enormous sum of fifteen thousand dollars 
 annually ! 
 
 The tariff revision to which the Democratic Party was 
 
474 NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 committed was not attempted because the Senate was 
 still held by the Republicans; but would not a true states- 
 man have appointed a commission of economic experts 
 to point out to the American people wherein the port cus- 
 toms could be reduced so as least to disturb the finances 
 of the country? Some one has reported President Cleve- 
 land frankly to have said, " I don't know anything about 
 the tariff." If this were true, might not he himself have 
 taken lessons from such a commission and so have had 
 something definite to propose to the nation? But he 
 merely sent to Congress a strong generalizing plea for 
 tariff reduction, and there, for his first term, the matter 
 ended. 
 
CHAPTER LXII. 
 
 THE HARRISON ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 In spite of President Cleveland's mouse of performance 
 as compared with their mountain of promise on his be- 
 half, the great New York dailies which had created him 
 were, of course, unanimous for his re-election. It would 
 never do to confess that in persuading the nation to confer 
 its highest honor upon an unknown quantity they alone 
 were responsible for its having drawn a blank instead of 
 a prize. The sham and the falsehood must therefore go on 
 and Cleveland still be held up before the country as those 
 same journals persist in holding him to this day — i.e. a 
 man pre-eminent in the qualities requisite to a great ex- 
 ecutive. 
 
 All the same, the disappointing negations of his regime 
 — the fact that, contrary to public expectation, no Repub- 
 lican " rascals " after the long incumbency of twenty- four 
 years had been exposed (simply, there were none to ex- 
 pose), and the campaign scandal of 1884 being not yet 
 altogether forgotten — it proved not difficult for the veteran 
 Republican managers to defeat his second candidacy for 
 the Presidency by the stainless character, hereditary 
 statesman, civil war veteran, splendid lawyer and most 
 felicitous speaker, Benjamin Harrison. 
 
 President Harrison made James G. Blaine his Secretary 
 of State, the masterful " Tom " Reed was Speaker of the 
 House, and tjie skilled and able McKinley was its leader. 
 
476 NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 Between them this " big four " — sustained in both 
 branches of Congress by fellow-RepubHcans almost equal 
 to themselves — carried through an administration which 
 must ever rank as one of the most dazzling in American 
 annals. The famous McKinley bill of 1890 was passed, 
 of which the immediate industrial stimulus and resulting 
 prosperity were so abounding that Harrison's re-election 
 was deemed practically certain. Moreover, a magnificent 
 and indeed sublime movement for industrial reciprocity 
 among all the American Republics was fully launched 
 by the high-soaring genius and comprehensive sympathies 
 of the generous Blaine, which, had it been adhered to, 
 would probably have resulted in the international alliance 
 of all the then Republics of the world — France, Switzer- 
 land, Liberia, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, 
 together with our own and all those of South and Central 
 America, and an Isthmian Canal might by now be com- 
 pleting minus the late needless and wicked, and, because 
 promoted by the United States, inconceivable dismember- 
 ment of our sister Republic of Colombia.* 
 
 How came it, then, since " every wheel was turning 
 and Labor was receiving more for labor than Labor ever 
 received before," that in 1892, when Harrison and Cleve- 
 land were again confronted at the polls, the former was 
 defeated and Cleveland elected for a second term? 
 
 Alas, the jealousies of the friends of Harrison and 
 Blaine on their behalf disrupted their splendid political 
 alliance and co-operation, and the fatuity of making a 
 
 * For does not everybody know that if President Roosevelt had given 
 Colombia the choice between ratifying the Hay-Herran treaty for the 
 Canal and our own recognition of the seceding Panama — like the tradi- 
 tional "possum," Colombia would instantaneously have cried — "Don't 
 shoot, Mr. President! I'll come down " ? 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 477 
 
 Catholic the Chairman of the National Republican Com- 
 mittee did the rest. 
 
 For the Catholic vote was and always had been faith- 
 fully Democratic. Could, then, any true, sincere Catholic 
 in his heart of hearts burn to defeat the political party 
 to which ninety-nine out of a hundred of his fellow- 
 believers belonged? Impossible. Even with honest inten- 
 tions a man cannot fight against those of his own 
 household of faith as he can against other men. The Re- 
 publicans were amazed and confounded at their defeat, 
 and when they came to investigate it, discovered all too 
 late, that instead of energy and vigilance, inertia and 
 over-confidence had marked the conduct of the campaign. 
 The Protestant who takes for his political staflF a Roman 
 Catholic has only himself to thank if it break and pierce 
 the hand that holds it. 
 
 Whatever the cause, Cleveland's third candidacy, like 
 his first, was successful; nor was he successful alone. 
 Both houses of Congress were also Democratic, and now, 
 surely, the great man would show what he could do ! 
 
 In the interregnum he had not shown himself either 
 very great or very good. On- his retirement he had taken 
 up his residence in the great city which had consummated 
 his fortunes and had been welcomed into a leading law 
 firm which had been among his earliest and stanchest sup- 
 porters. 
 
 In several cases in which he was made a referee the 
 Court did not sustain his findings — which seems to speak 
 volumes against his legal acumen — and as for his much- 
 vaunted political "honesty" and "courage," in 1891-92 
 he looked on without a word of protest at the theft of the 
 Albany Legislature connived at by the Democratic Gov- 
 
478 NEW YORK: A^ SYMPHONIC STUDY 
 
 ernor in order to elect a Democrat * to the Senate of the 
 United States, and though, during his four years' recess 
 from the presidency. New York City, as usual, was in 
 the throes of her sempiternal struggle against Tammany 
 Hall, neither sign of sympathy nor syllable of encourage- 
 ment did the ex-President vouchsafe to the agitators for 
 honest government. On the contrary, in his role of " good 
 Democrat " he appeared at Tammany banquets and on 
 Tammany platforms; in his campaign of 1892 he openly 
 entered into political relations with the Tammany leaders 
 — Croker, Murphy and Sheehan — and at his inaugura- 
 tion procession, in March, 1893 (so recorded by the 
 Herald), as the long column of Tammany "braves," with 
 their green scarfs and banners, reached the reviewing 
 platform. President Cleveland actually rose from his seat 
 and remained standing until they had marched by, pro- 
 claiming thus to his country the unholy alliance between 
 political Protestantism and political Catholicism which 
 is so stealthily but surely engaged in wrecking the institu- 
 tions of that country ! 
 
 * i.e., The Irish Catholic, Edward Murphy, Jr., of Troy, N. \ . 
 
CHAPTER LXIII. 
 
 THE SECOND CLEVELAND TERM. 
 
 In 1893 Civil Service Reform v^as not a foremost issue in 
 the Democratic mind. That mind was fixed — first, upon 
 the repeal of the Sherman silver purchasing act, and, sec- 
 ond, upon the revision of the but just established high 
 protective McKinley tariff. 
 
 From the previous November, therefore, to March of 
 that year, manufacturers and financiers had been waiting 
 like condemned criminals for the Presidential inaugura- 
 tion, and after the inauguration they waited week after 
 week for the fiat of this Democratic Congress and Presi- 
 dent which must and would touch every pocket through- 
 out the broad and trembling land. " Business " was fran- 
 tic to know its fate, so that as speedily as possible it could 
 adjust itself to its reversed conditions. The President 
 and the Platform had equally branded the McKinley tariff 
 as " robbery." Surely, then. Congress would be called as 
 speedily as possible in special session to stop the robbery. 
 " Why, in Heaven's name," so fretted the money centres, 
 " was not Congress so called together ? " 
 
 Why, indeed, except that the President was too busy re- 
 warding the hungry thousands to attend at once to the 
 anxious millions. The transfer of the ofifices from Re- 
 publicans to Democrats was as sweepingly carried out as 
 in his first administration — this time even to the United 
 States consulships throughout the world. Neither names 
 
48o NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 Standard in science nor sacred in American history, nor 
 the few poor little places filled by poor little women, were 
 respected. High diplomatic service and even a leading 
 embassy were the open rewards of large campaign con- 
 tributions. The Evening Post and other Civil Service 
 journals blushed and protested so violently that the most 
 flagrant of these " spoilsmen " appointments were with- 
 drawn ; but " the principle remained the same," for later 
 in the administration the President flatly refused patron- 
 age to Senators and Representatives who would not prom- 
 ise him votes for presidential measures. 
 
 By the end of June came the demonetization of silver 
 in India by the British Government, and instantly the 
 great panic of 1893 was upon the country, its bombs fall- 
 ing into the very heart of that " White City " of the 
 Columbian Exposition which, the creation and sunburst 
 of American genius — of a consensus of American finan- 
 ciers, engineers, architects and artists — was the most 
 beautiful and entrancing out-door ensemble that hereto- 
 fore the world had ever seen. 
 
 The panic made a special session imperative, and finally, 
 four endless months after the inauguration, the pre- 
 occupied Executive called his Democratic Congress to- 
 gether for the repeal of the dishonest Republican law 
 which was compelling the purchase of silver by the Gov- 
 ernment at its old ratio of sixteen to one, though the 
 difference in value had become nearly fifty to one ! 
 
 If now the Congress had only been kept in session in 
 order at once to proceed also to the inevitable tariff re- 
 vision ! 
 
 But no. This revision was postponed to the regular 
 session, four months later, and when the tariff surgeons 
 finally did get at it, their proposals were at first so sweep- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 481 
 
 ing and so drastic that Capital fled to its safety vaults, 
 Enterprise was paralyzed and Industry took an enforced 
 vacation. Within two years after the second Cleveland 
 inauguration it was estimated that a million men were 
 out of work and that four billions of dollars worth of 
 American securities had ceased to pay dividends. No 
 gold was coming into the national Treasury, but gold was 
 draining out to such an extent that the reserve got down 
 to less than half its hundred million limit. 
 
 It is on record that Representative, afterward Governor, 
 Oates, of Alabama, was calling on the President about this 
 time and the latter asked him what, in his opinion, was 
 the best way to bring the country out of its financial diffi- 
 culties. He replied that the subject was a most intricate 
 one, and while in a general way outlining his views, he 
 confessed finally that he did not know what should be 
 done. President Cleveland watched him .closely as he 
 talked, and when this admission came out he brought his 
 fist down on the table with a bang that shook it from one 
 end to the other and said : " Well, I'll be damned if I know 
 what to do ! " * 
 
 • Washington Evening News, June 4, 1893. 
 
CHAPTER LXIV. 
 
 THE CLEVELAND EXIT. 
 
 Nevertheless, something must be done. To an in- 
 structed and able political mind, that is, to a statesman, the 
 frequent example of our sister Republic of France would 
 have been object lesson enough, since time after time 
 France had shown that " the people " — the great patriotic 
 public — will always subscribe to a national loan in a na- 
 tional emergency. 
 
 But our Evening Post statesman had probably never 
 noted this little example. Instead, he turned to his stanch 
 friends and supporters, the New York plutocratic bankers. 
 Gladly in return for United States bonds they advanced 
 gold enough, minus their own commission, to fill up the 
 Treasury deficit, and immediately after were able to sell 
 the bonds at a high profit. Once, twice did this hap- 
 pen, and still another hundred million would doubtless 
 have been negotiated in the same manner, had not the 
 proprietor of the World raised such an outcry in his New 
 York and St. Louis papers that the bonds were perforce 
 offered to the general public, were eagerly taken, and 
 the bankers' commission was thereby saved to the nation. 
 Sad but true that it required a foreigner (and a Jew at 
 that) to teach a Democratic administration one of the 
 elementary principles of American patriotism ! 
 
 All this so discredited the Democratic regime, the com- 
 mercial and industrial suffering was so widespread and 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 483 
 
 intense, that in the fall elections of 1894 the Democratic 
 candidates were everywhere overwhelmingly beaten. By 
 1895 the next presidential campaign was in sight, with no 
 " gold Democrat," save the President himself, prominent 
 enough to lead it. 
 
 "So unpopular had he become, however, that it is said 
 anything more dreary than the White House during the 
 last half of the second Cleveland administration can hardly 
 be imagined. He had treated Congress as if they were 
 " a set of school-boys," and was shut up, as no president 
 had ever been, to the counsels of those whom his own 
 favoritism had exalted. No one who could help it went 
 near the blunt, unmanageable, over-bearing Executive. 
 The renegade owner of the New York Herald and the 
 foreign-born owner of the New York World insisted 
 month in and month out that Cleveland must receive a 
 fourth nomination for a third term. Other Democratic 
 editors, while not seconding the motion, demanded that 
 at least the President declare himself one way or the other 
 toward this proposed breaking of the unwritten law of the 
 country. 
 
 But the life-long office seeker took good care to make 
 no disavowal of a third term candidacy. On the con- 
 trary, with his usual shrewdness where his personal inter- 
 ests were concerned, he made probably the very best bid 
 for it that he could have hit upon. 
 
 England, ever greedy for more territory, was bullying 
 Venezuela about a boundary. Coming home, so it is said, 
 at three o'clock one morning from one of his frequent 
 duck-shooting expeditions, President Cleveland wrote out 
 a message asking Congress for money wherewith to send 
 a United States commission to Venezuela to determine 
 what Venezuela's boundary rights actually were, sum- 
 
484 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 moned his cabinet, not to discuss, but simply to hear, this 
 momentous message, and by noon had sped the same on 
 its way to Congress. 
 
 Of course this was practically throwing down the 
 gauntlet to Great Britain, and to one who believes in the 
 Monroe Doctrine and in an International Alliance of all 
 Republics, this message of President Cleveland is the finest 
 and most statesmanlike thing he ev^r did, and would 
 gladly be referred to the category of a wise and brave and 
 disinterested Americanism could similar acts be found to 
 bear it company. 
 
 But to a country after a long peace nothing is so popu- 
 lar as the prospect of a war. War is the natural status 
 of the natural man. From their babyhood boys are spon- 
 taneous fighters, and in this respect especially is the child 
 the father of the man. "In all ages" said the historian 
 Gibbon, " the courage of the soldier is the cheapest and 
 commonest of human virtues." On this occasion Cleve- 
 land struck the great " common chord " of Masculinism 
 with a sure and confident hand. If now his great party 
 had echoed and rallied round him, his fourth nomination 
 and third election were within the possibilities. 
 
 The exact reverse resulted. The Western Democracy 
 was sore and chafing under its silver grievance; Demo- 
 cratic Labor was disgusted because in its war against the 
 Pullman Company the President had ordered United 
 States troops to prevent interference with the United 
 States mails; and as for the East — when it came to defy- 
 ing the British Empire, the Evening Post, with all its 
 Independent following, was not with its adored President. 
 Not that the Anglo-Irish Godkin did or could love Cleve- 
 land less, but that he loved England more. Ruthlessly as 
 he had set the idol up, so ruthlessly did he now pull him 
 
NEW YORK. A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 4^5 
 
 down. His two papers and the Independent press gen- 
 erally denounced the Venezuela message in such unmeas- 
 ured terms that the Democratic Executive was plainly- 
 seen to have lost his national grip. 
 
 As the astute Samuel Tilden once wrote to a Democratic 
 official : " A public man must show not only that he is 
 individually right, but also that he can lead his party and 
 make it a power for good ; otherwise, when he comes to be 
 judged, he must be discarded, because he cannot effect 
 results." At their Presidential Convention of 1896 the 
 alienated and divided Democrats inflicted the almost un- 
 precedented mortification of refusing the customary party 
 endorsement of their own party administration ; with the 
 maddest frenzy of enthusiasm they nominated a candidate 
 the antipodes in every respect of their now discredited 
 President, and from the following March, Stephen 
 Grover Cleveland, the Political Creation of a hand- 
 ful OF EDITORS OF THE StATE AND THE CiTY OF NeW 
 
 York, whether as figure or figure-head, ceased to figure 
 in American History. 
 
CHAPTER LXV. 
 
 A CHARACTER SKETCH. 
 
 President Cleveland was not a possible great man 
 when he entered the White House and he was not 
 an actual great man when he left it. He had an ex- 
 ceptional ear for language — a feeling for words— and so 
 had his unmarried sister, hitherto a teacher in young 
 girls' boarding schools. When this lady, early in Presi- 
 dent Cleveland's first term, was the mistress of the ex- 
 ecutive mansion she very cannily published a book of her 
 class lessons in literature. Emanating from the White 
 House, the toadyism of the newspapers praised and ad- 
 vertised it everywhere, and thus helped it to an immense 
 sale; but in the literary world it was esteemed a mere 
 shallow compilation of echoes from other writers not only 
 in its views and opinions, but even in its language, its au- 
 thor having unconsciously appropriated the very hall- 
 marks of the great stylists — the words they had specially 
 made their own — as " dusky " and " gush " from Haw- 
 thorne, " tremendous " from Henry James, and so on ! 
 
 Like sister, like brother. Mr. Cleveland had the same 
 parrot-like instinct for sound — for effect — but he was all 
 unaware that long words had gone out of fashion even 
 before he was born, and therefore, in spite of an occa- 
 sional picturesque or striking phrase, the sententious 
 platitudes of his messages and addresses were often all 
 but pitiful, and comparable to nothing so much as im- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 4^7 
 
 mense, loose, flapping garments upon some poor little 
 spindle-biped altogether too thin and small for them. 
 
 It is rather curious that in 1881, the very year in which 
 Mr. Cleveland became mayor of Buffalo, Professor 
 Jewett of Oxford thus wrote about Thomas Carlyle, the 
 great literary, as Mr. Cleveland was the great political 
 bully of his day. 
 
 Carlyle was not a philosopher at all to my mind, for I do not 
 think that he ever thought out a subject for himself. His power of 
 expression quite outran his real intelligence, and constantly deter- 
 mined his opinion. While talking against slaves he was himself the 
 greatest of slaves. . . His " Reminiscences" convey a true pic- 
 ture of the man, with his . . ruggedness and egotism and his ab- 
 solute disregard and indifference about everybody but himself. . • . 
 I fai' to see any good influence which he has exercised. 
 
 If Cleveland had been a cultivated man he would have 
 known how to write, and his undoubted literary gift might 
 have contributed something to the political literature of 
 his country. But his very limited nature and his ignorance 
 combined to render this impossible. To become honestly 
 pre-eminent and to remain permanently so one must have 
 a great head, like Daniel Webster, or, like Lincoln, a great 
 heart. Washington had both, and he was the consummate 
 man. Cleveland had neither. With the wider horizons 
 of a liberal education, he still would have been an in- 
 tellectual mediocrity, but his eventual failure might not 
 have been so utter, so awful ! He entered the Presidency 
 in 1885 heralded as the man who was to re-create and re- 
 new the Democratic Party. When he left it in 1897 ^^ 
 Democratic Party was in sunder ! 
 
 Wherein, then, lay the talent that certainly did bring 
 him to the highest position possible to an American? 
 " Some men are born great ; some achieve greatness, and 
 
488 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 some have greatness thrust upon them." Cleveland's 
 greatness was thrust upon him, if any man's ever was, 
 but he did have the rare quality that made it possible. 
 He had the talent for personal success, that gift, often 
 miscalled " luck," which with little aid from any other 
 can waft a man on to power and prestige, but \vanting 
 which all talents combined may leave a man a personal 
 wreck even though his work survive him. Grover Cleve- 
 land, like Theodore Roosevelt, was absolutely shrewd in 
 feeling which way the wind blew and in trimming his sail 
 accordingly. He never saw much beyond the wave just 
 in front of him, but he could get to the top of that, and 
 he did. Assistant District Attorney — Sheriff — Mayor 
 
 — Governor — President — a happy marriage — a fortune 
 
 — a second candidacy — a third — a second presidency — 
 what billow after billow did not this wonderful opportunist 
 easily surmount! How long did his great talent for 
 success keep him on the crests of our vast human ocean ! 
 
 But the gift for success is not an infinite one, and 
 sooner or later a man finds himself at the end of it. Some 
 mighty unlooked-for issue appears upon the horizon — 
 some tidal wave of discontent from the deep bosom of the 
 " people " he thought he understood so well suddenly roars 
 and threatens toward him. This whelming surge he can- 
 not ride, and when it has plunged down and passed on, 
 the name and the fame and the memory of that man have 
 been swept into sea-beach wreckage along with all the 
 other futile and fraudulent disappointments of easily 
 duped, of often duped, but of ever sternly-reckoning hu- 
 manity. 
 
 ******** 
 
 At the Loan Portrait Exhibition of 1903 in New York 
 City were displayed on a small wall by themselves two 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 489 
 
 portraits by the 'distinguished Swedish painter, Zorn. In 
 the one on the right stood erect a compact, alert figure 
 with a keen, clear-cut face, every faculty and every 
 energy trained and disciplined, the whole man cap-a-pie 
 and ready on the instant to rush in and win — while in the 
 other was seated at a library table a ponderous personage 
 with ponderous tomes ostentatiously at his feet, but the 
 features and the expression of whose large visage were 
 alike submerged and indistinct amid insubordinate fat. 
 The pair so vividly contrasting represented the Hon. 
 Stephen Grover Cleveland, former Chief Executive of 
 the United States, and the Hon. Daniel Scott Lamont, who 
 from an Albany journalist became Grover Cleveland's 
 private secretary and one of the quick-witted managers 
 of his presidential campaign ; who later was his Secretary 
 of War, and who now is a rising railroad magnate and a 
 multi-millionaire. The portraits might have served both 
 to epitomize and to explain the "Cleveland" episode which 
 has puzzled so many. For here on the tell-tale canvases 
 were the ex-steered and the ex-steerer — the once political 
 candidate and the once political reporter — the former 
 president and one of his president-makers — the American 
 throne and the power behind the American throne, 
 namely, the American Newspaper.* 
 
 * Since these pages were in type this able New Yorker has added 
 another to the Cleveland " creators " who have untimely passed away 
 (see p. 478). His wealth was $3,000,000, and he was but fifty-four 
 years old. 
 
CHAPTER LXVI. 
 
 SOWING AND REAPING. 
 
 If the evil that men do lives after them, surely the evil 
 that they are lives longer still. When the campaign 
 slanders of 1884 were first made public, it will be remem- 
 bered that the Rev. Dr. Beecher said: — 
 
 The President of the United States not only administers the 
 affairs of the Government, but he also becomes a model for the 
 young men of the land and we must see to it that he is in every 
 way clean. He might not give us any the less a clean administra- 
 tion, but the precedent of such a man in the presidential chair would 
 not alone be harmful but positively demoralizing. 
 
 Nine years after, in 1893, the Rev. Dr. Parkhurst de- 
 clared from his New York pulpit: 
 
 The personal and moral character of the men who shall govern 
 us is a matter that touches to the quick our entire condition as a 
 moral and religious community, and if that is not an area to be occu- 
 pied by the rhinistry and the church, I know not, before God, 
 what is the use of having any ministry or any church. , . . You 
 can not place, even in a subordinate judicial position, a man whose 
 life is known to be tainted, without making drunkenness and 
 debauchery just a little less contemptible in the minds of at least all 
 those young men whose abhorrence of the coarse animal pleasures is 
 not full, distinct and pronounced. . . . That is the worst fea- 
 ture of electing to office men who are corrupt — not so much that they 
 govern badly or extravagantly, but that they operate irresistibly to 
 lower the moral tone of the whole community. 
 
 This " lowering of the moral tone of the whole com- 
 munity " — this rendering the " coarse animal pleasures " 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 491 
 
 " less contemptible " in the eyes of the young men of the 
 nation — was precisely what resulted from the supreme ex- 
 altation of a man who up to his nomination for the presi- 
 dency had notoriously never denied himself such pleasures. 
 
 Is it to be supposed that at the two-hundred-and-fiftieth 
 Harvard Anniversary Celebration the crowding Harvard 
 youths were so stupid that when they heard this pre- 
 presidential profligate held up by the famous Harvard 
 poet-statesman, James Russell Lowell, as the " ideal " 
 American and themselves led the cheers and shouts of the 
 occasion — they did not draw the moral of the scene to be 
 that let a man sow what " wild oats " he will and for so 
 long as he will, in the end they will weigh not one feather 
 against the boundless admiration and esteem which not 
 only the ignorant and thoughtless many, but equally the 
 wise and responsible few, may one day lavish upon him? 
 
 From Harvard this disgraceful ovation was not sur- 
 prising, since she had long since apostatized from the 
 Deity of Jesus Christ, for years had maintained at her 
 head a frank despiser of womanhood, and through his 
 influence had now become the special university source 
 of masculine scorn and contempt toward the wife and 
 mother sex for the whole United States ; but the influence 
 of it all may be measured when we realize — first, that 
 William Randolph Hearst was then an under-graduate ol 
 that University, and, second, when we hear from the plat- 
 form of a National Education Convention nearly twenty 
 years later that "an amazing and unparalleled increase" 
 in student immorality is one of the admitted educational 
 conditions of the day ! * 
 
 * See address of Bishop Thomas F. Gailor, of Tennessee, at the 
 Convention held in Boston in July, 1903. 
 
CHAPTER LXVII. 
 
 THE UNFORGIVABLE. 
 
 The immitigable wrong which American Womanhood 
 cannot and must not forgive the Democratic Party — the 
 burning and spreading moral cancer of the Grover Cleve- 
 land cult — was its placing the national seal upon the 
 Luciferian doctrines that the sacredness of human per- 
 sonality may be disregarded and desecrated provided the 
 person be a woman, and also that if manhood be industri- 
 ous and faithful in its business and official relations with 
 other manhood, it may, without personal loss or disgrace, 
 treat womanhood as a " thing " for " pleasure " merely. 
 
 For if this be true, although the great Federated Repub- 
 lic of the United. States is founded on the " Brotherhood 
 of Man," its twin and inseparable principle — the Sister- 
 hood of Woman — has therein no place. 
 
 Practically this had been the position of the Democratic 
 Party from the beginning. Its founder, Thomas Jefferson 
 — that marvellous and many-sided humanitarian with 
 heart seemingly as wide as the race itself — in all his 
 thoughts, in all his plans, in all his aspirations, bore in 
 fact only one-half the race either on his heart or in his 
 mind. In his day men had not extended education to 
 women, and women, therefore, were not yet self-con- 
 scious, nor were men yet conscious of them except as 
 *' one-half the race told off as a sub-species for reproduc- 
 tion." Women owned absolutely nothing. A woman's 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 493 
 
 person, her children, her time, her labor, her inheritance, 
 her earnings — even the very clothes upon her back which 
 she herself had spun, woven and made — belonged to her 
 husband. The common law permitted her husband to beat 
 her " in moderation," and the common proverb upheld the 
 law by the opinion that " A woman, a dog and a walnut- 
 tree, The more you beat 'em the better they be." Every- 
 thing that a woman had or was was of manhood suffer- 
 ance, or pity, or chivalry — not of justice; what she won 
 for herself within her little home-sphere was the personal 
 reward of her personal devotion, skill, tact or charm, 
 and not at all because she was a fellow human being. . 
 
 It is not therefore surprising that Jefferson, so far-see- 
 ing in his luminous pre-vision for the best interests of his 
 own sex, should have overlooked entirely those of the 
 other. To this day the only woman even a Christian man 
 admits unreservedly to his own plane is his own wedded 
 wife, and Jefferson's exquisite wife was all too early taken 
 from him. His passionate devotion to this idol of his 
 youth led him to the rash death-bed promise which no 
 mortal should ever make — namely, that he would never 
 marry again. 
 
 Far different might have been his own record and that 
 of his great party had this adored companion been by his 
 side throughout his long illustrious career. For, as the 
 lonely years went on, who can measure their temptations 
 to this sensitive and craving spirit? From youth Jefferson 
 had loved France; he held Jesus Christ to have been but 
 human like himself, and thus the morality of France, 
 instead of the morality of Deity, became his personal 
 morality. True in the external sense to the memory of 
 his beloved (since he never married again), in reality he 
 let himself be false to her and to all her sex. 
 
V 
 
 494 -VEll^ YGRa: a SYMPI-IOXIC STUDY. 
 
 And so, in retribution, the benign scheme of his politics 
 remained imperfect, for it concerned itself with only one- 
 half the citizenship. Like a mist his own unfaith to 
 womanhood shrouded from him the Divine Eternal Fem- 
 inine and its claims. " Freedom," said De Tocqueville, 
 " cannot exist without morals, and morals are the work 
 of women." Rather^morals are women, but men, with 
 their standards, with their customs, mould the women, 
 and the women, so moulded, mould the sons. The scheme 
 of Jefferson safeguarded to the utmost manhood's most 
 precious possession — his personal freedom; but woman- 
 hood's similar possession — her personal honor — he safe- 
 guarded not at all. 
 
 He forgot the Lily Girlhood whose foundation right it is 
 to walk untempted and unsullied through the world to its 
 bridal home. He forgot the Mysterious Motherhood from 
 whose soul and body for nine pre-natal months the soul 
 and body of each generation must draw its life, and which, 
 therefore, must be guarded as the very sacrosanct of the 
 Republic. Like the dream-image of King Nebuchadnez- 
 zar, whose head was of " fine gold," its breast of " silver," 
 its trunk of " brass," its legs of " iron," but its feet of 
 " iron mixed with miry clay," the glorious political fabric 
 he left to his country was builded of divinest humanitarian 
 truths, but the first and divinest of them all — '' they twain 
 shall be one flesh " — which is^ nothing else than the law 
 that man's and woman's honor are one and indivisible — 
 was not laid as its immortal, immutable base. 
 
 This explains why the Democratic Party proved totally 
 unable to cope with the Slavery Question. In its counsels 
 the sacredness of the personality and the inz'iolability of 
 the marriage of the slave woman equally with those of 
 the white woman were never taken into the account; yet 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 495 
 
 these negations it was which, placed by Mrs. Stowe in the 
 forefront of her epoch-making " Uncle Tom's Cabin," 
 touched the northern conscience to the quick, and within 
 fifteen years of its publication resulted in the violent 
 abolition of the Institution. " Is this the little woman," 
 cried President Lincoln, when Mrs. Stowe was presented 
 to him, " who brought on this great war? " 
 
 That the awful outcome of that war for the South with 
 its long subsequent exclusion from power had brought no 
 change of heart and therefore no wisdom to the Demo- 
 cratic Party, was evidenced by its elevation of Grover 
 Cleveland as its national standard-bearer and by its re- 
 tention of him as such throughout twelve years. 
 
 " The pure in heart shall see God!'' 
 
 In a special sense the Art of Government is the Art of 
 God, because it is the Art of Justice — of Establishing 
 Right Relations — and that party or that nation which 
 most nearly establishes divine justice and " right rela- 
 tions " between man and woman is the party and the 
 nation that " thinks clear and sees straight " in all other 
 relations and which in the end, therefore, will " win out ! " 
 The smile of Deity is with it; the strength of Deity is 
 in it. In the long run it always has the " heaviest bat- 
 talions." 
 
CHAPTER LXVIII. 
 
 " FROM BAD TO WORSE." 
 
 Since the first chapters of this book were put into type, 
 twelve years have elapsed, and as I write, the respective 
 adherents of President Roosevelt and of Judge Alton B. 
 Parker are waging for them the presidential campaign of 
 1904.* 
 
 Whether or no the failure of the Democratic Party to 
 hold its once triumphant leadership of the American 
 people, or, when lost, to recover it, be owing to the causes 
 indicated by the writer, certain it is that for years that 
 great party has been plunging like a derelict through the 
 waves — destitute equally of chart, compass and sails. 
 
 It arrives nowhere. So divided are its counsels that 
 politically it knows not where it wishes to arrive. Per- 
 sonally it is wild to arrive — its leaders for the sake of 
 place and power, its rank and file for the loaves and fishes 
 which go with power; and this sums up its whole ignoble 
 soul. 
 
 Senator J. J. Ingalls said in the United States Senate 
 in 1888: "The nomination and election of Grover Cleve- 
 land have made the pretensions of any American citizen 
 to the Presidency respectable. There is no man in this 
 country whose ignorance is so profound, whose obscurity 
 is so impenetrable and whose antecedents are so degraded 
 
 * These last chapters were in the hands of my printers, J. J. Little 
 & Co., New York, in the October before the election. 
 
XEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 497 
 
 that he may not justifiably aspire to a presidential nomina- 
 tion by — the Democratic Party." 
 
 Literally has this scathing dictum been fulfilled. Led 
 through two presidential campaigns by a magnetic young 
 orator who from the remote insignificance of Nebraska 
 was lifted to the party leadership on the strength of a 
 single sensational simile in a single speech, it has now 
 largely become a convert to the fierce and cynical socialism 
 of the California degenerate and demagogue who, a can- 
 didate for the Democratic presidential nomination, and in 
 the spirit in which Judas sold his Master for thirty pieces 
 of silver, tried this year (1904) to buy that nomination 
 with his thirty millions of gold in hope of then seating 
 himself with all his " unspeakable " past in the chair of 
 George Washington ! * 
 
 The last of the great Jeffersonian Democrats, Abram 
 S. Hewitt, of New York, not long before his death, in 
 1903, repudiated the party of his life-long allegiance be- 
 cause it had " lost all its principles." 
 
 How did it lose them? Chiefly through the political 
 innovators allhded to, William Jennings Bryan and Wil- 
 liam Randolph Hearst, who simply by calling themselves 
 " Democrats," for years have exploited the party as a 
 pedestal for their presidential aspirations, and meantime 
 have actually been reversing the teachings of its founders 
 — and yet the party has not seemed to know it. 
 
 Lrom the beginning a party for "hard money" — for 
 an " honest " dollar, whether of gold, of silver, or of paper 
 in return for that dollar's worth of honest labor which is 
 the unit value of them all — the presidential campaigns of 
 1896 and 1900 were fought out on the old sixteen-to-one 
 
 • See speech of Mr. Johnson of California, Congressional Record, 
 Jan. 8, 1897, for the William R. Hearst moral record! 
 
49^ NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 ratio of silver to gold, though the ratio had fallen nearly 
 fifty to one ! 
 
 A vital Jeffersonian dogma being that "the best gov- 
 ernment is that which governs least " — which least ham- 
 pers the industrial organization of private citizens — in the 
 face, on the one hand, of the matchless success of the 
 free individual enterprise which has created the prodigious 
 wealth and power of this Republic, and, on the other, of 
 the almost universal municipal corruption brought upon 
 it by its foreign office-holders and voters — Mr. Hearst's 
 papers cease not to clamor for the public ownership and 
 management of all public utilities. Not content with the 
 foreign looting of our municipahties, in return for foreign 
 votes he would give up to similar foreign looting all our 
 corporate industries ! 
 
 Again, if there were any supreme principle immortally 
 bound up with the name of Jefferson, surely it was that 
 " all just government rests upon the consent of the gov- 
 erned ; " yet, the morning after the destruction of the 
 Spanish fleet in Manila Bay by Admiral Dewey, and be- 
 fore his American fellow-citizens had thought or even 
 dreamed of the military conquest and holding of the 
 Filipino people by the American people — the Hearst 
 papers came flaring out on their front pages with big 
 headlines, " OUR COLONIES : THE PHILIPPINES ! " 
 and within a week on the same pages flaunted a great illus- 
 tration of a seated negro surrounded by standing negresses 
 as " OUR SULTAN AND HIS HAREM ! " 
 
 Finally, if there were a cause to the glory and exalta- 
 tion of which the whole illustrious life of Jefferson was 
 devoted — it was to the cause of peace, the life-giving, the 
 happiness-creating, over war, the desolating, the death- 
 dealing, the agony-causing; yet this same so-called " Dem- 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 499 
 
 ocratic " editor, from his great dailies in the leading mu- 
 nicipal centres, ceaselessly rubs and has rubbed into the 
 untaught, unthinking multitudes who are his readers the 
 duty and the necessity of great " war colleges " and " naval 
 uriiversities," wherein more and more soldiers and sailors 
 may be trained and sent forth ever more and more to en- 
 courage and foster in the American people that military 
 passion which has been the sure forerunner of empires 
 and monarchies since the world began. 
 
 " These he thy gods, Israel!'' and these the standards 
 and ideals of the up-to-date Democratic Party — the once 
 Party of Jefferson — under its dominating leaders, Bryan 
 and Hearst. 
 
 Throughout this present year (1904) capitalists and 
 lawyers have been striving behind the scenes to " get 
 together " the various factions of the party — the old-time 
 Democracy of the South, the Free-Silver Democracy of 
 the West, the Socialist Democracy of Hearst, and the 
 Irish Catholic Democracy of the cities — into a " sane and 
 safe Democracy," which, under a " sane and safe " leader, 
 may once more command the confidence and the affec- 
 tions of a majority of the American people. 
 
 Will they succeed? Can they succeed when the 
 "steerer" chiefly in evidence is the ex-Governor who was 
 implicated in the stealing of his State in 1892 in order to 
 seat a Democrat instead of a Republican in the United 
 States Senate, and when the other active party managers 
 by their very names, Sheehan — McCarren — Murphy — 
 Doyle — Farrell — Guffey — Gorman — Cockran — Ryan 
 — Taggart — are plainly of the race and religion most 
 antagonistic to this still six-to-one Protestant people? 
 
 Why, this very race, on the principle of rats deserting 
 a ship that they have honeycombed, is openly going over 
 
500 A^EW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 to the opposition ! The Boston Pilot, long the standard 
 Irish Catholic organ, and the New York Sun, equally 
 though not so frankly such, have declared for President 
 Roosevelt, and an " Irish-American Republican Associa- 
 tion " to advance the Roosevelt interests is already in the 
 field. " Where the carcass is there are the vultures gath- 
 ered together," says the Scripture. The Catholic Irish 
 are nothing if not office-seekers, and President Roosevelt, 
 for his re-election, humors them to the top of their bent. 
 As the Protector of the new Catholic Republics of Cuba 
 and Panama and the Creator of the latter — as the Au- 
 tocrat of our Catholic Colonies of Porto Rico and the 
 Philippines — he has done everything in those Spanish- 
 American countries, whether constitutional, Christian or 
 otherwise, that the Catholic Irish wished him to do; he 
 has done nothing that they did not wish him to do; they 
 own him as much as they can own any non-Catholic 
 President — so why should they not vote for him? 
 
 It is hard on the Democratic Party, since if the master 
 demagogue, Hearst, had his political dues. He, rather than 
 Roosevelt, would have been on the ticket with McKinley 
 in 1900 and hence the president and presidential candidate 
 to-day — for the present " anti-trust," " military," " colon- 
 ial," " do-things," " world-power " policy of the Republican 
 Party was first formulated and demanded, as we have just 
 seen, by the Hearst newspapers. Roosevelt merely added 
 to it the " rough-rider," rough-shod element — especially 
 the rough-shod ! 
 
CHAPTER LXIX. 
 
 "^AND WORSE REMAINS BEHIND ! " 
 
 The New York Journal was founded in 1884 by Albert 
 Pulitzer, the younger brother of Joseph Pulitzer, as a one- 
 cent paper for the East Side masses. In ten years Pulitzer 
 had made a fortune out of it, but, becoming a hypochon- 
 driac, he sold it to John McLean, of the Cincinnati En- 
 quirer. He in turn disposed of it to Mrs. Phoebe Hearst, 
 who bought it for her son in the hope, so it is said, of get- 
 ting him away from the associations to which he was com- 
 mitted in his native San Francisco. 
 
 Coming to New York backed by his mother s enormous 
 fortune and by his own " yellow " success with his own 
 San Francisco Examiner, the young editor soon secured 
 at the highest salaries an assisting corps of the brilliant 
 but mercenary minds yearly turned out of our godless 
 schools and universities, and then set them to out-yellow 
 the creator of yellow journalism, Joseph Pulitzer himself, 
 and as a sensation-monger to displace, if possible, the 
 World by the Journal. 
 
 That this would not be easy may be inferred from a de- 
 scription of the World of about that period by the editor 
 of Town Topics, the " yellow " society weekly of New 
 York and special chronicle of its " Four Hundred : " 
 
 The New York World is attempting to show that the increase of 
 crime in this locality is due to the lax and incompetent condition of 
 the police force under the management of the Roosevelt board of com- 
 missioners. The increase of crime here is due more directly to the 
 increase of Joseph Pulitzer. No single agent known to-day so ex- 
 cites, degrades and vitiates the criminal and brainless classes as 
 
502 NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 does a newspaper conducted upon the indecent lines pursued by the 
 World. This blatant, heartless and brutal sheet is a pattern for all 
 men that are blatant, heartless and brutal, and it will require a 
 wonderful police force indeed to cope with the desperate acts that 
 are traceable to the vicious teachings of this inhuman journal. The 
 World is a moral cholera. Max Nordau dwelt recently upon the 
 theory of degeneracy in the human race. The World is the organ 
 of degenerates. It assists them every day in the year to become 
 more degenerate. It attacks weak minds and destroys them. It 
 fills feverish minds with sulphurous fumes. It sickens struggling 
 souls with the stench of the charnel house. To the eye it is an 
 offense, to the sense a scourge. No city can hope to be peaceable 
 and pure when the newspaper that is read more than all its competi- 
 tors is a reckless and immoral collection of sensations founded upon 
 ignorance and cruelty. There will be more murders, more crimes of 
 every character, because the World is published each morning, 
 poisoning the air of heaven and the heart of the human race. It is 
 a thing to be burned, not read. 
 
 And this sheet was not only to be equalled; it was to be 
 surpassed ! 
 
 Surpassed accordingly it was by adding to every element 
 above catalogued cartoons devilish and degraded almost 
 beyond conception in mockery of the " Trusts " and equally 
 of the United States as "Uncle Sam"; by an editorial page 
 most of whose paragraphs were calculated truth-slayers 
 from the bottomless pit; by a Sunday issue which trained 
 children in tricks, irreverence, coarseness, cruelty and lies, 
 and — as a sentimental make-weight against these infamies 
 — by espousing the cause of revolted Cuba. 
 
 As has been said before, nothing being so popular after 
 a long peace as war — to create the public indignation 
 which resulted in the declaration of war against Spain and 
 at the same time sold the Hearst papers, Hearst money 
 was poured out literally by multi-millions. Whether any 
 of that money went to the Cuban Junta, whether that Junta 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 503 
 
 bribed some Spanish official to blow up the Maine in the 
 harbor of Havana in order to bring American indignation 
 against the " Spanish atrocities " to the exploding point, 
 will probably never be known until the Great Day gives 
 up its secrets. What is certain is that James Creelman, 
 the then Journal reporter, openly boasted that he " and 
 three other men brought on the Spanish war ! " 
 
 The Christian and peace-loving President McKinley 
 shuddered and shrank before the Rubicon toward which 
 Hearst was forcing him, but the masterful Republicans by 
 whom the President was surrounded hesitated not. \i the 
 Republican Party did not now couch the national lance 
 and run a national tilt for bleeding Cuba, the Democrats, 
 goaded by Hearst, certainly would, and then theirs would 
 be the credit and the prestige, and at the next presidential 
 election the inevitable presidential reward. Since war 
 there was to be, the Grand Old Party must still be the na- 
 tional standard-bearer. 
 
 Clever, therefore, supernally, satanically clever though 
 the San Franciscan had shown himself, the astute and 
 vigilant Republican leaders proved still cleverer. They 
 seized the " bald lock of opportunity " that was rushing 
 toward them. They, and not the Democratic Party, sad- 
 dled and bridled the war steed which the Hearst news- 
 papers had been so carefully training; all booted and 
 spurred they vaulted into that saddle, and there, in the 
 person of Theodore Roosevelt of New York, are they 
 riding confidently, triumphantly, flamboyantly to-day.* 
 The Napoleonic young editor was hoist practically with 
 his own petard — his best guns stolen and turned upon 
 his hopes. 
 
 * * ♦ ♦ ♦ 4c 41 
 
 * See President Roosevelt's letter of acceptance, September, 1904. 
 
S04 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 And so seems the great Party of Jefferson to be finally 
 succumbing, wounded to the death in the house of its 
 friends, yes, in that great city of New York which since 
 the civil war has been its stronghold and headquarters, 
 and of which, when it was yet a small sea-port, Jefferson 
 wrote : " New York, like London, seems to he a sewer of 
 all the depravities of human nature." 
 
 Strange that in this phrase Jefferson, almost as a prophet, 
 should have struck the New York " symphonic " keynote 
 which, since she is still the chief American inlet for the 
 ceaseless flood of foreign immigration, still persists unto 
 this day — dreadful — desperate — discordant with all right 
 Americanism and determined, if possible, to deafen and 
 drown all right Americanism out. 
 
 The foulest dregs of this foreign flood forever fall and 
 settle in the New York secret depths, but their mephitic 
 exhalations so narcotize her whole people that even her 
 reformers, philanthropists and clergymen are morally 
 brain-dulled and confused, and know not what,, for her re- 
 generation, they would be at. 
 
 Though Society and Politics are loudly and passionately 
 demanding reorganization from the top to the bottom, 
 these potter and palter with " Charity Organizations," 
 " Schools of Philanthropy," *' University Settlements," 
 " Societies for the Prevention of Poverty and Vice," 
 " Citizens' Unions," " City Clubs," " Societies for Political 
 Education." " Municipal Leagues," etc., etc., each compris- 
 ing a special little set of its own which revolves about and 
 swears by some more or less inadequate leader — with the 
 eternal result that three times out of four they lose 
 and the enemy gains and at each gain strengthens, and 
 thus New York grows steadily more and more wicked, 
 more and more irreclaimable, more and more hopeless, 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 5oS 
 
 her present official head being a renegade American who 
 sold the stainless name he inherited from his brave and 
 brilliant father to the Irish Catholic Tammany Hall in 
 return for office, first as a Tammany Congressman and 
 then as the Tammany Mayor. 
 
 How sorrowful, how inconceivable, that this glorious 
 new continent, instead of evolving from her virgin bosom 
 a " New Jerusalem," should cancer there but the Old 
 Babylon — the blazing " Scarlet Woman " whose cap and 
 bells of gayety and pleasure so thrill even the quietest 
 little hamlets as to draw irresistibly their quota into her 
 tainted veins, there to become in turn the blood-poison 
 which she ever pulsates into the remotest corners of the 
 mighty land ! 
 
 " Tammany town, Tammany town, 
 Old Nick's throne, seat of his crown. 
 How have ye pulled yourself so down, 
 
 Tammany town ? 
 What is the maggot that's got your brain, 
 
 Tammany town ? 
 Turning your back with a strange disdain 
 On all that was good for all that is pain — 
 Making your hope of the future vain ? 
 
 Tammany town ! 
 
 *' Proudest of cities ye might have been, 
 
 Tammany town? 
 Surest of cities to rule as Queen, 
 Fair as the fairest mankind has seen, 
 Down you plunge in a ruck obscene, 
 
 Tammany town ! 
 
 *• What have you done with your honored name, 
 Tammany town ! 
 What have ye cared for your envied fame, 
 Tammany town ? 
 
5o6 NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 Better the torch and better the flame 
 Than this choice of a life of lust and shame 
 At the beck of the host of thieves that came — 
 Lost Tammany town ! " * 
 
 From her American vantage-ground of New York will 
 the Scarlet Woman — Mother and Nurse of despotism, 
 poverty and woe, as She ever is — in the end win this land 
 as she already has nearly every other for her Master, 
 the "Great Dragon," the "Beast," with his "horns" of 
 golden pride and his "crowns" of golden power? 
 
 Or will a renewed Americanism, pure, strong and united, 
 seeing things as God sees them and beginning where God 
 would begin for their redemption, yet one day transform 
 the " lost Tammany Town " into that Vision City which 
 so long, long ago was promised as the " Joy " of the 
 whole earth? 
 
 * " Lines to a Lost City, 1897." — John Kendrick Bangs. 
 END OF PART I. 
 
» 
 
 PART II 
 THE CELESTIAL CONCORD 
 
 OR 
 
 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO 
 WOMANHOOD. 
 
PART II. 
 
 THE CELESTIAL CONCORD 
 
 OR 
 
 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO 
 WOMANHOOD. 
 
 Prelude 1 
 
 I Deity 5 
 
 II Soul 10 
 
 III Lucifer U 
 
 IV Hell 24 
 
 V The Game of Souls 32 
 
 VI The Serpent vs. Womanhood 40 
 
 VII The Race Tragedy 46 
 
 VIII Jesus the Emancipator 53 
 
 IX " The Spirit " 58 
 
 X Jesus and the Spirit 69 
 
 XI The Perfect 74 
 
 XII The " Fourth Gospel " 83 
 
 XIII The Author's Apology 85 
 
 XIV Proclamation 90 
 
 XV Other Visions of the Divine Feminine. . . 99 
 
 XVI Ideal Womanhood 105 
 
ACTS OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 XVn Acts of the Church : The Enemy Sows 
 
 Tares 108 
 
 XVHI Acts of the Church: The "Truth" 
 
 Makes " Free " 115 
 
 XIX MascuHnism 118 
 
 XX Mistress Hutchinson and MascuHnism. . 121 
 
NEW YORK 
 
 A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 PART II.—THE CELESTIAL CONCORD. 
 
 PRELUDE. 
 
 The great though youthful poet Keats, becoming a dis- 
 coverer in ivomanhood through his intense passion for his 
 betrothed, exclaimed in a letter to a friend, " Why should 
 woman suifer? Ay, why should she? By heaven, to know 
 I'd coin my very soul and drop my blood in drachmas. 
 These things are, and he who feels how incompetent is the 
 most skyey knight-errantry to heal this bruised fairness is 
 like a sensitive leaf on the hot palm of thought/* 
 
 When the writer was about fourteen she became aware 
 in some way now forgotten that there existed in the world 
 a class of her own sex devoted to degradation so dreadful 
 that even their own families coidd not and would not 
 speak to them. 
 
 They were " outcasts " — cast out ! 
 
 And since the world began there had always been these 
 outcasts. 
 
 And while the world went on there would always be 
 these outcasts. 
 
2 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 There was no hope; for they were a " necessary evil." 
 
 Now her own love of her ozvn family was at that period 
 the dominant passion of her soul. 
 
 Understanding not at all the horrific significance of the 
 social condition which had dawned upon her, the special 
 aspect that took hold of and shook her being to its depths 
 was that these so-called " outcasts " were never recognized 
 nor spoken to nor spoken of even by their own fathers 
 and mothers and sisters and brothers. They were utterly 
 shut out from home and home love. 
 
 To her this seemed an abyss of woe so black that it 
 could not be "necessary." God was too loving and too 
 tender and too just to permit such a fate to be in the in- 
 evitable, immutable order of his providence. There must 
 be sofue way out of if — some solution to the problem which 
 had never been thought of. 
 
 The Bible story that the youthful Solomon had prayed 
 to God for " wisdom'' and that wisdom had been given to 
 him, had in childhood vividly impressed the writer's 
 religious imagination. 
 
 And, on behalf of his Divine Father, her Saviour had 
 promised similarly to answer all prayers for heavenly 
 guidance and wisdom from all that believe in Him. 
 
 She, then, would thereafter pray to God to show her the 
 true way to cure or prevent this so-called " necessary " 
 evil. 
 
 And so for many years her daily prayers included these 
 petitions : 
 
 " O God^ make me to see Thee as Thou art; 
 
 " And to love Thee as Thou dost wish to be loved; 
 
 " And help me to help women — 
 
 "For Jesus' sake. Amen." 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 3 
 
 The pages of Part One of this Symphonic Study have 
 tried to indicate the stealthy but continuous destruction 
 wrought in family and in national life by this burning sub- 
 surface " evil " which, ever creeping and coiling about the 
 hidden roots of Home and Country, is ever eating them 
 fatally away. 
 
 The pages of Part Two offer what the writer believes 
 to be God's answer to her prayer. Its central thought 
 came to her as a glorious, joyous, regenerating, life-giving 
 Truth — in the summer of 1859, when she was twenty-three 
 years old. She has since kept it mostly " in her heart," 
 rarely speaking of it, even to friends, but waiting for the 
 " call " she knew must come in God's good time to give it 
 to the world. 
 
 That " call " she believes to be here and now. 
 
 For nearly nineteen centuries the world has had the 
 "Gospel according to Matthew," the "Gospel according 
 to Mark," the " Gospel according to Luke," and the " Gos- 
 pel according to John " — all Gospels " according to " Men, 
 and all of them taught and expounded quite exclusively 
 by men through all those hundreds of years — and still the 
 world is not converted. 
 
 Now, therefore, let the Christian Teachers of the world, 
 from the highest to the humblest, add to these Mighty 
 Manhood Gospels' the following Gospel according to 
 Womanhood as derived from those Gospels, and the great 
 Pagan World, whether within or without the pale of so- 
 called " Christendom," will surely and swiftly be con- 
 verted. If the Christian Teachers will not so add it, let 
 them then in the writer's spirit pray her prayer until from 
 the Divine Eternal Trinity descends a diviner answer to 
 their petition than was vouchsafed to hers. 
 
 Let them do one or the other of these, or at the Last 
 
4 JVEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 Great Day let them expect to he challenged by all the 
 Desecrated Girlhood and Degraded Womanhood and Lu- 
 ciferian Manhood they might have prevented, but would 
 not, through this Gospel. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 DEITY. 
 
 If God exists for happiness, for bliss — and there is no 
 other adequate reason for which God can exist — then the 
 Unitarian theory of God is untenable; for an infinite Cre- 
 ator with only his finite creatures for companions would 
 be a God alone in the universe, practically, therefore, a 
 God in hell quite in the same manner as would be a highly 
 cultivated human being with no companion nearer to him- 
 self than some motionless statue that he had carved or 
 some moving mechanism that he had constructed. For 
 Deity to be in bliss, Deity must be companioned by Deity, 
 and this requirement of divine or infinite happiness is 
 completely met by the Bible teaching that the creative and 
 sustaining force of the universe is a Divine Eternal 
 Trinity of Father, Mother and Only Son— the " Mother " 
 being veiled throughout the Scriptures under the terms 
 " The Spirit," " Wisdom," " The Holy Ghost," " The Com- 
 forter" and "The Woman clothed with the sun and 
 crowned with the stars and with the moon under her feet." 
 
 The separate Persons or Individualities of this Divine 
 Eternal Trinity are not confounded nor merged in one 
 consciousness. Their Divine Minds do not mutually pene- 
 trate and mingle as the air of three communicating rooms 
 interpenetrates and mingles. Relatively to Each Other 
 these Infinite Minds, even as our own to our associates, 
 are distinct and spherical and think their own thoughts 
 and keep their own counsel until They see fit to share 
 
6 NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 them — as was clearly indicated by the Divine Son when 
 in speaking of the Day of Judgment He said : " About 
 that day and hour no one has any knowledge, not even 
 the angels of heaven, nor yet the Son Himself, but only 
 the Father." * The Eternal Three constitute " One God " 
 simply because, being All-knowing, it is impossible for 
 Them to differ and therefore They are absolutely At One 
 in Counsel; and being at the same time All-loving, They 
 are absolutely At One in Purpose. The Law of Love, or 
 Law of Giving Everything, being the chosen law of their 
 being, self-seeking and jealousy between Them are im- 
 possible ; Each forever exalts the Other Two before Itself, 
 and thus it is that They present to the adoration of the 
 objective universe a Self-existent, Co-equal, Omniscient, 
 Omnipresent and Omnipotent Triumvirate of Three 
 Divine Persons absolutely At One in Counsel and in Pur- 
 pose, and, therefore, in relation to that universe, but One 
 Only God. 
 
 On the other hand, the independence and sphericity of 
 these Infinite Eternal Beings Each within. Itself adds to 
 their inexhaustible bliss in Each Other an element which 
 would otherwise be lacking.. 
 
 A famous philosopher so intensely enjoyed the quest 
 after scientific truth that he declared if he were offered 
 on the one hand the possession of all truth and on the 
 other the pleasure of seeking after it — he should choose 
 the latter. 
 
 The Three Divine Minds, then, being All-knowing — 
 that is, given any " cause " or combination whatsoever 
 They at once grasp all its " effects " or potentialities to 
 the remotest perspective of eternity — to Them there could 
 never come this thrill of rapt delight in something novel 
 
 * Matthew 28, 36. — " Twentieth Century Testament^' translation. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 7 
 
 and unknown before, were it not that by bringing Each 
 their personal and original concepts from the unknown 
 depths and powers of their several Infinite Natures, to 
 all their joy in Each Other They add this perpetual god- 
 like joy of discovery — of vision ever new and unfolding 
 from One to Another — and which, since every thought of 
 a perfect being must itself be perfect, is to be welcomed 
 for its beauty and its power, and is at once to enlist for 
 its success the infinite co-operation of the Other Two. 
 
 Now this Divine Eternal Trinity, with its three-fold 
 infinite energy, must create, must exert this energy, or its 
 bliss cannot be complete. If the artist who does not paint, 
 the poet who does not write, the inventor who does not 
 contrive, the athlete who does not move, be each to that 
 extent balked, abortive and therefore suffering, much more 
 the Supreme Artificers of the universe, if that universe 
 be never to emerge from the domain of Thought or the 
 Ideal into that of Fact or the Real. The Genius and the 
 Force which can plan and bring forth and sustain a 
 Universe of Stars and people it with a Universe of Souls 
 must actualize this infinite conception or endure torment 
 infinite of repression and inaction, and therefore — 
 . In the beginning of the universe God the Father created 
 the heavens and the earth; 
 
 And the earth was without form and void, and darkness 
 was upon the face of the deep. 
 
 And God the Mother moved upon the face of the waters. 
 
 For She is " Wisdom " and concerning Herself She de- 
 clared — 
 
 " I Wisdom dwell zvith prudence and find out knowledge 
 of witty inventions. 
 
 "Counsel is mine and sound wisdom; I am understand- 
 ing; I have strength. 
 
8 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 '^Jehovah set Me up in the beginning of his way — be- 
 fore his works of old. 
 
 "From forever was I knit together, from the begin- 
 ning, or ever the earth was. 
 
 "In no depths was I begun — in no fountains abundant 
 in waters. 
 
 "Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, 
 had I beginning. 
 
 " While as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields, 
 nor the highest part of the dust of the world. 
 
 " When He prepared the heavens I was there; when 
 He set a compass upon the face of the depth. 
 
 " When He established the clouds above — when He 
 strengthened the fountains of the deep. 
 
 " When He gave to the sea his decree that the waters 
 should not pass his commandment — when He appointed 
 the foundations of the earth. 
 
 " Then was I by Him the Builder as One brought up 
 with Him, and I was daily his Delight, smiling before Him 
 in all time. 
 
 "Smiling in the habitable part of his earth, and my 
 delights were with the sons of men." * 
 
 And also — 
 
 In the beginning of the universe was the Word, and 
 the Word was with God, and the Word was God the Son. 
 
 All things were made by Him, and without Him was not 
 anything made that was made. 
 
 In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men. 
 
 And God the Son said — "Let there be light," and there 
 was light. 
 
 The counselling and co-working of the Divine Father 
 
 *See the literal translation from the Hebrew by the deceased 
 Hebraist, Miss lulia E. Smith, of Glastonbury, Conn. Printed 
 1876. 
 
r 
 
 NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 9 
 
 and Mother of the universe are therefore openly shown 
 forth as above in the first verses of Genesis and in the 
 eighth chapter of Proverbs — the latter the most sublime 
 apotheosis of ideal marriage as yet embodied in human 
 language — while in the third verse of Genesis and equally 
 in the first verses of St. John's Gospel, God the Son — the 
 Logos — the Word — speaks into objective existence His 
 fiHal share in the illimitable design — " for without Him 
 was not anything made that was made." 
 
 " Stars in the universe around Him gleaming, 
 Stars in the firmament alive and free, 
 Stars, and of stars the innumerable streaming, 
 Deeps within deeps, a river in the sea." 
 
 Not irreverently may we suppose that the Universe of 
 Stars was first created, and that when completed the 
 Triune Deity listened with delight to the divine infinite 
 symphony which arose from that balanced intricacy of sun 
 and planet, each held immutable in his own place by what 
 Jonathan Edwards sublimely called " the stable will of 
 God " — of that " Father of lights with Whom is no varia- 
 bleness neither shadow of turning: " 
 
 " There's not the smallest orb that thou beholds't 
 But in his motion like an angel sings. 
 Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins," 
 
 — and yet this supernal melody was monotonous and its 
 harmony simple compared with what it would be when the 
 Universe of Stars should be peopled by the as yet un- 
 created Universe of Souls — of angels and archangels, of 
 cherubim and seraphim, of princes, powers, potentates 
 and spirits — who, each a conscious Soul and Will, should 
 voice each from its own heart its own joy of living and 
 loving in the symphony that would ascend in iridescence 
 of endless beauty as the created expression of- the Bliss 
 Uncreate of the IneiYable and Infinite Eternal Trinity. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 SOUL. 
 
 But ah, here was the dilemma — here, perhaps, the pause 
 upon the brink of the crowning creation; for a Universe 
 of Souls would and must be a Universe of free, self-deter- 
 mining Wills, not coercible or controllable even by Om- 
 nipotence, and as able, therefore, to strike each one a 
 discord in the divine eternal symphony as to contribute 
 an added concord. 
 
 Soul is not like insect or animal — of which the desires 
 and the activities are limited to its own preservation and 
 that of its species. The horizon of Soul is immeasurably 
 vaster than itself. Its goal is ever beyond it. A spark 
 struck out from Deity, its aim, like that of Deity, is happi- 
 ness, and it possesses memory, imagination and the power 
 of reasoning from effect to cause precisely in order that, 
 again like Deity, it may freely choose and pursue its own 
 happiness in its own way. Deity may instruct it in the way 
 of happiness, but Deity may not force it; otherwise it 
 would not be Soul, but animal, or plant, or star. In its 
 very essence Soul is and must be free. 
 
 The ideal of Deity for a Universe of Souls must there- 
 fore be that each member of it shall govern itself from 
 within — be, like Deity, self-governed — and shall freely, of 
 its own will, choose the Law of Giving Everything, or 
 Law of Love, even as Deity chooses it, — because it is the 
 only law which ensures that receiving everything which is 
 
I 
 
 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. II 
 
 the condition of absolute and infinite happiness. Not be- 
 cause Deity is a Lonely Despot who will have his own 
 arbitrary way, but because, knowing all laws and all pos- 
 sibilities, and having chosen this law as the law of Their 
 Own Being, Triune Deity desires every individual soul 
 for its own sake also to choose it, since no creature can 
 rise above its creator, but must be as its creator if it 
 would share the bliss of that creator. Every realm of the 
 material universe, to its minutest atom and ion, is obe- 
 dient to the law of its material being: 
 
 ** Their's not to make reply, 
 Their's not to question why, 
 Their's but to do or die "— 
 
 But would a spiritual universe — a Universe of Souls — 
 remain as universally and unalterably true to its Law of 
 Life, namely, the Law of Love ? 
 
 It would not, because from the highest to the lowest, 
 no life, not even the Infinite Life of Deity, can create 
 life upon its own plane. The bee creates the honeycomb; 
 it can not create but can only transmit the bee; man 
 creates a city, a steam engine, an automaton; he can not 
 create, he can only transmit a man ; Deity creates a con- 
 stellation, an archangel — nay, a universe of both ; but 
 Deity can not create another Deity ; Deity can only trans- 
 mit Deity as the Eternal Father and Mother did transmit 
 Deity to One Eternal Son (and for aught we know may 
 have transmitted Deity to One Eternal Daughter). The 
 mind of Creative Deity is incapable of error because it is 
 perfect and infinite; but the Creator can not endow any 
 " creature " with such a mind. The created mind, no 
 matter how exalted, must be a priori liable to partiality, 
 to prejudice, to misconception, to mistake ! 
 
V 
 
 12 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 Divine Omnipotence foreknew, therefore, that in the 
 lapse of ages the very first and highest of created in- 
 telligences, namely, the " Light-bearer " Lucifer, him 
 of the matchless intellect, the most dazzHng gifts and 
 the most god-like powers — because he personally had 
 neither witnessed the creation of the universe nor was 
 conscious of his own creation, would one day doubt — both 
 from the vastness of that universe and his own control of 
 its mighty forces as studied and mastered by his mightier 
 mind — whether there had indeed been any " creation " by 
 a " self-existing " Deity — whether he, too, were not self- 
 existent and therefore by right a participant in the rule 
 and the prestige of the Supreme Trinity; or, if he, Luci- 
 fer, were only created, whether, perhaps, They also were 
 only by some Prior Deity created, and thus practically 
 but on the same plane of being with himself. 
 
 This revolutionary thought once lodged in the heart of 
 Lucifer, he would pursue it to the bitter end. It would 
 be imparted to others, would be welcomed by them, and 
 the doubt would spread until " the third part " of the 
 Universe of Souls would be drawn after it.* 
 
 And yet, notwithstanding this appalling fore-knowledge, 
 in divine self-fulfilment Triune Omnipotence swept on- 
 ward and called into existence its high Universe of 
 Free Spirits. 
 
 To refrain from doing so because some of them were 
 certain eventually to rebel, would be to limit Creative Om- 
 nipotence on the one hand, and, on the other, to lose the 
 infinite joy of endless loving and being loved by radiant 
 beings, each of them a separate thought of the Creative 
 Mind and to be fulfilled each in ever-changing and ex- 
 panding perfection, as the plant begins in the perfect seed, 
 
 * So indicated in Revelation, 12, 4. 
 
NEfV YORK-; A SYMPHONJC^ STUDY, 1 3 
 
 goes on to the perfect leaf, then to the perfect flower, and 
 after to the perfect fruit. When the revolt should really 
 occur, the angelic schism be really consummated, the 
 Divine Eternal Three knew what They would do. They 
 would descend with their fallen creation into its abysses, 
 would therein live and suffer with it, and would eternally 
 proffer it of their own Light and Life and Strength until 
 that lost creation to its very last soul should be lifted out 
 and up — reconciled — redeemed — restored — and re-estab- 
 lished. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 LUCIFER. 
 
 For long ages after the adding to the Universe of Stars 
 the Universe of Souls there was no clashing of the finite 
 with the Infinite. No imperfection, no weakness, no dis- 
 ease, no suffering, no ugliness, no slavery, no death — was 
 anywhere throughout those measureless realms. Neither 
 was there fear of any one or of any thing. There was 
 nothing, nothing whatsoever, save strength and freedom 
 and beauty, save life and love and joy, save progress and 
 development and triumph, all existent by and in the Life 
 and the Love and the Bliss of the Triune Creator. 
 
 Not until the dawning of the first doubt in the mind of 
 Lucifer began the first faint discord which from thence- 
 forward slowly but surely spread and swelled and aug- 
 mented until the listening ear of Deity, instead of being 
 endlessly ravished by divine ineffable harmonies, became 
 ceaselessly tortured by a mad infernal dissonance which 
 pierced also the yearning heart and wrung the inmost 
 soul of Deity, because each tone of that discord revealed 
 the pain which began for the revolting children of Deity 
 from the moment that they exchanged the Law of Love — 
 of giving everything — which is the Law of God and of 
 Life, for the Law of Self — of taking everything — which 
 is the Law of Lucifer and of Death. 
 
 Lucifer's own strength and splendor as the elected 
 leader of the celestial hierarchy, together with the sublime 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. IS 
 
 achievements in every realm of thought and endeavor 
 which had brought about the distinction, had ended by 
 bhnding him to the infinitely greater, though softer, 
 splendor and strength of his Triune Creator. 
 
 Hardly had this transcendent intelligence beheld the 
 starry universe, than he began and thereafter continued a 
 survey of all its worlds and their contents until a luminous 
 and inexhaustible knowledge not only crowned him with 
 the beautiful name he bore, but gave him also a dynamic 
 and constructive power scarcely less than god-like. 
 
 If on our own little planet " Art is man added to na- 
 ture," how much more in the measureless universe must 
 Art be angel added to creation ! 
 
 At first simply enjoying his own unapproachable tri- 
 umphs and the rapturous plaudits that welcomed them, 
 gradually the axis of Lucifer's will changed from the 
 " Thou " to the " I." He became possessed of the 
 thought that in his progression of discovery and mastery 
 he must one day reach and grasp the life-centre or 
 Causation of Things and thus himself become a creator 
 — a God — One of the Supreme. 
 
 But this goal continually receding before him, his 
 egotism finally wove for him another scheme which often 
 boldly expressed itself to his fellows : " \i the Heaven- 
 Father be indeed the omnipotent Creator of the universe," 
 so would he argue, " why will He not call into being one 
 star or angel the more^ before our eyes, and thus con- 
 vince us beyond peradventure that He really is our 
 Maker and his tiresome ' law of love ' truly, as He main- 
 tains, the law of our existence? But though I begged 
 this of Him He replied, ' When this universe has fulfilled 
 its mission. We will show you a new creation; but now 
 We are resting from physical creating until the soul- 
 
1 6 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 universe of which you, Lucifer, are yourself a part, shall 
 have perfectly evolved according to its nature/ Now, 
 let me ask, what is this but excuse — but evasion? Can 
 we believe that a * creator ' of omnipotent power would 
 refuse a small display of that power which would satisfy 
 one of his questioning creatures that He really possessed 
 it ? Does this reply show conscious omnipotence or rather 
 a well-grounded fear lest haply our angelic fellowship 
 should unite against Pretenders Who are uui i hree while 
 we are legion? How convenient for Them, also, noble 
 friends, is this ' law of love ' which They maintain is 
 the condition of our happiness, nay, of our very life — 
 keeping us all, as it does, in a perpetual subordination of 
 admiration and adoration toward Themselves ! For my- 
 self, frankly, until I have thrown off this belittling yoke 
 and thus feel myself absolutely my own master, free to 
 do as I please and under obligation to no one — I shall 
 never know peace of mind, and I should think every self- 
 respecting spirit of us all would feel the same." 
 
 Thus Lucifer, in the cloud-palaces of his dreams long 
 upborne toward the Godhead, had at last attained that 
 highest pinnacle of Selfhood — inability to recognise a 
 superior! Ambition had first scorched and shrivelled 
 up his heart, and then its echoing spirit — Ingratitude — • 
 laid its freezing spell upon his soul. Love had become 
 impossible to him. If he felt any response toward any in 
 the universe, it was but a haughty condescension toward 
 the spirits lesser than himself who fed him with flattery 
 and adulation. Any personality near or equal to his own 
 was intolerable to him. Like his truest human child. 
 Napoleon Bonaparte, he yearned, he burned, for un- 
 limited domination — for absolute freedom to do as he 
 would. The law of giving everything in order to receive 
 
NEW YORK': A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 17 
 
 everything was abhorrent to him. Rather would he 
 take everything and give nothing. Force, its possession 
 and its expression, was to him the only good. His vast 
 conscious powers demanded the Unlimited for their exer- 
 cise. To accomplish, to achieve an event — not from any 
 beneficent reason, but simply as an assertion of personal 
 strength, of personal will and because he personally chose 
 to have it so — this was now his mainspring of conduct — 
 his one fierce joy. He was the pioneer and father of that 
 still lengthening succession of spirits which realize and 
 express only Masculinism — or the Male Soul with its origi- 
 nal Divine Manhood driven out. In the benign and bound- 
 less universe of God Lucifer had evolved an entirely new 
 type, and instead of the " Light-bearer " had now become 
 " Satan " — the Adversary — the Hinderer — him who dark- 
 ens and blocks and obstructs, and who labors incessantly 
 for the failure and the destruction of the Ideal ! 
 
 In the launching of their disaffection Lucifer and his 
 following did nothing but theorize and discuss. The 
 order of creation continued in all respects as before. The 
 Thrones of Living Light to which Lucifer aspired re- 
 mained seemingly unmoved. Though dissuading and 
 warning Lucifer when he sought to argue with Them, 
 Triune Deity did not oppose nor restrain him. As in 
 the old-time myth Phaeton demanded to drive the Horses 
 of the Sun, and his father, Phoebus Apollo, permitted the 
 fatal attempt, so did the Omnipotent Three leave free 
 scope to their malcontent to scale their infinite skies if 
 he could. The heavenly hosts became agitated through 
 all their ranks, but no notice was taken by the Thrones 
 and none was called to account. The insensate archangel 
 — in his own person the type and the forerunner of the 
 " fool that saith in his heart ' There is no God ' " — even 
 
1 8 NEH^ YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 doubted within himself whether the Divine Trinity were 
 aware of what was going on. 
 
 One-third of his fellow-angels had pledged him their 
 sympathy and co-operation, but here his conversions 
 stopped. He persuaded himself that many more were se- 
 cretly with him and that if an open blow were struck these 
 would at once join his revolted banner. His project was 
 nothing less than to attack the Supreme Thrones and seat 
 himself either beside or above the Supreme Three. 
 
 The possibility of failure, of defeat, never entered his 
 mind. As yet no member of the angelic host had ever 
 failed in anything. Success had hitherto been the unvary- 
 ing law of the universe and success would of course crown 
 this undertaking as it had every other. Lucifer declared 
 to his following — as he did to himself — that he wanted 
 but " justice " — but his " right " as the Chief of the Hosts 
 of God to place and prestige equalling the place and the 
 prestige of the so-called " Eternal Son." True that from 
 the beginning of his existence the Supreme Father and 
 Mother had taught him, together with all other souls — ^that 
 he was but of the created, while the Only Son being " be- 
 gotten, not made " was a Creator — that he, Lucifer, was 
 finite, while the Only Son was Infinite. He did not believe 
 it. They but said so in order to uphold their Favorite 
 against all other archangels, himself especially. 
 
 And so at length the storm of rebellion which had been 
 gathering so long in thought broke forth into deed, and, 
 as we learn from the Book of Revelation, " There was war 
 in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the 
 dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels and pre- 
 vailed not, neither was their place found any more in 
 heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old 
 serpent called the Peyil md SQtQn^ which deceiveth the 
 
I 
 
 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 19 
 
 whole world; he was cast out into the earth and his angels 
 were cast out with him." 
 
 In this war the Triune Deity had taken no part. 
 
 For the Creator to fight against the created would 
 have been the flame against the moth indeed. Nor was 
 there need that Deity should do so. The Universe of 
 Souls was a vast Self-governing Autonomy. One law 
 had been given it — the Law of Love. If each would give 
 everything, each must inevitably receive everything, and 
 deprivation and sorrow be therefore impossible. But to 
 the Souls themselves was left the organization and de- 
 velopment of their happiness, and doubtless it was the 
 very crown of the creative joy and triumph of Creative 
 Deity that, from their own perfect harmony within them- 
 selves and according to their various gifts and powers, 
 the Souls — the Universe of Souls — should practically have 
 become that " Celestial Rose " which, as sung by the in- 
 spired Dante, forever glows and palpitates around The 
 Divine Thrones and whose harmonies and whose per- 
 fumes forever radiate to the farthest boundaries of the 
 Universe of Stars. 
 
 Therefore it came to pass that when Lucifer and his 
 hosts opened their audacious attack against the Highest, 
 the loyal angels flew to the defence of the Life and Light 
 and Sweetness they so absolutely adored. Uninfluenced 
 by the subtle and specious leader, they had long discerned 
 the fell abysses of his ambition, and their love had re- 
 doubled for his treachery. Now, by his own act, had come 
 the hour when they could rightfully expel from their 
 councils and their society these traitors to the All-loving 
 Ones, and not one moment did they pause. 
 
 Advancing confidently against the Divine Heights, Lu- 
 cifer and his legions found themselves opposed by myriads 
 
V 
 
 20 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 on myriads of flaming spirits who, in numbers twice as 
 numerous as his own, and each animated by a fearful in- 
 tensity of resistance, had poured in from every quarter of 
 the Universe of Stars. Far from making headway toward 
 his impious goal, he and his were forced back, back, and 
 still irresistibly back, until " like lightning " they " fell 
 from Heaven " and their places therein " knew them no 
 more." From thenceforward the Universe of Souls was 
 openly divided between the Friends and the Foes of its 
 Creator. 
 
 The thought will next arise, " Why did not the Supreme 
 Trinity at once withdraw from the rebelling angels the life 
 which had been given them — annihilate them — and leave 
 only the loving and loyal spirits to go on from glory to 
 glory to all eternity ? " 
 
 Why? Because this would be for Omnipotence to fail 
 in a portion of its design, and also to doom Creative 
 Deity to endless sorrow over all those destroyed exist- 
 ences which were to have been so triumphant. The love 
 and yearning of the Divine Eternal Trinity over tho souls 
 They have created — from Lucifer down to the least — is in- 
 finite, fathomless, and not to be appeased save by the 
 answering love and consequent ideal joy of each and 
 every one of them. The inmost heart of the Divine Father 
 and Son must and would forever bleed — the secret tears 
 of the Divine Mother must and would forever fall — over 
 those forever missing but never-to-be-forgotten ones. 
 
 From its very name, " Omnipotence " must not even- 
 tually fail. In the end " Omnipotence " must succeed, and 
 therefore — because the finite intelligence of finite mind 
 can learn only through obedience to a Higher Power in 
 Which it has absolute faith, or else through experience 
 gained in its own groping and trying and suffering — 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 21 
 
 Omnipotence must hold these wayward souls in being as 
 the towering tree holds up a withered branch, patiently 
 waiting meantime through the tragic ages until they shall 
 learn each by individual experience what does and must 
 result to the soul which opposes itself to that Law of 
 Love which is the Life-Law of the Eternal Trinity, and, 
 convinced at last by the ever-deepening pain, failure and 
 deterioration resulting from their wilfulness, shall one by 
 one resolve, " I will arise and go to my Father, and will 
 say unto Him, ' Father, I have sinned against that Happi- 
 ness of the Universe which is " Heaven " and before Thee. 
 Forgive my blindness and my self-sufficiency. Teach me 
 to know Thee as Thou art and to love as Thou Thyself 
 dost love, and may the stream of thy Son's Eternal Life 
 riow through my perishing spirit until it is revived and 
 restored to Thee; for Thou, with the Mother and Only 
 Son, Alone art Life, and Thou, w^th Them, Alone art 
 Heaven.' " 
 
 The infinite suffering, the measureless agony that this 
 waiting — that this toleration of evil — meant for The Triune 
 Deity, who but Deity can comprehend or conceive ? 
 
 For whatever IS — whether it be Heaven or whether it 
 be Hell — whether the ravishing perfection of beauty or 
 the revolting extreme of ugliness — whether the whitest 
 white of good or the foulest foul of evil — must be forever 
 in the consciousness of Deity, since Deity is the all- 
 pervading, circum-sphering Life outside of Which nothing 
 can exist. No life, not even the life that is opposing Deity, 
 can live apart from Deity. With the raging pride of Lu- 
 cifer's revolt, with the writhing pangs of his foiled am- 
 bition, with the blackest depth of his depravity, the Divine 
 Trinity of Life and Love does and must perpetually abide 
 even as It abides with the mounting purity and joy of the 
 highest seraph. 
 
V 
 
 22 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 Surely this is the most awful consequence of what we 
 call " sin " — of this Law of Self which is soul-suicide or 
 " death " — that not only the sinning one does and must 
 personally suffer, but also that this Sweet and Omnipotent 
 God, this Author of Life and Strength, this Source of 
 Beauty and Joy, must, " though without sin," sin with the 
 sinner's sin, must suffer with the sinner's suffering, must 
 echo every pang experienced throughout the universe, 
 whether it be the fall of a sparrow, of a Napoleon, or 
 of a Lucifer — must bear in the Divine Consciousness and 
 supply the life for all the impurity and shame, all the hate 
 and cruelty, all the pain and agony, all the discord and 
 disorder, all the filth and uncleanness, all the squalor and 
 disease, all the ugliness and deformity which throughout 
 the miserable domains of Satan — whether in this our 
 world or in some other — perpetually profane and blas- 
 pheme and contradict the Divine Ideals ! 
 
 Imagine a master-leader facing a magnificent orchestra 
 with the most sublime and beautiful of musical composi- 
 tions on their desks before them and in their hands the 
 most splendid instruments for its performance, and as his 
 baton gives the beat, instead of the intended wave of rav- 
 ishing harmony, one-third of the artists deliberately play 
 anything, everything, rather than the notes before them — 
 nay, they even go on to reject their exquisite instruments 
 and blow horns, beat gongs and base utensils, fire ex- 
 plosives and utter hoarse laughter and cries in order to 
 make a din infernal enough to drown out, if possible, the 
 strains of ihe other two-thirds of their fellow-players — 
 imagine this, and likewise imagine that leader keeping 
 steadily on, enduring from age to age the musical agony 
 until the rebellious players, one by one, shall repent and 
 take up each his appointed instrument, and, with all his 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 'i'S 
 
 soul and all his mind and all his heart and all his strength, 
 play upon it his allotted part; this — such — in a dim, inade- 
 quate figure — is the Spiritual Symphony of the Universe — 
 of the Universe of Souls — of vi^hich you, Reader, and I 
 are each a concordant or a discordant unit ! 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HELL. 
 
 To Lucifer the inconceivable had happened. A new 
 horizon — the horizon of pain, of despair — had swum into 
 his mental ken. Hitherto he had known success only, for 
 success is a condition of Heaven, and he had been a life- 
 long denizen of Heaven. Now he knew failure, and fail- 
 ure — that gulf — that abyss — because of its never-dying 
 worm of self-reproach, is hell. As a new realm of the uni- 
 verse, Hell, through him, had begun. This measureless, 
 this incredible woe, was all that his revolt had accom- 
 plished. 
 
 How did his mortified and tortured spirit account for 
 his failure? Simply on the ground that he had been out- 
 numbered two to one. Oh, had his forces but equalled 
 Michael's forces ! He had been continually winning ad- 
 herents. H he had but waited, eventually his numbers 
 would have equalled, might even have surpassed, the num- 
 bers of those blind and slavish spirits who would not strike 
 for higher glory and dominion, but were contented as they 
 were — and then victory would have been his. 
 
 But the fallen Lucifer juggled with himself. This 
 " father of lies " and " liar from the beginning " would 
 not face the truth — the truth being that every spirit which 
 could be won had been won, and that, seeing he could ex- 
 pect nothing more by argument or persuasion, he had been 
 driven to try the last argument of kings and of devils — 
 force ! 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHOMC STUDY. 25 
 
 In his agony did yearning and pitying Deity seek out 
 Lucifer to " reason " with him as later on Deity so often 
 reasoned with the equally wayward children of Israel — 
 and did Deity say to him: 
 
 "Lucifer, you suffer. What did we tell you?" 
 
 " But I am not * dead.' You said I should die if I 
 opposed you and your law." 
 
 " Suffering is death — is the beginning and the process 
 of death. Only the Creator can suffer and not die. If the 
 creature suffer and cannot conquer his suffering, it will 
 end by conquering him. Sooner or later he will surely die 
 — vanish from the universe." 
 
 " I shall conquer my suffering." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 "If you are in fact All-knowing, you know already. 
 If you are not, I shall keep my own counsel." 
 
 " You are right, Lucifer. We do know, and we know 
 that your thoughts are chaos. Therefore, will you not 
 change your mind and come back? Will you not be 
 reconciled? Will you not love us again as we always 
 have — as we always shall — love you ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Now you have tried another plan, do you not see that 
 in a universe created hy Love and created for Love every 
 soul in it must love — must give everything — or be cast out 
 by it ? " 
 
 " I do not admit that the universe was created either 
 hy or for ' love ' ; nay — I do not admit, because I do not 
 personally know, that the universe was * created ' at all ; 
 nor am I out of the universe." 
 
 No, because we are yet holding you in it; but you 
 and your following are out of Heaven, that is, out of hap- 
 piness, and thus are on the road to death. Having grasped 
 
26 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 at what neither was nor could be yours, you and your 
 following are in torment, the torment of your defeat, loss 
 and despair. Will you not admit that you were wrong, 
 that we were right, and come back to us and to your 
 own glorious place and heritage? If not for your own 
 sake, will you not for the sake of all those deluded and 
 deprived of their happiness through you? And if not for 
 theirs will you not for ours — for now that you and yours 
 are suffering, We who are your Life are suffering and 
 must suffer with you, and as much more than you suffer 
 as Our Infinite is beyond your finite? " 
 
 "If you are suffering because I do, that very thought 
 would give me new resolve. I hope you are suffering and 
 that you suffer all that we are suffering, and since you 
 suggest it, more too. But that is too good to be true." 
 
 " It is true," answered Deity ; " it is too true." 
 
 " Take us back, then, into Heaven and give us our 
 realms and our dignities and our activities and our joys 
 as before, and we will no longer suffer and neither will 
 you." 
 
 " As we told you from the beginning, we do not * rule ' 
 the Universe of Souls. For the Joy of Creating we called 
 into existence the Universe of Stars, and to share and 
 complete our own Joy of Living we peopled it with the 
 Universe of Souls, giving them the Law of that Joy — 
 the Law of Love which made us blissful and keeps us 
 omnipotent, then leaving them freely to keep it or not, 
 as they chose. Force — the coercive force which you, 
 Lucifer, so worship — in the realm of spirit is paradoxical, 
 impossible, a contradiction in terms and to us abhorrent. 
 Omnipotence would not compel the love and allegiance 
 of the least and lowest soul in the entire hierarchy. En- 
 forced love would not and could not be the true love, and 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 27 
 
 we want and will accept only the true love. It is the 
 loving angels, therefore, and not we, who have cast you 
 out of Heaven. You intrigued among them; you slandered 
 them; as far as you could you seduced them with your 
 new Law of Self; finally, you made war upon your and 
 their Creator. They have cast you out in order to re- 
 establish the peace and joy they had with us from their 
 beginning, and which is their birthright. In justice to 
 them we could not put you back unless you acknowledge 
 that you have sinned against the Happiness of Heaven — 
 of the whole Universe — and turn utterly from the Law of 
 Self back to the Law of Love." 
 
 "In justice to them!" echoed Lucifer, scornfully; "in 
 hatred to us, you mean. You do not now love any of us 
 and you never did love me, or you would not have pre- 
 ferred Him Whom you call the * Only Son ' ever and al- 
 ways before myself. Now you would fain humble us, and 
 myself above all, before the whole universe. But I will 
 not please you in this. If I doubted you before, now I 
 hate and abhor you, and I will do evjerything in my power 
 to prevent a single one of my adherents from seeking 
 reconciliation with you. I see now that while you seemed 
 to be passive if not ignorant regarding our discontent and 
 disaffection, you were really plotting against us. You 
 evidently promised to others that everything that was ours 
 should be theirs, and so you kept them true. ' Supreme * 
 Beings though you claim to be, they love you no better 
 than we do ; they have been more politic, that's all. Con- 
 fess that I — that we — were * wrong/ and ' love ' you and 
 them once more ? Never ! War, rather, eternal war — eter- 
 nal revolt — against them and against you." 
 
 Before finally leaving the defiant demon did his all- 
 pitying Creator once more gently reply and say — " War 
 
28 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 be it then, Lucifer, but henceforth on our and not your 
 personal plane. On this plane we will provide you a 
 realm of your own and will people it with intelligent 
 beings whom you shall freely do your utmost to win as 
 your adherents, and on our side we will do the same. 
 As a rule these new beings shall see or perceive neither 
 you nor ourselves. Their only guide and motive shall be 
 the principles for which you and we respectively stand, 
 and to save you, if you will, from a second inevitable de- 
 feat, here and now we warn you that in the end they will 
 reject your Principle of Self and adopt our Principle of 
 Love. But if you will not listen to us; if you still per- 
 sist in believing that you understand the underlying Life 
 and Law of the Universe better than we, its authors — 
 which is, in effect, to claim that you are a Deity superior 
 to Ourselves — then we wish you to have the freest and 
 amplest scope for testing your belief. The end of our 
 existence is happiness. That also is your end and aim 
 as it must be that of every self-conscious intelligence and 
 will be that of the riew race whom we are to place in 
 your power. Let then the inexorable logic of events, of 
 cause and effect, that which the new race will one day 
 call " science," be judge between us. We will never co- 
 erce you. When you finally witness the results of our 
 principle upon the weak and groping humanity-to-be as 
 contrasted with the results of yours, we look for your co- 
 ercion of yourself — for your voluntary confession and 
 forsaking of your Principle of Death and for your per- 
 sonal prayer to us for restoration to that Life and Love 
 and Heaven-Bliss from which you have wilfully cut your- 
 self off. Until that time, you, the universe and ourselves, 
 two of whom you hate and one of whom you scorn, must 
 and will all agonize together — and ourselves infinitely 
 more than all the rest!" 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 29 
 
 The Glory and the Beauty and the Sweetness of The 
 Triune Godhead — the overwhelming grandeurs and splen- 
 dors of their illimitable creation — the infinite tenderness 
 of .their infinite love — had not sufficed to keep Lucifer 
 true to Them and Heaven. He, too, had aspired to be a 
 creator, and Hell — " an awful Hell " — existing as the 
 deadly, implacable Foe of Heaven, was his dreadful re- 
 sulting achievement. If he and his fellow-rebels were 
 not to be annihilated, how were they to be reconciled — to 
 be converted — and thus this bottomless abyss be filled, this 
 measureless breach be closed, this intolerable dissonance 
 be harmonized ? 
 
 " * Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit/ saith 
 the Lord of Hosts " — that is, by the Divine Eternal Fem- 
 inine, Who, in infinite contrast to the Father and the Son, 
 wields not the coercive forces of the universe and is 
 " Omnipotent " only because the All-wisdom of her Coun- 
 sel, the All-perfections of her Nature and the All-grace 
 of her Attributes render Her Irresistible. 
 
 To Lucifer, with his concentrated masculinism, this 
 Supernal but Intangible Being had ever been an enigma. 
 The Creator, comprehending everything, never despises 
 anything; but the instinct of the "creature" always and 
 everywhere is to scorn and oppose what is unlike itself. 
 Thus Lucifer, by far the highest and greatest but also the 
 most self-asserting and grasping personality of the created 
 universe — was utterly blind to the claims and perfections 
 of that One of the Triune Deity most absolutely dif- 
 fering from himself. 
 
 The open strength and glory of the Father and the Son 
 as the Overlords of all the angelic hosts, he could meas- 
 urably understand, and in the dream of his importunate 
 arrogance dare to cope with and hope to overcome. But 
 
30 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 this Elusive Loveliness within a half-concealing veil of 
 light — this hardly more than Emanation which might be 
 Ultimate Intellect, or Illimitable Genius, or simply " the 
 Nonentity which can fathom fathomless love " that, the 
 male nature ever hungers after and Masculinism ever 
 seizes and assimilates with itself without recognition 
 or reward, but which Manhood never accepts without 
 giving its whole self in return — this " Divine Feminine " 
 might be any one of these or all three combined for aught 
 Lucifer knew or wanted to know. Sufficient to him that 
 She was not an Arbiter of Creation in the sense that 
 he himself burned to become. To his blind arrogance 
 She was but its Ornament, nay, if you will, its Radiance, 
 but not its Law-giver or its Power; — and yet with this 
 mere Persuasive One the Father and the Son shared the 
 measureless empire and prestige that were withheld from 
 him, the tremendous, all-comprehending, executive arch- 
 angel ! Before his rebellion he believed that She influenced 
 Them against his pretensions, and his resentment was in 
 proportion. O that he could annihilate Her — could brush 
 Her out of his way ! 
 
 And still beneath his rage was a haunting terror lest 
 eventually She would subdue him, and deeper even than 
 this a heart-break and a torture that the Loveliest was dis- 
 approving him — that She did not take the same view of 
 him that he took of himself — She — whose smile was once 
 the dearest reward of every achievement in the universe ! 
 
 Thus the intensest note of the dreadful drama of THE 
 REVOLT OF THE CREATURE AGAINST THE 
 CREATOR was the special hatred of Lucifer, as the 
 Finite Autocratic Masculine, against the Spirit, or In- 
 finite Pleading Feminine — and therefore it was that the 
 Divine Father and the Son, in the councils of Eternity 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 31 
 
 before creation was, had accepted and were now about 
 to carry out in Time the Plan, the strange plan — and 
 to bring to pass the Act, the strange act,* proposed by 
 this Divine Non-resisting Spirit for turning the passing 
 failure of the Universe, which would be "Hell" into that 
 everlasting triumph of the Universe which must be 
 " Heaven." 
 
 •Isaiah, 28:21. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE GAME OF SOULS. 
 
 Lucifer had adventured against Deity with battalions, 
 but battalions are not on the Plane of Deity and he had 
 been vanquished not by Deity but by fellow-angels who 
 were the devotees of Deity. 
 
 Since, however, the inevitable challenge of the Creator 
 by the Created had come — since the " Why ? " was still 
 boldly demanded of Infinite Spirit by Finite Soul and, 
 in spite of its first defeat, submission and reconciliation 
 were scorned — All-loving Deity would not now abandon, 
 that is, annihilate the defiant questioner, but would lift 
 him to its own Plane of First Causes and there provide 
 him with an arena so absolutely his that " with none to 
 hinder nor any to make him afraid," but on equal terms 
 with Deity, he could freely champion and inculcate his 
 limited Principle of Self or the " I " as against the limit- 
 less Principle of Love or the " Thou," and let the one 
 making for the greatest happiness — otherwise the more 
 beautiful — be the winner. 
 
 For though Love alone is the Subjective of Happiness, 
 the Objective or Outward Expression of Love is the Beau- 
 tiful; therefore the ultimate tribunal for both Creator and 
 Created is equally and eternally the Beautiful. 
 
 To this end, upon the most exquisite spot of a planet 
 which through long ages had been slowly evolving into 
 a world of mingled loveliness and majesty, two newly 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 33 
 
 created spirits were established with " dominion " over 
 everything that world contained. Differing from all the 
 other intelligences of the vast surrounding universe, they 
 were clothed in a dense outer veil woven of the dust of the 
 ground on which they walked — a veil flawless in beauty 
 and perfection, but which was intended to hide and which 
 did hide the Triune Deity and also all other spirits from 
 their vision. 
 
 Like Them in whose '' image " they were made, they 
 were of opposite sex. The male spirit had been created 
 first, and when he had lived long enough to discover that 
 through the whole range of the animal kingdom there 
 was no real companion for him, God brought unto him a 
 sister. 
 
 " When we meet our accurate mate," said Ralph Waldo 
 Emerson, " conversation begins and life is delicious." The 
 beautiful Eden wherein Adam had found himself suddenly 
 became a rapturous Paradise. Every day, every hour, re- 
 vealed to the enchanting pair something more lovely and 
 lovable in each other and in the nature around them. 
 Conscious only of eye answering eye, of speech answering 
 speech, of soul answering soul, they walked as it were on 
 air. Their gifts and their graces were godlike ; their inno- 
 cence was like snow; but they were absolutely ignorant. 
 They had everything to learn, and as yet one only warning 
 had been vouchsafed them by the high yet gracious Pres- 
 ence that shared their happiness in the decline of every 
 day: "Of the tree in the midst of the Garden ye may not 
 eat, lest ye die." 
 
 They did not know, they could not dream, those un- 
 conscious lovers, that they were the opening though self- 
 moving pawns in a dread game of Heaven and Hell which 
 a whole universe was to watch, nor that the Divine Eter- 
 
34 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 nal Feminine as the " still small voice " * of conscience 
 was to be their perpetual Pleader against Self, while Lu- 
 cifer, her fierce implacable foe, was to be their sleepless 
 Tempter for Self ! 
 
 The exquisite Eve had been brought to the youth Adam 
 to be his companion, but when Satan towered before her 
 in the form of a gorgeous, gleaming, undulating serpent 
 she was alone. Together the pair would have been invul- 
 nerable. Each would have supplemented the other, and 
 therefore the arch-enemy took the least sturdy and per-, 
 sistent, the most imaginative and impressionable, when 
 sfte had no one to confer with, and appealed to her on two 
 of the noblest sides of our human nature — its love of 
 knowledge and its love of beauty, and also on perhaps its 
 weakest one — its delight in the pleasure of tasting. 
 
 " Tell me," said her strange and fascinating visitor, 
 " has God said that you shall not eat of every tree of the 
 garden ? " 
 
 " We may eat of the fruit of all the trees of the garden," 
 replied the maiden, " except the tree in the midst thereof. 
 Of that fruit God said we may not eat of it, neither may 
 we touch it, lest we die." 
 
 " Nay, you will not surely die. On the contrary, God 
 knows that as soon as you eat of that fruit your eyes will 
 be opened and you will become like Himself, knowing both 
 good and evil. God does not want you to be as wise as He 
 is, and so He forbids you this very best and most desirable 
 of all the fruits of the garden." 
 
 God had predicted " death " to Lucifer as the result of 
 his rebellion, yet Lucifer was not dead; on the contrary, he 
 was most intensely alive and eager. God had now also 
 predicted death to Adam and Eve if they ate of this paltry 
 
 * I Kings, 19, 12. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 35 
 
 fruit. Lucifer was anxious to see death. As yet nothing 
 that he could perceive had gone out of existence. Was 
 it but a threat which this Jealous Trio — trying to rule the 
 universe after their own fashion — could not carry out? 
 
 The melting, alluring beauty of the forbidden fruit 
 which, now that her attention was bent upon it, seemed to 
 compel her grasp, completed the conquest of the child-like 
 Eve. She longed to enjoy what looked so fair, and she 
 was fired with the thought of conversing on equal terms 
 with the August One who daily taught herself and her 
 beautiful brother. In vain the Spirit, her Divine Mother, 
 whispering, warned her — "Do not touch; do not eat." Eve 
 heard, but between the blushing fruit and the bewildering, 
 authoritative, flashing serpent the doomed one could not 
 heed. Leaping lightly upward she snatched one of the 
 lovely spheres; she tasted; from head to foot she thrilled 
 equally with the magic flavor and with her own daring — 
 and then, in the very act, she heard Adam calling. 
 
 Instantly she sprang for another of the fateful globes, 
 and, running in the direction of the beloved voice, cried 
 out, as she reached him : " Adam, dearest, I've brought you 
 a fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden. See how 
 beautiful — and I've just tasted this one myself! Here — 
 try it — quick ! It is the most wonderful — the most de- 
 licious — there's nothing like it in the whole garden, and it 
 makes you feel — oh — I can't express it — but as if you could 
 touch the sky; — and yet I've taken but one mouthful! " 
 
 " Eve ! " cried Adam, aghast and terrified, " what have 
 you done ? Not the forbidden fruit ? " 
 
 " Yes, the * forbidden ' fruit ! A most splendid creature 
 I never saw before, that stands and moves upon his tail 
 and lifts himself in waving wreaths of all colors higher 
 than my head, and on his own head a dazzling crest " 
 
36 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 " I know ; I named him the * serpent.' " 
 
 " Well, he speaks, Adam — yes, talks, just as we do, and 
 can tell us everything. But come ! Come along, so he can 
 tell you himself ! " And, turning, she went dancing swiftly 
 back with Adam to the Tree, reaching which, her tempter 
 was nowhere to be seen. The deep and infamous Satan 
 had designedly disappeared, so that upon the hapless Eve 
 alone might Adam lay all the blame of his own impending 
 transgression. 
 
 " Why," she exclaimed, " where is he ? " and the first 
 pang she had ever known struck sharp upon her heart; 
 " you would have loved him so, Adam, dear ! He was so 
 strange — so beautiful — and he assured me we will not die 
 at all (whatever that means) if we eat this lovely fruit; it 
 is only that God doesn't want us to be wise like Him that 
 made Him forbid us. And I'm sure that is true, for you 
 see I'm eating this one and nothing happens except that 
 I feel entirely different — grand — and great " — throwing 
 her arms toward the sky, " and as if I could do anything ! 
 Stop staring so at me, dearest," caressing him, " and taste 
 yours quickly and feel the same that I do. Until you try 
 you cannot conceive how glorious it is ! " And Eve was so 
 strangely and softly brilliant and in her accent was such 
 thrilling, persuasive music that though the agonized Spirit, 
 whispered to Adam also, "Do not touch; do not eat," and 
 he distinctly heard it, yet, like his sister before him he 
 could not heed, and so the one small thing' that All-Loving 
 Deity had asked of the beauteous pair in return for the 
 vast happiness bestowed upon them was refused. The 
 "THOU" was betrayed. The "I" was obeyed. They 
 deserted the Law of Love — which is Life, and the Law 
 of Self — which is Death, was henceforth upon them and 
 upon all their descendants. 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 37 
 
 With awful swiftness the Luciferian death-poison be- 
 gan coursing through their veins in all its potency of 
 physical degeneration, for while the matchless fruit was 
 yet in their mouths, with a shriek Eve dropped the one 
 she was eating and cried out — "Adam! You are changed! 
 There is hair on your face !" 
 
 Involuntarily Adam raised his hand to his cheek, but 
 nevertheless he finished his fruit before answering; then, 
 looking searchingly at the horror-stricken girl, he re- 
 turned — "And so are you changed! Oh, you bad — ugly — 
 Eve!" — new, terrible words coming to his lips with his 
 new, terrible conceptions. " Why, why did you disobey 
 God and insist on my disobeying Him too? Now He will 
 know that we have eaten of the forbidden tree ! " 
 
 It was true. The radiant, slender, ethereal pair, youth- 
 ful hitherto as the dew and the dawn, had in a moment 
 become matured man and woman, splendid indeed in 
 strength and glorious still in beauty, but ideal no longer, 
 but of the earth now, earthy, and with sex — which on 
 its birth-plane of the Divine is the viewless flame of 
 being, is soul-affinity, the very zenith and ecstasy of 
 the "" Thou " — now stamped so brutally upon them, that 
 Eve's one wild impulse, as that of her true daughters ever 
 since, was instant, utter concealment. 
 
 Never had her virgin vision beheld or conceived aught 
 but the benign harmonies of the exquisite Paradise pre- 
 pared for her by her Creator, and her perceptions were 
 all too quiveringly alive to their reverse. 
 
 " Oh'' she gasped, " we are horrible ! " and with the 
 speed of a deer she darted toward the nearest wood, and 
 rushed deeper and deeper into its recesses until she came 
 upon a heavy-foliaged tree whose branches, sweeping the 
 ground, mercifully offered her a hiding-place. Crouching 
 
38 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 therein beneath her long enfolding tresses, her face buried 
 in her hands, she wept and sobbed and agonized alone 
 until nature could weep no more. Then, gathering herself 
 together, she sat staring outward in blank despair — stonily 
 — silently — not really seeing what she saw, until, after a 
 long time, her brain at last took note that what she was 
 gazing at through a parting in the branches was a bush 
 of long sharp thorns such as she had never before beheld. 
 The swift resource and invention of her sex awoke within 
 her. Pulling a quantity of the broad leaves from her 
 kindly shelter, the tears streaming again the while, with 
 the thorns she put together the first of that infinite series 
 of garments which have since come from woman's hand, 
 and when she had donned it she began making one for 
 Adam. 
 
 The latter, lonely, sick at heart and desperately afraid, 
 at length slowly sought her out. Hearing him approach, 
 her burning face hidden on her knees, she held out to him 
 his kirtle. Accepting and fastening it, with a groan of 
 despair he sank by her side and there, in quaking, aw- 
 fullest dread, did these two first human criminals sit 
 speechless in the deepening shadows of the forest, await- 
 ing the voice of Him Who in the cool of the day was cer- 
 tain to summon and to question them. 
 
 Oh, the sorrow, the pity, the sympathy of that Divine 
 Voice as It foretold what through their listening to the 
 Serpent was to befall their beautiful world and their beau- 
 tiful selves. Of dust were they made and to dust would 
 they return. The ground would now be found their enemy 
 instead of their friend; thorns and briars would it bring 
 forth unto them, and from it Adam must wrest the food 
 for himself and his family by the sweat of his brow. Eve 
 would be still more bitterly changed. Besides the toil to 
 
JVEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 39 
 
 be shared with her bread-winner as his " helpmeet," she 
 must now often" and often become a mother, and every 
 birth would bring to her excruciating agony. Worse yet, 
 instead of being the friend and equal of her adored Adam, 
 henceforth he would regard and treat her as his subject. 
 "Thy yearning will be to thy husband, and he will rule 
 over thee " — " will," not " shall," as in the authorized ver- 
 sion, — for the Divine Father did not impose this deepest 
 " curse " upon his erring daughter, as has been so unjustly 
 believed; He but prophesied the inevitable consequence of 
 her following after a lie instead of the truth — Truth ever 
 giving freedom, Lies always making slaves. As for the 
 Serpent, who, triumphant, malignant, was towering there 
 insolently beside them — his proud and mounting curves 
 should in future writhe along prone in the dust until the 
 day wherein a Child of Eve would bruise his ruthless 
 head even to the death. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE SERPENT VS. WOMANHOOD. 
 
 The Masculinism or Self raised to the Highest Power 
 with which humanity was inoculated by Lucifer through 
 the betrayal of Eden, had found its fitting incarnation in 
 the Serpent, because the serpent embodies the most ter- 
 rific possible form of muscular strength with the mini- 
 mum of heart and brain to rule it. Absolutely short- 
 sighted,* utterly regardless of the harmony and happiness 
 of the rest of the universe and inspired by the single mo- 
 tive of having its own way, Masculinism represents noth- 
 ing but Force for force's sake, Power for the sake of 
 power, Cruelty for sake of cruelty. Lust for the sake of 
 lust. 
 
 Protean in its forms, its source and soul is the once 
 supernal " Light-bearer " who wilfully became the rival 
 and enemy of Creative Deity — whom the Bible calls " Sa- 
 tan," " the devil," that " old serpent," " the dragon," " the 
 prince of this world," and whom the Christ not only de- 
 clared to be " a liar " and " the father of lies," but also 
 a " murderer from the beginning " — because his Law of 
 Self or the " I " kills the Love or the " Thou " which 
 alone is Life. 
 
 After the tragedy of Eden had been consummated by 
 the expulsion of our first parents from their betrothal 
 paradise, it was easy for this pitiless and sleepless enemy 
 
 * Serpents distinguish objects only within a few feet. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 41 
 
 of Deity and murderer of soul-life to continue the woful 
 human drama on the simple principle with which he had 
 inaugurated it. Satan's first victory had been gained be- 
 cause one of the youthful pair acted on her own unaided 
 judgment instead of waiting to consult the companion to 
 whom God had brought her. All his subsequent ones 
 were to follow because he whispered to and impressed 
 upon Adam that Eve, having chosen wrongly in the sim- 
 plest yet most momentous decision of their entire ex- 
 istence, could never again be trusted and must never in 
 future be consulted. He, the man, the stronger, and there- 
 fore the Protector, must be the supreme arbiter and dic- 
 tator; she, the weaker, and therefore the Protected, must 
 hear and obey only. The man had followed the woman's 
 counsel once, and awful — agonizing — abiding — were the 
 consequences. In future the woman must never again use 
 her own mind nor ever influence the mind of the man. 
 
 Thus through the wiles of Lucifer — the author and pro- 
 moter of kingcraft and priestcraft, of autocracy and 
 aristocracy, of subjection, slavery and oppression of every 
 kind and degree — did caste — inequality — enthrone itself 
 in the inmost heart of the first human family, and under 
 this bitter transformation was the marriage of the hapless 
 pair consummated and the long father-and-mother-agony 
 of " subduing " the earth and '* replenishing/' it begun. 
 To all Adam's sons was doubtless rehearsed the folly of 
 their mother Eve, and by it they and their sons after them 
 were warned not to consult nor listen to their wives, until 
 the very condition Triune Creative Deity had sought to 
 avoid for human manhood, namely, that it should not be 
 intellectually and spiritually " alone " — was established as 
 the modus vivendi of the infant race and so has con- 
 tinued until this day. After Lucifer's one soaring appeal 
 
 k 
 
42 XEW YORK: A ^YMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 to the feminine intellect—" Ye shall be as gods, knowing 
 both good and evil " — Masculinism never made another. 
 
 Womanhood's physical service as wife, concubine or 
 courtesan — its provident tenderness as mother — the handi- 
 crafts womanhood invented and practised to promote 
 manhood wealth and comfort or childhood life and sus- 
 tenance — such functions women were not only welcome 
 to; they were bought and sold for their skill in them— 
 they were beaten and starved if they failed in them. But 
 from Eve's fall in the Garden to the days when the Mary- 
 mother of Jesus "kept his sayings in her heart," and 
 Mary of Bethany " sat at his feet " to learn about eternal 
 things, and to the brilliant " woman of Samaria " was 
 revealed that " God is Spirit, and they that worship 
 Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth" — few or 
 no illumining rays reached womanhood's scorned and neg- 
 lected intellect. 
 
 Men on the earth in general exemplified Masculinism. 
 As fathers and husbands they moulded womanhood into 
 the only thing they wanted of it, namely. Materialism. 
 In turn, this Materialism as Motherhood brought forth 
 Masculinism, and thus the fatal circle was never broken. 
 In both sexes the Divine, the Soul, was equally dead or 
 dormant. 
 
 For thousands of years in the history of the race it was 
 a winning game with Lucifer. True to her mission the 
 Divine Eternal Spirit was the faithful and sleepless con- 
 science of every member of the wayward and corrupted 
 human family, pleading with each and every human spirit 
 to do the right according to its light. Now and then She 
 was able to lift up and inspire some great soul as a leader, 
 a teacher or a witness for Light and Truth among their 
 fellows — as Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Daniel 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 43 
 
 — among the Bible heroes — as Confucius, Zoroaster, 
 Buddha, Homer, Socrates, Plato, Sophocles — among the 
 Gentiles. At times the Divine Father and the Son came 
 to her aid with the forces of the universe — as when They 
 destroyed with a flood all the perverted race save Noah 
 and his family, or delivered Israel from Egypt by "signs 
 and wonders and a stretched-out-arm," or caused the sun 
 to "stand still" at the prayer of the fighting Joshua, or 
 by lesser miracles saved some other hard-pressed cham- 
 pion of the True and Only God. 
 
 But the manhood of all the leaders of the race, even 
 the loftiest, was in each and every case so deeply alloyed 
 with masculinism, that the physical and mental and moral 
 bondage of womanhood was co-extensive with the sex, 
 and what we now understand by " the Feminine " was as 
 absent from the world as the modern Art of Music was 
 absent. Simply, it was not there; or rather, it was op- 
 pressed and stamped out of recognition and thus was no 
 more suspected by the ancient mind than from the few 
 grass-blades between city stones a city child who had 
 never heard of them could image forth the varied blooms 
 of woods and gardens, or the fruits and harvests of fields 
 and orchards, or the towering verdure of primeval forests. 
 Through the "air-like words" (as she herself called 
 them) of the Greek "Psappha" alone in all those genera- 
 tions of soul-slavery did the Exiled Feminine just once 
 voice Itself — whispering — ''This is what the Feminine can 
 do, — but her time is not yet come." Characteristic is it 
 that the monks, those incarnations of Masculinism, should 
 so specially have begrudged and hated this one peerless 
 woman genius, that her masterpieces were universally 
 erased from their parchments in the libraries of the earth, 
 and only the few quotations inscribed on vases or im- 
 
44 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 bedded in the writings of other authors remain to witness 
 that the inspired *' Psappha " ever existed ! * 
 
 That the woman-spirit was in every respect the comple- 
 ment of the man-spirit was not dreamed of by the relig- 
 ious Hebrew, by the transcendent Greek or by the law- 
 giving Roman. Though woman's chastity and love of 
 freedom were deified in the goddess Diana, her chastity, 
 wisdom, invention and skill in the goddess Minerva, her 
 chastity and wifehood in the goddess Juno, her chastity 
 and motherhood in the goddess Ceres, her beauty, joy and 
 fascination in the goddess Venus, her grace in the three 
 Graces, her genius in the nine Muses — this magnificent 
 galaxy of feminine divinities reflected no prestige on the 
 miserable sex from which their several attributes had been 
 derived. 
 
 Everywhere women were despised and maltreated by 
 their master, man. The polygamous husbands of the East 
 could bring as many wives into their households as they 
 could afford to purchase. The monogamous husbands of 
 Jewry, of Greece and of Rome besides carte blanche 
 as to concubines and slaves could divorce any wife at any 
 time for any cause or none. Women literally had no foot- 
 hold of their own upon the earth. The disciples of Jesus 
 were but ignorant Jewish fishermen, yet their attitude 
 toward the sister sex until changed by the divine example 
 of the ''first true gentleman that ever breathed" was 
 equally scornful with that of the Athenian philosopher or 
 the Roman ruler. When the Master told them that a man 
 might not righteously divorce his wife save for infidelity, 
 they at once replied, — 'Tf that be the position of a man 
 with regard to his wife, it is better not to marry," — recip- 
 
 • At least, such is the writer's theory of the otherwise inexplicable 
 disappearance of all her works. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 45 
 
 rocal obligation as from manhood to womanhood being to 
 them evidently inconceivable. " Thou hast had five hus- 
 bands," said Jesus to the Woman of Samaria, " and he 
 whom thou now hast is not thy husband." She had been 
 divorced — handed on — by her family from one husband 
 to another five times, and now in middle or declining life 
 was obliged to accept the lower position of concubine and 
 to draw and carry the water for her lord's household. It 
 is not recorded of Jesus that when on earth He met any 
 keener or swifter intelligence than that of this poor 
 woman, the victim of masculine lawlessness in the mar- 
 riage relation: — yet how often has the Christian pulpit 
 made her the theme of its pious reprobation ! 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE RACE TRAGEDY. 
 
 Thus the ghastliest tragedy of earth is not " man's in- 
 humanity to man," nor even man's ingratitude to God. 
 Man cannot behold God, so that his fallings away from 
 and aberrations in the service of God are not, after all, 
 inconceivable or even surprising. His every brother-man 
 being also a possible rival — that is, a man who if you do 
 not take from him may possibly take from you — the ham- 
 mer-and-anvil social and national policy of so many mil- 
 lenniums was perhaps only to have been expected. 
 
 But woman is and must be man's another — the very 
 source and cradle and guardian of his early existence; 
 woman is and must be man's sister, deriving from a com- 
 mon parenthood — his companion and playmate throughout 
 childhood and youth; woman is and must be man's wife 
 — his partner and sharer in all the cares and labors of his 
 adult life and the mother of his children; woman is and 
 must be man's daughter — bone of his bone and flesh of 
 his flesh, nay, life of his life, and thus knit to him by the 
 closest and tenderest of ties and the deepest of obliga- 
 tions; and yet do but consider the cruelty, the contempt, 
 the deprivation, the desecration, the degradation — the al- 
 most immeasurable mountain of wrong — the almost fath- 
 omless abyss of betrayal — which the stronger half of hu- 
 manity has, as a rule, meted out to the weaker? 
 
 As merely a few examples — think of the agonizing suf- 
 
r: 
 
 L 
 
 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 47 
 
 fering to the hapless womanhood of China through the 
 national custom of feet-binding; or that of the widow- 
 burning in India, for which, when forbidden by the British 
 conqueror, custom has substituted and now upholds a 
 long, living death of family scorn, persecution, deprivation 
 and bitterest slavery infinitely worse for the widowed one 
 than the brief torture of the funeral pyre; or hark back 
 to the four or five millions of elderly or aged women 
 who between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries were 
 tortured, drowned, hanged and burned throughout Chris- 
 tian Europe as '' witches " by Catholics and Protestants 
 alike — the Salem hanging of a very few being but a short 
 and gentle episode of the long, horrifying story; or re- 
 member the infamy of contemporary London with her 
 thoroughfares and music-halls infested nightly with at- 
 tractive girlhood and womanhood on open sale; or look- 
 ing at home let the mind realize the appalling fact of the 
 " social evil " as it exists all about us and beneath us in 
 the United States. 
 
 Where in the whole animal kingdom is a sex-case even 
 remotely resembling this of the human race, and if we 
 deny as true the Scripture account of the Temptation and 
 Fall in Eden and the several relations of its four actors — 
 — Deity, the Man, the Woman and Lucifer — ^how can 
 "science" possibly account for this monstrous phenomenon 
 of a race divided by sex against itself as the human race 
 has ever been? 
 
 Accepting, on the contrary, the narrative in Genesis as 
 a simple statement of fact, the otherwise inscrutable mys' 
 tery is solved. To prevent the triumph of God's Law 
 of Love in the heart and in the life of God's new crea- 
 ture — Lucifer, the Rival and Enemy of God, instilled into 
 the man scorn, distrust, resentment and lawlessness to- 
 
43 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 ward his sex-companion. Being physically the stronger 
 the man could impose upon the woman what conditions he 
 would. He chose that throughout the whole range of hu- 
 man activity she should as absolutely as possible be his in- 
 ferior — and the whole supervening human tragedy was the 
 inevitable result. 
 
 Now, however, confronts womanhood the question : 
 How came it that the divine All-Father of the Universe 
 in Whom dwells every ideal of justice, of nobleness, of 
 chivalry, of tenderness — could contemplate and carry out 
 the creation of a race the mother-half of which should be 
 in such ignominious and degrading subjection to the other 
 that the Hebrew to whose Scriptures we owe the knowl- 
 edge of this All-Father and his Law of Love used to stand 
 weekly in his synagogue and say, "I thank Thee, O God, 
 that Thou hast not made me a woman" — while from the 
 opposite side of the same synagogue his wife humbly re- 
 sponded ""/ thank Thee, O God, that thou hast made me 
 as I am" — both of them in this act of worship equally 
 voicing humanity all over the world, since to this hour 
 even the Christian father at the bedside of his newly-born 
 in nine cases out of ten audibly rejoices and triumphs 
 when the baby is a son. but silently regrets and deprecates 
 it if it be a daughter? 
 
 How terrible to be thus branded from birth — to be thus 
 everywhere and always undervalued, unwelcome, be- 
 grudged ! 
 
 And yet this is " womanhood " — human womanhood — 
 even after nineteen hundred years of that Gospel in which 
 " is neither Jew nor Gentile, is neither bond nor free, is 
 neither male nor female — but all are one in Christ Jesus." 
 
 If Deity be Male and Manhood only — and if to this 
 Deity alone does the " weaker " sex owe its unequally 
 
xVEJV YORK-: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 49 
 
 trammelled and scorned and suffering existence — then 
 thinking womanhood can well be excused for skepticism 
 — for refusal to beheve in an Omniscient and Omnipotent 
 God Who could deliberately design and give life to such a 
 victim. 
 
 But if Deity include Eternal Womanhood no less than 
 Eternal Manhood, and if, in the counsels of Deity before 
 creation, the Divine Ineffable Mother — foreseeing her 
 own disdain by Lucifer — in the subtlety and perfection 
 of her All-wisdom Herself proposed the creation of this 
 human daughter so certain to be remorselessly sacrificed 
 by Lucifer — then can one woman, at least, repeat with 
 her Jewish sister, "' / thank Thee, O God, that Thou hast 
 made me as I am! " 
 
 For the writer — studying to explain and excuse the 
 divine permission of earthly injustice and of the profana- 
 tion of womanhood which is its heart — can arrive at no 
 other conclusion save that the Heaven-Mother, in her 
 sad infinite thought, desired and obtained our little planet 
 as the arena whereon through the agency of a race made 
 in the Divine Image and Likeness^ and more especially 
 through the half of it made after Her Own, She, the 
 Heaven-Son co-working with Her, should essay the con- 
 version of Lucifer to Deity; — her "Plan, her strange 
 plan," being that when through the earth-triumph of 
 Lucifer and his Law of Self men in general should 
 have become subjects and slaves, and all women the de- 
 spised slaves of these slaves (for let Manhood sink as 
 deep as it may, Womanhood is ever in a deeper deep 
 below it), then the Heaven-Son should "bring to pass his 
 Act, his strange act," by appearing on earth to share hu- 
 manity's Death through Self and to offer as the sole 
 rescue Deity's Life through Love. 
 
50 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 At this message from the Heaven-Father, and at this 
 giving everything by the Heaven- Son, profaned and 
 trampled womanhood would begin to lift its poor fallen 
 head ; the infinite sufferings and humiliations of the 
 Redeemer would give it patience with its own; his 
 infinite love would inspire infinite love in return; when 
 Redeemed Manhood should begin proclaiming everywhere 
 the Law and the Life of Love, Redeemed Womanhood — 
 as well as for its weakness, ignorance and slavery it 
 might — would begin to live that Life, to keep that Law 
 and to teach It to its little children. Thence very slowly 
 but very surely each generation would love a little 
 more and a little better; sons would be born and would 
 grow up more and more in the Likeness and in the 
 Mind of the Divine Son; this Christianized Brotherhood 
 would more and more pity, liberate and cherish its Chris- 
 tianized Sisterhood until at last, from the blind thrall and 
 tool of Lucifer, World-manhood would become the wise 
 and eager Co-worker with Deity and of its own free will 
 would seek to establish and maintain " happiness " upon 
 God's little earth even as it is maintained by the angels 
 throughout God's unmeasurable heaven. 
 
 Thus without the autocratic " force " which alone Luci- 
 fer would deem to be " god-like " and largely through 
 the faithful and patient love of the lowest and feeblest 
 of all its vast hierarchy of souls — the soul of human 
 woman — would Triune Eternal Deity rebuke and vin- 
 dicate Itself against its power-hungering, power-invok- 
 ing rebel, and would prove to the whole witnessing crea- 
 tion and for all eternity that even " the foolishness of the 
 Creator is wiser than the creature, and even the weakness 
 of the Creator is stronger than the creature, and that be- 
 fore creation was the Creator could ordain the weakest 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 51 
 
 thing of that creation to confound the mightiest thing 
 thereof, and the basest things of that creation and the 
 things despised could the Creator choose, yea, and the 
 things which are not to bring to nought the things that 
 are " * — so that the awful Luciferian Secession once 
 lived through and healed, the progressive evolution of 
 Heaven-Bliss could never again be interrupted because 
 no finite created soul would ever again exalt itself against 
 Infinite Uncreate Spirit as the insensate Light-bearer 
 would dare to exalt himself and would thus bring about the 
 Tragedy of the Universe which would be " Hell" and 
 the Tragedy of Deity which would be the " Cross," and 
 the Tragedy of the Human Race which would be 
 " Woman." 
 
 And if, as this writer believes, the foregoing were the 
 Plan of the Heaven-Mother — was it then accepted by the 
 Heaven-Father because by no other could He so humiliate 
 and efface Himself and therefore suffer in the suffering 
 of Deity for sin as by allowing the Divine Son and the 
 Spirit so infinitely dearer to Him than Himself, to yield 
 Themselves to the blasphemy and torture of the demonized 
 Lucifer and yet not exert his own omnipotence for their 
 rescue and avenging? And further did He accept this 
 Plan because, being carried out by the Divine Son and 
 the Spirit, Theirs chiefly would be the resulting love and 
 glory from it and their Sacrificial Omnipotence thus be 
 recognized and exalted side by side with his own Crea- 
 tive Omnipotence? And again did He accept this plan 
 because it would be meet that Lucifer, having scorned 
 Love and worshipped Strength, should largely be under- 
 mined by the earth-daughter whom Lucifer would thrust 
 down to the lowest depth as "" the lost beyond all lost 
 * / Corinthians, i, 28. 
 
V 
 
 52 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 ones" of his Kingdom of Force? And fourthly did the 
 Heaven-Father accept this seeming-ruthless Plan because 
 He purposed with Himself one day to recompense his 
 hapless earth-daughter " above all that she could ask or 
 think" for her humiliation when on earth as the hu- 
 man representative of the Self-defenceless, Non-resisting 
 " Spirit " — ^her Heaven-Mother* And finally did the Fa- 
 ther make his own this " strange " Plan of overcoming 
 Lucifer through Suffering Patience instead of by Con- 
 quering Strength — because when the promised " restora- 
 tion of all things " should have progressed so far that 
 Lucifer himself should be the only sinner and therefore 
 the only created sufferer now left in the universe, would 
 not even he at last break down into wildest love-yearn- 
 ing toward his infinitely loving Creators, when he should 
 realize that They were not triumphing over him in his 
 extremity, but were waiting for him to come to Them of 
 his own accord and thus release Them from their con- 
 tinuing share in every throb of his self-invited agonies 
 from the very beginning and with pain as much more 
 exquisite than his own as " their Infinite was beyond his 
 finite?" 
 
 Whether these thoughts be true or no, it is thus that 
 the writer, at least, would answer the sensual and the 
 skeptical who fling in their Creator's face Omar Khay- 
 yam's 
 
 Oh, Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make, 
 And in his Paradise didst loose the Snake — 
 
 And thus also is it that she can " thank " The Triune 
 Deity for making her " as she is." 
 
 * Romans, 8, 20, 2i. 
 
i 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 JESUS THE EMANCIPATOR. 
 
 In the lurid History of Humanity after the Garden of 
 Eden, nation after nation rose and flourished, then de- 
 cayed and fell, because the Principle of Self or Death was 
 the inspiration and motive-force of each and every one of 
 them. In vain Deity chose and in the heart-centre of the 
 eastern hemisphere planted and trained one little race as 
 the " covenanted people," which should exemplify the 
 Law of National Happiness,* and therefore of National 
 Life before the whole wayward earth. Amid the univer- 
 sal and crushing domination of masculinism the benign 
 altruistic institutions of the Republic of Israel could not 
 take a living human hold. After two centuries of vicissi- 
 tude this republic was abandoned by its citizens for an 
 absolute monarchy, and though in later centuries the 
 torch of liberty in the tribal sense was lifted aloft by the 
 successive Republics of Greece and Rome, these neither 
 did nor could they create in the human breast the Divine 
 Ideal of Universal Personal Freedom. 
 
 So far from it, that from the world-conquering Re- 
 public of Rome evolved itself in logical sequence the most 
 concentrated expression of Masculinism that Aryan civili- 
 zation ever knew; for the Caesar Imperator of that vast 
 military organization was not alone the supreme sover- 
 eign; he was worshipped also as a divinity, and while yet 
 
 * " Thou shah love thy neighbour as thyself." — Leviticus, 19, 18. 
 
54 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 a living man altars were devoted and religious rites were 
 paid to him ! 
 
 But when through Roman masterfulness the great Luci- 
 ferian Principle of Self had thus perfectly and logically 
 triumphed — had reached its earthly apex, and was fully 
 and firmly enthroned above prostrate nations every family 
 of which, owing to the horrible and inexorable taxation 
 system of the Empire, had ever before its eyes the pos- 
 sibility of being sold apart into slavery — when humanity 
 in general had at last got down to this common abyss of 
 hopeless woe — there appeared in an insignificant little 
 town of the long-dead Republic of Israel, now one of 
 Rome's most insignificant provinces, the promised incar- 
 nation of that Divine Manhood Eternal in the Heavens 
 in whose image and after whose likeness manhood on 
 earth had been created. A Nazarene carpenter whose 
 mother, notwithstanding her lowly position, was a de- 
 scendant of King David, suddenly announced Himself 
 as the long-promised, long-looked-for, long-sighed-for and 
 wept-for Champion of trampled mankind against its op- 
 pressors and therefore, of course, against the Masculin- 
 ism which is the inspiration of them all. 
 
 In the synagogue of that Nazareth which for all his 
 life had been his home, this youthful Jesus whose very 
 name meant " Saviour," rose and read to his fellow- 
 townsmen his divine commission : " The Spirit of the 
 Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach 
 glad tidings to the poor. He hath sent Me to heal the 
 broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and 
 recovery of sight to the blind; to set at liberty them that 
 are bruised; to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." 
 
 In the course of his mission Jesus declared Himself 
 "the Light of the world; he that followeth Me shall not 
 
L 
 
 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 55 
 
 walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life ; " — 
 " I and my Father are One ; " — " He who hath seen Me 
 hath seen the Father ; " — " I am the Resurrection and the 
 Life;" — "Before Abraham was I AM;" — "If you con- 
 tinue in my word you shall know the truth and the truth 
 shall make you free ; " — " A new commandment I give 
 unto you, that ye love one another as I have loved you ; " 
 — " Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good 
 to them that hate you and pray for them which despite- 
 fully use you and persecute you ; " — " I say unto you — 
 Resist not evil, but if a man smite you on the right cheek 
 turn to him the other also; " — " Be ye therefore perfect, 
 even as your Father which is in heaven is Perfect." 
 
 When John saw Jesus coming to be baptized, he cried — 
 " Behold the Lamb of God Which taketh away the sins of 
 the world ! " The disciple Peter declared, " Thou art the 
 Anointed One, the Son of the Living God." The Evan- 
 gelist John called Him " the Only-Begotten Son of the 
 Father, full of grace and truth." Of Himself He con- 
 stantly spoke as the " Son of man," but as He was careful 
 never to call Mary of Nazareth his " Mother," and since 
 He explicitly showed the Pharisees that David could not 
 claim as a " son " Him Whom he called his " Lord," * it 
 seems evident that Jesus meant that Himself was the 
 " Son," not of earthly manhood but of the Divine or 
 Archetypal Manhood Eternal in the Heavens. 
 
 The stupendous sayings of Jesus were sent home to his 
 hearers by displays of power over the laws of the uni- 
 verse equally stupendous yet to Him effortless and matter- 
 of-course as the words themselves. Literally, He had but 
 to " speak and it was done ! " 
 
 For a very few years Jesus the Christ lived and 
 taught and wrought after this unheard-of, this unimagin- 
 *Mark 12, 35. 
 
V 
 
 56 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 able manner; and then, because the all-ruling Masculin- 
 ism of the day could not any longer suffer a propaganda 
 so manifestly destructive of itself, it put Him to one of 
 the most dreadful and shameful of all the dreadful and 
 shameful deaths it . had for ages devised and practised 
 against its human victims. 
 
 This monstrous arrest and execution came when hope 
 and faith and expectation in and when love and awe and 
 passion for the New Leader were at their highest in Jeru- 
 salem — when "all the world was gone after Him" — 
 when the crowding Passover multitudes were eager to 
 proclaim Him " King/' and when He had no enemies 
 save the small corporations of Pharisees and priests who 
 hated Him because they " envied " Him. Yet inexplicably 
 He abandoned everything and like " a lamb led to the 
 slaughter " submitted passively to the vengeful satanism 
 and self-hood which in a few hearts had risen up against 
 Him. 
 
 When hanging upon his cross of agony He did not 
 show the power He had claimed by coming down from 
 it as his crucifiers now taunted Him to do, and though 
 on the third day thereafter He indeed rose from the 
 dead as He had promised, He did not burst forth in a 
 blaze of glory such that all Jerusalem must be over- 
 whelmed and converted. Instead, in the dark of early 
 morning He glided silently from his tomb and on that 
 triumphant day of days appeared but to the few who were 
 most deeply mourning for Him. During the remainder of 
 his sojourn on earth He was rarely seen and only once 
 by " as many as five hundred at one time," and his spe- 
 cial disciples alone witnessed the closing marvel of his 
 ascension and final vanishing into the sky. 
 
 Now why, when on earth, did the Divine Eternal Son 
 assume a character and fulfill a career so absolutely in 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 57 
 
 live and move and have his being in such infinite con- 
 trast to the boundless power and glory with which the 
 Father had glorified Him " before the world was " and 
 would " glorify Him again " ? Why did He come into the 
 world not by his own agency as a Self-existing, Self-di- 
 recting, Transcending Personality before Whom " every 
 knee must bow," but (of all things) as the helpless, new- 
 born babe of a lowly girl? Why throughout his earthly 
 sojourn was He " filled with the Spirit " — was He " led 
 by the Spirit" — was He "driven by the Spirit"? Why 
 was the very first word of his ministry — " The Spirit 
 of the Lord is upon me " ? Above all, why, just before 
 going to the fearful cross, did He tell his stricken and 
 bewildered disciples that it was " expedient " or " good " 
 for them that He should go away, " for if I go not away 
 the Comforter will not come unto you " — that Comforter 
 Which He further explained to be the " Spirit of Truth " 
 Who should come to them " from the Father " and should 
 make them " know the truth " and should " teach them 
 all things " and " bring all things to their remembrance " 
 whatsoever He Himself "had told them?" 
 
 What was the Invisible Presence to which Jesus so 
 absolutely surrendered Himself when in the world, and 
 Which now was to be given to the disciples as even better 
 for them than his own? Could anything in the whole 
 universe possibly be so precious and so priceless as the 
 daily and hourly companionship of this adored Being 
 Who " spake as never man spake " — Who loved as never 
 man loved? 
 
 Let us briefly consider the characteristics and functions 
 of the " Holy Spirit " as revealed in the New Testament 
 in order to discover, if possible, the Scripture explanation 
 of this " mystery." 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 "the spirit." 
 
 I. 
 
 When the angel Gabriel announced to the Virgin 
 Mary that she was to become a mother, he added 
 that the Child which would be born of her would be 
 "great" and would be called the "Son of God." The 
 pure and docile but comprehending and high-spirited 
 girl inquiring how this could be — he told her that the 
 " Holy Spirit " would " come upon " her, and the " power 
 of the Highest " would " overshadow " her, and therefore 
 that " Holy Thing " which would be born of her would 
 be called the " Son of the Highest." — Now, Who is the 
 "Highest" but "God the Father of Heaven?" Can 
 then it be expressed in plainer terms that the Heaven- 
 Father AND THE Heaven-Mother were the Dual 
 Life-Forces Which Evolved this Climax of All 
 Created Life — the perfect human form within whose 
 breathing veil the Uncreate Heaven-Son was to meet and 
 overcome Lucifer? 
 
 And yet, obvious as is this commentary when once it 
 is pointed out, the writer, though for years scrutinizing 
 the Scriptures for every confirmation of her theory of 
 the Spirit, did not read aright the angelic declaration 
 until she came upon it in Mrs. Elizabeth Miller Jeffries's 
 original study of the same subject.* So far from it, the 
 
 * The Great Mystery, note E, p. 53. (Published by Geo. W. Jacotj 
 & Co., Philadelphia, 1901.) I earnestly hope all my readers will get and 
 read this book. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 59 
 
 writer could not see how the Holy Spirit, if indeed the 
 Nutritive or Perfective Energy of the Divine Trinity, 
 could inaugurate a human or any other life — this being 
 the prerogative alone of the Creative or Originative 
 Energy of that Trinity. 
 
 II. 
 At the baptism of Jesus by John, the " Spirit " de- 
 scended upon Him " in the form of a dove " and " re- 
 mained " upon Him. Now the dove is a purely feminine 
 emblem, and is, moreover, of the entire animated king- 
 dom the special and perfect type of conjugal love and 
 union — being born always in pairs and these pairs being 
 rarely absent from each other one moment; if one flies 
 from a roof to the ground, the other immediately follows. 
 
 III. 
 
 Jesus was " filled with the Spirit," and when His ene- 
 mies said He had an " unclean " spirit. He immediately 
 declared that " all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be 
 forgiven unto men, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall 
 not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a 
 word against the Son of Man it shall be forgiven him, but 
 whosoev^ speaketh against the Spirit it shall not be for- 
 given him, neither in this world, neither in the world to 
 come." * 
 
 Could this tremendous warning, uttered in immediate 
 connection with the hellish slander against the " Spirit " 
 with which Jesus was " filled," have referred to anything 
 save the unapproachable purity of the Spirit? But purity 
 — personal stainlessness — personal inviolability — is and 
 ever has been the quintessential of womanhood — the sine 
 qua non equally of girlhood, of wifehood and of mother- 
 hood — of the real no less than of the ideal Feminine. 
 ♦ AfaU. 12, 31. Mark 3, 29, 30. Lukg 12, 10. 
 
6o NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Note further that the Saviour did not say that the 
 " Spirit " will not forgive slander against Itself, but slan- 
 der " shall not be forgiven." Not forgiven, then, by 
 whom? Of course by the Lawgivers, Rulers and Judges 
 of the Universe — by the Divine Eternal Father and Him 
 to Whom the Father " has committed all power in heaven 
 and in earth " — the Divine Eternal Son. 
 
 Here then we seem to have the Divine Manhood of 
 Triune Deity declaring Itself the Guardian and Cham- 
 pion of the Divine Womanhood of that Deity, and to find, 
 therefore, that the original source and home of chivalry, 
 which is the knightly defence of the weaker sex by the 
 stronger, is in the bosom of the Divine Eternal Father 
 and his Divine Eternal Son ! 
 
 For, as has been intimated before, because of the Perfect 
 Feminine of which the Spirit is the Infinite Archetype, 
 in and for Herself She is defenceless. She is Love — She 
 is Beauty — She is Wisdom — She is Freedom — She is 
 Charm endless, inscrutable, irresistible; but in bringing 
 Herself to bear She is Influence only — She is Persuasion 
 only — giving everything — claiming nothing — counselling, 
 illuminating, inspiring — pleading, comforting, nourishing 
 and perfecting — but not law-giving, not governing, not 
 condemning, not punishing, and therefore that Form of 
 Omnipotence Which Lucifer had not understood — Which 
 had altogether escaped him — and Which of the Divine 
 Eternal Trinity probably for that very reason was 
 deputed in the councils of Deity to conduct the long moral 
 combat against him. " ' Not by might, nor by power, but 
 by my Spirit' saith the Lord of Hosts " — that is, " Not by 
 the might, O Lucifer, which you can see, nor by the power 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 6i 
 
 which you can estimate, but by the Divine Eternal Femi- 
 nine Who neither possesses nor wishes to possess any- 
 thing in the whole universe besides the infinite joy of lov- 
 ing and being loved — must you at length be disarmed 
 of your pride and melted from your resistance." 
 
 V. 
 
 " The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suf- 
 fering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance; 
 against such there is no law." But all these are the char- 
 acteristic feminine virtues — are the rainbow flashings 
 from the deep translucence of the flawless feminine dia- 
 mond. 
 
 Peculiarly is this true of the " joy " which comes sec- 
 ond on the list. 
 
 "Sorrowful,'' sighed a down-trodden Indian mother, 
 " is the lot of woman/' 
 
 But if " sorrowful " be woman's lot, it is because Mas- 
 culinism and Materialism have made it so. Not so was 
 it intended nor so will it be when the Gospel of Jesus has 
 done its perfect work. The smiling, carolling, light- 
 hearted, untrammelled girl — she is the reminiscence of 
 that " joy " with which innocent Eve was dowered in the 
 Garden, and which will return to all her daughters when 
 once they realize that for them also as for their brothers 
 there is a Divine Archetype Eternal in the Heavens in 
 whose image and after whose likeness they were created 
 and to reflect whose perfections and whose loveliness is 
 their one great mission upon earth. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Jesus said to Nicodemus — " The wind bloweth where it 
 listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not 
 
V 
 
 62 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth ; even so is the 
 Spirit." 
 
 By this our Lord's magnificent comparison of the 
 " Spirit " to the trackless and careering " wind " He in- 
 dicates the perfect freedom and self-direction of the 
 Spirit and therefore the mighty fact that in her nature 
 the Eternal Feminine is not enslaved, but is free, self- 
 governing, unlimited, even as the Divine Eternal Man- 
 hood is free, self-governing, unlimited. 
 
 How continually do men rail at women as " capricious," 
 " uncertain," " changeable," " inconsistent," " not know- 
 ing their own minds " — when the real trouble is merely 
 that they cannot trace the underlying laws and motives 
 of feminine action any more than they do or can fix the 
 way of the wind or of the Divine Eternal Spirit. 
 
 But in absolute contrast with the attitude toward and 
 treatment of human womanhood by human manhood, the 
 Divine Manhood Eternal in the Heavens utterly trusts 
 the Divine Feminine, exalting and proclaiming Her as 
 the very " Spirit of Truth " Itself, and promising to all 
 who " continue in the word " of the Divine Son that this 
 Spirit of Truth will " come unto them," will " guide them 
 into all truth " and when they " know the truth " that 
 freedom — the breath of life of the Spirit Itself and the 
 boon without which all others are a mockery — shall be 
 theirs, for the " truth " shall make them '* free." 
 
 Away then W'ith the satanic rubbish preached to and 
 about womanhood for so many generations — that " no 
 true woman is happy until she has found her master!" 
 No " true " woman nor any other woman nor any self- 
 conscious intelligence whatsoever wants a " master." The 
 very lowest and meanest soul in the universe wants above 
 all things its freedom and its own self-direction, and just 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. (>t, 
 
 to the extent to which, whether deservedly or not, it is 
 deprived of that freedom, to that extent in its inmost 
 heart it suffers and in its own sight is shamed, humihated 
 and miserable. Even ignorant and utterly helpless child- 
 hood longs for the day when it shall be " grown-up and 
 not have to mind," while to the adult of either sex subjec- 
 tion never was and never can be anything but a penalty. 
 
 " Ligeia, Ligeia, 
 
 My beautiful one 
 Whose harshest idea 
 
 Will to melody run, — 
 Say is it thy will 
 
 On the breezes to toss 
 Or capriciously still 
 
 Like the lone albatross 
 Incumbent on night 
 
 As she on the air 
 To keep watch with delight 
 
 On the harmony there? " 
 
 In this world-famous verse of syllabled music was not 
 the rapt poet " whose heart-strings were a lute " but echo- 
 ing a strain caught from the Free Feminine Divined 
 
 VII. 
 
 The earthly mission of the Spirit — to " glorify " not It- 
 self but the Divine Eternal Son — is feminine; for just as 
 throughout the nineteen Christian centuries " Christ " has 
 been kept ever in the foreground of Christian conscious- 
 ness while the Spirit, though the active and ceaseless 
 Agent in the spread and triumph of His Name, has been 
 ever in the background and but little mentioned or re- 
 membered — so throughout human history has typical wom- 
 anhood similarly remained content in obscurity to carry 
 
64 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY 
 
 on the daily family work and bear the daily family bur- 
 dens, happy if only the manhood nearest and dearest to it 
 is succeeding and honored on the outside stage of life. 
 
 And not only is the " mission " of the Spirit feminine. 
 The way it is carried out is that of the ideal wife and mother 
 who, wrapped up and lost in husband and son, continually 
 refers to them as her authority even when expressing her 
 own view-s or energizing her own plans. — For illimitable 
 as is the freedom of the Spirit, She comes not "to us as 
 from her own initiative, but the Divine Son says that He 
 " will send " the Comforter to us " from the Father," and 
 He adds that this Spirit of Truth will not speak " from 
 Herself " — that is, from her own views and purposes — 
 " but what things soever She shall hear these shall She 
 speak." * — Can womanly self-forgetfulness and humility 
 farther go than first (as this writer supposes) to suggest 
 the plan by which Deity should essay the conversion of 
 the great Rebel against Deity, and then, when {he plan is 
 approved and adopted by the Father and the Son, to strive 
 for its success only as their Representative? 
 
 The petulant John Ruskin — finished specimen of self- 
 satisfied and self-exalting British masculinism — some- 
 where frets and finds fault because, though modern wom- 
 anhood is so feeble and inconsiderable as compared with 
 modern manhood, yet the lafter habitually calls his most 
 wonderful and achieving creations — e.g. his ship, his 
 locomotive, his steam-engine^not "he" but "she!" 
 
 If Ruskin could have perceived and acknowledged the 
 Divine Feminir.e in Deity, the apparent paradox would 
 
 * John, 16, 13, R. V. "He shall not speak of Himself; but what 
 things soever He shall hear, these shall He speak." So it stands as 
 translated from the Greek, but our Lord's language was not Greek, and 
 how do we know that He did not use a feminine pronoun? 
 
NEIV YORK: A ^SYMPHONIC STUDY. 65 
 
 have been explained. For the ship, the locomotive, the 
 steam-engine, etc., exert their mighty energies not in their 
 own behalf, but for some end entirely outside themselves; 
 and similarly the Eternal Spirit and her typically feminine 
 daughters always and everywhere have chiefly sought and 
 striven after not their own comfort, joy or triumph, but 
 after the comfort, joy and triumph of the person or the 
 cause most precious to them. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The function of the Spirit toward every believer in Jesus 
 is feminine, since that function is peculiarly the mother- 
 function of nourishing, purifying and perfecting the re- 
 deemed soul which is born into eternal life by accepting 
 the proffered Life of the Son of God. 
 
 Throughout animated nature the male organism con- 
 tributes one living germ toward each individual life; the 
 female organism appropriates that germ, feeds and evolves 
 it into the destined offspring, then brings it to the birth 
 and still thereafter nourishes and cares for it until it 
 reaches self-sustaining maturity. 
 
 And similarly with the human soul. If it repents and 
 accepts the eternal life proffered by the Eternal Son, 
 straightway the Divine Maternal Spirit begins to inspire, 
 to develop it, then to usher it through baptism into the 
 Church and Kingdom of God on earth, thereafter, if it 
 remains faithful, lovingly dwelling with and tenderly 
 leading it toward the full stature of the perfect humanity 
 of Christ Jesus, that so it may one day reign in bliss with 
 the Glorified Christ in heaven. 
 
 And once again: If there were no other reason at all 
 in Scripture for supposing the " Holy Spirit " to be the 
 Divine Eternal Mother of the Universe, would not that 
 
(i(t NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 precious and priceless name " Comforter" under which we 
 best love the Spirit, alone suggest and all but prove it — 
 for what but human motherhood from the cradle to the 
 grave is the closest human "comforter" of this tragic 
 world ? 
 
 IX. 
 
 Since time began the mother-sex has been the chief 
 cleanser of the world, accomplishing the daily never-end- 
 ing task by the water which washes out stains and impuri- 
 ties, by the Ure which consumes what is irreclaimable, or 
 by the fresh and living breeze which blowing through the 
 house bears the invisible poison germs away. 
 
 And so in the inspired Scripture is the Divine Eternal 
 Spirit identified with the cleansing " water " and the puri- 
 fying " fire " of baptismal regeneration, and with the 
 " mighty rushing wind " which sweeps before it all mist 
 and miasm and leaves behind it the clear sweet air which 
 is man's breath of life at every moment of his existence. 
 In the Greek Testament, in fact, the same word "pneurna" 
 is used to indicate both the breath and the Divine Spirit. 
 
 On the immortal Day of Pentecost the " Spirit " ap- 
 peared upon the heads of the assembled disciples of both 
 sexes in the likeness of " tongues of fire/' so that each 
 soul burst as it were into flame and every mouth began 
 proclaiming in the language of him to whom it was speak- 
 ing the new " glad tidings " of God. — But of the two 
 halves of humanity, which is the naturally eloquent — 
 which the spontaneously talking half? Is it not the sister 
 half? — and may we not in these lambent, heaven-pointing 
 " tongues " find still another confirmation that the Divine 
 
A'Eir YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 67 
 
 Eternal Spirit is in its nature and attributes divinely and 
 absolutely " Feminine " ? 
 
 XI. 
 
 Consistently with the foregoing theory of the "Holy 
 Ghost " or Divine Spirit and therefore of the infinite dig- 
 nity and preciousness of the Feminine, the attitude of the 
 Redeemer toward the despised womanhood of earth was 
 as revolutionary as his attitude toward the other accepted 
 standards of his day, if not more so. Besides the tremen- 
 dous initial honor of being " born of a woman," He first 
 extended from manhood to womanhood the gentle per- 
 sonal courtesy before Him unknown and undreamed-of 
 whether by prince or by peasant. He addressed women 
 as on the same moral and intellectual plane with men, 
 placed their special virtues of purity, devotion, humility, 
 ardor and self-sacrifice in the same rank with the recog- 
 nized manhood virtues, found a divine value in their 
 " loving much," and offered to every woman who would 
 accept it, equally with every man, a co-partaking in his 
 own Eternal Life. 
 
 Moreover, He forbade the divorce of the wife save on 
 account of her own conjugal infidelity, and thereby gave 
 to women for the first time in history a place of their 
 very own on God's wide earth, namely, their husbands* 
 house, from which they could not causelessly be ejected 
 without deadliest sin on the part of the husband. Think 
 of it ! — that to Jesus the Christ does woman owe that 
 priceless institution of " home " which before Him her 
 brother man had never conceded to her, but from which 
 as from her first firm foundation she has since builded 
 herself slowly up through the ages and h'as brought her 
 sons with her; for so fast as womanhood rises, just so 
 
68 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 fast and no faster is each generation of manhood born 
 higher up and farther on ! 
 
 More tremendous still, by re-enacting the first law im- 
 posed by God upon human society — " They twain shall he 
 one iiesh" Jesus declared marriage to be between two 
 and two only. Follows logically that if a third come in 
 it is no longer " marriage/' but adultery. Not bigamy, 
 not polygamy, not any other infidelity can shelter within 
 the exclusive relation. Manhood equally with woman- 
 hood was therefore bound over by Christ to Monogamic 
 Marriage. 
 
 XII. 
 
 In the closing book of the Holy Bible or " Revelation 
 of St. John the Divine " — is pictured " a Great Wonder in 
 Heaven . . a Woman clothed with the sun, and with the 
 moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of 
 twelve stars." Before Her stands " a great red Dragon " 
 ready to devour her " Man-Child " so soon as it shall 
 be born. But the Child is " caught up to Heaven and 
 to the Throne of God," while the Mother remains on 
 earth, where, together with those " who keep the com- 
 mandments and have the testimony of Jesus Christ," She 
 is " persecuted " and " warred upon " by the Dragon. 
 
 Shall not human womanhood, esteemed by Christian 
 theologians from St. Paul down as hardly more than a 
 nature-provision for reproduction, now find courage to 
 ask these same theologians: "WHO can this Heaven- 
 Wonder be but the DIVINE ETERNAL FEMININE 
 — the Divine Eternal Consort of the Divine Eternal 
 Father— the Divine Eternal Mother of that "Only- 
 Begotten Son " Who on earth illustrated his own pre- 
 cept — "Except ye become as little children ye shall in 
 no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven?" 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 JESUS AND THE SPIRIT. 
 
 " Little children " are taught and trained and implic- 
 itly led by Womanhood in the guise of their mothers; 
 and similarly did the Omnipotent Son of God, in order to 
 achieve and forever establish that Bliss of the Universe 
 which w^e call " Heaven," carry out absolutely what this 
 book assumes to have been the counsel of the Divine 
 Eternal Feminine as adopted by the Almighty Father and 
 the Son before creation was; — otherwise what means the 
 declaration of the Lord of Hosts — " Not by might, nor by 
 power, but by my Spirit?" — or what meant the Apostle 
 Paul by saying that " through the Eternal Spirit Christ 
 offered Himself without spot to God? " * 
 
 Alas, in her mission of subduing Deity's great enemy, 
 this Pleading, Persuasive Spirit had thus far seemed ut- 
 terly to fail — for the despotisms of Asia and of Rome with 
 their frightful slaveries and cruelties were now completely 
 dominating the earth. The super-subtle and far-seeing 
 Lucifer had comprehended perfectly the purely Moral 
 Force pitted against him, and hence his deep tactics from 
 the Garden of Eden onward in influencing human man- 
 hood to humiliate, enslave and degrade human woman- 
 hood. 
 
 He thus not only struck back at the very heart of the 
 Divine Eternal Feminine, but, because enslaved mothers 
 
 * Hebrews^ 9, 8. 
 
70 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 can bring forth only slavish sons, the subjection of woman 
 to the " I " or Selfhood of men ensured the eventual sub- 
 jection of men themselves to the same Demonic Selfhood 
 or One-Man-Power which is the Luciferian Ideal. Such 
 had at last become the world-wide contempt for aught 
 and everything save martial strength and splendor and 
 success, that even had the Divine Feminine then come to 
 dwell visibly on earth as Ideal Woman, her exquisite but 
 defenceless All-Perfection could have made no impression 
 upon the iron-clad masculinism of the Roman era. 
 
 But Triune Deity had only been waiting for the " ful- 
 ness of time " to come — in other words, for Lucifer's 
 Law of Self to have achieved its inevitable result of uni- 
 versal and hopeless slavery and misery, for the Divine 
 Omnipotent Son to lay aside that Deity and descend to 
 earth in human form, there to " walk in the Spirit " — to 
 " walk in love," and show convincingly forth to human 
 manhood what it was capable of becoming when to its 
 own magnificent attributes it should add the equal though 
 softer appeal of the Feminine. 
 
 For when of the master sex One Who revealed to his 
 hearers those ultimate truths of Deity which had been 
 vainly sought by the best and greatest in all ages — Who 
 taught the law of Its divine life — Who swayed at will the 
 forces of the universe — Who by a word called back the 
 dead and Whom simply to behold was to long to hail as 
 " Master," *' Lord " and " King ; " — when this Supernal 
 Personality from All-subduing suddenly became All-sub- 
 missive — when He turned from a world practically at 
 his feet and abdicating even his human manhood allowed 
 Himself like a very woman to be " crucified through 
 weakness " — resisting not his enemies — resenting not 
 their blows, their spitting, their insults, their tortures 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 7 J 
 
 — " being made perfect through sufferings " — pouring out 
 his blood — giving everythingy-yielding even his soul — laid 
 a lifeless victim in the tomb — and then — within two sun- 
 risings quietly reappearing in the same Veiled Omnipo- 
 tence as before, and after brief sojourn among those who 
 adored Him ascending bodily to his Eternal Home — the 
 amazement that this Mightiest One should choose as his 
 crown of special glory the despised self-sacrificing virtues 
 of every-day common motherhood, and as his kingly robe 
 of beauty the robe of suffering which had been woman's 
 closest inner garment ever since her fall in Eden — the in- 
 finite pity and wonder of it all melted even human mascu- 
 linism itself, and from that crucifixion hour, through the 
 lustre cast by Him upon the " mind " and the " works " 
 of the Perfect, Pleading, Non-resisting Spirit hitherto so 
 brutally thwarted and ignored by Lucifer and his follow- 
 ing — began the fulfilment of his own deep prophecy — " // 
 / be lifted up I will draw all men unto Me ! " 
 
 The visible Passion of the visible Christ upon the visible 
 Cross was the translation into the terms of Finite Soul, 
 human and every other, of the otherwise inconceivable 
 suffering of the Infinite, Ineffable Trinity from the non- 
 love of that Soul. 
 
 " Give me a torch," cried Santa Teresa, " that I may 
 burn heaven, and bring me water that I may drown hell 
 — that God may be loved for Himself alone ! " 
 
 The moral miracle of this union of humility and power 
 in the Person of the Divine Son — the Heir of the uni- 
 verse submitting to the Rebel of the universe — Highest 
 Life plunging down to Deepest Death only to emerge self- 
 revived, triumphant and bringing out with Him by the 
 might of love alone all who would sweep with Him back 
 to the Plane of Heaven — this Transcending Beauty of 
 
V 
 
 72 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 THE Redemption it is which when fully apprehended must 
 and will complete the conquest of all our still-resisting 
 humanity and set its remaining self-centred currents 
 rushing outward toward that One Name in heaven and 
 earth whereby men may be saved — the Name of Jesus — 
 of Him who both said and lived, " Greater love hath no 
 man than this, that a man lay down his life for his 
 friends." 
 
 To bestow new, pure, perfect life — for Creative Deity 
 what joy ! what triumph ! 
 
 But for Creative Deity to restore life destroyed by turn- 
 ing death back into life — what agony ! what horror ! 
 
 For this is to demand that radiant, immaculate, self- 
 existent Being shall identify and unite Itself with the 
 spiritual decomposition and decay of which dead and 
 putrescent flesh is but the loathsome outer sign, so that 
 by closest contact of living love the divine soul-spark 
 may be rekindled and by the divine energy the gan- 
 grened soul-veins transfused until their pulses beat again ! 
 
 Could a self-sacrifice so awful be consummated save 
 through suffering as awful ? 
 
 If a glorious and beautiful youth were compelled to 
 take into his arms a diseased and dying pauper and hold 
 him to his breast and to his mouth until vitality returned, 
 would it not be revolt and agony unspeakable ? 
 
 And oh, therefore, to the Divine Son was it not the 
 merging and co-partaking of his living purity with the 
 soul-corruption of Lucifer's soul-dead realm and not the 
 physical tortures of the approaching cross which called 
 forth the " strong crying " and the " tears " and the " sweat 
 which was as it were great drops of blood falling down 
 to the ground ? " 
 
 To many, very many, how hard and how dark is the 
 saying — " Without shedding of blood is no remission." 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 73 
 
 All non-Trinitarians reject it. — The enormous prepon- 
 derance of American manhood rejects it. 
 
 Yet how obvious the explanation. 
 
 For the "Blood is the Life" — that is, the physical life 
 of the physical body, and therefore the most vivid pos- 
 sible emblem of that Divine Life which alone is or can 
 be the Life of the Soul as it is of the whole organic crea- 
 tion. 
 
 From that creation Lucifer's Law of Self, commonly 
 called " sin," cuts off and kills the soul, even as blood- 
 poison corrupts and kills the living limb upon the living 
 body. 
 
 But — " / am come that ye may have life" declared the 
 Saviour, " and that ye may have it infinitely.'' 
 
 It is the perpetual imparting of the LIFE of the Self- 
 existing Son of God to the sin-slain souls of generation 
 after generation of those who repent — to yours also, 
 Reader, and to mine, in our turn, if we will have it — 
 which constitutes the "ATONEMENT." 
 
 "/ have no words wherewith to tell 
 The loveliness of loving well!" 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE PERFECT. 
 
 " The loveliness of loving well " the Divine Son had 
 shown forth on earth after the Self-abnegating and Sac- 
 rificial Deity of the Divine Mother, as in his miracles and 
 his offer of salvation He had represented the Power and 
 the Life-giving Deity of the Divine Father, and in 
 the celestial tenderness of his daily walk and the celestial 
 wisdom of his daily teachings and the celestial patience 
 of his final suffering had exemplified Them Both — " for 
 in Him dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." 
 
 And having thus revealed the Perfect Deity of Dual 
 Nature, and reverently championed and exalted the Self- 
 defenceless Feminine so disdained and persecuted by 
 Lucifer — also from His Cross having become the Life- 
 Restorer of all who were dead through Lucifer, He re- 
 turned again to the " glory He had with his Father be- 
 fore the world was," while the Eternal Spirit went back 
 to earth to continue the moral struggle in which for so 
 many tragic ages the Great Enemy had been the winner. 
 
 But not now was the Invisible Spirit here as the " still 
 small voice " of conscience and right reason only. As a 
 " mighty rushing wind " of conviction to sweep away all 
 mists of doubt and falsehood did She come, and as a 
 " burning flame " did She descend into every believing 
 heart, refining its gold, consuming its dross and inspiring 
 its zeal, to reach out and enkindle the next heart and the 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 75 
 
 next, and thus ever to widen the joy-circle of the re- 
 deemed until at last it shall embrace the whole human 
 family and the Kingdom of the Father and His Anointed 
 be forever established on earth as it is in heaven — its 
 wildernesses blossom as the rose, its swords be beaten into 
 ploughshares, the Chosen People be restored to a re- 
 claimed Palestine and a " new " Jerusalem, the world be 
 full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea, 
 and every least thing in it, even to the " bells upon the 
 horses " be wholly and proudly and joyously dedicated 
 " To THE Lord." * 
 
 When this victory of Love over Self shall be achieved, 
 and the planet which had* made Lucifer its " Prince " 
 shall have restored itself to Deity — what of the " lost " — 
 of those whose unforgivable sins against the Holy Spirit 
 had sentenced them at the Last Judgement to the loveless 
 realm of the loveless Lucifer — to that " outer darkness " 
 so immeasurably distant from the Universe of Stars that 
 no faintest ray therefrom can reach it, and where is no 
 sound save "weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth?" 
 
 For when the Divine Feminine had done all upon the 
 earth that She was commissioned to do — then, as foretold, 
 had come the " great and terrible day of the Lord " when 
 the Might and the Power of Manhood Deity in all their 
 Blazing Omnipotence had succeeded to her Humility, 
 her Patience and her Pleading, and in the clouds of 
 heaven the Eternal Son had appeared on the " right 
 hand " of the Eternal Father, then and there to judge 
 both the quick and the dead, and according to the deeds 
 recorded, at last to send every soul " to its own place." 
 
 Will not that too-oft rejected Spirit in whose cause 
 and vindication many are now themselves rejected, so 
 * Zachariah, 14, 20. 
 
V 
 
 76 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 forever bear them in her yearning love, that through her 
 divine sympathy and compassion " the balm, the bliss, the 
 beauty and the bloom " which will stream forth from the 
 transfigured earth will in some way be brought home even 
 to them? Will they not begin to ask themselves, each 
 and everyone, yes, even to the devils who from the first 
 were devotees of Lucifer, why — rather than continue in 
 the torture of unshriven guilt and in the vitriolic burning 
 of remorse which is all their following after Self has 
 brought them — they should not even yet take Love 
 for their Lord and seek to share with their once-sinning 
 but long-since saved and regenerated human brothers in 
 the Forgiveness and the Life and the Joy of their ever- 
 loving and merciful Triune Creator? 
 
 The inspired apostle has declared that the last enemy 
 to be destroyed by the Eternal Son is "' Death." * May 
 we not then hope that from out their living death 
 these " lost," from the greater transgressors to the least, 
 will all ask and receive pardon, cleansing, reconciliation 
 and restoration — imploring first the forgiveness of the 
 Holy Spirit and obtaining her intercession (since other- 
 wise the Heaven-Father and the Son from loyalty to Her 
 could not give ear to them) until finally the Head and 
 Front of all their wickedness — the great Self-Worshipper 
 of the universe himself — will be left solitary in his Realm 
 of Despair with its ever-agony of failure, its ever-con- 
 sciousness of sin, and its memories of treacheries, cruel- 
 ties and depravities ever eating into his soul like flames? 
 
 But if not even a Creator in heaven-bliss could sup- 
 port solitude, how much less a " creature " in hell-tor- 
 ment! If the vast empire of the stupendous Lucifer — its 
 countless hosts — shall have shrunk to himself alone, and 
 * /. Corinthians, 15, 16. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 77 
 
 his utter defeat have come through that giving everything 
 by the Heaven-Son and his believers which Lucifer had 
 so scorned in his own conduct of Hfe, will he not then 
 personally realize that of which he was forewarned — That 
 on the Plane of Cau«;e and Effect and with equal freedom 
 of action with Deity, he would be unable to maintain his 
 Principle of Self as against Deity's Principle of Love — 
 and this because so soon as the very weakest of his sub- 
 jects, human womanhood, had been given something* 
 above itself to love, it had begun to prove stronger than 
 him the strongest, and had eventually won away from 
 him his human following — thereby demonstrating to him 
 what from his first doubtings the Eternal Spirit had 
 striven to show him, — that he should from the beginning 
 have trusted in love and not strength, because love is 
 the soul of strength? 
 
 And oh — may we not then further hope that shame at 
 his own intellectual bhndness, and horror at the mad 
 wickedness of selfhood which could wilfully inflict such 
 immeasurable suffering not only upon his fellow-beings 
 but upon All-loving Deity, will crumble his towering 
 pride, his adamantine will, into the dust — that his mighty 
 nature will at last abandon itself to the " Thou " which 
 for so' long had been knocking at his heart — so that in 
 the face of the onlooking universe he will beseech the 
 Heaven-Mother Whom he had blasphemed, to go with 
 him to the Heaven-Son Whom he had crucified and plead 
 that the soul-life he had forfeited might be vouchsafed to 
 him again, and that the Heaven-Father Whom he had 
 defied would receive back his now humbled and repenting 
 Prodigal and thus " GOD " again be " ALL in ALL." * 
 
 With Lucifer in the agony of contrition before the 
 * /. Corinthians, 15, 28. 
 
78 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 Heaven-Father and the Son — the Heaven-Mother at his 
 side in mute appeal, the assembled Universe of Souls 
 spectators of the tremendous surrender, and at the scene 
 the very suns and planets suspending in their courses — 
 will not then befall the foretold " silence in heaven " 
 which will announce to every heart that the Crisis of 
 Creation is Here? 
 
 At the unspoken prayer of the Heaven-Mother will 
 ^he Heaven-Son descend from beside His Father and 
 place a nail-pierced hand upon the prostrate head of him 
 who, from the Archangel of glory and beauty transcend- 
 ing, has through the selfness and soul-decay of ages 
 become the hideous, appalling Fiend whose very presence 
 is a horror and an infamy? 
 
 With the first contact of that Living Touch will the 
 consuming torture of the burning mind allay, the sobs of 
 the bursting heart begin to soothe, and as the Self-Exist- 
 ing One, once more the Crucificial Sacrifice, sends his Im- 
 maculate Life into the foul and fathomless corruption 
 of the Luciferian Death, while the motionless universe 
 looks on and the Heaven-Father and the Heaven-Mother 
 agonize in the final, supremest agony of their Redeemer- 
 Son — will that all-revolting form slowly resolve into a 
 faint chrysalis of light, then softly shape into the old 
 remembered guise of magnificence and might — save that 
 the dazzling pinions, crossing above the once haughty 
 head, close-veil that head now prone '* in dust " before 
 its Saviour? 
 
 And at length will that Saviour sigh and gently say — 
 "Arise, my own Brother, and from henceforth be our 
 Father's ' Light-bearer ' indeed ? " 
 
 And will the forgiven Archangel lift himself only to his 
 knees, and in the sight and hearing of all Heaven sob 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 79 
 
 again and again before Him — " My Lord and my God — 
 my Lord and my God? " 
 
 And then, like the father in the Saviour's own blessed 
 parable, will the Heaven-Father raise the broken-hearted 
 one and " fall upon his neck and kiss him " and in glad- 
 ness and tenderness immeasurable cry to the surrounding 
 universe " — This our son who was dead is alive again! 
 He was lost and is found f" 
 
 And will that Heaven-Father then ask for him . from 
 the Heaven-Mother her " best robe " — the priceless robe 
 that only She can weave — for the Purity which is Deity 
 is its warp and the Humility which is Herself is its 
 woof, and its divine, invisible tissue arrays those who 
 wear it in that mystery of the Ideal and that grace of the 
 Ineffable in quest of which the soul may roam and search 
 the universe and without " the Spirit " can never find ? 
 
 And with the last pang of pain — the last sob of sorrow 
 — the last discord of " self " in the Celestial Harmony 
 thus quivered away into eternity — will the whole Gamut 
 of Creation, all its Stars and all its Souls, burst into one 
 rapt, exultant, never-ending, ever-changing Symphony 
 OF Joy — because the vast Cosmic Serpent which had sought 
 to crush the Heaven-Rose of Happiness in his terrific 
 folds is now and forevermore the adoring, encircling 
 Guardian of that Rose ! — because the Arch-Deceiver of 
 the Universe who in his glorious first estate was its 
 intellectual Light-bearer is now transfigured to its more 
 glorious moral Light-bearer — to a " Lucifer " indeed who 
 as a blazing ocean-beacon upon the Rock of Ages will 
 to all eternity warn all created souls and all souls to be 
 created from adventuring their finite argosies against that 
 Infinite, Immutable, Inscrutable Supremacy which is 
 " Deity " through being " Love " ? 
 
80 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 When the " plan, the strange plan " of the Divine 
 Eternal Spirit together with the " act, the strange act " of 
 the Divine Eternal Son have thus done their perfect 
 work and achieved their divine ends by destroying Death 
 and restoring, ** clothed. and in their right mind" to their 
 Father's House all the once deceived and dying souls 
 of the universe— then will that ALMIGHTY FATHER, 
 the GLORIFIER, arise in the creative omnipotence from 
 which He had " rested " throughout the Luciferian era, 
 and before the once-denying Lucifer and the whole as- 
 semblage of witnessing Intelligences will He with the 
 Almighty Son bring into being " the new heavens and 
 the new earth " which from the beginning were included 
 in the Triune Immeasurable Design? 
 
 For in accordance with that infinite preference of love 
 which subsists between the several Persons of the Divine 
 Eternal Godhead — in the long conflict of the Heaven- 
 Mother and the Son with the Heaven-Enemy, had not the 
 Heaven-Father remained passively suffering with, rather 
 than actively aiding Them, in order that They might fully 
 demonstrate the equal omnipotence of Sacrificial with 
 Creative Deity and, because the glory of the triumph must 
 chiefly remain with Them, might thereby attain to an 
 adoration throughout the universe equal to His Own? 
 
 Last of all — as the zenith-crown of the re-union and 
 reconciliation of Creator and Created — will there not be 
 celebrated that promised " Marriage of the Lamb "* 
 whereat the bliss alike of Deity and of the Universe is 
 to culminate and overflow in ecstasy f 
 
 "The Bride— the Lamb's Wife"— thdit mysterious 
 ''King's Daughter Who is All-Glorious within — whose 
 clothing is of wrought gold; 
 
 " Who will he brought unto the King in raiment of 
 * Revelation, 19, 7, 9 and 21, 9. 
 
NEIV YORK': A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 8 1 
 
 needlework — all the virgins that he her fellows hearing 
 her company; 
 
 " Who with joy and gladness shall he hrought and shall 
 enter into the King's palace " * 
 
 Who is She? 
 
 Is She " The Holy City, New Jerusalem," which the Vi- 
 sionist John saw " coming down from God out of heaven, 
 prepared as a bride adorned for her husband? " 
 
 Is She " The Church " or Whole Company of the Re- 
 deemed — as taught by the apostle Paul? 
 
 Or is She perhaps some Ineffable One, far, far with- 
 drawn and waiting within the impenetrable veils of Self- 
 existing Being until her Eternal Bridegroom shall have 
 " put down " Death and Hell and restored a Universal 
 Heaven ? 
 
 Whosoever and Whatsoever She is — the closing words 
 of her Divine Betrothed in his Revelation to the world 
 He came to save are: 
 
 " / Jesus am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the 
 End, the First and the Last. 
 
 "And the Spirit and the Bride say 'Come!* And 
 let him that heareth say 'Come!' And let him that is 
 athirst, come! And whosoever will, let him take the 
 Water of Life freely ! " 
 
 Yes — to the infinite persuasiveness of his death upon 
 the cross for our Lucifer-led, world-besotted humanity — 
 the Divine Son adds one last supreme plea — " not only I, 
 but my Heaven-Mother, and not only my Heaven-Mother 
 but my Heaven-Bride — They Both invite you all, every- 
 body, to 'come' and share MY 'Life' and OUR Heaven- 
 Bliss!" 
 
 Oh, shall this transcending invitation of the Divine 
 * Psalm 45, 13, 14, 15. 
 
82 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 Eternal Feminine on behalf of the Divine and Only 
 Son be disregarded by you, Reader, or by me? 
 
 Shall we not rather cry with the beloved Visionist — 
 "Surely we come quickly!" and thus help to hasten the 
 day when " all " shall come, so that the Bridegroom 
 Himself can come to his own Bridal? 
 
 "Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!" 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE " FOURTH " GOSPEL 
 
 BiBLiciSTS have thus far been at a loss to account for 
 the striking contrast between the Gospel according to St. 
 John and the other Three. 
 
 But this is only another of the innumerable instances 
 of men striving in vain to grasp and interpret human 
 phenomena while absolutely ignoring the agency of any 
 sex save their own. 
 
 From his cross of agony Jesus the Redeemer looked 
 down upon his earth-mother Mary and upon his disciple 
 John and said to the former — "Behold thy son!" and to 
 the latter — " Behold thy mother! " " And from that hour 
 that disciple took her unto his own home." 
 
 Now what woman that ever lived or will live had, or 
 can have, an education comparable to that of the Mary- 
 mother who dwelt for thirty years beneath the same roof 
 with the Omnipotent Son of Creative Deity in his human 
 guise of " Jesus of Nazareth," and who kept all that she 
 saw and heard from Him "in her heart?" 
 
 When a youth has graduated from a college where for 
 three or four years he has recited two or three times a 
 day to learned men — he is called an "educated" man. 
 
 Yet the twelve disciples of Jesus lived for two or three 
 years in daily and hourly companionship with this Super- 
 human Personality, and because when He " called " them 
 they were but uninstructed fishermen, to this day they 
 
84 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 are thought of and talked of as " unlearned " and " igno- 
 rant " persons ! 
 
 Similarly has it never been suggested (so far as known 
 to the writer) that the Gospel according to St. John was 
 doubtless the joint work of the " beloved disciple " and 
 the uniquely taught and illuminated Mary-mother whom 
 he was sheltering in his " own home," 
 
 Of the graciousness of Jesus toward human womanhood 
 — of the sympathy of Jesus for human womanhood how 
 much less should we know were there no " Gospel accord- 
 ing to St. John ! " 
 
 Of the personality and sphere of the Divine Eternal 
 Spirit how dim and nebulous would be our conception 
 were it not for the glimpses behind the veil of Her Holy 
 of Holies as vouchsafed by this priceless Gospel? 
 
 Is it at all probable that St. John compiled this so sweet 
 and strange Memorial of his Divine Lord without con- 
 stant consultation with that earthly mother who had 
 studied and worshipped Him from his human birth and 
 even before that birth ? 
 
 It is not only not probable; simply, it is not possible — 
 and accordingly the " feminine " mind and heart therein 
 betray themselves from one end of its divine, appealing 
 pages to the other. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE AUTHOR S APOLOGY. 
 
 The famous Darwin once said that "humanity can no 
 more comprehend Deity than the dog can comprehend 
 the dog-star." 
 
 But the Scriptures which we Christians hold by and 
 swear to as the deliberate Self-revelation of God to man 
 declare to us in their opening chapter that God said — 
 "Let us make man in our on'n image and after our like- 
 ness" — which is nothing else than to say that the Triune 
 Wills Which are Creative Omnipotence chose to mirror 
 Themselves in a thinking and feeling and achieving race 
 which should live and move and have its being on this 
 earth as " male and female," otherwise " man and 
 woman," and resultantly as " husband and wife," as 
 " father and mother," as " brother and sister." 
 
 Which shall we believe — Darwin or the Bible? 
 
 The best definition of faith the writer has ever seen is 
 that of the Christian (to her unknown) who said, *' Faith 
 is not sense — nor reason — but the simple taking of God 
 at his word." 
 
 The foregoing pages are but an attempt by " taking God 
 at his word " to show that this " pure word " of God does 
 not, as do our human brothers, hold up to woman's wor- 
 ship a ruthless Male Supremacy Who invented the almost 
 impossible relation of the sexes and then placed upon the 
 weaker of the two nearly all of its burden and quite all 
 
86 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 of its agony, humiliation and shame — ^but that its Divine 
 Glad-Tidings console, inspire, and exalt our dual hu- 
 manity by revealing an Infinite Dual Parenthood That 
 fashioned man and woman in its own dual image in order 
 that as the objective microcosm of Dual Deity, these 
 might demonstrate his own futility to the merciless 
 "male" Lucifer whose egoist, heaven-storming ambition 
 was determined to dominate that macrocosm of Dual 
 Deity which is the whole objective universe. 
 
 Can we " by searching find out God " when " heaven 
 and the heaven of heavens can not contain Him ? " 
 
 Nay, no more than a tiny water-sphere of dew can en- 
 close the awful fire-sphere of the sun ! 
 
 Yet a drop of dew, if perfectly transparent, can reject 
 the sun. 
 
 And so may our limited humanity, simply by " taking 
 God at his word," " feel after Him and find Him." 
 
 How in its deepest depth the human heart has ever 
 yearned after the Dual Deity so persistently hidden from 
 it by the co-working masculinism of earth and hell, let 
 the ancient mythologies of Egypt, of India, of Greece, of 
 Rome — let the impassioned worship of the Madonna-Mary 
 by the Greek and Roman Catholicisms for the last fifteen 
 hundred years — nay, let the prayers to " Our Father and 
 Mother in Heaven," as even now being offered by the 
 Unitarian and also the Christian Science denominations — 
 bear witness; — and here I think that I ought, even at the 
 risk of appearing egotistic, to state how I myself came 
 to believe that the Divine Eternal " Spirit " of the Old and 
 New Testaments is the Divine Eternal Feminine of Deity. 
 
 A clergyman's unmarried daughter — one summer Sun- 
 day afternoon in my twenty-fourth year I read a sermon 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 87 
 
 by the famous Frederick W. 'Robertson of the Church of 
 England upon the Virgin Mary. 
 
 The great preacher said that since all ancient religions 
 save the Jewish included and worshipped female deities, 
 so great was the loss of these intimate and beloved god- 
 desses to the pagan converts, that, as time went on and 
 the Church got farther away from the era of the apostles 
 and their teachings, the Virgin Mary was gradually 
 exalted to the pedestal left vacant by the acceptance of 
 the Male Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost as 
 the Only True God. 
 
 But, so Mr. Robertson argued, this devotion of both 
 the Greek Catholic and the Roman Catholic Churches to 
 "Mary" as the "Mother of God," the "Queen of Heaven," 
 " Our Blessed Lady," etc. etc., had resulted from the 
 failure to realize that the Second Person of the Divine 
 Trinity or " Only Son " — in his incarnation as " Jesus the 
 Christ " was complete and perfect humanity — was perfect 
 man and perfect woman in one, and therefore, when the 
 Protestant Christian feels the need and the yearning that 
 so many do for an element in Deity even more tender, 
 gracious and indulgent than the All-Loving Saviour Him- 
 self, that Protestant should turn to and dwell upon the 
 feminine side of His Infinite Nature and find therein the 
 comfort and consolation that through so many centuries 
 the devout Catholic has realised from his love and con- 
 fidence in the Virgin Mary. 
 
 Closing the volume I objected to myself — " But the 
 Scripture tells us that Jesus * came in likeness of men ' 
 and was * tempted in all points as a man.' Now in every 
 living organism the spirit or soul must come first, and 
 must shape the body as the expression of itself. The 
 soul of Jesus clothed itself in a male body; therefore at 
 
88 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 the core, that soul, let its lo've, tenderness and gentleness 
 be what it would, must have been the firm, immovable, 
 law-giving, law-executing * male ' soul ; its nature, its 
 quintessence could not have been equally ' female,' and 
 therefore Mr. Robertson's theory does not meet the diffi- 
 culty." 
 
 At that moment darted into my mind like a ray of 
 light the words of Jesus when promising to his disciples 
 on the night of His betrayal the " Holy Ghost the Com- 
 forter," namely, "He shall not speak of Himself," and, 
 "" He shall glorify Me" — just those words and those alone. 
 Came then the thought : " But that is like a woman — for 
 women as I know them are always talking of and quoting 
 their husbands and their fathers; they don't exalt, they 
 don't strive for themselves and in all history they never 
 have.* Can it be that the ' Holy Spirit ' is that Fem- 
 inine in Deity of Which, though we women need Her so 
 sorely, the Bible seems to give no assurance ? " 
 
 I lost no time in looking op the chief passages in Scrip- 
 ture which mentioned " the Spirit " and without exception 
 these seemed to me then, as now, to confirm the reality 
 of this infinite exaltation of my sex which like a sun 
 had so suddenly unveiled and flooded with glory and with 
 joy the hitherto hopeless woman-world — that despised 
 and flouted sub-world into which woman had been herded 
 and kept as a function merely — as the breeder which 
 President Roosevelt, the Political Head of these United 
 States, and also President Eliot of Harvard, their Uni- 
 versity Head, even to-day would fain have her chiefly 
 
 * Remember that this was in 1859, when the woman suffrage move- 
 ment was in its obscure and feeble infancy; and even yet, how few 
 women are agitating for the "manhood ballot" compared with the multi- 
 milliotas who are passive and contented without it! 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 89 
 
 consider herself! In an old commentary I even found 
 that among the early Greek Christians were those who 
 held that the " Spirit " was the Mother of the Universe— 
 the Maternal Principle, etc., etc. 
 
 It seemed to me that I had now been vouchsafed the 
 answer to my long-offered prayer on behalf of outcast 
 womanhood,* and that here was THE truth which when 
 accepted must and would cure, by preventing, the 
 so-called " necessary " Social Evil — for how could man- 
 hood dare continue the profanation of the sex which, 
 equally with its own, has its Supernal Archetype in the 
 Godhead Itself? 
 
 Nevertheless, the chequered years rolled on and no way 
 suggested itself of presenting the stupendous dogma pos- 
 sessing me until it came to me to do so in this book 
 of warning against the Masculinism and Materialism 
 which, radiating from the city of New York as their 
 vital American centre, are more and more penetrating 
 and subduing our divinely-born Republic to their Lu- 
 ciferian ends. 
 
 In 1884 I went to live in New York in order to study 
 the city at first-hand, and from about 1892 — very slowly, 
 and with pauses of years between, these imperfect 
 pages have come from my protesting brain and in in- 
 stalments have been transferred to the " plates ; " for it is 
 a bitter thing to have to pass unfavorable judgment upc.i 
 one's fellow-mortals, and a fearful one — in striving to 
 formulate a perfect and consistent theory of Creator and 
 Created — to have to search into the BEING and the 
 PURPOSES of the LIVING GOD. 
 
 • See Prelude to Part II. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 PROCLAMATION. 
 
 " When the Lord gives the word, great will be the company of 
 wDmen to publish it. 
 
 " Kings with their armies will flee apace, and the women of the 
 household will divide the spoil. 
 
 " Though they have lived amid the grime of the cooking pots, 
 they shall become as the wings of a dove that is covered with silver 
 wings and her feathers like gold. 
 
 " Yea, when the Almighty Himself scatters the kings for their sake, 
 then will they be esteemed white as the snow of Mount Salmon." * 
 
 And now — if the foregoing Gospel according to Woman- 
 hood as read " between the lines " of the Inspired Man- 
 hood Gospels be indeed the reading of the " Spirit " and 
 not mere human delusion — then must all Christian be- 
 lievers, and especially all Christian women, regardless 
 equally of skepticism, ridicule or brow-beating, proclaim 
 everywhere the infinitely joyous thesis of these pages, 
 namely — That the Perfect Deity revealed in the Sacred 
 Scriptures is a Divine Eternal Trinity of Father, Mother 
 and Only Son — Co-Equal and Co-Powerful — Omnipotent, 
 Omniscient, Omnipresent — Radiant in Infinite Love, in 
 Perfect Beauty, in Changeless Youth — existing solely for 
 Happiness and shrinking from no self-abnegation nor self- 
 sacrifice to achieve Happiness — Three Divine Natures, 
 Each with a Personality and a Mission peculiarly Its Own 
 
 * Paraphrased from Psalm 68, 11-14 — and is it not significant to note 
 that the translators of the Authorized Version left out the word 
 "women" in verse II? Like St. Paul, they had no mind to encourage 
 women preachers! 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 9^ 
 
 — the Father the Giver of original life, the Son the 
 Restorer of life destroyed, the Mother the Nourisher of all 
 life, yet All living in every life and All absolutely AT 
 ONE because All are infinitely v^ise and so They can not 
 differ, and All are infinitely loving and so They can feel no 
 jealousy, but Each forever works for and with the Other 
 Twain and forever seeks to exalt Them before Itself. 
 
 " Perfect " love where there is either inferiority or in- 
 constancy being impossible — follows from this Fatherhood 
 and Motherhood in Deity that SEX IS THE EQUA- 
 TION OF SELF-EXISTING BEING, and therefore that 
 
 Sex is the Great Equation of the Objective Uni- 
 verse. 
 
 Its Plane the Spiritual and Eternal and not the 
 material and temporal; 
 
 And MoNOGAMic Marriage its Heaven-Law: — 
 
 That upon earth was divinely intended the universal 
 social, industrial and political Brotherhood and Sister- 
 hood of the Race whose first parents were created " male 
 and female " by the Eternally Wedded Infinities Who said 
 to Each Other — " Let Us make humanity in Our Image 
 and after Our likeness " : — 
 
 That the equi-dignity, equi-freedom and equi-devotion 
 of this Ineffable Union Eternal In The Heavens were 
 meant to reign equally in the human unions of earth as 
 they already do and must in every true sex-affinity 
 throughout that Universe of Spheres and Souls of which 
 the Divine Father, Mother and Only Son are the 
 Alpha and Omega — They the Authors and Nourish- 
 ers — They the Redeemers, the Perfecters and the 
 GLORIFIERS:— 
 
92 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 That the inequality in the marriage relation as existing 
 all over the world and embodied in the marriage ritual 
 of even Christian nations, like all adult subjection and 
 slavery of every degree, v^as originally the result and is 
 the sign of Sin, and remains the direct inspiration of the 
 Father of Sin: — 
 
 That therefore, together with Sin and Satan, it should 
 now be disowned and repudiated by every God-obeying 
 mind and that from thenceforward all Christian parents 
 should teach their sons from infancy itself, that before as 
 lovers they seek to approach the marriage-altar, thereby to 
 enter another's life and through " life kindling upon life " 
 to bring into being living souls — their one principle and 
 pledge toward this deepest and divinest of all relations 
 should be — " Love — the Giving Everything — the 
 Thou " :— 
 
 That the Profanation of Human Womanhood, together 
 with the Licentiousness of Human Manhood which is its 
 moving cause, must now cease and disappear from the 
 earth : — 
 
 That the terms " bigamy " and " polygamy " as meaning 
 two or more wives to one man must be blotted from the 
 language and from the statute books, because there is 
 and can be only one " wife " — the monogamic wife — tq 
 any husband; unfaithfulness to her is only and simply 
 " adultery," and as such must be branded, legislated-for 
 and punished; and even still more impossible is it for a 
 woman to be a " bigamist," i.e., a " wife " to two or more 
 husbands : — 
 
 That Creative Deity having entrusted to monogamic 
 marriage the transmission Of the human soul, adultery is 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 93 
 
 not only the violation of the most intimate and solemn 
 contract of the universe, but is also the betrayal and cor- 
 ruption of the source of life itself — consequently is treason 
 to the unborn, to the future offspring of the unborn, to 
 society, and to the race. Therefore its proper penalty is 
 not divorce, but death or prisoning for life. The Lord 
 Christ did not avert the stoning of the adulteress because 
 she did not deserve it, but because her would-be execution- 
 ers had all been guilty of similar sin : — 
 
 That " marriage " being absolutely and only between 
 two, the intrusion of a third instantly destroys it; there- 
 fore, the man or woman whose wedded partner is unfaith- 
 ful, by that fact becomes instantly and absolutely freed 
 from the marriage bond, and, so soon as the authorized 
 court proclaims the same to society, is as righteously en- 
 titled to contract another marriage as though the first 
 had never existed — all the ministers of the so-called 
 " apostolic succession " to the contrary notwithstanding: — 
 
 That seduction of the innocent where not repaired by 
 honorable marriage, should outlaw the seducer and give 
 any relative of the victim the right to shoot him on sight 
 without blood-guiltiness : — 
 
 . That profane assault upon womanhood, girlhood or 
 childhood is the special crime of War, and should be 
 avenged by death at the hands of the local militia so soon 
 as the officers of the militia can summon a court-martial, 
 weigh the evidence and sentence the ravisher; and this 
 for the reason that the Militia Service exists for the Na- 
 tional Defence, and the first duty of National Manhood is 
 the assurance to every woman of that foundation right 
 whose forcible violation far out-classes her murder — 
 namely, her right to her own person: — 
 
V 
 
 94 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 That the unforgivable degenerates now so often brought 
 before the courts for depraving children, and equally all 
 men and vi^omen who as procurers and procuresses traffic 
 in girlhood and womanhood — are guilty of the highest 
 crime possible to humanity against humanity, and should 
 upon conviction be swiftly executed without appeal: — 
 
 That should the aforesaid penalties for the aforesaid 
 crimes be deemed too severe, the writer can only refer the 
 reader to the Eternal Source and Standard of Theistic 
 Morals, namely, the Bible, in a topical edition of which 
 may be found twenty-three and a quarter pages of de- 
 nunciations and warnings against licentiousness and adul- 
 tery, and but one and a third similar pages against the 
 vice of intemperance — quite sufficient, so it would seem, 
 to prove which of these two sins in the Divine Mind is 
 the more heinous: — 
 
 That parents, and especially fathers, should now every- 
 where awake to the supreme duty of early training their 
 little sons to be pure and chaste in thought, word and 
 deed, and, in the words of the noble Richmond Pearson 
 Hobson, '' to believe that chivalry and gallantry toivard 
 women is a part of the Plan of Creation, and that every 
 man in the presence of every woman in any circumstances 
 should act the part of a cavalier and a knight " * ; — 
 
 That parents everywhere should from this onward 
 impress it upon their daughters that if as maidens 
 they find themselves ruined or violated, or as wives un- 
 faithful to their husbands, they should courageously de- 
 stroy their desecrated bodies and go before their Divine 
 Judge and ask Him to assign their souls to such place 
 as He shall choose — because to remain in this world 
 
 * Address at the obsequies of Admiral Phillips. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 95 
 
 will and must only disgrace their families, their sex, and 
 their country, and help to undermine society. Save a 
 prison, there is absolutely no spot on earth for the dese- 
 crated woman. Why should she not be at least as noble 
 as the common soldier in all ages and die for her friends, 
 her country and her sex as the one thing she can do for 
 them — yea, hide herself in the mercies of the Divine Eter- 
 nal Trinity whose Three-Fold Love will pity, cleanse and 
 in its own good time restore her? For — and ponder it 
 well, O American Womanhood, so shameful and so hor- 
 rible a proportion of whose daughters is perpetually de- 
 voted to profanation — in the Bible there is no command 
 against suicide. 
 
 That the legislatures of the United States must now see 
 to it that throughout this land the Stage and the Studio 
 shall cease from being the active allies and feeders of the 
 Social Evil that to-day they more or less are — the one by 
 the near-nude costuming and dancing common to farce and 
 burlesque, with the wanton dialogue and plot that accom- 
 pany them ; the other through the unchaperoned, unclothed 
 posing of youthful girls and women to artists and sculp- 
 tors which constitutes the living soul and centre of that 
 so-called " Bohemia " which is in truth and fact nothing 
 but the Kingdom of the Nude. 
 
 If the necessities of Art absolutely demand the study 
 and mastery of the female torso, then by law the models 
 should pose in strict incognito, with face and hair con- 
 cealed by a cap of double chiffon veiling coming below the 
 chin, and in the presence of matron-chaperons paid by the 
 State and appointed and guaranteed by a Mothers State 
 Commission. Girls between six and sixteen in all schools 
 
V 
 
 96 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 without exception should by law be trained daily in light 
 gymnastics and dancing, to ensure to each as far as pos- 
 sible bodily strength and grace and symetry. At the end 
 of their training, the most perfectly formed should be 
 numbered and registered, and from these annual lists 
 artists models should be chosen by lot. They should be 
 allowed to pose only between the ages of sixteen and 
 eighteen because posing requires in the model absolute 
 passivity and idleness of both hands and brain, and to fol- 
 low this vocation longer than two years is criminally to 
 waste the best years of a girl's life not only in doing and 
 learning nothing that can advantage her in any depart- 
 ment of industry or home-making, but on the contrary, by 
 imposing upon her months and years of personal idleness, 
 actually trains her into a loafer who not only can not, but 
 who does not ivant to do anything, and who thereby when 
 posing years are over, may become a human derelict. 
 Artists and models who break the above regulations as to 
 nude posing should alike be punished by fine and imprison- 
 ment. As for the nude posing of female models out of 
 doors and their indecent posing within doors, the artist 
 who exacts and the models who consent to these degrada- 
 tions should equally be imprisoned for life. 
 
 That womanhood throughout the world must now raise 
 its eyes and its ideals to Deity, and taking the Inefifable 
 " Spirit " or Divine Eternal Feminine as revealed in 
 Scripture for its sole Pattern and Cynosure, must strive 
 after the gifts and graces and activities therein ascribed 
 or implied to Her, and which, studied and lived and 
 taught by the Mary-mother and her - friends, the " holy 
 women," raised for their sex ^ white and radiant stand- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHOXIC STUDY. 97 
 
 ard that, however faltering, dimmed and stained in the 
 
 fierce earth-wars of Evil against Good, has still shone at 
 
 the head of Christ's hosts of redeemed and loving women 
 
 and still zW// shine ever more and more until they '' come 
 
 unto the Perfect Day." 
 
 ******* 
 
 " Whatsoever things are true," urged the Apostle Paul, 
 *' whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are 
 just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are 
 lovely, whatsoever things are of good report — if there be 
 any virtue, and if there be any praise — think on these 
 things." 
 
 And why? Because, as King Solomon ages before had 
 said, " As a man thinketh so is he," nay, so must he be — 
 THOUGHT being the man ! 
 
 If the doctrine of the Womanhood of the Divine Spirit 
 were not taught in open phrase by the Divine Son (though 
 since the dialect in which He spoke has disappeared it is 
 not certain that He did not use the feminine gender in 
 referring to Her)— it was probably because in that age 
 of fathomless profligacy in the sex-relation, it could not 
 have been explicitly declared without being misunderstood 
 and even blasphemed; but it is so plainly and strikingly 
 THERE in the New Testament— it is so manifestly revealed 
 in every quality and function therein attributed to the 
 " Spirit " that the reason it has not long ago been per- 
 ceived and preached is simply that through the many gen- 
 erations of unadulterated Masculinism which preceded 
 Christianity, men's " hearts " had become so " gross," and 
 their "ears" so "dull," and their "eyes" so "closed" 
 Ihat they could not " see " with their eyes, nor " hear " 
 
V 
 
 98 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 with their ears, nor " understand " with their hearts, and 
 thus be converted to the Pure and Perfect Deity of Dual 
 Sex, and by that Deity and not by the strictly Male Deity 
 so gratifying to masculine self-absorption and self-exalta- 
 tion be " wholly healed." 
 
 For never, never while mortal man continues to ignore 
 this incontrovertible Bible Revelation of the Divine 
 Eternal Feminine in Heaven will he cease his scorn and 
 his oppression and his desecration of the Human Feminine 
 on Earth, nor as the dreadful, inevitable re-action of these 
 — -will or can cease either his individual decay and retro- 
 gression or his collective social, political and racial 
 failure ! 
 
 Because " there is a rock on which every human soul 
 must anchor or be split; it is the sex opposite to its own/* 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 OTHER VISIONS OF THE DIVINE FEMININE. 
 
 No deduction from human experience is more true than 
 that if in any sentient being of the universe there is a 
 conscious or unconscious need — a long-felt want — some- 
 where in the universe exists that which can and which will 
 one day satisfy the need and fill the want. 
 
 Therefore the following examples of the aspirations and 
 yearnings of the human heart throughout the ages after 
 the Feminine in Deity — to the writer are confirmation so 
 strong as to its Reality, that it is hoped they may assist 
 the convictions of others toward the effulgent, all-blissful, 
 all-satisfying, all-solving Truth. 
 
 " In the Vishnu Parana * Lakshmi ' or 'Sri ' is the sea-born 
 goddess, the Bride of Vishnu, the Mother of the world, the 
 Eternal and Imperishable. As Vishnu is all-pervading so is 
 She omnipresent. Vishnu is Meaning, Lakshmi is Speech; 
 Vishnu is Understanding; Lakshmi is Intellect; He is Right- 
 eousness, She is Devotion; He is the Creator, She is the 
 Creation ; She, the Mother of the world, is the creeping vine 
 and Vishnu the tree round which she clings ; She is the Night, 
 He is the Day ; She is longing, He is Covetousness ; He is all 
 that is Male, She is all that is Female. * I bow to Sei, the 
 Mother of all beings. Seated on her lotus throne with eyes 
 blue like full-blown lotuses, reclining on the breast of Vishnu.' 
 From thy propitious gaze, O mighty Goddess, men obtain 
 wives, children, dwellings, friends, harvest, wealth. Health 
 
V 
 
 100 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 and strength, power, victory, happiness, are easy of obtain- 
 ment to those upon whom Thou smilest. Thou art the Mother 
 of all beings as the God of Gods is their Father, and the world, 
 whether animate or inanimate, is pervaded by Thee and 
 Vishnu. O Thou Who purifiest all things— forsake not our 
 treasures, our granaries, our dwellings, our dependents, our 
 persons, our wives; abandon not our children, our friends, our 
 lineage, our jewels. O Thou Who abidest in the bosom of 
 the God of Gods, the tongues of Brahma are unequal to cele- 
 brate thy excellence. Be propitious to me, O Goddess, lotus- 
 eyed, and never forsake me more.' 
 
 "Another name for the Universal Mother was 'Devaki,' and 
 it was declared that the * other gods ' celebrate her praises con- 
 tinually as the Mother of the Divine Brahma. 'Thou,' say 
 these divinities, ' Which formerly contained Brahma in thy 
 Person, art that Prakiti, infinite and subtle; Thou art the 
 Goddess of Speech, the Energy of the Creator of the Universe 
 and the Parent of the Vedas (the Hindu Scriptures). Thou, 
 Eternal Being, comprising in thy substance the essence of all 
 created things, wast identical with the Creation; Thou wast 
 the Parent of the Tri-form Sacrifice — becoming the germ of 
 all things ; Thou art Sacrifice, from whence all fruit proceeds ; 
 Thou art Light, from whence day is begotten; Thou art 
 Humility, the Mother of True Wisdom; Thou art Kingly 
 Policy, the Parent of Order; Thou art Modesty, the Pro- 
 genitrix of Affection; Thou art Longing, of Whom Love is 
 born; Thou art Contentment, whence Resignation is derived; 
 Thou art Intelligence, the mother of Knowledge; Thou art 
 Patience, the parent of Fortitude; Thou art the Heavens 
 and the stars are thy children and from Thee does all that 
 exists proceed. Thou art Wisdom, Ambrosia, Light and 
 Heaven. Thou hast descended upon earth for the preserva- 
 tion of the world. Have compassion upon us, O Goddess, 
 and do good unto the world. Be proud of bearing that 
 Deity by Whom the Universe is upheld.' 
 
 "Among the Latins, Juno was originally the Female Deity 
 of Nature in its w-'^ert extent, the defication of womanhood — 
 
.\EIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. loi 
 
 womanhood in the sphere of the divine. Every wife had her 
 own ' Juno ' or femtale guardian spirit, and the whole of a 
 woman's life in all its moments from the cradle to the grave 
 was under the conduct and protection of this goddess — but 
 especially her marriage and her maternity. 
 
 " This benignant Mother of the Pagan World was carried 
 over into Catholic Christianity in the person of the Virgin 
 Mary of the Greek and Latin Churches and the invocations 
 addressed to her by both Churches are much alike. 
 
 " Saint Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, says in a 
 sermon on the Virgin — 'If you can hold the earth in the 
 hollow of your hand or circumscribe the ocean with a cord — 
 if the heavens can be contained in a cubit or the hosts of 
 stars be numbered; if the drops of rain, or blades of grass 
 or sands of the earth or the forces of the wind can be 
 estimated — then it might be possible for us to handle this 
 mighty theme.' 
 
 " St. Andrew, in a Homily on the Virgin, says that — 
 'Every holy and reasonable mind investigating the secret 
 mysteries of Heaven and distinguishing between the orders 
 of superior spirits, finds that She, the Blessed among Women, 
 is first after the Redeemer, that She, Who brought forth 
 God without losing her virginity, is full of grace. This 
 Blessed Virgin, brighter than light, sweeter than all sweet- 
 ness, higher than all might, illumines the whole world and 
 by the persuasiveness of her pre-enninent suavity renews all 
 things, transcending in power and majesty the ranks of the 
 cherubim and seraphim. She is therefore second only to 
 God Who has made her worthy to be honored with praises 
 and Who has exalted her to so great a dignity that the 
 omnipotence of God Himself cannot create a greater. This 
 is the woman promised in the Paradise who by Divine Power 
 should bruise the serpent's head. This illustrious, this blessed 
 among women, was foretold before all others by the ancients 
 and typified by the Fire in the Bush, by the Blossom upon 
 the Rod, by the Dew upon the Fleece. She is the Mystic 
 Ark of the Covenant, the Golden Mercy-Seat, Jacob's Ladder, 
 
V 
 
 102 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 the Root of Jesse, the Throne of Solomon, the Bow of the 
 Covenant, the Gate of Paradise. She is the Fountain that 
 waters the whole earth, the Dawn that precedes the True 
 Sun. She is the HeaUh of all, the Reconciler of the whole 
 world, the Inventress of grace, the Generatrix of life, the 
 Mother of sarvation. She is the Restorer of our First Parents, 
 the Renewer of their posterity, the true Mother of the 
 living, the Comfort of the miserable, the Refuge of the 
 afflicted, the only Hope of sinners. In Her is all the grace 
 of the Way and the Truth. In Her is all the hope of life 
 and of virtue — 
 
 ' This Woman Who alone 
 Unfolded death's dark door, 
 This Woman Who alone 
 Did life and light restore. 
 
 " 'Under her shade he who turns aside from the heat of 
 passions may find rest and shelter from the oppressions of 
 the times and stillness from their toil and tumult.' 
 
 " In an Encyclical given at Rome in December, 1864, on 
 the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the dogma of the 
 Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, the Roman 
 Pontiff, Pius IX, said to the faithful: — That God may accede 
 more easily to my and your prayers and to those of all his 
 faithful servants, let us employ in all confidence as our 
 mediatrix with Him. the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, Who 
 (in the words of St. Bernard) has destroyed all heresies 
 throughout the world, and Who, the most loving Mother of 
 us all, is very gracious and full of mercy, allows Herself to 
 be entreated by all, shows Herself most clement toward all, 
 and takes under her pitying care all our necessities with 
 most ample affection, and sitting as a Queen on the right 
 hand of her only begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, .in 
 a golden vestment clothed round with various adornments, 
 there is nothing which She cannot obtain from Him.' 
 
 " The late Catholic archbishop Spalding of Baltimore, in 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 103 
 
 speaking of the Virgin Mary, said — 'Wliat a privilege! To 
 have a Mother in Heaven — and so tender, so powerful and 
 so sweet a Mother! Christ, Who denied Her nothing on 
 earth, will surely deny Her nothing in heaven. Whatever 
 we ask through Mary with earnest and persevering faith, 
 we shall most certainly obtain if it be conducive to out 
 salvation. Our faith and devotion should be stimulated by 
 the fact that She is the chosen Patroness of this our beloved 
 country of America, for the welfare and prosperity of which, 
 both temporal and spiritual, she will not fail to raise her 
 immaculate hands before the throne of her Divine Son.' "* 
 
 In October, 1897, the late Pontifif, Leo XIII, issued an 
 Encyclical to all the Faithful, exhorting them on ac- 
 count of the falling away from the Church and the wide- 
 spread decay of faith, to " redouble prayers to Mary,"'] 
 who certainly would hear and would answer prayer and 
 love toward her with renewed blessings to the Church 
 and to the progress of religion. Among Catholic Asso- 
 ciatioi.i he assigned the place of honor to the Confra- 
 ternity of the Holy Rosary founded by St. Dominick, and 
 of which " the Rosary of Mary is the Soul of the In- 
 stitution " — being *' the suppliant host gathered by Father 
 Dominick under the standard of the Glorious Mother." 
 Leo further declared, that " the Roman pontiffs have ever 
 lavished the most exalted praise on this Association, so 
 devoted to Mary," and expressed himself as entertaining 
 the most lively hope that " the prayers and praises of this 
 Rosary of Mary will prove most powerful when, issuing 
 from the lips and hearts of a great multitude, they go 
 
 * Monumental Christianity, ch. 8, p. 212 et seq., by John P. Lundy. 
 Bouton, Piblisher, 706 Broadway, New York, 1876. 
 t Italics on this and the next page arc the writer's. 
 
V 
 
 104 ^V£H^ YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 on unceasingly by day and night in the different parts of 
 the globe." 
 
 The same Leo, in his letter of May 26, 1903, to the 
 Lord Cardinals with reference to the celebration of the 
 fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Immaculate 
 Conception as an Article of Faith — uses the following 
 language : " Devotion to the Mother of God not only 
 has been from my tender years among my most cherished 
 affections, but it is for me one of the most potent means 
 of defense granted by Providence to the Catholic Church. 
 At all times and in all trials and persecutions the Church 
 has had recourse to Mary, and in her has ever found 
 solace and protection. And now that the days in which 
 we live are so stormy and so big with menace for the 
 Church herself, I am rejoiced and stimulated to hope, 
 when I see the faithful seizing the auspicious opportunity 
 presented by this fiftieth anniversary and turning with a 
 unanimous impulse of love and confidence to her who is 
 invoked as the Help of Christians." 
 
 And finally, the present Pope, Pius X., thus remarkably 
 concludes his encyclical of January 11, 1907, upon the 
 French Church and State Separation law : " In full con- 
 fidence that the Virgin Immaculate, Daughter of our 
 Father, Mother of the Word, Spouse of the Holy Ghost, 
 will obtain for you from the most holy and adorable Trin- 
 ity better days — from the bottom of our heart we give 
 you, venerable brothers and the whole people, our apos- 
 tolic benediction." 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 IDEAL WOMANHOOD. 
 
 Of the persons of this generation who may honor by 
 reading these pages upon Triune Deity, probably all of the 
 men and most of the women will regard them not as a 
 sober study and statement of vital and tremendous truths, 
 but as the scarcely intelligible ravings of a rhapsodist. 
 
 Nevertheless, here and there a woman will understand 
 me and believe me, and also here and there a girl — and to 
 such I would appeal to form themselves into an association 
 to be called " The Daughters of the Spirit " and individu- 
 ally and collectively throughout the rest of their lives to 
 strive to realize here on earth the true feminine image 
 and likeness of the eternal, ineffable Feminine in Heaven ; 
 — cherishing first of all ardent and absolute faith in and 
 love to Triune Deity as the life of all womanhood — 
 cherishing immaculate purity as the soul of all woman- 
 hood, — absolute modesty as the sacredness of all woman- 
 hood, — exquisite refinement as the atmosphere of all 
 womanhood, — sweetnoss and gentleness as the charm of all 
 womanhood, — patience and persuasiveness as the power 
 of all womanhood, — pity and compassion as the halo of 
 all womanhood, and perfect humility as the wisdom of all 
 womanhood. 
 
 Pursuing knowledge and understanding as the strength 
 
io6 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 of all womanhood, — prudence and discretion as the safety 
 of all womanhood, — household skill as the obligation of 
 all womanhood, and industry and thrift as the dowry of all 
 womanhood ; 
 
 Cultivating health and vitality as the imperative of all 
 womanhood, — daintiness and grace as the magic of all 
 womanhood; and personal beauty as the expression of 
 all womanhood; — 
 
 Promoting beauty in everything as the mission of all 
 womanhood, — ardent in all humanities as the maternal in 
 all womanhood, — devotee of husband and home as the 
 bliss of all womanhood, — inspirer and encourager of men 
 as the glory of all womanhood; — 
 
 " Given to hospitality " as the graciousness of all wom- 
 anhood, — exacting courtesies and chivalry as the preroga- 
 tive of all womanhood, — promoting feminine achievement 
 as the duty of all womanhood, — defending and not dis- 
 paraging women as the self-respect of all womanhood ; — 
 
 Organizing and practicing housekeeping on Rochdale 
 co-operative principles as the civilization for all woman- 
 hood, — and electing from among themselves Women's 
 Auxiliary Boards to the Town, State and National Coun- 
 cils, Commissions, Legislatures and Congresses of our 
 country as the one genuine, non-sham, worth-while 
 "suffrage" for all womanhood — irresistible, all-powerful, 
 because all-influential. 
 
 Although no one woman can fulfil perfectly any one of 
 these attributes and functions of Ideal Womanhood, yet 
 each and every woman can approximately fulfil several of 
 them, and collective Christian women by consciously and 
 intelligently striving toward this Divine Feminine Ideal 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 107 
 
 will in the end as a sex present as wondrous an image and 
 likeness of the Divine Omnipotent Womanhood Eternal 
 in the Heavens as in the magnificent entirety of its 
 achievements and institutions human manhood to-day 
 presents a god-like image and likeness of the Divine 
 Omnipotent Manhood Eternal in the Same Heavens. 
 
 O Waiting Women of the World! Sisters Beloz-cd! 
 Awake! — Unite! You have everything to gain. You 
 have nothing to lose but your chains — your vitriolic chains 
 of flesh and sense. From now onward enroll yourselves 
 under the snowy and joyous banner of The Spirit, taking 
 as your mottoes that of the winning Frances Willard — 
 " Do Everything " and that of the inspiring "Aunt Mary " 
 of Ralph Waldo Emerson — " Do more than you can," and 
 for your method that " persuasiveness of pre-eminent 
 suavity" ascribed by the saintly Catholic to the Blessed 
 Virgin Mary, and ' all will yet be well." 
 
ACTS OF THE CHURCH 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 ACTS OF THE CHURCH : THE ENEMY SOWS TARES. 
 I. 
 
 The Enemy Sows Tares. 
 
 True Christianity is founded upon Science, or the In- 
 variableness of Cause and Effect, as much as Chemistry 
 is; for just so much Love as the human race wills to pour 
 into the crucible of Life, just so much Happiness does 
 that crucible yield back, and no more. 
 
 That the Author of Christianity challenged the strictest 
 scientific test on behalf of his Gospel of Love is clear from 
 his own declarations: — "A good tree cannot bring forth 
 evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good 
 fruit. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? 
 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them''; and 
 again, "' // ayiy man will do the Father's will, he shall knoiv 
 the doctrine whether it be of God." 
 
 It is true that in order to gain the attention and credence 
 of his hearers to the spiritual truths He was revealing, 
 Jesus amazed and awed them by physical miracles ; but so 
 soon as through the lives and teachings of his followers 
 the great principle of Love to God and Man had become 
 accepted as the axis of human conduct, the superhuman 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 109 
 
 signs and wonders ceased. They were no longer neces- 
 sary. "See how these Christians love one another!" was 
 the Pagan comment upon the converts of the first century 
 — and from that age to this the superior beauty and happi- 
 ness of Christianized lives, together with the progress and 
 prosperity which such lives invariably bestow upon a 
 nation in proportion to their number, are all the guarantee 
 of its Divine Origin that the Divine Gospel has needed for 
 the progressive extension of its Divine Kingdom. 
 
 Why then, since it is nearly two thousand years since 
 Christ gave us this Gospel so undeniably from Heaven, is 
 but one-third of the world even yet nominally Christian, 
 and, worse still, why is the Christianity of even that third 
 not only so lamentably imperfect, but actually, at the 
 present time, retrograding? 
 
 On the night of the Farewell Supper Jesus said to His 
 disciples ; — " / have yet many things to say unto you, but 
 ye cannot bear them now." 
 
 May we interpret this saying of the Divine Son about 
 to lay down his life for the world to mean — that on account 
 of the deep submergence of humanity in the slough of 
 sensuality into which the fallen Lucifer had lured it, our 
 Lord was unable to reveal even to his own intimate dis- 
 ciples the Divine Spirit He was promising them as the 
 " Divine Feminine " that She truly is? 
 
 In the Semitic mind was " sex " a conception so de- 
 graded that it would have been impossible at that time to 
 lift it to the Plane of Deity without blaspheming Deity in 
 that mind? 
 
 Was the Self-existing Celestial Mother obliged to be 
 left enshrouded in a veil of mystery in order to insure any 
 
no NEW YORK: A ^M PHONIC STUDY, 
 
 manhood welcome and allegiance to her guidance and 
 regency of the Church as about to be committed to Her 
 by the Father and the Son ? 
 
 Certain and sorrowful it is that after the death of the 
 Apostles her Mission and her Power were soon lost sight 
 of, even by believers. 
 
 Nevertheless, so irresistibly convincing was the cruci- 
 fied Christ's commandment of " love for Love's sake " — 
 that, taught just as He personally had delivered it and 
 lived it, its results in human uplift would soon have scien- 
 tifically demonstrated its absolute truth, and the rescue of 
 human womanhood on earth, together with the unveiling 
 of the Divine Womanhood in Heaven have been accom- 
 plished ages ago, had not the same old "dragon" — Mas- 
 culinism, wroth with this Divine Feminine whose converts 
 to Love in the person of the ineffable Jesus were every- 
 where threatening and dissolving his dragon yoke, blinded 
 that magnificent genius and over-mastering leader, the 
 Apostle Paul, first into exalting celibacy above the married 
 state, and second, into forbidding Christian women to 
 teach or even to ask a question in the meetings of the 
 faithful. He ordained that woman's part in the churches 
 was to " keep silence," and if she wanted to know about 
 anything she must " ask her husband at home." 
 
 Now Paul, though of purest Jewish descent and train- 
 ing, was born and brought up in the pagan city of Tarsus, 
 in Asia Minor, and he had taken over with him into 
 Christianity those gross and harsh conceptions of, and 
 that withering contempt for, the weaker sex which invari- 
 ably prevail in societies immersed in sex-desecration such 
 as he described in his own epistle to the Romans.* 
 
 * Romans, 1, 24-32. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. in 
 
 Moreover, being converted and becoming an apostle 
 only after the departure of Christ from the earth, he was 
 not eye-witness with the twelve of the new manhood-atti- 
 tude toward womanhood which they had daily noted in 
 their Divine Master and which afterward, therefore, ap- 
 peared in their writings and doubtless in their lives. 
 
 Thus Paul, the special apostle of spiritual and intellec- 
 tual freedom for men converts, proved also a still more 
 potent influence for the spiritual and intellectual subjec- 
 tion of women believers, and the continuing of the world 
 tragedy which the Savior had come to heal was the in- 
 evitable result. Estopped from freely sharing in his 
 emancipating gospel, and commanded each to accept the 
 measure of her husband's mind as the limit of her own, 
 the doors of the world-old mental prison which Christ had 
 thrown wide open to Mary of Bethany and all Hke-minded 
 women, crashed back upon them. 
 
 Christian motherhood, re-enslaved and forbidden to 
 think, could bring forth only slavish sons, and within a 
 few centuries the nominally " christian " but abjectly 
 priest-ridden Latin manhood had all unconsciously turned 
 its back upon the " truth " which would have made it 
 " free " and was intent only upon transferring to the chris- 
 tion bishop of Rome the combined spiritual and political 
 autocracy over Western Europe which had first been 
 forged and wielded by Rome's pagan emperors. 
 
 The English philosopher Hobbes declared, and two cen- 
 turies later the French Zola in his terrific triple arraign- 
 ment — " Lourdes," " Paris" " Rome " — drove home the 
 charge, that under another name and in a more specious 
 guise the Papacy is the resurgence, the re-incarnation, of 
 
112 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 the terrible Roman Empire — equalling it in ambition, in 
 despotism, in corruption and in cruelty, and far surpassing 
 it in falsehood, treachery and craft. 
 
 The Master had told his followers " call no man ' father,' 
 for One is your Father, even God." 
 
 But directly defying this divine warning, for ages the 
 bishop of Rome has assumed to be the " Holy Father " of 
 all Christendom, also Christ's infallible "vicar " or " vice- 
 regent " on earth, logically triple-crowned, therefore, as 
 being the lord of lords and king of kings before whom 
 every earthly potentate as well as every fellow-being must 
 slavishly kneel * and outside whose spiritual realm of the 
 " Church " no soul is safe from eternal death because the 
 Pope supremely, and the bishops and priests of the so- 
 called " apostolic succession " in less degree, together hold 
 the keys of heaven and hell for the entire human race. 
 
 Many centuries were required fully to establish this 
 awful dominion, neither could it ever have been accom- 
 pHshed and maintained save by the army of men celibates 
 which for fifteen centuries Rome has selected in their 
 early years, has carefully taught and trained to her twin 
 ideals of abject obedience and ruthless despotism, and 
 thereafter has scattered as her active emissaries all over 
 the globe. 
 
 For a thousand years of the above period the whole 
 mind and soul of western Christendom was as absolutely 
 as possible chained, kept down and blighted by this great 
 CeHbate Hierarchy. In the course of events the territories 
 
 • To this day Catholics to whom the Pope grants an audience must 
 kneel throughout the whole of it — a usage inexorably exacted, no 
 matter how prolonged the interview. 
 
NEPy YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 113 
 
 and secular powers of the Roman Emperors became divided 
 among the barbarian leaders of the successive invading 
 hordes that over-ran the imperial realm, and " dark " in- 
 deed were the long ages through which Europe grovelled 
 and agonized beneath the double yoke of the so-called 
 '• apostolic succession " of its priests and the so-called 
 "divine right" of its kings! Had not the teachings of 
 the Divine Eternal Trinity been miraculously enshrined 
 and preserved in the Jewish and the Christian scriptures, 
 to this day the human mind would not have broken 
 through these Luciferian forgings. 
 
 But even as beneath a deep-frozen ice-crust the living 
 stream may still run living on, so in a few hearts here and 
 there flowed far down this " living water " of the Word of 
 God. Through the slow generations higher and higher 
 rose a sacred flood of protest and revolt against spiritual 
 tyranny and oppression, until in the giant personality of 
 Martin Luther spiritual freedom burst its bonds and 
 spread far and wide the great and glorious Protestant 
 Reformation of Religion. 
 
 The yoke of the " apostolic succession " was rent first 
 from Luther's own dauntless neck and then from the necks 
 of all courageous enough to uphold him. 
 
 " Ye are an holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacri- 
 fices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ/' declared St. 
 Peter to his converts, whether Jew or Gentile. 
 
 '' Ye are all kings and priests unto God," proclaimed 
 St. John.* 
 
 Upon the questioning mind of the youthful monk search- 
 
 */ Petet, 3:5-9, and Revelations, 1:6 and 5:10. 
 
114 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 ing and sifting his newly-found Bible for the " truth," 
 these teachings shone as the Magna Charta of freedom 
 for every human soul. To him they meant that no one 
 man, nor any hierarchy of men, was ever commissioned 
 or intended to come between the soul and its Maker. Each 
 soul, whether of man or woman, was to be its own " priest " 
 to offer up its living self in perfect love and surrender to 
 the God of Love. Each soul, whether of man or woman, 
 was to be its own " king " to rule its own heart and will in 
 accordance with the law of love as taught and lived by the 
 Divine Son of that God. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 ACTS OF THE CHURCH : THE "'tRUTH'" MAKES "fREE/' 
 
 The nations that followed Luther were Protestant Ger- 
 many, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Ice- 
 land, Switzerland, Scotland, Wales and non-conformist 
 England. But there the Reformation halted. Though 
 humanity had broken the yoke of the priest, it was still 
 too morally feeble, sturdy little Holland excepted, to break 
 the yoke of its kings, while so intricated within and over 
 the human mind had become the religious and the secular 
 authorities, that the Protestant potentates who had thrown 
 overboard the Papacy soon began to impose upon their 
 subjects their own religious creeds and forms whether the 
 subjects were in sympathy with them or not. 
 
 In England, for instance, the sovereign and his ob- 
 sequious Parliament chose to place over the national church 
 they had established a hierarchy of bishops which claimed 
 to continue the " catholic apostolic succession " of the 
 Greek and Roman communions, and thereby to exercise 
 over the inferior clergy and the laity something of the 
 lordship and authority of their predecessors. To the 
 intense disgust and distrust of the English disciples of 
 Luther and Calvin, the English bishops insisted that the 
 reformed presbyters and their congregations should wor- 
 ship only in the words and should wear in the chancel 
 
V 
 
 Ii6 XEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 only the garb prescribed by the church liturgy or Book of 
 Common Prayer, two thirds of whose matchless formulas 
 were translated from the old-time Roman missals. 
 
 And so it came to pass — after long years of friction, of 
 striving, and of punishments by silencings, fines, imprison- 
 ments, mutilations and in some cases by death — that multi- 
 tudes of ardent and disaffected Puritans betook themselves 
 and their families across the trackless Atlantic to the 
 trackless North American wilderness in search of that 
 " freedom to worship God " in their own way and accord- 
 ing to their own convictions which alone to them could 
 make life "worth living." 
 
 Alone there with God and nature — amid those *' forests 
 which God must have loved since they were the most 
 beautiful He ever planted " — a new race was born and 
 reared to a free but self-disciplined, self-governing citi- 
 zenship such as the world had never known before; and 
 when, after about a century and a half of this " State 
 without a king and this Church without a bishop," its 
 titular sovereign proposed to rivet upon it one at least of 
 the two old-time yokes, a few of these field-and-forest 
 freemen fired for their freemen's " rights " the immortal 
 shot which their fellow-farmers echoed the country over 
 with " their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honours." 
 At their head they placed the Virginia farmer whom after 
 his death the civilized world as with one voice eulogized as 
 mortal manhood's theretofore highest expression, and who, 
 if a leader is to be judged by the results of his life-work, 
 certainly has not been paralleled since. 
 
 Through his generalship American Independence was 
 achieved; through his urging the Constitutional Conven- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 117 
 
 tion was assembled; under his chairmanship the Federal 
 Constitution was adopted; by his presidency the Federal 
 Government was organized. God Almighty in Heaven, 
 the Divine Trinity of Father, Mother and Only Son, be 
 forever praised for their divine gift to the world of 
 George Washington, Humanity's Ideal Realized, in that — 
 untcmpted by the dazzling success and acclaim which 
 crowned the devotion of what President McKinley called 
 his "vast and varied abilities" to the heaven-cause of 
 Human Happiness — throughout his forty-five years of 
 unpaid public service he never swerved from " loving 
 mercy," from " doing justly " or from " walking humbly 
 with his God" * 
 
 •iiicah, 6:8. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 MASCULINISM. 
 
 Not even the New Manhood evolved from the united 
 teachings of the Divine Scriptures and the American for- 
 est, was, however, by any means freed from MascuHnism. 
 
 In 1776, when after signing the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence in Philadelphia, John Adams of Boston playfully 
 but proudly wrote home to his devoted wife that he had 
 been assisting at the " birth of a fine boy," that wise and 
 brilliant woman replied to the momentous announcement : 
 " And, by the way, in the new code of laws I suppose it 
 will be necessary to make, I desire you to remember the 
 ladies and to be more favorable to them than your ances- 
 tors were. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands 
 of the husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if 
 they could." 
 
 On another occasion she wrote: — " If we mean to have 
 heroes, statesmen and philosophers we should have learned 
 women." 
 
 But for these pregnant warnings not even the American 
 revolutionists were as yet ready ; for though the Brother- 
 hood of Man was laid as the foundation-rock of their new 
 Republic, the Sisterhood of Woman which should have 
 been imbedded beside it for the upbuilding thereon of the 
 twin half of the ideal structure, remained unthought of. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 119 
 
 Husband and wife continued to be " one " and " that one 
 the husband." American men, like all other men since 
 history began, considered womanhood as practically a part 
 of manhood functioning automatically for his home com- 
 fort and for the perpetuation of his race, and the struggle 
 for an American Republic had not changed this view. 
 Under the new and glorious conditions for white manhood 
 the secret profanation of white womanhood continued 
 permissible and possible from one end of the country to 
 the other, and legal marriage was still withheld from its 
 black slave womanhood. 
 
 Thus Masculinism fastened its demon-clutch on the 
 new civilization. As of old, it ravened and battened on 
 human souls in the hidden dens and lairs of human life, 
 waiting, as so often before in history, .for yet another 
 youthful nation to grow rich and great and self-confident 
 — when it would spring forth and once more overpower 
 with Satanic strength the humanity created by Deity in 
 Deity's own image for the express purpose of destroy- 
 ing it ! 
 
 How had this oversight happened ? How had this most 
 dreadful enemy been overlooked ? 
 
 When the " Woman clothed with the Sun " — otherwise 
 the Holy Spirit, the Dove of Heaven, the Divine Eternal 
 Feminine — by the sails of the Mayflower as by " the two 
 wings of a great eagle " * wafted Herself across the sea 
 to the American wilderness, therein to find *' for a time 
 and times and half a time " shelter and rest from the 
 persecutions of her " dragon " enemy, and amid its virgin 
 
 * Revelation, 12:14. 
 
120 NEW YORK: A S'VMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 fastnesses to found the pure Realm of Christ thus far 
 impossible in the priest-ridden, king-ridden, lust-ridden 
 eastern hemisphere — can it be that deep and dark within 
 the sacred hold of the lit.tle vessel was borne also a dragon 
 ^%% which when hatched and grown was certain to con- 
 tinue against that Realm the world-old persecutions of its 
 Satanic father? How was it that no eye saw — no foot 
 crushed — the embryonic monster? 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 MISTRESS HUTCHINSON AND MASCULINISM. 
 
 Not from the Mayflower at Plymouth in 1620, but from 
 another little bark at Boston in 1636 — there had landed 
 with her husband and band of children, the brilliant 
 Mistress Ann Hutchinson. 
 
 Mr. Hutchinson was a man of fortune and of family, 
 and she, the daughter of a clergyman of the Church of 
 England, was a blood relation of the great poet Dryden. 
 Such was the personal importance of the newcomers, that 
 on arriving they were received and lodged in the only 
 brick house the little settlement could boast — the house of 
 the colonist Coddington. 
 
 Mrs. Hutchinson soon showed herself an inborn leader, 
 It being the custom of the Puritan men to meet on Thurs- 
 day to discuss the sermons of the previous Sabbath, her 
 ardent religionism instituted similar weekly meetings 
 among the Puritan women — an entirely new feminine de- 
 parture which made her the true fore-runner of the now 
 all-pervading and all-discussing American club-woman. 
 
 Skilled in the domestic arts and in nursing, Mrs. Hutch- 
 inson's ready help and sympathy both in health and in sick- 
 ness made her a ministering angel " longed for " in many 
 a pioneer household, while so exhaustive was her Bible 
 knowledge, and so persuasive her logic, that the views and 
 
122 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 convictions of this "masterpiece of woman's wit" — as 
 an admirer called her — spread from her women listeners 
 to the men of their families, then to the Boston clergy and 
 even to Governor Vane himself. 
 
 Ann. Hutchinson never committed her conclusions to 
 writing, and they have so confusedly come down in the 
 reports of her opponents and vilifiers that whether she 
 fully accepted the terrible Calvinistic " Confession and 
 Covenant " — " You do acknowledge that every person 
 from the very moment of his birth is under God's wrath 
 and curse, and that your own nature is utterly vile and 
 void of all goodness" — or whether, on the contrary, she 
 attempted to soften and spiritualize the iron creed — certain 
 it is that, not the ministers of Boston, but those outside of 
 Boston, took the alarm and decided to indict her for 
 heresy. 
 
 She was silenced, taken from her home and confined 
 in another household, then brought before the assembled 
 ministers and deacons of the colony, by them bitterly ac- 
 cused, scornfully questioned, and though soon again to 
 become a mother, compelled to remain standing through- 
 out the sessions, and finally, since she steadfastly refused 
 to recede from her position, she was exiled from the colony 
 with her family. 
 
 "Better he cast out of the church than deny Christ" 
 was her comment — as with her baby in her arms she went 
 forth into the wilderness. 
 
 Ann Hutchinson's husband remained devotedly loyal 
 to .his gifted wife, but none of the Boston ministers who 
 had previously agreed with her, took her part — doubtless 
 from shamefacedness at championing a '" woman " — and 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 123 
 
 possibly even her oldest son went with the tide, for when 
 the family left Boston he remained behind. Their first 
 host in Boston, however, Mr. Coddington, of the " first 
 brick house," shared their exile, and the party betook 
 themselves to the previously cast-out Roger Williams in 
 Rhode Island. Later, the Hutchinsons made their sad- 
 dened way through the forest to New Rochelle, just north 
 of beautiful Manhattan Island, where, in an uprising of 
 the Indians against the Dutch governor, and but eight 
 years after their landing in America, the hapless home- 
 seekers were all massacred save one little girl. The clerical 
 foes of the martyred mother exulted in her hellish fate 
 and saw in it the just judgment of Heaven upon a pre- 
 sumptuous member of the subject sex whom they held to 
 be inspired by, and even in actual personal communion 
 with, the devil ! 
 
 Puritan womanhood had received its terrible lesson. 
 Henceforth it openly questioned Puritan theology no 
 more. It accepted whatever was imposed upon it, sub- 
 sided into the immemorial woman role of " silent partner " 
 in human civilization, and while outwardly conforming 
 and non-protesting, simply thereafter, woman-fashion, 
 thought its own thoughts about the stern masculine doc- 
 trines that no woman's mind could by nature endure or 
 would ever by nature have conceived. 
 
 The late Mrs. Craigie (John Oliver Hobbs) born in 
 New England though by cradle and lifelong residence 
 wholly of Old England, said after her last visit to this 
 country in 1905 — ''American capitalists will give any- 
 thing and everything to the women of their families ; only, 
 they must not ask questions nor proffer advice." 
 
V 
 
 124 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 The shrewd observation is a flash-light not only upon 
 the masterful American husbands so absurdly bemoaned 
 by foreigners as being patient driven slaves of useless and 
 contemptuous wives — but equally on their Puritan fore- 
 fathers as against the unconquerable Ann Hutchnson. 
 The epoch-making Ibsen also pierced the true inwardness 
 of her life-tragedy when in his comment upon his own 
 " Doll's House " he wrote : — " In our modern society the 
 woman cannot be true to herself, for society's laws are 
 formulated by man and they criticize feminine actions 
 from the man's point of view. . . . Modern Society 
 is not human society, but merely a society of men-folk " — 
 i. e., a one-sex society. 
 
 But what if the All-Maker meant human society to be a 
 two-sex society? What if the woman mind is by divine 
 appointment that alert, watch-dog mind intended to sleep 
 with one eye and one ear open, ever ready to give the 
 alarm on behalf both of the family and the race ? 
 
 Ann Hutchinson's mind was evidently such a mind. It 
 was a Cassandra mind, daring to search, to find, to judge 
 for itself. In the sacred scriptures she perceived some- 
 thing that the deeply religious men about her were not 
 perceiving, and she wanted to point it out, to bring it to 
 the front, to compel to it Christian attention. But the 
 jealous, despotic Puritan manhood would not have it so. 
 It would not tolerate that a " mere " wife and mother 
 should study, and think, and suggest. Consequently her 
 teaching, her prestige, yea, her very self, must be destroyed 
 out of the infant colony. 
 
 Destroyed accordingly they were — and in this world 
 we shall never know what Asiatic and European Christen- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 125 
 
 dom would have become had not the Apostle Paul 
 ' silenced " the women saints in the newly-born Christian 
 churches, nor how New England religion would have 
 evolved had not the Massachusetts clergy so ruthlessly 
 (lone the same thing to the winning and illuminated 
 Mistress Ann Hutchinson; but Trinitarian women can at 
 least maintain that the results could not have been worse 
 than they actually were, for European Christendom shaped 
 itself into the Papacy, and after the American Revolution 
 nearly all the light and leading of New England reacted 
 from the now intolerable Calvinism into Unitarianism ! 
 
 Ah, not in the hold of the sacred Mayflower with the 
 gentle Pilgrims was borne across the sea the dragon-egg 
 of future enmity to Jesus — but on the ships that were 
 bound for Boston its militant masculinism hid in the truly 
 though imperfectly converted heart of the mighty Puritan 
 Manhood Itself ! 
 
 For it is given to no man, not even men so God-seeking 
 and God-loyal as the Puritan colonists, to get outside the 
 spirit of their own age. Sixteen hundred years after 
 Christ and his apostles did these colonists live — yet the 
 Bible translators of their day rendered into English St. 
 Paul's divine Praise of Love as though it were a Praise 
 of Charity! 
 
 Not even yet had the human mind apprehended and 
 grasped the Gospel of Love according to Jesus ! 
 
 But that in our youthful century the human mind is at 
 last responding to the inner soul of this Gospel, the fol- 
 lowing American lyrics may, I think, be taken as evidence 
 — the first of them surely a vibration down from the 
 Divine Christ, and the second as surely one from the 
 Divine Spirit! 
 
126 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 AFTER THE BATTLE. 
 By O. Henry. 
 
 These lines were found written on scraps of paper in their author's 
 room after his death — the last he ever penned. 
 
 Hard ye may be in the tumult, 
 Red to your battle hilts; 
 Blow give blow in the foray, 
 Cunningly ride in the tilts. 
 But when the battle is over, 
 Tenderly, unbeguiled — 
 Turn to a woman a woman's 
 Heart and a child's to a child. 
 
 Test of the man if his worth be 
 
 In accord with the ultimate plan 
 
 That he be not, to his marring, 
 
 Always and utterly man. 
 
 That he may bring out of the tumult, 
 
 Fitter and undefiled, 
 
 To woman the heart of a woman — 
 
 To children the heart of a child. 
 
 Good when the bugles are shrilling 
 It is to be iron and fire. 
 Good to be oak in the foray — 
 Tee at a guilty desire. 
 But, when the battle is over 
 And back ye ride from the wild, 
 Give to a woman a woman's 
 Heart and a child's to a child. 
 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 127 
 
 SONG OF THE TRUE WOMAN. 
 By Coletta Ryan 
 
 In my opinion this poem is not only the most beautiful poem about 
 woman ever written, but also the most beautiful that in this world 
 ever will or can be written about her. — M. F. P. 
 
 By permission of the author and of the New York "Independent." 
 
 "Who am If" 
 
 I'm a star in the sky. 
 I'm the far-rolling sea and a wide-spreading tree, 
 A delicate rose and good will that flows 
 All over the earth. Irresistible mirth, 
 
 Happy laughter am I, 
 
 Silent weeping am I. 
 I'm the moon mildly gleaming, the sun kindly beaming, 
 And all in one breath do I blow away death — 
 
 O a heartful of feeling am I : 
 
 I'm compassion and strength, and my breadth and my length 
 Is from meadow to meadow; — look! there is my shadow — 
 Follow fast if you choose me, because you may lose me. 
 
 O subtle am I, 
 
 And elusive am I — 
 I'm the ghost of your brother, the heart of your mother, 
 
 And Sympathy's spirit am I! 
 
 Oh, I must unravel my soul as I travel, 
 
 Myself must I be, so full-hearted and free. 
 
 I must lean forth and sing since I'm one with the spring!— 
 
 For your smiles and your tears, your woes and your fears, 
 I establish my song, genial, tender and strong. 
 
128 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 I live for the lover, the rambler, the rover, 
 
 The maiden who dances, the youth and his fancies, 
 
 The rich man, the poor man, the pioneer woodman, 
 
 For the light on the altar, and those who may falter, 
 
 My flame can not scorch, I am Love's fairest torch, 
 
 And I prize you all so that I must tell you so. 
 
 It is sweet to say so, though you doubt me, you know! 
 
 Cold custom has made you so close with your words 
 That you contradict nature. The generous birds 
 Tell you daily how cherished you are — 
 Why not I, for the truth is not far? 
 But you're all so afraid of the self that God made 
 If His angel should show it, I doubt if you'd know it! 
 Follow fast, I am going, the west wind is blowing — 
 Sympathetic am I, through all seasons I hear 
 Your well-hidden sigh in my finely trained ear. 
 
 hark how the children alone in the lane 
 
 Are calling and ^calling. — I hear through the rain. 
 Follow fast if you choose me, because you may lose me, 
 
 For subtle am I, 
 
 And elusive am I, 
 I'm the ghost of your brother, the heart of your mother, 
 
 And Sympathy's spirit am I! 
 
 Dear comrades, a word ere I leave you ; 
 
 1 come not to fool and deceive you. 
 
 I come to make pleasant the future and present — 
 O the wings of your longing am I ! 
 
 Am I, 
 
 Simple I, 
 Like the bird in the tree, I am sorrow and glee. 
 Something near, something far, like a rose or a star; 
 But always so true with a fond prayer for you ! 
 
 I roam on the hill of immortal Good Will, 
 
 With the friends God has given me out of his heaven. 
 
 1 am youth, I am hope, on this beautiful slope, 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 129 
 
 And I carry my light through the deeps of the night. 
 I am love and good cheer, and the spring of the year — 
 O a heartful of feeling am I ! 
 
 "Who am I?" 
 
 I'm a star in the sky— 
 The far-rolling sea and a wide-spreading tree; 
 A delicate rose and good nature that flows 
 All over the earth. Irresistible mirth, 
 
 Joyous laughter am I, 
 
 Silent weeping am I, 
 I'm the moon silver gleaming, the sun golden beaming, 
 And all in one breath do I blow away death — 
 
 O just a true woman am II 
 
 END OF PART II. 
 
 L 
 
PART III 
 
 THE DISCORD VS. THE CONCORD. 
 
 L 
 
PART III. 
 THE DISCORD VS. THE CONCORD. 
 
 Prelude 1 
 
 WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE UNIVERSE? 
 
 I Question One : " What's Wrong with 
 
 the Universe ? " 1 
 
 WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE WORLD? 
 
 II Question Two: "What's Wrong with 
 
 the World?" 2 
 
 III Question Two: "What's Wrong with 
 
 the World ? " Continued 8 
 
 IV Question Two : " What's Wrong with 
 
 the World ? " Continued 18 
 
 V Question Two : " What's Wrong with 
 
 the World ? " Continued 27 
 
 VI Question Two : " What's Wrong with 
 
 the World ? " Continued 33 
 
 VII Question Two: "What's Wrong with 
 
 the World ? " Concluded 38 
 
WHAT'S WRONG Vi^ITH NEW YORK? 
 
 VIII Question Three : " What's Wrong with 
 
 New York?" 45 
 
 IX Question Three : " What's Wrong with 
 
 New York ? " Continued 55 
 
 X Question Three : " What's Wrong with 
 
 New York? " Concluded 69 
 
 XI The " Bible " and the '" Bishop " CiviUza- 
 
 tions 77 
 
 XII Catholic Foreignism vs, American Co- 
 
 Education 84 
 
 XIII More " Bishop " Civilization 88 
 
 XIV The Ward and Election District Systems 
 
 " Must Go " 96 
 
 XV A Philosopher's Political Diagnosis 100 
 
 XVI Memphis 105 
 
 XVII The Way to Do It 109 
 
 XVIII A New Patriotic Association 115 
 
 A NEW POLITICAL PARTY. 
 
 XIX A New Political Party 118 
 
 XX Proposed Planks for the New Party ... 120 
 
 XXI The Last Word 164 
 
 Appendix A 171 
 
 Appendix B 179 
 
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE 
 UNIVERSE? 
 
NEW YORK: 
 
 A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 PART III.— THE DISCORD VS. THE CONCORD. 
 
 PRELUDE. 
 
 Probably every American who thinks, at some time or 
 other asks himself these questions: — 
 
 I. "What's wrong with the Universe?" 
 II. "What's wrong with the World?" 
 
 III. "What's wrong with the City of New York — and 
 resultantly with the giant Republic which as its financial 
 and therefore its social centre New York so tremendously 
 influences?" 
 
 Beginning imth the first, the answers to, these inquiries 
 ivill summarise all that has been said or implied in the 
 preceding pages as penned between 1890 and 1905 — the 
 form of this^ finale, though not its substance, having been 
 suggested by the title of the deep and brilliant Mr. Gilbert 
 K. Chesterton's "What's wrong with the World?" 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 QUESTION one: ''what's wrong with the universe?" 
 
 The "wrong" in the universe is that the supernal arch- 
 angel Lucifer grew weary of the Law of Love of that 
 universe as given to it for its own happiness by the God 
 of Love who created it, and introduced instead the Law 
 of Self as the moral axis of his own being and that of 
 all who sided with him. This revolt transformed Lucifer 
 from the moral and intellectual Light-bearer for Deity, 
 into Satan, the moral and intellectual Hinderer against 
 Deity, and similarly all his followers from Angels of 
 Bliss into Demons of Bale. 
 
 The Omnipotent Trinity did not destroy Satan and his 
 following for the schism and disorder thus introduced 
 into their divine universe. Being absolutely without pos- 
 sibility of jealousy, and concerned only for the triumph 
 of the Truth, Triune Deity continued to maintain in 
 existence these rebels against Love in order that they 
 might do their utmost to make good their cause — even 
 bestowing upon Satan a battle-ground of his own, where, 
 in the most favorable conditions and in sight of the whole 
 universe he might carry out his principle to lasting vic- 
 tory and domination if he could. 
 
 This battle-ground is the human heart of our own race 
 as its successive generations occupy this beautiful earth. 
 When the invariable experience of the ages shall have 
 demonstrated that the Self-principle of Satan brings 
 forth — not the power and beauty and triumph which col- 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 3 
 
 lectively are Life, but only the weakness, ugliness, suf- 
 fering and failure which collectively are Death — then 
 Satan and his following will of their own accord abandon 
 the Law of Self; they will repent of and ask to be for- 
 given for the monstrous wrong and evil they have 
 wrought; the Divine Son, to whom alone belongs the re- 
 storation of the immortality originally conferred by the 
 Divine Father upon every angelic and human spirit, will 
 from his own life rekindle in each penitent the dead soul 
 which Self had killed; the Divine Mother will renew 
 and remould that soul after the Divine Image and Like- 
 ness originally intended; the original harmony and 
 heaven of the Universe of Stars and Souls will reappear 
 and will thenceforth go on from Bliss to Bliss and from 
 Glory to Glory in an infinite progression which shall 
 know no end. 
 
 Every human soul, therefore, who on this earth and 
 in this life allies itself with Triune Deity and their Law 
 of Love, or the "Thou," not only secures its own heaven- 
 future, but by that much shortens the suffering of Triune 
 Deity for and with their sinning and therefore suffering 
 creatures, and hastens the restoration and progress of the 
 universe ; and every human soul who on this earth and in 
 this life adopts for its rule of conduct the Law of Self, or 
 the "I," allies itself with Satan, dooms itself to Satanic 
 suffering and deterioration, and prolongs the immeasur- 
 able pain and sorrow of Triune Deity and equally of the 
 human race for whose love and co-operation that Deity 
 has for ages been morally contending with the Arch- 
 enemy of both — "not by might, nor by power, but by my 
 Spirit, saith the Lord!" 
 
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE 
 WORLD? 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 QUESTION two: "what's wrong with the world?" 
 
 By one who believes that in placing humanity upon the 
 earth, there on behalf of Heaven-happiness to wage the 
 battle of the Authors of Joy, otherwise Triune Deity, 
 against the Author of Pain or Lucifer, otherwise Satan — 
 it can not be doubted that the loving-tenderness of Tri- 
 une Deity intended for humanity an equal and mutually 
 considerate Brother-and-Sisterhood throughout all its life 
 relations. 
 
 This being so — the first and foremost thing "wrong" 
 with the world is that after the tragedy of Eden, Satan, 
 the better to block and defeat Deity, impelled the stronger 
 of the exiled pair to withhold this fraternity from his 
 physically weaker sister who had now also become his 
 wife, and thereby to create from the beginning two great 
 social castes — the Superior or Manhood Caste, and the 
 Inferior or Womanhood Caste — which castes have been 
 and in the main still are coextensive with human society. 
 Furthermore, not content with this grievous humiliation, 
 as time went on this same "stronger" devoted throughout 
 the ages an endless procession of girls and youthful 
 women to a personal desecration which inflicts upon its 
 victims intellectual decadence, moral depravity, loathsome 
 disease, and untimely death. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, S 
 
 The long persistent agitation of a handful of women 
 for the manhood suffrage is a blind exasperated effort 
 to throw off on the one hand this unnatural domination 
 of the World-sister by the World-brother, and on the 
 many thousands of every girl-generation that comes upon 
 the stage of adult life, 
 other to stop his devilish and inexcusable immolation of 
 
 The American manhood that will now accept and con- 
 duct itself in accordance with the doctrine of the Divine 
 Eternal Feminine as expounded in Part II of this work, 
 will eventually accomplish that Prevention and conse- 
 quent Cure of the Social Evil which was the sole motive 
 of its writing. 
 
 For if men believed that Collective Womanhood on 
 earth is intended to image the Infinite Ineffable Heaven- 
 mother veiled to us throughout Holy Scripture as the 
 "Spirit," even as Collective Manhood upon earth images 
 or reflects the Illimitable Omnipotent Heaven-manhood 
 revealed to us as the "Father" and the "Son" — such a 
 conception of womanhood would raise the World-sister 
 to such dignity and sacredness that the sealing of any 
 woman to sex infamy would thereafter be as unthinkable 
 to the World-brother as now is and long has been the 
 similar crime against the youth of his own sex which yet 
 in the ancient pagan civilizations was as much a matter of 
 course as are kept mistresses among rich men now. 
 
 This transformed World-brother will rank first on the 
 list of crimes, not murder, as did Moses, but sex-lawless- 
 ness, as did Jesus and the Spirit*, and will make swift 
 
 * Mark 10:19, Luke 18-20, Acts 16:20, 28, 29. 
 
6 A Ely YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 death by court martial the penalty of violent assault and 
 equally of pandering and of procuring. He will so brand 
 and socially bar the profligate and the seducer, that no 
 sister of his will marry such a man any more than she 
 would a leper. He will cease the exploitation of the 
 woman form, of the nude for the nude's sake, which on 
 the stage, in the studio, and as far as possible in dress — 
 has now, through the influence and leading of licentious 
 France, taken such flamboyant possession of present-day 
 Christendom and is so terribly lowering its morals. In- 
 stead of scorning and refusing, as heretofore, to meet 
 his World-sister on the Plane of the Mind, he will both 
 invite and will seek her comradeship throughout his 
 schools and colleges, and in this new intellectual and spir- 
 itual communion will confer on her and realize for him- 
 self a bliss, a happiness, a gayety and an inspiration that 
 on the Plane of the Body her society never held nor ever 
 could properly bestow. 
 
 On her side, the coming World-sister will so study and 
 possess herself of the Law and Secret of Beauty both in 
 mind and person, that when she becomes a wife her 
 lover-husband shall never be either disappointed in or 
 sated by her fascinations. Age will not wither nor cus- 
 tom stale her infinite variety, but she will embody to him 
 always The Beautiful because she will he "beautiful" not 
 only in person but beautiful also in soul, beautiful in 
 manners, beautiful in motive, beautiful above all, in her 
 love — the supreme want, the hunger, the craving of man- 
 hood with reference to womanhood being always and 
 ever Love enshrined in Beauty, even as the supreme want 
 of womanhood with reference to manhood is always and 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 7 
 
 ever Achievement enshrined in Strength. So dull, so 
 crass, are the men who say and who believe — "Every true 
 woman wants her master!" No woman, true or sham, 
 wants "her" master, but every woman does want the man 
 she loves to be a master — a strength — and therefore a 
 success — in something. 
 
 "I saw Othello's visage in his mind, 
 And to his honors and his valiant parts 
 Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate." 
 
 So said the snowy Desdemona of her swarthy wooer; 
 and, conversely, the dramatist Gilbert assures us in his 
 "Esmeralda" that 
 
 "... man's heart is in his eye, 
 His love must have its daily food or die," 
 
 beauty throughout the universe being next to love as the 
 source of joy, and love itself, without beauty, being so 
 incomplete as to be subliminally conscious of tragedy. 
 
 Therefore, to be worthy of that consideration and 
 companionship and devotion of the World-brother which 
 is woman's very life, let the new World-sister resolve that 
 whatever human relations toward him successively are 
 hers — whether mother or grandmother, whether sister or 
 friend, whether bride or wife or daughter — in each one 
 to express the beauty appropriate to its ideal — in each 
 one to be beautiful according to its possibility. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 "what's wrong with the world?" — Continued. 
 
 The second thing absolutely and terrifically wrong with 
 our present-day world is — that with the advent of steam- 
 machinery, Upper-class Womanhood became and thus 
 far has remained, Parasitic Womanhood. 
 
 If then the coming World-sister shall prove so wise 
 with reference to her World-brother as for his joy and 
 happiness to study and conquer the Feminine Art of Fas- 
 cination — equally must she so study and conquer the 
 Feminine Art of Housekeeping as to be able to welcome 
 him at the close of each day to a home of thrift and skill 
 and charm and therefore of noble peace and satisfaction ; 
 for let her be never so fair in person, never so lovely in 
 character, never so exquisite in gifts, the World-sister 
 can not and she will not take her intended God-given 
 place as the equal companion and world-power with her 
 World-brother, unless in the new modern conditions she 
 shall find and fill a Money- Value Sphere as indispensable 
 to his modern comfort and prosperity as in its day was 
 her ancient and once universal Sphere of the Household 
 Industries. 
 
 Can she, unaided and uncounselled by him, find and 
 fill such a sphere ? 
 
 My fear is that she can not— or, more probably, that 
 she will not. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. g 
 
 For in the eighteen-sixties, when the writer was a 
 young married woman — as well as she could she set her- 
 self to study the true causes of the African Slavery, the 
 controversy over which had resulted in the then raging 
 Civil War. Certain conclusions became clear to her, 
 which, scientific fashion, she wanted to verify extensively 
 and then embody in a book; but the daily detail of her 
 housekeeping, simple as it was, seemed to be ever in her way. 
 
 Was housekeeping, then, she asked herself, in which 
 women at that time were and through all time previous 
 had been almost universally engaged, the reason why 
 woman as a sex had achieved so mortifyingly little in 
 the boundless realm of thought wherein the World- 
 brother had made so many and such dazzling conquests? 
 Ceasing to interest herself in the Black Man, she turned 
 her attention to the White Woman, as from her fifteenth 
 year she had intended eventually some day to do. 
 
 Vast and grim and tragic were the stern realities which 
 from the mists of her ignorance took shape before her! 
 Two of them in especial so dominated the others that 
 adequately to appreciate them was easily to account for 
 all the rest. 
 
 One was that the men had won all the triumphs and 
 were having and holding all the money-making and honor- 
 bestowing places in the world, because as a sex they 
 were politically and intellectually and industrially banded 
 and organized together. Their achievements were 
 stupendous, god-like; but they had come about through 
 one principle and one alone — the principle of working 
 together. Modern men were serried in laboring armies 
 under Captains and Colonels and Generals of Industry 
 
V 
 
 10 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 who had thought out myriads of problems and methods 
 and had discovered and planned and provided the 
 ways and means by which the masses could earn their 
 living and at the same time make life and the world more 
 and more comfortable — more and more interesting — more 
 and more beantiful. 
 
 Modern women, on the other hand, from the top to 
 the bottom, were just what ancient women had always 
 been: simply Units — units as absolutely disconnected 
 among themselves as so many bullets in a bag. All of 
 them kept house who had houses to keep (and fifty years 
 ago most American women did have houses to keep) ; 
 but no housekeeper combined with other housekeepers 
 to run her house more economically or perfectly than she 
 was running it alone. No wonder that as a sex women 
 had no money ! About one-seventh of them owned prop- 
 erty left them by father or by spouse ; the rest, though 
 forever working industriously with their hands, were 
 practically so penniless that few could give away a dollar 
 without the permission of the male head of the family. 
 
 As the homemakers of the land, my countrywomen 
 were carrying on within their own walls, besides lesser 
 industries, three main trades, Cooking, Laundering, and 
 Sewing, which are no more affiliated than are Carpen- 
 tering and Blacksmithing and Gardening; yet many 
 housekeepers were passably skilful in each of these call- 
 ings, and some housekeepers were very skilful in all 
 three. How absurd for all women, whatever their tastes 
 and talents, to be all doing the same thing! Inevitably 
 there was much waste; inevitably there was much im- 
 perfection; inevitably there was much heartbreak of 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. n 
 
 square women martyred for life into round holes, and of 
 square holes but partly filled by round women; but this 
 was only what was to be expected, since there were no 
 Generals or Colonels or Captains of Housekeeping who 
 were organizing all other housekeepers into a magnificent 
 and respected and self-respecting Solidarity of Woman- 
 hood comparable with the magnificent and respected and 
 self-respecting Solidarity of Manhood with its wide 
 choice of occupations suited to the special gift or ambi- 
 tion of any and every individual within its ranks. 
 
 Moreover, this banding together of men and this non- 
 banding together of women on behalf of the industrial 
 and achieving purposes of life accounted also for the most 
 humiliating and therefore most afflicting modern woman- 
 hood fact next after the Social Evil — the fact that Civili- 
 zation, while ever uplifting and advancing and glorifying 
 manhood, has ever relatively lowered and belittled wom- 
 anhood. 
 
 For though wives and mothers must more or less, and 
 do — rise with their fathers and husbands in the scale of 
 intelligence and refinement, they have never yet risen 
 with them in the scale of importance. Collective man- 
 hood, because it is collective manhood, can and does soar 
 ever higher and higher into the empyrean of Thought 
 and Achievement, while Unit Womanhood, because it is 
 "unit" womanhood, remains on the far-below manual 
 labor level upon which both sexes started. 
 
 Consequently the World-brother can not value his 
 World-sister to-day as he did when he too was in the 
 industrial unit-stage and was personally tilling his fields 
 and tending his stock and bringing in to her the raw 
 
T2 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 materials which she personally manufactured into his 
 personal food and clothing. Her hand labors are no 
 longer necessary to the comfort of her super-civilized, 
 because super-organized, companion. He can and does 
 pay great working classes to forestall his every want. 
 Mentally, intellectually, collectively, she plays so tiny a 
 part in his tremendous practical universe that she might 
 be swept completely out of it and, if so he willed, it could 
 go on much the same as before ! 
 
 The second grim discovery which acutely alarmed the 
 writer, was that this mighty manhood army was forever 
 demanding new worlds to conquer, and that, not satis- 
 fied with its own "all-outdoors," it was invading the 
 feminine ail-indoors — had already taken away from it 
 the spinning and weaving and knitting, had just launched 
 the machine that would certainly pre-empt the sewing, 
 and had started the bakery, the canning factory, and the 
 steam laundry as the advance battalions against "home" 
 cooking and washing and ironing. Yet with the home 
 industries gone, what would become of the women-hosts 
 whose foremothers, by inventing and practising them 
 had for ages kept the home roofs over their heads and 
 the home ties about their hearts ? 
 
 In great foreign capitals the wage of the working-girls 
 averaged but fifty cents a day. Unable to live on it, their 
 expenses were met by the bachelor youths who shared 
 their rooms. It had to be. They could not help them- 
 selves. But was this, alas, to be what the lowly but 
 virginal American maidens who hitherto had only left 
 their fathers* roofs to go to those of their husbands must 
 come to ? 
 
AEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 13 
 
 Therefore in some articles entitled "Co-operative 
 Housekeeping" which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly 
 in 1868-69 and the next year were collected into a littte 
 book by an Edinburgh publisher — and again in a second 
 little work, "Co-operative Housekeeping: Hozv not to Do 
 It and How to Do It" as published in Boston in 1884 — 
 the writer urged that modern women should thenceforth 
 adopt the method of modern men, and, starting from 
 housekeeping as their womanhood foothold, even as men 
 had started from farming as their manhood foothold, 
 should commit themselves to this divine and mighty prin- 
 ciple of "working together" and should inaugurate 
 Stock-company or' "Co-operative" Housekeeping by imi- 
 tating the then little known but now world-renowned 
 Rochdale Co-operative Store as founded by a small com- 
 pany of weavers in Rochdale, England, in 1842, and 
 which, even at the date when I first wrote (1868) could 
 point to a successful career of a quarter of a century 
 and to a multitude of successful imitators which had 
 sprung up throughout Great Britain. The figures of this 
 movement for 1913 give the number of its stores as 
 over thirteen hundred, their membership as over three 
 millions, and their annual trade as over six hundred 
 millions of dollars. Pretty safe guides, such Stores, one 
 would say, for any and all housekeepers and home-makers 
 willing to reduce family expenses by increasing family 
 savings ! 
 
 Much interest among the women readers of the At- 
 lantic, and a few short-lived attempts at Co-operative 
 Housekeeping resulted from the articles. They all failed 
 because though we had adopted the principles of the 
 
14 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 Rochdale Pioneers we did not follow their method. We 
 did not know it. I myself did not know it and had not 
 given it in the Atlantic. In my second little work fifteen 
 years later, therefore, the Rochdale modus operandi was 
 so fully set forth that failure would be impossible to 
 any band of women intelligent and united enough to put 
 it in practise. 
 
 But though to this book important New York and Bos- 
 ton papers gave notices so spacious that a veteran critic 
 congratulated the writer on its "success," yet were they 
 all so dubious or so disapproving that no woman reading 
 them would thtnk of buying it. Also, immediately after 
 its appearance its Boston publisher failed and its small 
 edition was put on sale and disposed of only in that city. 
 I might have sought and found another publisher for 
 the work but for the fact that about the same time I 
 became so submerged by other demands that for years 
 I practically forgot all about it. 
 
 Within the twelvemonth after its appearance, however, 
 Edward Bellamy, of Boston, published his famous "Look- 
 ing Backward/' which had an immense vogue because of 
 its vision of a frictionless and faultless push-the-button 
 housekeeping — though whether devised and operated by 
 man or by woman the gifted visionist vouchsafed not. 
 It is said that Bellamy wrote this book in collaboration 
 with a literary Irishman noted for his literary borrow- 
 ings; and as .previous to "Looking Backward'' its author 
 had shown no evidence of any interest in sociology, it 
 is perhaps natural for me to flatter myself that in some 
 way my plea for organized (and therefore perfected) 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 15 
 
 housekeeping had been brought into the focus of the Bel- 
 lamy imagination. 
 
 Since that time "Co-operative Housekeeping" has 
 floated a homeless phrase about the American conscious- 
 ness but has not yet seriously settled itself to take root. 
 The few literary women who have commented upon the 
 theory have mostly opposed it on the ground that it 
 threatened the home, whereas it is in fact the only pos- 
 sible method by which the home can be saved. 
 
 About the year 1894 a philanthropist friend — the late 
 Miss Catherine Spence, of Adelaide, South Australia — 
 gave the copy of my second book which I had given to 
 herself, to the highly intelligent Mrs. Charlotte Perkins 
 Stetson (now Oilman). A few years later this very 
 active lecturer and writer came out as a sociologist, and 
 besides using as her own and accepting credit for the 
 scientfic diagnosis of housekeeping conditions which, 
 previous to my own brief writings on the subject, can not 
 be found in print,* Mrs. Oilman has done her utmost 
 to disallow and kill my proposition that modern woman- 
 hood should collectively take arms against the sea of 
 forces now battering down the home and through organ- 
 ized housekeeping overcome and rout them ! 
 
 Far from deploring, Mrs. Oilman welcomes the man- 
 hood invaders who for the sake of the manhood pocket 
 are taking away from the home one industry after an- 
 other — because, she maintains, "they free the wife from 
 so much housework that she is able to give her chief 
 
 * "Who steals my purse steals trash"; who steals my ideas steals a 
 portion of my living soul and is the most intolerable of thieves! 
 
i6 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 attention to outside wage-earning!" Yet a "home" — 
 yet family life — is the vital, absolutely indispensable this- 
 world need for every v^oman worthy of the name. And 
 why? Because home is the only place wherein she has 
 a "right" to love and be loved. Without home-love, life 
 to womanhood is the "pain but not the peace of death." 
 Take it away from women — make them live without the 
 anchoring ties of father, mother, sister, brother, hus- 
 band, child — and in the long run their standards and ideals 
 must and will go down. That an intelligent woman should 
 seek to make other women undervalue and repudiate 
 housekeeping and home-making seems to me a crime al- 
 most past praying for. One is reminded of King Solo- 
 mon's — "The mise woman huildeth her house; the foolish 
 plucketh it down with her hands!" 
 
 In 1908, after reading a scathing arraignment of pres- 
 ent-day womanhood in the "Sex and Society" of the dis- 
 tinguished sociologist, Prof. W. I. Thomas, of Chicago, 
 I sent him a copy of the book from which, without men- 
 tioning either it or its author, Mrs. Oilman had equally 
 borrowed and dissented, and received from him the 
 following letter : 
 
 University of Chicago, 
 
 December 8, 1908. 
 My dear Mrs. Peirce : 
 
 I assure you I have read your book with great pleasure and 
 profit. I think you saw a number of things and said them 
 before anyone else. I think the book is wonderfully inter- 
 esting and shows a scientific grasp of things. I wonder if 
 it has been widely read. It seems to me that if it had been 
 gotten out in a diflPerent form, and perhaps hy a different 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 17 
 
 publisher, it would have had a wider notice. I was sur- 
 prised that I had never met so important a book myself. 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 W. I. Thomas. 
 
 As in an omitted paragraph of the above, the Pro- 
 fessor objected that I had considered womanhood too 
 exclusively with reference to housekeeping, I then sent 
 him the more cosmic presentation of the subject I had 
 given in the Atlantic Monthly; to which he replied : 
 
 University of Chicago, 
 
 December 15, 1908. 
 My dear Mrs. Peirce : 
 
 I have been looking at your book again, and with the one 
 received since writing to you it confirms what I was thinking — 
 that you had anticipated much that is most fundamental in 
 the modern discussion of woman. You may have the satis- 
 faction of knowing that you wrote ahead of your time, and 
 it is the fate of all who do that to be ridiculed or neglected — 
 or both. 
 
 I am planning to have some able student make a study of 
 the woman movement, with the special view of determinnig 
 the development of the ideas in it — of working it out as a 
 part of the history of thought. It is evident that your name 
 will be very prominent in this work. I should like to pres- 
 ent the two volumes you have given me to the University 
 Library, to be used in the work and also to be accessible to 
 students of the question. 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 W. I. Thomas. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 "what's wrong with the world?" — Continued. 
 
 Such having been the writer's early disappointments in 
 trying to make women see things as they are, her present 
 thought is that in order that the World-sister may become 
 to the World-brother in all innocence and freedom the 
 beautiful and satisfying Other Self that for his world- 
 mission he requires, he must himself first admit to him- 
 self, and then frankly and fully acknowledge to her, the 
 tremendous industrial dislocation and consequent home- 
 shattering and girl-ruination that his steam machinery 
 and organized labor within a century and a half have 
 wrought against her as a Home-dweller and a Home- 
 maker. 
 
 Throughout the old times there were no stores because 
 there were no factories, no steam machinery. Everything 
 eaten and everything worn was made in the home by the 
 home women from the raw materials raised by the farm- 
 ers. Their processes were their own invention, and to 
 the race the money value of their industry and skill was 
 beyond computation. When the Englishman came to 
 the continent which was to make him an American, he 
 began as a farmer, and this busy and tireless woman was 
 the farmer's wife. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 19 
 
 In 1619 in Jamestown, Va., on the very first day of 
 the very first legislative assembly ever held by white 
 men on this continent, it was moved, and the motion was 
 carried, that as many acres of land should be apportioned 
 to the wife of every colonist as to the colonist himself; 
 ''because," argued the mover of the bill, '"in an infant 
 settlement it is impossible to say whether the outdoor 
 labors of the men or the indoor labors of the women 
 are more indispensable to the welfare of the colony." 
 
 During the simple pioneer and colonial eras, every 
 Farm and every Household in the land was each an In- 
 dustrial Autonomy complete and closed within itself, with 
 a Unit Farmer at the head of the one and a Unit House- 
 wife at the head of the other; no farmer co-operating 
 with farmer neighbors the better to run his farm; no 
 housewife co-operating with neighbor housewives the bet- 
 ter to run her home; and similarly in our own highly 
 complex civilization is every farm and every household 
 in the land each an Industrial Autonomy complete and 
 closed within itself, with a Unit Farmer at the head of 
 the one and a Unit Housewife at the head of the other; 
 no farmer co-operating with farmer neighbors the better 
 to run his farm; no housewife co-operating with neighbor 
 housewives the better to run her home. 
 
 Up to a hundred and fifty years ago, therefore, the 
 American women of every community and every family, 
 whether married or single, busied themselves practically 
 every day and all day in the household arts which, by 
 feeding, clothing, and ministering to all the bodily wants 
 of fathers and husbands and sons, enabled the men to 
 go forth daily to provide from the fields and herds and 
 
20 
 
 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 flocks the raw materials required for the practice of those 
 arts. The periodical making of candles and soap, of 
 sausages and salt pork and hams and corned beef, of dried 
 and pickled and preserved fruits and vegetables, and the 
 brewing of the universally-used ale and beer; the daily 
 carding,^ spinning, weaving and knitting of textiles, and 
 the making and mending and laundering of garments ; the 
 tri-daily cooking and cleaning and tidying; — these multi- 
 form indoor industries kept the house-mothers and their 
 daughters busy from morning until far into the night, and 
 from year's end to year's end. The saying that "Woman's 
 work is never done" was literally, absolutely true. 
 
 Thus the old-time, pre-steam-machinery World-sister 
 supported by her hand labor not only herself, — she half 
 supported the family besides. She not only — to use a 
 fine Rooseveltian phrase — "pulled her own weight in the 
 boat of life," she pulled half that of her children also, 
 besides bearing in agony and mothering those children. 
 Think how dependent upon those incessant and universal 
 home-labors of its "weaker" half were the wealth and 
 the manhood force of the "stronger" half of this and 
 every other country ! 
 
 Yet so blind was the World-brother to what the World- 
 sister by his side was achieving for him, that because he 
 provided the roof over her head and the razv materials 
 for her fingers, he believed, — and she thoughtlessly 
 echoed the belief, — that he "supported" her. Man "sup- 
 porting" Woman ! One-half the adult world carrying 
 on its back the other half! It would be incredible that 
 this actually was manhood's serious though absurd con- 
 viction, did we not know that for generations it was 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 21 
 
 in truth the prevailing economic theory of family life. 
 
 But though the World-brother and his Sister univer- 
 sally began human civilization together as farmer and 
 farmer's wife, — he out of doors laboring with his hands, 
 she within doors laboring with hers, — this manual labor 
 was not after all congenial to them. 
 
 A few years ago the brilliant Ambrose Bierce in a 
 magazine dialogue insisted upon it that what all human 
 beings without exception hate and do their best to escape 
 from, is manual labor. The working-man, he thinks, 
 envies and resents the office-man because, while the 
 working-man and his class are manual toilers, the'office- 
 men are brain-workers only — and the laboring man 
 doesn't consider that "work" at all ! 
 
 Therefore, in countless instances the mental gifts and 
 energy of the male descendants of the colonial farmers 
 emancipated them from the ancestral bondage to hand 
 labor, so that now each week-day morning sees two or 
 more millions of them betaking themselves to business 
 offices, wherein by brain-labor at their desks they provide 
 employment for all the hand-workers of the nation save 
 only the farmers and the men who help the farmers, and 
 the housewives and the women who help the housewives. 
 In return for these organizing services, every man, 
 woman, and child in the nation pays to them those small 
 imperceptible tolls on all the necessaries and accessories 
 of life, whose aggregates roll up into the great incomes 
 that make them "the rich." 
 
 The outcry against these rich has long been the most 
 popular cry of our day; but without the citizens of 
 mental power who as "business" men have created and 
 
22 
 
 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 direct all the American banking, mining, manufacturing, 
 merchandizing and transportation industries, enterprises, 
 corporations and trusts, and who also finance the educa- 
 tional institutions, — where would be the American civi- 
 lization? where the hundred and fifty billions of American 
 accumulated values as against the eighty billions of Ger- 
 man and the eighty-five billions of British similar 
 values?* Save for such men as these our youthful con- 
 tinent would have remained poor and backward and un- 
 developed indeed ! 
 
 It is said that the Canadians scorn and look down 
 upon U9f Americans and wish to have nothing to do with 
 us. How amusing! What would northwest Canada be 
 to-day, let us ask, without the American house-heating 
 inventions that make endurable its terrible winters, or 
 without the American plowing and harvesting machines 
 that have brought under cultivation its vast otherwise 
 untilled areas? Nay; what would the whole world be 
 without the "Standard Oil" that lightens its darkness, 
 or even without the oblong tin cans in which that product 
 is sold, and which are converted into so many helpful 
 uses by the poverty-stricken Orientals who buy it ? 
 
 In the view of this humble writer the American Busi- 
 ness Man is, as the phrase is, "all right." Not him should 
 the reformer, the philanthropist, the labor-leader, the fic- 
 tionist and the editor decry and call down, — but this busi- 
 ness man's unfe and daughter, otherwise the two millions 
 or more educated women whom his inventive genius and 
 
 • These are the figures of Sir George Paish, the eminent statistician 
 of London, A more recent official estimate raises the American valua- 
 tion to one hundred and eighty billions! 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 23 
 
 matchless executive ability have lifted along with himself 
 up and out of the incessant hand-labors of their farm 
 forefathers and mothers, and have made — not the Or- 
 ganizers of Industrial Womanhood, as he himself has 
 long been the Organizer of Industrial Manhood, but, — O 
 lame and impotent conclusion ! — its superfluous Parasites, 
 Non-Producers, Consumers, and Spenders. 
 
 Yet our master financiers so little suspect what they 
 have done that they are now searching the civilized 
 world for the causes of the high cost of living, when the 
 main cause is beneath their own roofs and at their own 
 hearthstones. 
 
 The steam-machinery and specialized labor of these 
 money-kings have taken away from contemporary wom- 
 anhood one-half at least of the domestic industries which 
 the old-time womanhood invented and practised for thou- 
 sands of years — and no proportionately noble because 
 indispensable and self-supporting occupations have in- 
 stead been provided for her. 
 
 The resulting status quo is the most alarming that 
 American civilization has ever known. 
 
 For what can be more desperate than to read that in 
 the United States to-day are seventeen millions of men 
 and women of marriageable age who are not married — 
 multitudes of whom, therefore, are not, nor can be, in 
 the enjoyment of a home? 
 
 A still more thundering and portentous statistic is that 
 in this enormously rich country thirty-nine out of every 
 hundred marriageable men are unmarried. Correspond- 
 ingly, thirty-nine out of every hundred marriageable 
 women must be unmarried too, and instead of presiding 
 
24 A'EIV YORK.'^A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 over homes of their own, those who are not still under 
 the paternal roof are living in rooming-houses and board- 
 ing-houses and hotels, or in tiny flats, — either alone or 
 with one or more women chums, — or as unblushing mis- 
 tresses with so-called "protectors," who will leave them, 
 or whom they will leave, for a similar sensual companion- 
 ship whenever the fancy so inclines them. Mrs. John 
 Van Vorst, in her "Woman Who Toils," declares (pp. 
 88, 81) : 
 
 The American woman is restless, dissatisfied. Whether 
 among the highest or lowest classes, she is driven toward a 
 destiny that is not normal. The factories are full of old maids ; 
 the colleges are full of old maids; the ball-rooms in the 
 society centres are full of old maids. For natural obliga- 
 tions are substituted the fictitious duties of clubs, meetings, 
 committees, organizations, professions, a thousand unwomanly 
 occupations. 
 
 Yet it is claimed that the average American housewife 
 spends but $50.00 a year on her food and the same amount 
 on her clothing. Eighty-two per cent, of this great class 
 keep no maid, but, as the phrase is, "do all their own 
 work," — that is, all the cooking, cleaning, tidying, launder- 
 ing, and mending of their families and also much sewing; 
 nine per cent, of them keep but one maid, and therefore 
 must help personally with these domestic functions, and 
 also the unmarried daughters of these two classes by 
 tens of thousands seek and obtain employment in factories, 
 shops, offices, and schools. ' 
 
 Thus over nine-tenths of all American women are as 
 self-supporting as were their pioneer foremothers, and 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 25 
 
 less than one-tenth of them it is that, by employing others 
 to make their clothing, and also by keeping two or more 
 servants, are thereby exempt from all manual labor even 
 to needlework, and public opinion demanding no brain 
 labor from them — in this our great Democracy they 
 practically constitute a one-sex aristocracy, yes, an "aris- 
 tocracy" as genuine and more inexcusable than any the 
 sun of worldly prosperity ever shone upon; for in other 
 aristocracies both sexes equally are non-earViers, but in 
 the one under consideration that ''nobody works but 
 father" is often too literally true ! 
 
 The terrific load — the crushing financial weight of this 
 feminine aristocracy on the shoulders of the American 
 people can be estimated from the cost of supplying shelter 
 tents and the plainest food and clothing to less than a 
 million Northern soldiers throughout the Civil War. This 
 cost was five hundred million dollars a year ! But to the 
 ornamental woman-army of which I speak ''our United 
 States" contribute the beautiful homes, the expensive 
 toilettes and jewels, the costly journeys and festivities, 
 the choicest viands and wines, the rarest art, and the 
 carriages and motors of the land. As a rule they have 
 one city and one country house — many of them have 
 several. They pass their time in sports and amusements 
 and gossip and bridge and travel ; their hearts they 
 lavish chiefly on animals; a fraction of them plays at 
 "church" and "charity" and "welfare" work; another 
 fraction includes the devoted clubwomen and suffragettes 
 or anti-suffragettes. 
 
 Meanwhile, because they are not giving to the working 
 masses of their sex the organizing brain labor that their 
 
26 NEiy YORK: a'' SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 fathers and husbands devote to the working masses of the 
 manhood sex — working girls and working women must 
 in battalions leave their sleeping places every work-day 
 morning, must toil in men's offices and be half paid by 
 men employers, because the latter can't — they — can — 
 NOT — pay to working women full wages and '"support'* 
 wives and daughters and sisters too ! For "homes" these 
 toilers return to hall bedrooms, or to "flats" so contracted 
 that in them they can hardly turn round. 
 
 But thousands of them note and envy the lives of irre- 
 sponsible ease and pleasure and variety that the "society" 
 women lead. They, too, crave idleness and joys and dress 
 and "good times," and on every side these are offered 
 them in return for the chiefest jewel of their sex. The 
 jewel is parted with. Not a sun sets that has not seen 
 new girls hovering on the brink of the abyss. Not a 
 sun rises that has not seen new girls plunged into that 
 abyss, — the men who led and who maintain them there, 
 seared and animalized into selfish and scornful traitors 
 to the American Home, instead of living in it and for 
 it as did the clear-eyed and virile husbands — "house- 
 bands" — that were once the national birthright of all 
 marriageable American maidens. 
 
 The excuse of this derelict American manhood? — 
 
 Simply, — "the high cost of living." 
 
 The reason of the high cost of living? — 
 
 Simply that the educated women of the land as a class 
 are not doing the only money-value work — are not filling 
 the only labor sphere that by any possibility in the modern 
 world could replace their old-time one of Family Manu- 
 facturing — the sphere of Retail or Family Distribution. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 "what's wrong with the world?" — Continued. 
 
 Just what, let us ask, is the existing economic situation 
 throughout this "Christendom" which is theoretically the 
 Domain of Christ? 
 
 The existing economic situation is this: 
 
 Through thought and study and invention and energy 
 the abler sons of the old-time farmer collectively evolved 
 into the Modern Business Man, who, and especially the 
 American Business Man, is the Chief Civilizer of the 
 Globe because he is its Chief Organizer. Unfortunately, 
 though this superman organizes all lesser industries, he 
 overlooks the great Farming Industry from which he 
 sprang, nor does he urge the housewives to organize their 
 equally great and indispensable Housekeeping One. 
 
 This failure on the part of the Modern Farmer and the 
 Modern Housewife to grasp the Spirit and Method of 
 their own Age, is the true and sufficient cause of the deep- 
 ening poverty and distress and consequent unrest of the 
 European and American masses. 
 
 In the United States about six million farmers raise 
 all the food of the nation, and about sixteen million house- 
 wives cook it. As has already been said, every Farm and 
 every Household is a 'separate autonomy, complete and 
 closed within itself, — no Farmer combining with farmer 
 
28 NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 neighbors the better and more economically to run his 
 farm; — no housewife combining with neighbor house- 
 wives the better and more economically to run her house. 
 Think of it ! The special industries of the United States, 
 from lucifer matches to locomotives, all on the highest 
 possible plane of business economy and efficiency; and 
 our two universal, because food-supplying, industries on 
 the lowest possible level of personal makeshift, half- 
 training, and waste ! Surely, no more fatal formula for 
 national economic dislocation than this can be conceived. 
 
 Instead of the tireless women-fingers of every house- 
 hold achieving, as in former times, just enough food and 
 cloth for that household, — the mills and factories of the 
 modern World-brother heap up foods and garments in 
 quantities enormous enough for families by the ten thou- 
 sand and the hundred thousand. 
 
 But these products have to be distributed. Therefore, 
 the World-brother has had to create and daily has to 
 pay for an entirely new field of labor, one practically 
 unknown up to a hunded and fifty years ago, — the labor- 
 field of Distribution or Merchandisinq. 
 
 The immediate agent of this distribution to the house- 
 mother for her family is the modern retail store, and 
 the conduct and responsibility and money-making of the 
 Retail Store it is which the intelligent World-brother 
 should now confide to his intelligent Sister as the financial 
 quid pro quo of the Home Manufacturing of which he, 
 and he alone, has deprived her. 
 
 As at present carried on by men, Retail Distribution is 
 disastrous to this nation in two directions. First, it is an 
 occupation far too light for manhood thews and sinews 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. ^ 29 
 
 and therefore it atrophies manhood — makes it non-manly; 
 and second, it attracts away from the land manhood labor 
 which is absolutely needed to plant and harvest the nation's 
 crops. Living prices are so torturingly high partly 
 because not enough raw materials are raised to go com- 
 fortably round, and partly because the nation is paying 
 an army of men who ought to be helping to raise suf- 
 ficient crops for its needs to distribute insufficient ones! 
 
 The farmers can not get all the farm hands they 
 require in order to grow and harvest the food for the 
 live stock. 
 
 Ten years ago there were two and a half animals to 
 every consumer in the nation. Today there are but one 
 and three-quarters, — nearly a whole animal less to each 
 consumer! Is it any wonder that meat has soared, — and 
 because the scarcity of meat makes a greater demand for 
 eggs, that eggs, too, have soared ? 
 
 Thus the Economic Leech of the civilized world is prac- 
 tically two-headed : the lavishly-spending, non-producing 
 Society Woman being the one head, the Retail Store as 
 carried on by men, the other. 
 
 Fifteen dollars out of every hundred dollars spent by 
 the housewife is what the seventy years' experience of 
 the English Rochdale Pioneers and their imitators has 
 demonstrated to be the household toll to the middleman. 
 
 It is said that the price of the food of the country as 
 paid to the farmers and gardeners of the country is six 
 billions of dollars a year, and that to get it to the con- 
 sumers costs in transportation and middle-men seven 
 billions of dollars more — thirteen billions in alL Of this 
 inconceivable sum about two billions — two thousand mil- 
 
30 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 lions — would be returned to the families of the nation if 
 the housewives of the nation were banded among them- 
 selves on the Rochdale Plan for the purchase and dis- 
 tribution of their table supplies ! 
 
 It is also said that the advertising of the country costs 
 four tons of gold a day, of which at least one half must 
 be paid out by men in securing their women customers. 
 
 Probably much also of this fearful expense would be 
 saved if women bought and sold co-operatively among 
 themselves. 
 
 The scornful resentment against society women as 
 voiced by leading fictionists and dramatists and press- 
 writers of the day on both sides of the Atlantic — the 
 shameless condoning and idealising and illustrating in their 
 stories and plays and newspapers of adulterous wives and 
 girl mistresses and girl models and girl bohemians — their 
 ousting of the word "lady" from the Anglo-American 
 speech, so that the species "gentleman" need no longer 
 feel obliged to observe the chivalries, the courtesies, the 
 leticencies, the delicacies, hardly even the decencies, with 
 which the madonna sex in our country was once enhaloed 
 — a leading genius of the day defining a women as "a rag 
 and a hone and a hank of hair," and declaring that "the 
 colonel's lady and Judy 0' Grady are the same under their 
 skins" and that "a woman is only a woman, but a good 
 cigar is a smoke!" — all this vitriol of contempt, hatred, 
 and repulsion has its inspiration in the tremendous Revo- 
 lution and Tragedy we are considering, namely : that our 
 high-class educated womanhood, instead of being thrifty 
 and helpful womanhood, is "consuming" and "spending" 
 and "non-producing" womanhood, and that our able and 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 31 
 
 enterprising manhood is obliged nolens volens to work for 
 and "support" it ! 
 
 As the champions of these much-bestowing and too- 
 Httle-receiving fathers and husbands, the popular writers 
 snarl and sneer at the "society" wives and daughters as 
 though their money dependence were their deliberate 
 and wilful choice. It is not. Society women simply 
 accept the conditions created for them by the men of 
 their families, and take for gospel truth what they have 
 heard all their lives, namely, that women always have been 
 and always will be "supported." Thus they very excusably 
 feel no responsibility about it. 
 
 Whose then is the responsibility for this "army of the 
 unemployed" — this two million army of American maidens, 
 wives, and widows of the capitalist and the professional 
 classes, who give no economic quid pro quo for what 
 they enjoy? 
 
 The responsibility for this abnormal feminine host 
 rests with the trained and strenuous Brain workers — the 
 Inventors, Engineers, Promoters, Lawyers and Financiers 
 who collectively constitute the AMERICAN BUSINESS 
 MAN — on the one hand the greatest constructive force 
 of this or any other era, and on the other the blind incon- 
 sequential father and husband of the parasite woman. 
 •His is the blame — his and the woman-despising COL- 
 LEGE PROFESSOR who influences him — because both 
 these types claim to be on the heights of financial knowl- 
 edge and wisdom. Their vision sweeps the industrial 
 horizon of the world, past and present. If they don't 
 know what women have done and have been in the past 
 
32 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 and therefore what presumably they are capable of in 
 the future, they ought to know! 
 
 They have no right, these powerful and masterful 
 brothers, either to dwarf the women of their own class 
 into individual children or to 'tote" them as practical 
 dolls. It is their first and deepest duty to recognize in 
 them their own God-given intellectual comrades and work- 
 ing partners, and since as Collective Manhood they them- 
 selves have grown so great, while modern woman is still 
 but the original "unit" pigmy, they should further ask what 
 is to be done that as Collective Womanhood this World- 
 sister may reach a sufficient executive and economic 
 stature with themselves to be able to keep free and strong 
 and joyous upward step with her ever-ascending World- 
 brother and become to day as proportionally indispensable 
 and therefore priceless, to him and to the race as of old 
 she was, and as he still is to her.. 
 
 It is by far the greatest economic question now before 
 the country; the greatest question in the Department of 
 State; the greatest question in the Department of the 
 Treasury; the greatest question for the President of the 
 United States. Conferences ought to be held upon it 
 by the Chambers of Commerce conjoined with the Agri- 
 cultural Granges and the State and National Boards of 
 Education throughout the country, and some one on 
 behalf of the above high functionaries, and in the name 
 of the World-brother, should draw up an address to the 
 World-sister in manhood language, but to the following 
 effect : 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 "what's wrong with the world?" — Continued 
 
 The World-brother to the World-sister. 
 
 "Sister-mine, when you and I started human civili- 
 zation thousands of years ago — I as the farmer, you 
 as the farmer's wife — you were my efficient and all- 
 sufficient assistant in our joint-work of providing for 
 the human family of which we were the parents. 
 Both labored with aur hands for this family — I out- 
 side the house, you inside the house. Little by little 
 and more and more I devoted myself to the brain- 
 labor I loved, and gave up the manual labor I hated — 
 enslaving weaker men or hiring more ignorant ones 
 to do it for me. I pondered, I investigated, I experi- 
 mented, I invented. At last — after many ages and 
 with age-long gaps between my efforts — I perfected 
 machines which could do a great deal of my work and 
 of yours also ; machines which, while you were spin- 
 ning and weaving and sewing one coat or one shirt, 
 could turn out coats and shirts by the thousand. Thus 
 we have come to the era wherein it no longer pays 
 educated women to labor with their hands any more 
 than it would pay educated men to do so. 
 
 "Not for this, however, should you accept futility 
 
34 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 and 'a good time' for your life-work, as for a genera- 
 tion or two you have been doing. Considered as, a 
 vacation after your thousands of years of hand-labor, 
 you richly deserved it. It was right and beautiful 
 for you to have it; it was justice for you to have it; 
 for not you, but I, had had all the education through- 
 out the ages; not you, but I, had had most of the 
 enjoyment and the glory while throughout the long 
 centuries and milleniums you had been kept steadily 
 at manual work and in ignorance in order that I 
 might have my cooked food when and as I wanted it, 
 and that new garments might be ready for me when 
 those I was using were worn out ! Not a little bit. 
 Sister-mine, have I minded the sneers of German 
 professors or German-American students at the 
 'extravagance' and 'pleasure loving* of American 
 wives. Those m^^n, by the way, never comment nor 
 sneer at the wealth and luxury lavished by the Euro- 
 pean man upon the European mistress and the Euro- 
 pean courtesan ! It is only the American mothers 
 and daughters to whom they begrudge the external 
 beauty and delight that virtuous women love and 
 crave as much as do the non-virtuous. 
 
 "But now that you are educated, Sister-mine: 
 now that you are travelled and experienced ; now that 
 you have had a long, long rest from the relentless 
 cares and labors of our devoted foremothers, you 
 should henceforth do as I am doing — expend your 
 best self in brain labor. Your feminine mission as 
 home-maker is now not to manufacture for the home, 
 
NEPV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 35 
 
 but to buy for it. Your wifely and motherly business 
 to-day is not Producing ; it is Spending. 
 
 "But spending, Sister-mine, to be wise and not to 
 waste, must be carried out on business principles as 
 thoroughly and rigidly as earning is. In other words, 
 women home-makers to-day ought to buy in the 
 wholesale instead of the retail market, and from the 
 producer direct instead of from the middleman. This, 
 however, women can not do unless they buy col- 
 lectively and divide among one another after the 
 manner of the famous Rochdale Equitable Pioneers 
 who bought at wholesale and sold at retail both to 
 members and to outsiders, and divided the profits 
 among the members in proportion to their purchases. 
 
 "As Home-makers, you women have a tremendous 
 sphere of your very own — a sphere as big as the 
 human family. It is an inexhaustible gold-mine under 
 your feet. But instead of organizing and running it 
 yourselves and making for womanhood all the money 
 there is in it, thereby also making your sex inde- 
 pendently rich, — you are letting the middlemen run 
 it and put the profit that should be woman's own into 
 their masculine pockets. This is doubly bad; for 
 while you give up to them this woman's work which 
 they love — this retail selling — because it is so easy 
 and also so sociable, they are leaving undone their 
 own manhood crop-raising and stock-raising, and 
 therefore food enough to go comfortably round is 
 not produced. 
 
 "Now, Sister-mine, as your World-brother, — other- 
 wise the Man of this American continent and respon- 
 
36 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 sible for its best welfare, — I seriously propose, and in 
 this I earnestly ask for your sympathetic co-operation, 
 that in the future all my educated daughters who on 
 leaving school or college do not prefer to become 
 vocationalists (by which I mean teachers, writers, 
 artists, actresses, singers, musicians, nurses, and so 
 on), shall fit themselves for family responsibilities by 
 beginning Stock Company or Co-operative House- 
 keeping. In other words, I propose that they begin 
 housekeeping and home-making on business principles, 
 starting as did the Rochdale Pioneers, with dividing 
 (that is, retailing) groceries, because that is the 
 simplest, and taking Rochdale methods and experience 
 as the safe and sure and easy guide for the new 
 departure. 
 
 "As a practical business man, Sister-mine, I want 
 to assure you that, except this, there is no possible 
 remedy for the high cost of living as it is now grip- 
 ping and grinding this nation and murdering its family 
 life, and that if its Educated and Leisured Daughters 
 do not take the lead and pilot their sex into this 
 stock-company or "business" housekeeping, American 
 manhood and womanhood and childhood will all go 
 to the devil together, and the Almighty Himself can 
 not stop it. 
 
 "For the Almighty is a God of Cause and Effect, 
 and human annals afford not a single instance where 
 nations have not reaped as they have sown. 
 
 "The present economic basis of American Society is 
 all wrong, in that it expects and compels nine-tenths 
 of all the men and nine-tenths of all the women to be 
 
iVElV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 37 
 
 hand-workers, and one-tenth of all the men to be 
 brain workers, and at the same time not only permits 
 but encourages one-tenth of all the women to be no 
 workers at all, but to be "supported" by their fellow- 
 beings as the irresponsible spenders of intolerable 
 billions ! 
 
 "No wonder that the old-time American virtue 
 and probity and chivalry and decency are crumbling 
 with the homes of the American people, and that 
 thirty-nine per cent. — nearly two-fifths— oi Ameri- 
 can marriageable men are remaining unmarried! 
 When "Poverty comes in at the door" not only does 
 "Love fly out of the window"; — Vice spreads her 
 nets in the cellar and Lust orgies under the roof!" 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 "what's wrong with the world?" — Concluded. 
 
 ' If then the Educated American Mother, — the two mil- 
 lions of her — does not wish to stand self-confessed as the 
 hopeless inferior of the Educated American Father, she 
 must accept the practical facts, the great machinery facts, 
 of modern life, and, by organising her housekeeping, 
 take her proper place as the "American Business 
 Woman" side by side with the American Business Man. 
 While he ceaselessly heaps up and transports harvests and 
 factory products for the families of the land, she no less 
 ceaselessly through her housekeeping activities must dis- 
 tribute these harvests and products to the families of the 
 land. 
 
 Everywhere as soon as possible American housewives 
 should unite in neighborhood groups of two hundred or 
 more to establish and maintain for the benefit of them- 
 selves and their families, Distributing Centres or "Stores" 
 on the Rochdale principle of "strictly cash" both in buy- 
 ing and selling; selling to all comers at current retail 
 rates and dividing the profits among the members in pro- 
 portion to their purchases ; beginning with groceries and 
 vegetables (because this is what the Rochdale Pioneers 
 did, and it is also the easiest), and managing each Centre 
 or Store by an unpaid Executive Committee chosen from 
 
I 
 
 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 39 
 
 the members hy the members until it is successfully and 
 solidly established; after which, regular salaries should be 
 voted to its officers and directors; no men whatever to 
 be on the Managing Board; the planning and the execu- 
 tion to be entirely by women. 
 
 And because the great Farming Industry, like the great 
 Housekeeping Industry, is entirely behind the business 
 organization of the age, — simultaneously with Co-operative 
 Housekeeping should be brought into being Co-operative 
 Farming. The farms of every United States township 
 should be combined and managed as one farm on the 
 stock company basis by their incorporated owners; each 
 farmer to own as much stock in the company as his land 
 is worth and to continue to live on his own acres, if he 
 so desires ; each farmer to be paid the current rates for 
 his labor, whether hand labor or brain labor; the whole 
 area to be planned and cultivated in accordance with 
 Scientific Agriculture and Landscape Architecture, and to 
 be managed by an Executive Board elected by and from 
 the farmer owners. 
 
 With the National Farming and the National House- 
 keeping thus conformed to the modern ''business" or stock- 
 company principle, all other trusts would fall into their 
 relative places, with none encroaching upon or robbing 
 the others, because the Two Universal Industries would 
 be on the alert against any and all corporate aggression 
 injurious to their mutual interests. Throughout the vast 
 realms of Production and Distribution the deep, the divine, 
 because fraternal principle of Co-operation, would be en- 
 throned; and every man, woman, and child would fully 
 
40 NEW YORK: A .SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 and generously receive — not the present too scanty "all 
 that's coming to him," but the satisfying "all that ought 
 to come to him." 
 
 This needed readjustment of the modern sexes as earn- 
 ers once successfully entered upon, the discouraged old 
 world would renew its youth and "rejoice greatly and be 
 glad" in the co-working Brotherhood of Man and Sister- 
 hood of Woman then for the first time reahzed according 
 to the fore-ordained plan of their Divine Triune Creators. 
 
 The True Votes for Women. 
 
 Nor would these co-operating money-earners and 
 money-savers be brothers and sisters in the business world 
 alone. Their just and sane and mutually beneficient busi- 
 ness relations would automatically bring about equally just 
 and sane and beneficient political ones. Through new and 
 noble legislation the World-brother would say to his 
 World-sister : 
 
 "Sister-mine, we men no longer need two exclusively 
 male legislative houses to pass laws and ordinances 
 for you and for me and for our children. We have 
 been electing such through all these generations simply 
 until you should reach your normal intellectual 
 stature, and also by the up-to-date business manage- 
 ment of your housekeeping should become so familiar- 
 ized and identified with financial interests and con- 
 siderations on the 'big business' scale that you could 
 meet us on common ground. 
 
 ''We therefore offer you one of two propositions: 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 41 
 
 Either we will everywhere give up our State Senate 
 Chambers and also the Washington Senate and turn 
 them over to you — the seats and committee rooms to 
 be occupied by women elected at large by women 
 from the women of each State respectively ; and also 
 to each village, town, and city hall we will add a 
 woman's council-chamber, the same to be filled with 
 women elected by the votes at large of the women of 
 the villages, towns, and cities : 
 
 "Or, should you prefer it, we will halve the nuuiber 
 of our men representatives in town and city councils, 
 and also in State legislatures and in Congress, by 
 requiring twice as many votes to be cast for a member 
 as now suffice to elect him. This would leave one- 
 half the seats in every council-room and legislative 
 chamber vacant for the women who would be elected 
 by the women voting at large to replace them — the 
 men members to be seated together on one side of 
 the room facing the Speaker, and the women together 
 on the other side. 
 
 "In either of the above methods the country would 
 secure what it intimately and deeply needs, and this 
 is, the pure, unalloyed, equal representation of both 
 the adult sexes, and their untrammelled legislative 
 discussions and decisions. If the sexes meet in the 
 same chamber, however — in order to be absolutely 
 just, when a bill is on its final passage the Right and 
 the Left Divisions of the Chamber should invariably 
 vote separately, so that no measure could become Law 
 save by the majority vote of both sexes." 
 
V 
 
 42 XEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 Should American Manhood offer and American Wom- 
 anhood accept this Political Representation of Women by 
 Women, the latter would thenceforward possess in the 
 State just what the Saviour of mankind gave to women 
 in the Family, when He forbade husbands to divorce their 
 wives except for unfaithfulness: they would possess a 
 National Place and Vantage-ground of their Very Own 
 from which could be brought continually to bear the 
 concentrated perception and force of the feminine mind. 
 
 What every community and State in the Union needs 
 and must have, what the Union itself needs and must 
 have, what the whole world needs and must have — is the 
 Quintessential Thought and Point of View of Women as 
 women. To devolve the manhood ballot upon women, 
 and thus mix them up promiscuously with men, can not 
 possibly secure to the country the idiosyncratic conclusions 
 and aspirations of adult and responsible womanhood, any 
 more than to turn a large and fertile and well-watered 
 estate into a uniform swamp would bring out the char- 
 acteristic qualities of land and water as differentiated 
 by the Creator throughout the globe to their mutual 
 advantage and beauty. 
 
 Three tremendous problems are besieging and beleaguer- 
 ing educated worrwnhood. They are: the High Cost of 
 Living, the Servant Question, and the Social Evil. While 
 they concern all humanity and inter-penetrate all the 
 ramifications of the social structure — they belong espe- 
 cially to educated womanhood because they must be solved 
 by womanly right thinking, and only educated women 
 possess the knowledge which is the indispensable pre- 
 requisite of such thinking: 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 43 
 
 "—Ignorance is the curse of Good, 
 Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to Heaven — " 
 
 That is, to happiness — "heaven" in Shakespeare's day, 
 who said this, being, as now, a favorite word for "hap- 
 piness" and also the Bible term for the same thing. 
 
 To understand the womanhood problems — to master 
 them — Educated Woman must cease equally from being 
 the Leech and Vampire of Financial Man and the non- 
 thinking Echo of Intellectual Man that now she is, and 
 in business offices of her own, and in committee rooms of 
 her own, and by the exercise of her own ability, ideality, 
 experience, and common sense, must she investigate con- 
 ditions and causes and gather facts and figures in the 
 impartial, uncompromising, and, above all, thorough spirit 
 of her Scientific World-brother. Her conclusions reached 
 and her plans formulated, she must appeal to Collective 
 Womanhood, that is, to women agitating and acting 
 together — to achieve them. 
 
 Let her who hath eyes to see, read these pages; and let 
 let her who hath ears to hear, heed them! 
 
 For any solution of the problems specified other than 
 Organized or Business Housekeeping by intelligent and 
 able matrons and maidens, together with Enlightened 
 Legislation through similar maidens and matrons as 
 elected by their fellow-women to the legislatures and town- 
 councils of the nation, neither will nor can realize any- 
 thing but fatuity — futility — failure! 
 
 Educated Sisters of America, shall we not awake? 
 Shall we not unite ? 
 
44 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 "We have everything to gain. We have nothing to 
 lose but our chains !" 
 
 The wind that waves the blossoms 
 
 Sang, sang, sang from age to age. 
 
 The flowers were made curious by this joy. 
 
 *'Oh wind" they said, "why sing you at your labor 
 
 While we, pink beneficiaries, sing not 
 
 But idle, idle, idle from age to age?" 
 
 — Stephen Crane. 
 
 If it be true that Love is necessary to Joy — if it be true 
 that Beauty is necessary to Joy — equally is it true that 
 Achievement is necessary to Joy. 
 
 But achievement can come only through work, and the 
 highest achievement, whether of race or of sex, only 
 through collective work. 
 
 Co-working, then, or "co-operation," Modern Woman 
 would find her open sesame to womanhood happiness and 
 success, just as long and long ago Modern Man found it 
 the only open sesame to manhood happiness and success. 
 
 Should not therefore the World-brother now hasten 
 to persuade his problematical World-sister to try the 
 magic spell? Would she not quickly learn it from him, 
 and, so learning, forever thereafter cease from being 
 merely his "white man's burden," — merely his "pink bene- 
 ficiary who sings not, but idles, idles, idles from age to 
 age?" 
 
 In this connection the indulgent Reader may be willing 
 to close this section of our "Symphonic Study" by con- 
 sidering in Appendix A Kipling's famous White Man's 
 Burden from a point of view other than that presented 
 to American attention by its distinguished author. 
 
WHAT'S WRONG WITH NEW YORK? 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 QUESTION three: "wHAT's wrong with new YORK?" 
 
 What's zvrong with New York — and therefore with 
 the country upon which as its financial, and fashion, and 
 art, and pleasure centre, New York exerts so tremendous 
 and formative an influence — is, in one word, Foreignism ; 
 foreignism in religion, foreignism in society, foreignism 
 in education, foreignism in the press ; and since religion, 
 society, education, and the press underlie American exist- 
 ence — foreignism in morals and foreignism in government ; 
 for as has often been well and truly said, "Every nation 
 has the government it deserves," and this nation is now 
 governed by foreigners — is now terrorized by foreigners. 
 
 Twenty-five or more years ago the distinguished lawyer 
 and after-dinner speaker, Joseph H. Choate of New York, 
 <it a St. Patrick's day banquet where nearly all present 
 were Irish-Americans — declared breezily that everybody 
 except New Yorkers ran New York, and that all positions 
 of pozvcr in the city were filled by foreigners. This per- 
 fectly true statement so angered the Irish-American 
 Mayor Gilroy that he sprang to his feet, scathingly re- 
 bukeed this leading Hereditary American, then flung out 
 of the room and attacked him further in the papers the 
 next day. 
 
 Did Mr. Choate retort,— '7/ is true," and then proceed 
 
46 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 to rally all the Americans in New York into a solidarity 
 whose object should be to secure for themselves their 
 due proportion of the offices? Not at all. Mr. Choate 
 subsided. 
 
 And so it goes. Free speech is dead in this country — 
 killed by foreignism. We are perpetually sickened and 
 heart-broken by the tireless proclaiming of the moral de- 
 cadence of the nation and the flagrancy of its money 
 worship. Over the causes of this decadence we maintain 
 a practically national silence. But if we do not admit 
 and analyze it, how can we arrest it? 
 
 Early in this century a newspaper quoted the famous 
 Dr. Parkhurst, once for a few years the most influential 
 citizen in New York, as saying: 
 
 We of this State call ourselves a representative democracy, 
 which is true with two important qualifications: the first of 
 which is that we are not a democracy, and the second, we 
 are not representative. Pretty soon the representatives of the 
 sovereign people are going to gather in Albany for the purpose 
 of interpreting eternal law in its application to this Common- 
 wealth. As a matter of fact, there will be no eternal law, 
 no representation, no sovereign people, no commonwealth in 
 the session from beginning to end. Two or three men get 
 together in this city about once a week and settle the whole 
 thing in advance; and we must do them the justice to say 
 that they are but exercising authority that the people have 
 abandoned. And the most serious part of the situation is 
 that there appears to be only here and there a scattered 
 sporadic mind taking it all to heart. Nobody is worrying 
 about it or fretting under it. 
 
 The profound statesman, Edmund Burke, once wrote: 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 4; 
 
 I give it as my clear opinion that if things are left to them- 
 selves a nation may slide down fair and softly from the 
 highest point of grandeur and prosperity to the lowest state 
 of imbecility and meanness without any one's marking a par- 
 ticular period in this declension, without speculating on any 
 of the innumerable acts through which have stoien ni ims 
 silent and insensible revolution. Every event so prepares the 
 subsequent, that, when it arrives, it produces no surprise, nor 
 any extraordinary alarm. 
 
 The distinguished and indomitable suffragist, Rev. 
 Anna Howard Shaw, declared a few years since: 
 
 New York is Hell! 
 
 And even in its infancy Thomas Jefferson said of it: 
 
 New York, like London, is a Sewer of all the Depravities"; — 
 
 He might have added, "and for the same reason," — 
 London being to England, as New York to North 
 America, the sluice-gate for the deep inflowing corrup- 
 tion of the three pagan-saturated continents, Europe, 
 Asia, and Africa. 
 
 H any one knew well the city of New York, surely it 
 was that gifted O. Henry, humorist and tragedian in one, 
 who studied it during the first decade of this century, 
 and some of whose chapters from its multiple life are 
 masterpieces that the world will not let die. Among the 
 briefest, yet perhaps the strongest of them all, is The 
 Duel, which opens and proceeds in this wise : 
 
 The city of New York is inhabited by four million mysteri- 
 
48 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 ous strangers. . . . They came here in various ways and 
 for various reasons — Hendrik Hudson, the art-schools, the 
 stork, the annual dressmakers' convention, the Pennsylvania 
 Railroad, love of money, the stage, cheap excursion rates, 
 brains, personal column ads., heavy walking shoes, ambition, 
 freight trains, — all these have had a hand in making up the 
 population. 
 
 But every man jack when he first sets foot on the stones of 
 Manhattan has got to fight. He has got to fight at once until 
 either he or his adversary wins. There is no resting between 
 rounds, for there are no rounds. It is slugging from the 
 first. It is a fight to a finish. 
 
 Your opponent is the City. You must do battle with it 
 from the time the ferry boat lands you on the Island until 
 either it is yours or it has conquered you. It is the same 
 whether you have a million in your pocket or only the price 
 of a week's lodging. 
 
 The battle is to decide whether you shall become a New 
 Yorker or remain the rankest outlander and Philistine. You 
 must be one or the other. You can not remain neutral. 
 You must be for or against — lover or enemy — bosom friend 
 or outcast. And, oh, the City is a general in the ring. Not 
 only by blows does it seek to subdue you. It wooes you to 
 its heart with the subtlety of a siren. It is a combination of 
 Delilah, green Chartreuse, Beethoven, chloral and John L, 
 in his best days. 
 
 In other cities you may wander and abide as a stranger man 
 as long as you please. You may live in Chicago and be a 
 citizen until your hair whitens, and if Boston mothered you, 
 you may still prate of beans without a rebuke. In any other 
 town but Knickerbocker's you may become a civic pillar and 
 all the time publicly sneer at its buildings as compared with 
 the architecture of Col. Blank's residence in Jackson, Miss., 
 whence you hail, and you will not be set upon. But in New 
 York you must be either a New Yorker or the invader of 
 a modern Troy concealed in the wooden horse of your con- 
 ceited provincialism. . . . 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 49 
 
 This town is a leech. It drains the blood of the country. 
 Whoever comes to it accepts a challenge to a duel. It is a 
 Juggernaut, a Moloch, a monster to which the innocence, the 
 genius, and the beauty of the land must pay tribute. Hand 
 to hand every newcomer must struggle with the leviathan. 
 . . . I hate it as one hates sin or pestilence or the color 
 work in a ten-cent magazine. I despise its very vastness and 
 power. It has the poorest millionaires, the littlest great men, 
 the haughtiest beggars, the plainest beauties, the dolefullest 
 pleasures of any town I ever saw. I could stand a town ruled 
 by wealth or one ruled by an aristocracy; but this one is 
 ruled by its lowest ingredients. Claiming culture, it is the 
 crudest; asserting its pre-eminence, it is the basest; denying 
 all outside values and virtues, it is the narrowest. 
 
 0. Henry died in 1910, and two years afterward the 
 Nezu York Sunday Times devoted an entire page to an 
 interview with Miss Mary de G. Trenholm, chief organ- 
 izer and head worker of the important Settlement House 
 at Seventy-second Street and the East River. Since by 
 Ijirth and breeding this lady is of America's "very best," 
 and by vocation is devoted to the uplift of the lowly, her 
 experiences and observations include all classes from the 
 top to the bottom of O. Henry's ''wonderful, cruel, en- 
 chanting, bewildering, fatal, great city!" Condensing and 
 rearranging the paragraphs but preserving nearly ver- 
 batim the language of this remarkable interview, let us, 
 if possible, grasp the full import, the true inwardness 
 of what it says, its first sentence being the following, (the 
 italics my own) : 
 
 Extravagance, inefficiency, immodesty, ar^d selfishness are 
 what this town is breeding in its women. . . . 
 
 The American woman, rich and poor and young and old, 
 
V 
 
 50 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 in these days is the most selfish woman in the world, and 
 the New York woman between thirty and forty is, I verily 
 believe, the most frivolous the world has ever known. Ameri- 
 can women have always been extravagant in dress ; they never 
 have been so terribly extravagant as they are now. Ameri- 
 can women have rarely been immodest in their dress; now, 
 in this year of 1912, they have become outrageously im- 
 modest. . . . The story of an old lady who came to town 
 lately to visit relatives is illustrative. On the third morning 
 after her arrival she was found packing her trunk for de- 
 parture. "But, dear," expostulated her daughter, "you were 
 to stay a month." "I was, but I'm not. The first evening I 
 was here you took me to hear a man who tried to take away 
 my God, and on the second evening I heard a dress reformer 
 who tried to take away my petticoats! — I'm going home! 
 . . ." There was more truth than poetry in this indict- 
 ment, for the women of New York are frequently without a 
 God and just now very frequently without a petticoat. A man 
 recently told me he can no longer tell decent women from 
 loose women on the street; yet five yars ago such dress did 
 not exist. 
 
 At present two things are working with terrific energy 
 and force toward the ruin of the working girl, and both are 
 sins which seep down upon her from higher levels. They 
 are the dress and the dancing she copies from the girls who 
 do not have to work. 
 
 Society girls, working-girls, and the mothers of both are 
 dressing viciously, and as long as rich girls dress as. they 
 do the working girl will copy them. Yet these fashions mean 
 wild extravagance, they mean loss of delicacy, they mean 
 young men sent wrong or changed to cynics about woman- 
 kind. . . . 
 
 Then consider the dancing, the 'bunny hug* and the 'turkey 
 trot' that First Avenue and Cherry Hill have borrowed from 
 Fifth Avenue and Newport. What a wild craze for the young 
 people of the nation to take up! The society women could 
 have stopped it. Why didn't they? What is the meaning 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 51 
 
 of their failure to? I hesitate,— I find it impossible,— to com- 
 ment adequately on the state of things which has transplanted 
 dances originating in the worst dives of San Francisco into 
 the great drawing-rooms of our "best people." The river- 
 ward girls insist on these extraordinary dances because the 
 newspapers tell them that they are in high favor in "real 
 society." Our settlement started a crusade, and even brought 
 official pressure to bear against them all over the East Side. 
 But what did it amount to? The indecent dancing goes on 
 every night, and the dance halls are keeping up their work 
 of ruining young girls and wrecking young men. I cannot 
 emphasize too strongly my horror of the situation to-day in 
 New York City. It is paralyzing. . . . 
 
 That the first attribute of a good woman must be modesty 
 has been recognized through all time. Yet not only is the 
 rising generation of our girls handicapped in this regard by 
 the dances and fashions which are reaching down from the 
 upper to corrupt the lower strata; . . . the girl who lives 
 in a New York tenement can not grow up sweetly modest 
 after the ideals of our grandmothers, for she can have no 
 privacy. The herding in our cities, — the very nature of our 
 living, — has so destroyed our homes that they are no longer 
 attractive and our women have lost taste for them. The 
 working-girl, even if she lives with her family, has practically 
 no home to go to after work is done. She has a little space 
 in a small flat in a crowded tenement in a crowded quarter 
 and is thrown in continual contact at all hours with father, 
 brothers and often boarders in all stages of the imtimacies 
 of life. ... If she lives away from home in a tenement 
 boarding house along with other working girls and men and 
 boys her situation may be looked upon as hopeless, for she is 
 then learning that which she should never know and learning 
 nothing which she should learn. The present very poor New 
 York girl is not a modest girl, nor can be; the present New 
 York rich girl does not seem to wish to be! . . . 
 
 Nor is the New York girl unselfish; and unselfishness must 
 come next to modesty in the equipment of a girl who is to 
 
52 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 be a faithful wife and a good mother. In the old American 
 days the farms were cruder than the cities, but now the 
 cities are cruder than the farms and are doing everything 
 possible to pull down and destroy the home we used to hold 
 so essential. This city-district numbers 80,000 people and 
 / don't know of a room in this neighborhood where a whole 
 family can get together at the table at the same time for a 
 meal! The majority of the people are "free thinkers" and 
 for them all there are only four places of worship ! 
 
 New York's biggest problem is not its police, its fires, or 
 its sanitation; it's girls. . . . The problem of the health, 
 the morals and the education of American working girls, 
 the future mothers of a large part of the coming nation, is 
 the greatest of the lot now confronting the nation. The 
 presidential campaign, — Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, the Tariff, 
 the Canal, the Trusts, — all such questions are quite insig- 
 nificant compared to it. We've got to save them, the work- 
 ing girls; but though I speak especially of them, my ex- 
 perience has taught me that in order to do so we must begin 
 with the girl who does not work. There is a subtle poison 
 harming all our femininit)', — girls in general in the United 
 States and girls in general in New York Cit}', — a poison that 
 is not working upward from poverty into prosperity, but 
 downward from prosperity into poverty. 
 
 How well-deserved is Miss Trenholm's indictment of 
 contemporary upper-class womanhood, the society lead- 
 ers as caught by the camera for the New York Sunday 
 papers, are ample proof. 
 
 See them seated with the crossed limbs which draw 
 their short skirts half-way up to the knee; or in driving- 
 coats and top-boots as from the coachman's box they 
 tool a four-in-hand; or as riding astride in similar boots 
 and hunting togs they jump their mounts over fences 
 and ditches, sometimes grotesquely hunched, their coat- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 53 
 
 tails flying in the air ! See them in scanty skirt prancing 
 violently before the tennis nets, or in bare feet and limbs 
 throwing themselves about and thrusting up their knees 
 in ''nature" dances in the open air, or reclining on the 
 sea-sands in brief bathing suits which show the whole 
 length of their stockings — their little girls meantime 
 running round with legs bared high above the knee and 
 thereby being trained from babyhood in non-modesty 
 and in ugliness; for the knee is a hinge and a hinge never 
 is nor can be the curving line which is the beautiful line; 
 it must be the obtrusive line, the angular line, and to that 
 extent militant against feminine suavity and grace. Yet 
 women are such ''fools and blind" on behalf of their 
 own feminine interests that for a decade they have ac- 
 cepted dress-fashions that emphasize both the knee-hinges 
 of the lower limbs and also the still greater and uncome- 
 lier ones between those limbs and the torso. Formerly 
 women sat and walked and danced icithin their skirts — 
 thereby so far as possible e-vanishing the hinges; — now, 
 their skirts may go "any old way" so that their limbs may 
 have the adored mannish "freedom!" 
 
 In reminding these pleasure-loving and pleasure-seek- 
 ing New York society women that "from time imme- 
 morial the first attribute of a good woman must be mod- 
 esty" ; Miss Trenholm was true to her sex in the deepest 
 sense; for modesty is to womanhood what the bark is 
 to the tree, — the outer guard and protector of the entire 
 enclosed organism, and equally the mystic living envelope 
 through which alone can and does flow its life. An 
 immodest or a non-modest woman is spiritually a dead 
 woman. There is no soul-life in her; and similarly soul- 
 
V 
 
 54 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 dead or dying is the man who influences her against mod- 
 esty — as Ibsen showed in his terrific last warning to the 
 modern conscience, "When We Dead Awake." 
 
 But in her yearning over the New York working-girl, 
 our noble-hearted philanthropist does not indicate the 
 source of this "poison" which "seeps down" from the 
 upper social levels to the destruction of the lower ones. 
 Does she know whence originates the evil which the girl 
 "higher up" transmits to her humbler sisters? If yes, 
 why does she not warningly label it? "What is the use 
 of us women any longer concealing from ourselves and 
 ignoring before the world the awful fact that has ever 
 hounded — that still hounds — our sex: man's moral in- 
 humanity to woman? 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 "what's wrong with new YORK?" — Conttfiued. 
 
 Exploited Girlhood. 
 
 In New York, as in all great capitals, the chief, nay, 
 the indispensable amusement, recreation, enjoyment, sen- 
 sation of her Multitudinous Masculine is found in her 
 pleasure women and pleasure girls — especially the latter. 
 
 Within the last decade the writer has been present at 
 several stage performances on tour from New York, 
 which were to her harrowing because they evidenced so 
 brutally the abandonment of the feminine ideals of our 
 once chaste and refined and chivalrous country. 
 
 One of the occasions was Bernard Shaw's play, "Man 
 and Superman'' — a drama which proved so devilish that 
 to me it seems inconceivable that a human being, the son 
 of a human mother, the husband of a human wife, could 
 have conceived and written it, or that any American could 
 have produced or acted in it. For its plot is to the effect 
 that all girls are and must be men-hunters, because Na- 
 ture, to carry out her purpose of perpetuating the race, 
 drives them irresistibly on to become impregnated. Man 
 therefore cannot escape them. Reluctance and resistance 
 on his part are useless. Married in spite of himself, man 
 must and shall be in order that the girl bent on securing 
 him may become a mother; and if a girl become a mother 
 without marriage, equally must she be applauded and 
 
V 
 
 56 NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 cherished because she has simply fulfilled the great im- 
 perative end for which she was designed and created. 
 
 A second shocking spectacle was at a Ziegfeld bur- 
 lesque to which I had been invited in order to see the 
 stage dancing of the renowned Mile. Genee. Her danc- 
 ing, by the way, was that of a sylph in grace and a 
 thistledown in lightness, and needed but obedience to 
 two ignored and indispensable canons of aesthetic stage 
 dancing, namely — swaying draperies in long lines from 
 the waist to the instep instead of the usual parachute 
 ballet skirts, and pirouetting in curves from the knee, 
 instead of at right angles from the hip — to have been 
 ideal in delicate reserve and exquisite femininity; but 
 her ethereal art was starred in a depraved and vulgar 
 burlesque, the "sensation" and climax of which was a 
 procession of thirteen girls representing poodles — ■ 
 twelve in black tights throughout, and one in white ones, 
 with fluffed-out hair and with paws in front like poodles 
 on their hind legs, and attached to each of them a 
 poodle's tail which she wagged poodle-fashion as she 
 minced across the stage ! 
 
 Imagine a mortal man under the American flag de- 
 voting the young women of his company to the public 
 degradation of impersonating female dogs! Yet Ameri- 
 can manhood suffers this decadent German to inflict upon 
 helpless girlhood similar outrages every season and fills 
 the seats of his theatres in enjoyment of them! 
 
 Another to me incredible profanation was perpetrated 
 by the New York Hippodrome Company in an acrobatic 
 act by a woman and two men. One of the latter stood 
 on the shoulders of the other and then the woman, in 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 57 
 
 tights and trunks of course, swung herself up to the 
 shoulders of the second. A moment — and she was stand- 
 ing on her head upon his head, her arms outstretched 
 for balancing, her limbs and feet together straight up 
 in the air. Still another moment, and the limbs unclosed 
 and on each side slowly descended until they lay flat and 
 parallel with her outstretched arms and hands. As she 
 achieved this fearful feat, the pink of her upside-down 
 face, neck, and arms contrasting with the white of her 
 fleshings and the darker shade of her trunks, made her 
 seem like some monstrous and horrible Flower from the 
 Pit that for an instant was poising and waving before 
 the huge audience of her human brothers and sisters. 
 Ah — imagine devoting a girl's miraculous and sacred 
 frame to such uses ! 
 
 Examples could be multiplied; but side by side with 
 the imported desecrations of American ideals which peo- 
 ple have to pay to witness, must be classed the recent 
 free street exhibitions of girlhood and womanhood as 
 costumed in fashions designed by men, — designed prac- 
 tically for men, manufactured by men, and marketed by 
 men, and in the creation of which there seemed to have 
 been but the single aim of displaying as much of the 
 woman-physique as possible. The ungloved hands, the 
 arms unsleeved nearly to the shoulder, the throat and one 
 or more inches of the neck — all bare ; the skirt cut smooth 
 to the torso and below it so scanty that walking empha- 
 sized every line, and so short that the whole foot and 
 ankle were exposed ; beneath the skirt evidently nothing 
 save the stocking and gauze underwear and the corset ; 
 the head bare, or covered with a hat so huge and hideous 
 
58 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 that both face and hair were extinguished. Who can 
 deny that streets filled with girls and women so costumed 
 gave the effect of being filled only with bodies ? So elimi- 
 nated from one's consciousness were the faces belonging 
 to the bodies that one could not, as it were, discern them 
 amid those uncovered, tanned, and generally ugly hands 
 and arms, those blatant feet and ankles, those obvious 
 hips and limbs that everywhere, as a great American 
 citizen justly complained, "hurt" the eye ! 
 
 The impression of the crowded sidewalks was not, as 
 beforetime, of feminine faces full of life and variety and 
 expression coming toward one, but rather of the monot- 
 ony and more or less crass materialism of women's backs 
 going from one! "Whether you like the present fash- 
 ions," said in 1911 a New York woman-illustrator to an 
 interviewer from the New York Times, "depends entirely 
 upon whether you like the nude." Of course she liked it ! 
 The men artists demand and will have the nude, and so 
 the women artists and the women art-critics praise and 
 exalt it also — the fatal temperamental impulse of aver- 
 age women being always to give men whatever they want, 
 let the consequence to womanhood be what it will ! 
 
 And what the real zest, what the soul and motive of all 
 these so shocking and so depraving twentieth century 
 exhibitions? Yes, what? Nothing on earth but the sex 
 degradation of girlhood and womanhood. "All the arts 
 of expression tend to keep alive and in activity the feel- 
 ings they express." So declared a great thinker; and 
 can American Law be held guiltless in that it suffers 
 stage managers thus publicly to destroy modesty in 
 woman and thereby stimulate lust in man? 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 59 
 
 To suppose that with mere physical girlhood and wom- 
 anhood perpetually thrust upon their attention, men can 
 be other than profligate, is idiotic; and to pretend that 
 girls and women can and do withstand the added tempta- 
 tion from men which decadent fashions bring upon them, 
 is simply to lie. 
 
 These fashions originated in the European stronghold 
 of the Nude in Art and were intended as the glorification 
 and propaganda of the nude. The quasi-artists who are 
 the famous fashion-makers of Paris resolved that wom- 
 an's dress should no longer be the shield and protector. of 
 woman's honor that it had been throughout the Christian 
 centuries, but instead should become the revealer and dis- 
 closer of woman's every contour as the female of the 
 male, thus doubly inflaming the male to an unhallowed 
 pursuit and doubling the danger of his prey. From 1905 
 to 1915 woman's dress has been woman's worst conspira- 
 tor against woman ! 
 
 Paris fashions are first displayed on the stage by 
 actresses, many of whom are mistresses of the rich. 
 Then the grandes dames who are the wives of the rich — 
 in order to show that their own charms are not behind, 
 accept the fashions meant to display the charms of mis- 
 tresses. They know well, these "great ladies," what their 
 lords want, what they sigh and pine for, what they chiefly 
 go dissipating to enjoy; and the great ladies, like all other 
 women, far rather than fail to attract and amuse and 
 pique and please their men, will imperil their own souls 
 and wreck their sex and with it their country. 
 
 And thus it is that the "mode" of the day is decided 
 upon and fixed. No semi-yearly conference, as in New 
 
V 
 
 6o A El J' YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 York or Paris there should be of the opulent matrons of 
 the great American cities to inspect, discuss, and decide 
 upon the momentous problem of what apparel is or is 
 not womanly and modest and beautiful and becoming and 
 suited to the years and the occupations and the means of 
 the wearers; but the grande dame goes alone or with a 
 friend to view the new "models" as they are displayed 
 upon the living "mannequins" that walk about the show- 
 rooms of the costumer. By this latter the lady is cajoled 
 and flattered into ordering something that will be above 
 all ''quite different from every one else," will be "origi- 
 nal" — "daring" — "novel" — whether it be personally be- 
 coming and suitable to herself or not. 
 
 The latest "creations" having thus been endorsed by 
 the leaders of both the upper world and of the "half- 
 world," the great American merchants — the John Wana- 
 makers of the East, the Marshall Fields of the West — 
 take the vulgar and demoralizing garments thus launched 
 by the immodest vanity of actresses and mistresses and 
 the baser subservience of great ladies, and in cheap ma- 
 terials make and pile them on their counters by the mil- 
 lion. There is nothing else for the rank and file of wom- 
 anhood to buy. They do buy, and the working-girls — 
 the poor ignorant little daughters — are of course the 
 chief victims of it all ! From maidens many turn into 
 mistresses, and from mistresses many turn into wantons, 
 and from wantons many turn into hags, and some into 
 devils; and men, — MEN, — beginning with the Artists of 
 the Nude, have done it and are responsible for it. And 
 why have they done it? Because they are European 
 either at heart or by birth ; and Europeans, where maiden 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 6i 
 
 innocence or .matron virtue is concerned, are "of their 
 father the devH, and the works of their father they urill 
 dor 
 
 A few years ago I heard the noted artist and art-critic, 
 Kenyon Cox, declare on the platform that to paint or 
 model the human form is the highest exercise of Art,— 
 and about the same time a standard American portrait 
 painter, who is also a devoted nudist said to me : ''The 
 woman's body is the most beautiful thing there is, and 
 it has simply got to be painted. The whole art-world 
 is agreed on this. Portraits are to me only pot-boilers. 
 I paint nine nudes to one portrait." 
 
 Were these men right? They were wrong. The high- 
 est exercise of Art is to reproduce the highest beauty ; 
 and in woman the highest beauty, — the beauty unique, 
 unsurpassed, and unsurpassable, — is found from her 
 waist-line up through bust, shoulders, throat and features 
 to her lovely brow and small shapely head enframed 
 by waving hair. The universal consensus that the Venus 
 of Milo is the most beautiful single art-object ever pro- 
 duced, proves the above proposition; for that statue is 
 nude only to the waist. Her glory is in the faultless as- 
 cending lines which culminate in her supreme face, — 
 the human face being the special revelation of the human 
 soul and mind. Another proof to me is the fact that for 
 one man who falls in love with a beautiful figure, ten 
 men, — a hundred men, — are "captive to a beautiful face! 
 
 The nude and the near-nude minimize woman into a 
 forked animal; and where is the beauty in a fork? In 
 fact, so opposed is the deep sub-consciousness of woman- 
 
62 ^\EW YORK: a'' SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 hood to this physiological confession of herself, that the 
 overwhelming majority of the sex among the clothed 
 races of all history has ever sought by flowing robes or 
 by long skirts to conceal what woman's aesthetic instinct 
 and her feminine instinct and her self-respecting instinct 
 would fain forget and make man also forget. It is the 
 ruthless and profaning modern artist whose insatiable 
 hunger for the nude — comparable only to the thirst of 
 the drinker for his dram or of the gambler for his game — 
 by eliminating from pictures and statues innumerable, 
 and also from present-day fashions, womanhood's im- 
 memorial draperies, has well-nigh banished feminine 
 beauty from the earth and has robbed much of what is 
 left of its mystery, of its sanctity, and consequently of its 
 spell 
 
 THE OLD ARTISTS MODEL. 
 
 Paraphrased from Herbert Kaufman's "Prodigal Daughter." 
 
 Why are you weeping, — Sister, Sister, — 
 Why are you sitting alone f 
 
 I'm bent and grey, 
 And I've lost the way! 
 All my to-morrows were yesterday ! 
 I traded them off for a model's pay: 
 I bared my graces in pleasant places 
 Where paint the artists with winning faces, 
 My beauty I sold for a little gold — 
 Now I am old ! 
 
 Why are you lonely — Sister, Sister — 
 Where are your friends all gone? 
 
 Friends have I none, for I went the road 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 63 
 
 Where women must harvest what men have sowed; 
 And they never come back when the field is mowed. 
 They talked the "Glory of Art" to me, 
 And I joyously posed and would not see 
 They were simply, only "using" me — 
 Now I am old ! 
 
 Why did you do it, — Sister, Sister, — 
 Why did you peril your soul?'* 
 
 I was foolish and fair and my form was rare; 
 I longed for men friends, and I did not care. 
 When we know not the price to be paid, we dare, 
 I listened when Vanity lied to me, 
 And I ate the fruit of her bitter tree — 
 Now I am old ! 
 
 Will they not help you up. Sad Sister, 
 Who so ruthlessly pulled you down? 
 
 I have no claim, — for the artists bought, — 
 I accepted their wage for the youth I brought, 
 So much an hour; so they owe me nought; 
 I have no hold, for t'was I who sold : 
 Once I lost my heart, — ^but the painter was cold, 
 It made me desperate, — turned me bold — 
 Now I am old! 
 
 Is there indeed no pity, Sister, 
 For the once so flattered and sought for sitter? 
 
 While a woman is lovely the artists will fawn, 
 But not when her beauty and grace have gone: 
 The torso heavy — the face thin-drawn. 
 I have had my day; I have had my play; 
 With the winter of loneliness I must pay — 
 Now I am old! 
 
64 ' NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 What of the morrow, — Sister, Sister, — 
 How shall the morrow he?" 
 
 I must feed to the end upon remorse; 
 I must falter alone in my self-chosen course; 
 I must hang alone on my self-made cross, — 
 For I bared my graces in pleasant places, 
 My beauty I sold for a little gold. — 
 Now I am old ! 
 
 What of the artists, — Sister, Sister, — 
 Of the men who exploited you so? 
 
 Those who stripped my soul with my maiden shape, — 
 
 Those who held me a "body"? — They did not escape 
 
 The deadly narcotic exhaling from me 
 
 As a woman profaned ! Oh, still can I see 
 
 The gloat in their eyes as I dropped my clothes, 
 
 And they eagerly placed me in pose after pose, 
 
 Discussing my "points" with the chum who strayed in, 
 
 For little they cared who shared in their sin. 
 
 With the door safely locked and me naked within. — 
 
 They sketched and considered, they paused and they smoked 
 They pondered and painted, they laughed and they joked. 
 Sometimes they were brutal, ofttimes they were rude; 
 They chummed with the rake and they scoffed at the prude; 
 They had "got back to nature" and felt they were "free" ; 
 It was "joy-life" to them, — desecration to me! 
 
 "The most beautiful thing in all this wide world 
 Is the maiden's white form !" Oh, like incense upcurled, 
 Did the lovely words woo me and lull me so deep 
 That I kept on and on, like a girl in her sleep; — 
 
 But so is flame "beautiful," — yellow and red 
 
 As it wreathes round the body and climbs to the head; 
 
NEIV YORK: A ^YMPIWNIC STUDY. 6, 
 
 Yet when it has passed,— behold the white form 
 A horror of blister and black in the dawn; 
 And nothing now left but to sink out of sight, — 
 Out of mind, — out of love, — out of hope, — into night! 
 
 "Those who held vie a bodyf" Oh, again shall they see 
 
 Myself and the rest they persuaded to sell 
 
 What nothing can pay for, — shall see the poor souls 
 
 That they doped with their guile while reaching their goals 
 
 Of ambition and greed; why — their Lust of the Eyes 
 
 Is just their ART-GOD with his bible of lies 
 
 To deceive first themselves, — then their models, — then all 
 
 Who trust what they say ! Yes, indeed shall they see 
 
 Myself and my mates, — we will all cost them dear 
 
 When their fingers are dust and their memories tell 
 
 Of what in their studios us befell. 
 
 And they find what they did to themselves as- well ! 
 
 For the God-heights of Art staid veiled from their sight 
 While they used us to get- their "effects," in the light, 
 Even drove us outdoors, — made us stand, lie, and run 
 Under God's holy sky : open shame 'neath the sun ! — 
 Yet who cared for tiieir paintings of nymph and of nude 
 Save only themselves ? Women loathed the whole brood. 
 Were they beautiful? no; let them try as they please, — 
 Every spring brings a crop with the buds on the trees 
 To fade and to fall into nothing, like leaves. — 
 And for these were we sacrificed, — only for these! 
 
 Though so gaily the artists bid Conscience farewell 
 
 Some day only She will be with them, and then 
 
 Must they re-live with Her those old studio hours, 
 
 When they copied girl-charms and ignored girlish powers 
 
 Day by day, year by year, till, — transformed and deformed,— 
 
 God's Image was lost, so that what they achieved — 
 
 What they really and truly, completely achieved. 
 
 Was sisters in ruins, minds shrunken and sere, 
 
66 NEW YORK: A ^SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 Hearts blackened or broken or hopeless or drear 
 With "burning for beauty," — while for their own souls 
 It was death unto death ; — 
 
 "Oh — we thought — we believed — it was Art!" will they wail; 
 "It is hell !" 
 
 Would the reader know the atrocious ignominy of dress 
 and gesture to which a once artist's model may be re- 
 duced, — let him look at the colored sketches of the women 
 dancers in the after-midnight cabarets of New York as 
 printed in McClnre's Magazine for June 1915, pp. 26, 27, 
 while in Mrs. Lurana W. Sheldon's "Night Court" he 
 may glimpse the final goal of many of these victims of 
 "man's inhumanity to woman," — New York lowest living 
 layer ! 
 
 THE NIGHT COURT, 
 
 Your Honor has done me a favor 
 
 In asking my presence an hour 
 To gaze on the Night Court in session 
 
 And study municipal power. 
 I have come with my courage undaunted, 
 
 Though only too sadly I feel 
 That before what you call me to witness 
 
 The tower of my reason may reel. 
 
 Who are these strange creatures, your Honor, 
 
 Who come in the dead of the night, 
 Dragged in by a "cop" or detective, 
 
 In almost incredible plight? 
 Whence came they, and what is their calling? 
 
 Whose mothers and sisters are these? 
 The drunk and bedraggled ones wailing, — 
 
 The brazen who stand at their ease? 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 6? 
 
 What questions are these I am asking? — 
 
 They are queries that rise in one's brain 
 Before such demoralization 
 
 Such dreadful affliction and pain! 
 Why, in this enlightened, rich city 
 
 Has womankind fallen so low? 
 These reek of a vile degradation 
 
 That not even heathen should know ! 
 
 Is labor so packed, over-crowded. 
 
 That work can no longer be had? 
 Are wages so low that a woman, — 
 
 A mother, — need go to the bad? 
 Are men so impotent, — such weaklings, — 
 
 That woman must stand in the streets 
 To trade out her soul and her body 
 
 For all that she wears, drinks, and eats? 
 
 These girls in their teens who have entered, — 
 
 Pickpockets, the "nymphs of the pave," — 
 Who branded Sin's mark on their foreheads? 
 
 Their birthright of horror who gave? 
 Are men's veins so full of beast nature. 
 
 Men's bosoms so sordid and cold. 
 That humans, — aye, (Children, — must suffer 
 
 For being in feminine mould? 
 
 What use is the Night Court, your Honor? 
 
 To me 'tis but splitting the stream 
 That flows from a million directions, — 
 
 From sources that no one would dream ! 
 What forces these girls to be wantons? 
 
 What teaches them evil, and who? 
 Why has not your city safeguarded 
 
 Their frailness their whole childhood through? 
 
68 
 
 NEW YOkK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 If children are part of the nation, — 
 
 The assets of city and state, — 
 What have legislators been doing 
 
 That these have come down to this fate? 
 "White Slaves," aye, and worse, are among them; 
 
 Their eyes are sin-hardened and blear; 
 This Night Court should vi^iden its mission 
 The Preachers to Men should be here! 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 "what's wrong with new YORK?" — Coficluded, 
 
 To account for what is ''wrong" with any city, any 
 nation, or any individual, it is only necessary to know the 
 real religion of that city, nation, or individual; for the 
 word ''religion" stands for the relation between the soul 
 and its Maker — otherwise, for the very deepest and clos- 
 est relation there is or can be. No tie can possibly ap- 
 proach in intimacy the tie between a creator and the 
 creature he has planned and vitalized. If the creature 
 in any respect misconceives this tie and so hinders the 
 full current that seeks to flow from his creator to him- 
 self, he does and must suffer loss of power and perfection 
 to that extent. He will play his part in life less well and 
 less nobly, and the more like him in the community or in 
 the nation, the less well and less nobly will that commun- 
 ity, or that nation, play also its part. 
 
 Now the city of New York, religiously speaking, is 
 chiefly Catholic, — Anglican CathoHc (or Episcopalian) 
 in her endlessly influential society classes, and Roman 
 Catholic in her enormous foreign classes. Moreover, 
 among her foreigners she counts one million Jews; and 
 as Jews are practically Unitarians, they tremendously 
 re-inforce the Unitarian spirit which Thomas Jefferson 
 hoped would eventually become, and which in fact has 
 
70 NEiy YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 become, our national religious spirit. Between these 
 great preponderating religious strata New York Protes- 
 tanism bulks but a weak and shallow layer. True that 
 the leading Protestant denominations have in New York 
 their respective headquarters and publishing houses; but 
 the situation persists that Catholicism and Judaism in 
 the American metropolis are mighty, and flamboyant, and 
 super-potent, and that Evangelical or Trinitarian Pro- 
 testantism is practically obscure and mostly overridden. 
 
 A brief retrospect may help us to realize where we 
 are. 
 
 More than one hundred years before the embarkation 
 of the Pilgrims for this western land, Columbus had dis- 
 covered the New World and Luther had rediscovered 
 the Old Bible. Columbus had sailed under the commis- 
 sion and protection of the Spanish crown. In the name 
 of that crown he and later navigators and soldiers ex- 
 plored and took possession of the Caribbean Islands and 
 of Central and South America; and the civilization they 
 planted in these vast territories was naturally the Spanish 
 civilization. This civilization was the Catholic or 
 "Bishop" civilization that held the Church as supreme 
 over the State, and the Bishop as overlord of the Church, 
 because he was the sole depository of the Sacraments 
 through which flowed the mercy and grace of God to 
 man. 
 
 Simple and stern was the formula : 
 
 "Without the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's 
 Supper, no salvation; and without the Bishop, or a Priest 
 consecrated by the Bishop, no Sacraments." 
 
 Such is the quintessential doctrine, of the Catholic 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 71 
 
 Church, the doctrine held by all true Catholics, the doc- 
 trine that makes them "Catholics," whether Greek Catho- 
 lics,. Roman Catholics, Anglican Catholics, or (as we call 
 them in the United States) Episcopalians. In all of them 
 the Bishop holds the Key, and is practically, therefore, 
 the Door of that Church which was founded by Christ 
 for the spread and maintenance of His Gospel. To be 
 wholly and truly within that church you must enter it 
 by that "bishop" key or door, otherwise you are only 
 in a "sect" — only in the vestibule of the divine edifice — 
 if even that ! The "covenanted" mercies of God, namely, 
 the forgiveness of your sins, daily grace enal^ling you 
 to lead the Christ-life, and endless heaven-bliss after 
 death, are not surely and absolutely yours as they are 
 the "Catholic" Christian's. As a schismatic and a sec- 
 tarian, yours are only the "uncovenanted" mercies; that 
 is, God may extend them to you if He will; but they are 
 not promised to you — are not certain in the sense that 
 they are certain to the Catholic. As the Israelites of 
 the ancient world were God's "chosen" people, entitled to 
 special privileges and blessings, so have the Catholics 
 nominated themselves God's chosen of the modern world — 
 the only legitimate "inheritors of the promises." 
 
 But Luther's re-discovery of the Bible, and its trans- 
 lation by him and his followers into their native tongues, 
 shattered in many minds the previous universal faith and 
 confidence in this "bishop" doorway to God. Luther and 
 his fellow reformers read in their Bibles Christ's saying: 
 "I am the Door — the Door of Eternal Life open to the 
 whole human race, and into which any one may enter 
 who feels repentance for his sins and that faith in Me 
 
V 
 
 ^2 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 as the Son of God which makes man forever forsake 
 sin, or 'self,' and follow God, or 'love.' " 
 
 Many English reformers, therefore, understood and 
 practiced Baptism and the Lord's Supper only as outward 
 rites ordained by Christ on the same principle that the 
 soldier enlisting in an army must put on the uniform 
 prescribed by the government he serves. In themselves 
 Baptism and the Lord's Supper neither do nor can avail 
 anything whatever for the salvation of man or woman 
 without the loving heart toward God and man and equally 
 the transformed life which evidences that heart. 
 
 Thus in the belief of multitudes, the great central doc- 
 trine of the Catholic Apostolic Succession fell from the 
 high spiritual throne from which for a thousand years 
 it had towered above and dominated European Christen- 
 dom, and the Bible was exalted in its place. 
 
 The Bible gave and Luther echoed the Magna Charta 
 to all Christian men and women that they are, as St. 
 John expressed it, "kings and priests unto God."* Every 
 human being, that is, must be his or her own "king," 
 to rule him or her own self according to the unchange- 
 able Law of Love. Every human being must be his 
 or her own "priest," to offer his or her own undivided 
 self as that "living sacrifice" unto Love which Christ 
 both by precept and example enjoined upon every one of 
 his followers. 
 
 From Luther's day, then, the Bible and not the Bishop 
 became to multitudes the supreme authority on Right and 
 Wrong; the Bible and not the Bishop became the highest 
 
 * Rev. 1:16, and 5:10. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 73 
 
 Court of Appeal as to what is essential and what non- 
 essential in constituting a Christian Church. 
 
 The thousand-year spiritual rule of the Bishop in 
 Europe had been purely masculine, because from the life 
 of the Roman bishops and priests Woman and Home 
 were excluded. Through this one-sex rule, as all un- 
 tempered by mother, or sister, or wife, or daughter, 
 humanity had suffered so terrifically that the reaction 
 against that rule was corresponding. "Away with pre- 
 lacy r\ became the bitter wide-echoing cry of millions. 
 The Lutherans and the Calvinists, the Huguenots and 
 the Dutch, the Scotch and English Presbyterians and 
 Independents, the New England Pilgrims, Puritans, Bap- 
 tists, and Quakers, — all founded denominations whose 
 highest officers were "elders," or "ministers" only, or 
 even, as with the Quakers, laymen. 
 
 Under the respective banners of "Catholic" and "Pro- 
 testant" the two great religious camps into which Europe 
 swiftly divided fought out their differences on the battle- 
 field as well as from the pulpit — until, after a whole cen- 
 tury of blood and agony, English contestants for the 
 Bible as against the Bishop exiled themselves by tens of 
 thousands to the wilderness-coast of North America, 
 there to obtain peace for themselves and freedom for 
 their convictions. 
 
 Thirteen colonies were founded, of which two, Vir- 
 ginia and Georgia, were from the first chiefly Anglican 
 Catholic, and Maryland was for a short period Roman 
 Catholic; but the other colonies were in church govern- 
 ment either Congregational, or Baptist, or Dutch Re- 
 formed, or Lutheran, or Quaker, or Presbyterian. Also 
 
74 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 a very remarkable fact is that during the hundred and 
 seventy-five years from the founding of Jamestown to 
 the American Revolution, though there was in every 
 colony an English Governor with staff, and therefore, of 
 course, an established Anglican church for ther"i to wor-' 
 ship in, there was never settled on the soil of the thirteen 
 colonies any bishop of the Catholic Apostolic Succession, 
 whether Roman or Anglican. The divine Liturgy of the 
 Anglican Church (two-thirds of it, like the Lutheran, 
 translated from the pre-existing Greek and Roman Lit- 
 urgies, and practically, therefore, the assembled prayers 
 of all the saintliest saints of fifteen hundred Christian 
 ages) was in use throughout all the Anglican congrega- 
 tions of the colonies, but their clergy were either colon- 
 ists from England or men who had been obliged to go 
 to England for ordination. 
 
 "In whatever else they differ," says William Elliott Griffis, 
 "our ancestors and their descendants agree in these points; — 
 the liberation of religion from sectarian, priestly and politi- 
 cal control; the elimination of priestly mediators between 
 God and man; the practical abolition of priestly monopoly in 
 religion; the separation of Church and State; freedom of 
 conscience; the priesthood of believers; the rights of the 
 independent congregation; the liberty of expounding; prison 
 reform; abolition of human slavery; the salvation of infants 
 and of the seekers after God in non-Christian lands; the 
 equality of souls before God ; and an avowed obligation toward 
 social and political reform."* 
 
 The North American civilization, then, which brought 
 to glorious birth this new nation of the United States, 
 
 * "Roger Williams," by Edward J. Carpenter, Litt.D.; Introduction, 
 pp. 23, 24. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 75 
 
 was emphatically a Bible civilization as contrasted with 
 the century-older South American, or Bishop civilization. 
 
 Whether Catholic South America has led Protestant 
 North America and the world, or whether Protestant 
 North America has led Catholic South America and the 
 world, let the facts decide. 
 
 "By their fruits ye shall know them." 
 
 Surely it was a sufficiently magnificent and unique 
 achievement — this founding and originating a Land not 
 only of Freedom but also of Peace and Plenty to which 
 the poor and the oppressed of every race and clime were 
 welcome — to have given pause even to the romantic and 
 over-sanguine mind of Thomas Jefferson, and to have 
 made him hesitate to throw open the American suffrage 
 and the American offices to all male comers on such all- 
 too-easy terms; for the native-born has to wait twenty- 
 one years before he can vote, — but the foreign-born only 
 five. 
 
 Awful and measureless blunder ! — one of the worst 
 cases in history of "The fathers have eaten sour grapes 
 and the children's teeth are set on edge" ; for to-day, less 
 than a hundred years since the death of Jefferson, the two 
 civilizations of the Protestant and the Catholic — other- 
 wise the Bible and the Bishop civilizations — are in a 
 soundless but life-and-death struggle in this land. One 
 or the other of them must go down to eternal defeat for 
 they can not co-exist. To each other they are death ; as 
 absolutely antagonistic, as mutually subversive and de- 
 structive, as are light and darkness, as are noonday and 
 midnight. 
 
 Therefore, even as this book maintains that what is 
 
76 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 "wrong" with the Universe is the "Self" of Lucifer as 
 against the "Thou" of Deity, and that what is "wrong" 
 with the World is the ruthless non-Brotherhood of Man 
 toward the Sisterhood of Woman with its terrible re- 
 sultants of masculine tyranny and depravity and of femi- 
 nine poverty, subjection and degradation — so equally must 
 it maintain and earnestly impress upon its readers that 
 what is "wrong" with our country is Catholic, i.e. 
 "Bishop" Foreignism. 
 
 Foreignism is Catholicism: Catholicism is Masculin- 
 ism: Masculinism is Luciferianism — and there we are! 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE ''bible" and THE ''bISHOp" CIVILIZATIONS. 
 
 Our native and adored land was originally a Protestant 
 land; it still is a non-Catholic land; it may yet again be- 
 come a Bible land, whose superiority over all and every 
 "bishop" land will inhere in the fact that a written stan- 
 dard which can not change itself, and which has remained 
 practically unchanged for nearly two thousand years, 
 is because of that very fact far more to be trusted than 
 can safely be trusted the teaching of bishops who are 
 superseded by successors every ten or fifteen or twenty- 
 five years, and who each in his term of office inevitably 
 emphasizes that portion of Bible truth which most appeals 
 to himself and his hierarchy, and as inevitably more or 
 less neglects the rest; whereas, when the entire Book 
 remains the standard moral authority of its believers, 
 there glow always on high for each and every one of 
 them to read, mark, learn, and morally assimilate — all 
 the precepts and examples for the Good, and all the warn- 
 ings and examples against the Bad, of which our so 
 easily tempted human nature stands in need. Thus an 
 ideal or all-round Christian manhood and womanhood 
 are more likely to develop in a Protestant or "Bible" than 
 in a Catholic or "Bishop" civilization. 
 
V 
 
 78 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 But our foreign vote — which is the vote of the CathoHc 
 or "Bishop" civiHzation — has taken away the Bible from 
 our American school-children, so that by now nearly two 
 generations of American citizens have grown to manhood 
 and womanhood without Public-school Bible Instruction. 
 Only twenty-five per cent, of the children go to Sunday 
 schools ; these schools are held once a week for one hour, 
 one-half of which is devoted to the Bible-teaching; learn- 
 ing the lesson is not compulsory, and four times out of 
 five it is not learned; attendance is not and can not be 
 compulsory on either pupils or teachers, and the teachers 
 are usually young and untrained girls. Can a more 
 wretchedly weak and inadequate national agency be im- 
 agined than this to which we confide the training of our 
 multi-millions in the vast and vital subjects of Religion 
 and Morality ? 
 
 When in the eighteen-forties, the potato famine in Ire- 
 land drove over here within a few years a great host of 
 Catholic Irish who settled in New York and the greater 
 Atlantic cities, and when contemporaneously the conti- 
 nental revolutions of the same decade exiled a similar 
 army of Germans who pushed westward to Chicago and 
 the Mississippi, — neither Germans nor Irish had any in- 
 tention of accepting the Bible-Americanism they found 
 here ; nor was it very long before the Catholic Bishop 
 Hughes in New York Citj had ousted the Bible and Co- 
 education from the New York public schools. The first, 
 he claimed, was contrary to the First Amendment to the 
 Federal Constitution; the second was contrary to Catho- 
 lic conviction and usage. The Ward Election system 
 being an instrument ready-fashioned to the "good" bish- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 79 
 
 op's hand (our newspapers always call the Catholic 
 bishop, priest, or nun "good"), it was easy enough to 
 oust them. It was but to see that sufficient of the faithful 
 lived in enough city wards to wield the balance of power 
 and elect the men who would vote in the city council as 
 the "good" bishop desired. 
 
 But let us inquire whether to read and memorize the 
 Bible in the public schools really is ''unconstitutional." 
 
 The North American colonies, as has been already said, 
 were founded mainly by men with Bibles in their hands 
 and with the resolve in their hearts that they would live 
 closer to that Bible than laymen had ever lived Defore. 
 In Massachusetts, the hamlets as soon as possible after 
 their settlement opened schools wherein the children 
 might be taught to read the Bible — the Bible itself being 
 their chief reading book. Very early (1636) Harvard 
 College was founded, and with it special schools to pre- 
 pare for it, in order that the youth inclined to the min- 
 istry might be able to read the sacred Book in the an- 
 cient tongues and thereby the better expound it to future 
 flocks. Up to the time of the Revolution the Bible was 
 read and memorized in all the schools of all the colonies 
 as a matter of course, and after it the usage remained 
 unchanged until the appearance in force upon the New 
 York scene of the Catholic Irish. 
 
 The First Amendment of the Constitution forbade the 
 establishment by law of any form of religion throughout 
 the United States. If, therefore, the men who drew up 
 and who adopted the Constitution had supposed the read- 
 ing and study of the Bible in the public schools was in 
 
V 
 
 8o NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 effect to "establish" a "religion," the Volume would of 
 course at once have been ousted from all such schools. 
 The fact that before the Catholic hierarchy made war 
 upon it such exclusion was not suggested, nor even 
 thought of, and that the Bible remained for the first half- 
 century of the Republic a schoolbook as national and as 
 universal as the spelling primer itself, proves that the 
 founders who drew up the Constitution did not regard its 
 First Amendment as prohibitory of the Bible in the public 
 schools. 
 
 For whether the Bible is in very truth the "Word of 
 God" or only the Wisdom of Man trying to formulate 
 an ideal God and also the moral standards consistent with 
 such a God — still is it the great Book of Right and Wrong 
 which towers into the human firmament far beyond any 
 and all similar books, and which because of its trans- 
 cendence has been the dominating ethical influence of 
 Europe and of both Americas. The civilization of these 
 continents, even if haltingly and imperfectly, patterns 
 itself upon that Book, nor can any wrong to an American 
 child be greater than to let him grow up either in ignor- 
 ance or in contempt of it. Nevertheless, the Protestant 
 American Native accepted the ruling of the Catholic 
 Irish Immigrant in the matter — the Protestant clergy 
 insanely fancying that the Sunday Schools which they 
 had at the time everywhere inaugurated, would make 
 good the exclusion of the Holy Scripture from the secular 
 schools. 
 . Nor zvas this all. 
 
 Together with the Bible, general history was also 
 quietly eliminated from all the grades of the schools 
 
NEW YORK: A SYI\^ PHONIC STUDY. 8l 
 
 below the High Schools, because general history can not 
 be taught without teaching the great fact of the Refor- 
 mation of ReHgion and of the Catholic corruption, op- 
 pression, and cruelty against which that Reformation 
 was the ''protest." Our United States is the direct off- 
 spring of the Protestant Reformation, and our history 
 has no adequate explanation as divorced from that 
 mightly upheaval. Before the eighteen-fifties, general 
 history was taught throughout the public and all other 
 schools of our country as a matter of course, the best 
 and also the most popular compendium of the day being 
 the so-called "Peter Parley's" history as compiled for its 
 publisher by the youthful and as yet unknown Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne. 
 
 But the Catholic Hierarchy intrigued and protested; 
 and to please them the American grade-schools univers- 
 ally shut down on this study of General History. Not 
 until a pupil reached the High School — this being only 
 about one in a hundred — was any hint of any history 
 vouchsafed him save that of his own country, which, of 
 course, did not begin until after A. D. 1600! Every 
 now and then some foreigner remarks with surprise upon 
 the prevailing American ignorance of the history of the 
 human race. The American subserviency to the Catholic 
 Church, and this alone, is the sufficient explanation of it. 
 
 Nor is this all. 
 
 The newspaper press, being chiefly in the hands of 
 Catholic reporters and editors, for years has been under- 
 mining American pride and gratitude toward the New 
 England element of American ancestry by perpetually 
 gibing, sneering, and lying against "Puritan" history. 
 
82 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 laws, customs, and ideals. For example, they always 
 speak of the Puritan "burning" of witches in Salem. 
 Now — no witch was ever ''burned" in any of the North 
 American colonies. Nineteen were hanged in Salem, but 
 New Englanders can retort that this handful is infinitely 
 offset by the millions of women, mostly old, who in 
 Catholic Europe, between 1300 and 1700, were tried 
 and executed for witchcraft, many of them at the stake. 
 That most glorious and stainless of all girls, Joan of 
 Arc, was burned alive at nineteen by Catholic bishops as 
 a "witch !" 
 
 Another specially favorite anti-American fling is at 
 the Puritan "blue laws," one of which, so it is claimed, 
 forbade a man to kiss his wife on Sundays. No such 
 law was ever on any statute book of any New England 
 colony; but Americans accept this calumny, as they do 
 that of witch-burning, because they are so ignorant of 
 their own history that they don't know it is not true. It 
 is indeed a sad and bitter fact that the deprivation of 
 American pubHc-school children below fifteen of all 
 knowledge and consciousness of Human History save 
 only the history of the United States, has had the effect 
 of atrophying in the national mind the inborn gift and 
 desire for the vital and fascinating branch of which the 
 poet justly said, "The proper study of mankind is man." 
 
 Made bold by impunity, the Irish Catholics are now 
 claiming that it was the Irish who fought and bled at 
 Bunker Hill and who were the mainstay of the American 
 Revolution and largest factor in its triumphant success, 
 though the truth is that only about four per cent, of the 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 83 
 
 American troops were of Irish birth, and those were 
 mainly Scotch Irish Presbyterians! 
 
 How inconceivable in Protestant Americans is it that 
 they countenance and support a newspaper press so 
 overwhelmingly edited by the foreign-born and foreign- 
 fathered ! How incredible that they do not establish and 
 maintain a powerful journalism which will daily cham- 
 pion and do battle for themselves and for their fore^ 
 fathers J 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 CATHOLIC FOREIGNISM VS. AMERICAN CO-EDUCATION. 
 
 As for the sex-segregation brought about in the public 
 schools by Catholic influence — the sewer-like morality 
 now spreading everywhere among the American people 
 is no doubt largely due to this separation, since to mini- 
 mize the animal side of sex in growing boys and girls 
 it is absolutely indispensable to enlarge the intellectual 
 rapport between them and to cultivate in them the en- 
 joyment of mind by mind — and this is and only can be at- 
 tained through co-education under enlightened and sym- 
 pathetic adult supervision. With, in many sections, sixty 
 or more per cent, of the public school teachers Roman 
 Catholics who disapprove of co-education, and with 
 multitudes of Catholic pupils in the public schools from 
 tenement houses so overcrowded that the decencies of 
 life are impossible and the children are more or less 
 demoralized before they reach school at all — it is not 
 surprising that we now hear from many quarters that 
 "co-education is a failure" and that it must be given up. 
 
 ''By their fruits ye shall know them." 
 
 Co-education was a Protestant American evolution of 
 this Protestant American people. Nothing is or can 
 be more true than that a people is what its education 
 makes it, and the patriotic American can point with 
 glowing pride to the co-education which, and mostly 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHOXIC STUDY. 85 
 
 under the now often decried women teachers, has sent 
 American manhood to the very apex of the existing 
 human pyramid and constitutes him at this moment not 
 only the Leader but the Hope of the world. How did 
 co-education achieve this? Mainly because in her daily 
 class-impact w^ith the embryo manhood of the school-boy, 
 the American school-girl unconsciously takes over from 
 him some of the steel fibre which is the manhood quint- 
 essential and which when later she becomes a mother 
 she transmits to her son. Thus, to begin with, the Ameri- 
 can boy is born more of a man than he would have been 
 had his mother been educated with and companioned only 
 by girls — a proposition which is proven by the fact that 
 in business enterprise and daring the men from the West, 
 where co-education is still almost universal, often relegate 
 eastern men to second place even in the latter's own 
 section. Contrarywise, while the co-educated American 
 is the boldest and most determined of living men, he is 
 also the most humane and chivalrous, because in the 
 school-room his women teachers and girl class-mates 
 diffuse through his spirit those emanations of the "eternal 
 feminine" without whose softening and meliorating in- 
 fluences men are too often "hard as stone and dry as 
 stubble-wheat." 
 
 The American boy "sissified" by co-education and 
 women-teachers! What teachers other than men have 
 the Spanish military ever had? and yet in the Cuban 
 war they crumpled in the American grasp like a handful 
 of feathers ! If " 'tis an ill bird that fouls its own nest," 
 what of a retired Admiral of the United States expressing 
 from the platform his disapproval of the co-education 
 
86 .\EIV YORK: A SYMPIIOX/C STUDY. 
 
 which is the special differentiation of the pul)lic schools 
 of his country from those of nearly all other countries? 
 If, as the admiral claimed, co-education "feminizes' 
 boys, why are not the sons of our own upper-class 
 Americans, who now almost universally are educated in 
 boys' schools, the most masterful men we have — by which 
 I mean the men who dare and do the biggest things and 
 who achieve the greatest results? Notoriously the 
 Americans who are subduing the globe are the sons 
 of the "plain people" — of the co-educated "masses" and 
 not of the segregated "classes." 
 
 Yet the Catholic priests and bishops — yet the daily 
 press which they inspire and control — together with a 
 multitude of foreign-minded and therefore women-despis- 
 ing college presidents and professors and school-principals 
 and school trustees, are now a practical unit in their 
 warfare upon American Co-education. 
 
 Hardly a year passes but some co-educational school 
 or college is turned back toward the Dead Past as a 
 single-sex — or, more branding and degrading to woman- 
 hood still — a "segregated" institution. Great God ! 
 Have not these reactionaries all the experience of Eu- 
 rope, Asia, Africa, and South and Central America, to 
 warn them against this suicidal policy? Let the Heredi- 
 tary American take it from the present writer and pon- 
 der it well — that if he continues at the behest of the 
 foreign-born and also the foreign-minded of his country 
 to give up co-education, he may as well at the same time 
 resign himself to the inevitable subsidence of American 
 Manhood Pre-eminence. His sons will not be able to 
 continue his inventive and engineering and financial 
 
.\EIV YORK: A SYMI'HONIC S'lUDV. 87 
 
 leadership because they will not he born as well as he 
 was born. They will be the morally and intellectually 
 weakened sons of mothers brought up only with girls — 
 and this will be "sissification" indeed ! 
 
 I admit that co-education requires a higher, more 
 spiritual type of teacher than do segregated classes. 
 Under the many Catholic teachers in the public schools 
 who do not believe in it and who, being Catholics, are 
 rar more sex-conscious than is general with Protestants — 
 co-education may possibly involve danger. 
 
 But that is no reason why the masterful American 
 manhood which itself is the product of co-education 
 should distrust and abandon this benign and beautiful 
 American Institution — the true Mother of pure and happy 
 marriages and of beautiful and noble children! That is 
 but a reason the more for taking co-education under its 
 own ardent and jealous championship and studying out 
 and guarding it from whatever risks may be connected 
 with it. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 MORE BISHOP CIVILIZATION. 
 
 Besides taking away the Bible and Co-education from 
 American children and youth, the Catholic or "Bishop" 
 element of the United States, by standing solidly to- 
 gether, has possessed itself of the vast majority of the 
 municipal places, offices, and emoluments throughout the 
 towns and cities of the North and West, from scrub- 
 women, messenger boys, and street sweepers to the town 
 and city police, the clerkships, school teachers, school 
 trustees, aldermen, mayors, judges, and town representa- 
 tives to the State Legislatures. In the largest, richest, 
 and therefore most powerful sections of the Republic, the 
 government has passed away from the Hereditary Ameri- 
 cans in whose hands by the foundation American prin- 
 ciple of Majority Rule it rightfully belongs. 
 
 For who and what is a "Hereditary American?" He 
 or she is a native-born American one or more of whose 
 ancestors voted for one or more of the first nine presi- 
 dents of the United States, — Washington, Adams, Jef- 
 ferson, Madison, Monroe, Quincy Adams, Van Buren, 
 Jackson, and the first Harrison. There are said to be 
 over sixty millions of them in the country to thirty mil- 
 lions of the foreign-born-and-fathered-and-grandfathered 
 whom the unrestricted immigration of the last seventy- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 89 
 
 five years have incorpoi>ated with ourselves. Of the 
 latter, according to the Catholics themselves, over sixteen 
 millions are Catholics. 
 
 Early in June, 1914, the newspapers recorded that at 
 an open air meeting on Staten Island, New York, two 
 thousand Catholic laymen "listened bare-headed" to, and 
 passed with "acclamation," resolutions protesting against 
 the appointment of the able and progressive ex-mayor of 
 Rome as the official representative of the Italian Govern- 
 ment at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, be- 
 cause "the said Ernesto Nathan is an avowed enemy of 
 the Catholic Church and notorious for his insults to our 
 Holy Father, Pope Pius X," and therefore "the said 
 Ernesto Nathan is persona non grata to the 16,000,000 
 CathoHc citizens of these United States as such pleni- 
 potentiary." 
 
 If the Catholics of the United States are sixteen mil- 
 lions, and the remaining seventy-four millions are non- 
 Catholics, in fairness and justice to the latter the for- 
 mer should fill less than one-fifth of the town and city 
 offices and places; whereas the almost incredible truth 
 is that in the northern half of the country four-fifths of 
 the urban positions in the gift of the people are in the 
 hands of foreign-bo^n-or-fathered citizens who, as one 
 of their most famous bosses admitted on the witness 
 stand, "are in politics for their pockets all the time." 
 Tammany Hall in New York is and the similar political 
 "machines" in every northern city from ocean to ocean 
 are nothing but the Irish Catholic Solidarity re-inforced 
 with equally self-centred Catholics of other races. The 
 Irish whom the famine of the eighteen-forties sent over 
 
90 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 here by tens of thousands, settled in the North Atlantic 
 cities, and as they possessed the English tongue and 
 were the first Catholic race in the field, they naturally 
 have kept the Catholic political leadership and also the 
 labor leadership over all succeeding Catholic immigrants, 
 the revengeful Italians included. 
 
 In the persons of newspaper reporters and the heads 
 of newspaper departments, the same all-permeating ele- 
 ment runs the great city journals and exploits most of 
 the sports and amusements. Even though the owners 
 of such journals may be Protestants or Jews the depart- 
 ment editors and reporters are chiefly Catholic. Ameri- 
 can Protestanism practically no longer possesses a city 
 press and on every important paper is an employe whose 
 special charge it is to see that nothing unfavorable to 
 the Catholic Church gets into its columns. Thus in read- 
 ing their daily papers non-Catholic Americans perforce 
 read them through Catholic spectacles. This accounts 
 for the decline of American chivalry and courtesy, for 
 the giving up of the word "lady" in journalism and fic- 
 tion and largely in real life, and for the crying down of 
 swift death by lynching or by court martial as the only 
 adequate penalty for the most atrocious crime on earth — 
 the crime of atrocious assault upon*Svomanhood or girl- 
 hood by manhood; because this crime is always unpro- 
 voked, is always wilful, is always deliberate, and it also 
 blasts and brands its innocent victim with shame and 
 shunning for life. There is absolutely no excuse for this 
 crime, and there should be absolutely no forgiveness for 
 it. 
 
 Yet such is the fatuous admiration of and confidpn ; 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 91 
 
 in the national policy of "toleration" as supposed to be 
 laid down in the first amendment to the Constitution, to- 
 gether with the bombs, the bludgeons, the pistol-shots, 
 the blackmail and the boycotts of these gentle and grate- 
 ful children of the "bishop" civilization — that this writer 
 is aware of only two authors of national renown and 
 prestige (the Hon. Thomas E. Watson of Georgia, and 
 the Rev. Josiah Strong, D.D. of New York) who have 
 thus far had the courage to call attention to the Sleep- 
 less Power which is so stealthily mastering and trans- 
 forming this Republic. The American patriots who to- 
 day, are rousing the nation to the Catholic peril — the 
 editors of the Protestant Magazine, of the Menace and 
 similar publications, are men who until their various 
 periodicals and papers had attracted a following, were 
 unknown outside their own communities and who even 
 now are as much as possible ignored, despised, and dis- 
 credited.* 
 
 Within the last twenty-five years the writer has often 
 spoken to American men about this Catholic domination 
 of our United States. Almost invariably has she received 
 the reply : "Some day there'll be a war." 
 
 And of course there will be a war, unless modern 
 Ariericans prove even more degenerate than the ancient 
 
 * When in 1913 the Hon. William Sulzer was Governor of the great 
 State of New York, he was warned that if he failed to sign certain bills 
 which would give the control of the New York City Board of Educa- 
 tion into the hands of its Catholic members, it would end his political 
 career. He vetoed the bills, and within a year he was impeached on 
 trumped-up charges, tried by a packed senatorial jury, found guilty and 
 turned out of his splendid office! And the ten or eleven millions of 
 that State doubtless still continue to thing they live under "free" 
 American Institutions! 
 
92 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 Romans who fought under Fompey against the dictator- 
 ship of Caesar, or unless they find out and follow "a more 
 excellent way." 
 
 The inventors, the engineers, the promotors, and the 
 business men of this country lead the world; and back 
 of them is the American farmer. Is it then conceivable 
 that these farmers and thinkers and financiers will for- 
 ever submit to be politically governed and exploited and 
 plundered by foreign-born workingmen and their Ameri- 
 can-born-and-educated, but foreign-minded because 
 "Catholic," sons and grandsons? 
 
 For to be at once a loyal Catholic and a i,oyal 
 United States American is intellectually impossible. 
 
 Has Protestantism — Mother of Home, Mother of Lib- 
 erty, Mother of Popular Education, Mother of Woman- 
 hood Education, Mother of Cleanliness, Mother of Sani- 
 tation, Mother of Sciences, Mother of Invexitions, Mother 
 of Comfort, Mother of Co-operation, Mother of Modern 
 Poetry, Drama and Fiction and forging rapidly to the 
 front as the Nursing Mother of the Fine Arts, and all 
 because she is at heart the Daughter of the Bible, has 
 She sunk so low that she will permit the mighty land 
 which her Bible led and dedicated to God and Christ, to 
 be permanently moulded and governed by the Bishop 
 Civilization that drove her across the Atlantic in the first 
 place, and which hates and scorns and vilifies and under- 
 mines her now? "Black Protestants T ''Stinking Pro- 
 testants!'' are their terms for us among themselves. Yea, 
 even the Catholic urchins in the street cry out when re- 
 proaching one another, "O you Protestant T 
 
 Some years ago in Chicago a large congregation of 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 93 
 
 Polish Catholics seceded from the Roman Communion, 
 sent their leading priest to be consecrated as a bishop 
 by the "Old Catholic" bishops of Switzerland, and set 
 up a 'Tolish Catholic Independent Church" of their own. 
 Desiring after a time to affiliate with the Episcopal 
 Church, this bishop and one of his priests presented their 
 claims at a meeting of Episcopal clergy of the diocese 
 of New York City. The Polish bishop was asked whether 
 he and his people, calling themselves and still being 
 Catholics in everything save submission to the Roman 
 hierarchy, could consistently enroll themselves in the 
 "Protestant Episcopal Church," — this being the latter's 
 legal title? The Polish priest who was interpreting for 
 his bishop, promptly replied that "the Poles are Catholics, 
 and being Catholics have been brought up with the idea 
 that a Protestant was some awful thing. However," 
 added the Father, 'T do not emphasize that the Episcopal 
 Church is necessarily Protestant" (here there were 
 "laughter and cheers" from. the listening clergy) ; "and 
 if they ask me more, I say that at the present time we 
 also protest against the Catholic Church, — so we are all 
 'Protestants' together." 
 
 This writer earnestly asks the Protestant American 
 reader to take "a realizing sense" of this Polish cleric's 
 remark that a "Protestant" is "some awful thing" — as 
 indicating the attitude toward our seventy or more non- 
 Catholic milHons of the sixteen or more Catholic millions 
 within the United States. 
 
 Here is a gifted Christian people, the Polish people, 
 conquered and divided among three alien monarchies, 
 (two of them Catholic), their nationality, their flag, 
 
94 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 and, in their schools, even their language denied them. 
 By millions they have come over to us. Everything in 
 this land, every right, every privilege, every office, save 
 the two highest, is open to them. "There's none to molest 
 them, none to make them afraid.'' They live in peace, 
 and the measure of their prosperity is only the measure 
 of their own industry and intelligence. The political, 
 educational, and philanthropic institutions under which 
 they flourish are all the work of Protestants, and most 
 of the direct taxes by which the institutions are supported 
 are paid by Protestants. What rights, privileges, and 
 happiness they have here are all evolutions of Protest- 
 antism. Here they dwell and here they leave after them 
 their children; and yet even the educated class to which 
 their clergy belong is "brought iip with the idea that a 
 Protestant is some aivful thing," 
 
 Now if our educated Catholic foreigners so regard us, 
 what must our ignorant Catholic immigrants think of 
 us, and is it not probable that the nation-wide war of 
 foreign trade-unionists upon American employers, led 
 as it almost invariably is by the Catholic Irish, is de 
 profiindis a religious war, — is practically a war of Catho- 
 lic against Protestant, — is an expression of the Catholic 
 feeling that if Protestant capitalists can be harried, crip- 
 pled, or even ruined by ever-mounting exactions — so 
 much the better ? 
 
 Yet so little self-respect and self-assertion have we 
 Protestants of the United States — so little gratitude to 
 and reverence for our Protestant forefathers and found- 
 ers — that to the nearly three-quarters of a million Catho- 
 lics that pour down annually upon us we never teach 
 
AEH^ YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 95 
 
 one line of that Bible which inspired and is the soul of 
 our civilization; nay, such is the Paganism to which we 
 are now committed, that to please the million Jews of 
 New York City we no longer suffer the public school 
 pupils of that city to hear even the name of Jesus ! — 
 whereas, our attitude toward all our immigrants should 
 be, and in the future must be, or our mighty Republic as 
 a Republic is doomed; — ''Your children are to read the 
 great Book of Right and Wrong in our public schools 
 with our children; your children are to learn the facts 
 of our Protestant history with our children, or you shall 
 NOT land on our shores !" 
 
 Vice-President Marshall said lately in public: "What 
 is needed in our schools is more God Almighty." 
 
 But how can we get "more God Almighty" into the 
 schools when we keep out of them the only Book that 
 ever told the world about Him?* 
 
 * Judging from his name, Judge Thomas Dowdy of Boston is an Irish 
 Catholic, and during a recent session of the Municipal Court at which 
 he was presiding he said: "There is altogether too much perjury in these 
 courts, and it has got to stop. People come in here with no idea of 
 telling the truth. Attorneys say to the court that they can't make their 
 clients tell the truth, that they don't know whether their clients are 
 telling the truth or not. Something must be done about it." The 
 "something" to do, and the only thing, is to teach the Ten Command- 
 ments to the children in the Public Schools and to restore Bible-reading 
 therein; and how would Judge Dowdy and his co-religionists relish this? 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE WARD AND ELECTION DISTRICT SYSTEMS 
 
 Is there then any peaceful policy that can lift the yoke 
 of the Roman Bishop civilization from this our American 
 Bible civilization which it is now so terrorizing and de- 
 moralizing and supplanting? 
 
 One peaceful remedy, and one alone, could lift it, and 
 that is — Personal instead of Area Representation; other- 
 wise the abolition of Wards in all towns and cities with 
 the election at large of all Councilmen from the whole 
 community, — and similarly the abolition of the Election 
 Districts throughout all the States with the election at 
 large from each State as a whole, of its State and of its 
 Congressional Representatives and Senators. 
 
 "Just as the Angles, Saxons, and other Teutonic races 
 who conquered Britain brought to their new homes their 
 kinship, their village communities, and their settled 
 framework of society with its own laws and customs and 
 a certain rude representation in local affairs" so did their 
 descendants a thousand years later bring to the North 
 American coasts a similar "settled framework," and they 
 founded it, as the first was founded, upon local repre- 
 sentation. 
 
 The "town-meeting" of New England began with the 
 compact of the men-pilgrims on the Mayflower and landed 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 97 
 
 with them and with all successive New England pioneers. 
 For the first generation (1620-1664) only church mem- 
 bers were allowed to vote;. but thereafter the landholders 
 of New England and of all the colonies south of her 
 were the voters of their respective town-meetings, and 
 when the needs and interests of any colony required 
 mutual consultation and joint action, each town sent one 
 or more of its responsible voters to represent it in the 
 colonial council. In turn, the stress of the American 
 Revolt from England caused these councils to send to the 
 Continental Congress delegates representing each colony. 
 
 It was not until after the Revolution that men could 
 become voters merely because they were twenty-one years 
 old and had been a certain number of years in the coun- 
 try and of months in their voting district. During the 
 formative period of American Institutions which now 
 proves to have been our "great" period, voters were 
 obliged to have property or income enough to show that 
 they belonged to the class of "responsible" citizens. In 
 those days men of so little value to the community that 
 they paid no taxes were not trusted to vote away the 
 money of those who did. Such a state of affairs as that 
 of the City of Boston in 1906 — when her whole Board of 
 Aldermen paid all of them together only seven or eight 
 hundred dollars in taxes, but voted upon a city expen- 
 diture of over forty millions, — would have been incon- 
 ceivable. 
 
 Thus the original British suffrage represented land, or 
 area, and the original American suffrage that sprang from 
 it represented the same thing. A voter must be a land- 
 owner or a land tenant. Therefore it was not men that 
 
V 
 
 98 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 were represented; it was acres. The "brotherhood" en- 
 thusiasm of Jean Jacques Rousseau, with which Jeffer- 
 son so deeply sympathized, threw Jefferson's influence 
 and that of his followers into making voters out of male 
 citizens simply because they were men twenty-one years 
 old. Moreover, after the Jeffersonian Party came into 
 power, it needed voters to keep it there. Consequently 
 as *'men" only, male voters have ever since poured into 
 our naturalization ranks. 
 
 Unhappily, the oversight was made that though men 
 no longer needed to be property-owners in order to vote, 
 they could after all only vote within the specified dis- 
 trict in which at the time they were living, and only for 
 a candidate domiciled in the same district. Whether vot- 
 ing for town or for state or for national legislature they 
 were alike restricted to an area. 
 
 And from this political paradox and this alone, flows the 
 tremendous degeneration and disappointment of Ameri- 
 can Politics. The ''best" or standard American is not 
 in politics. He is rarely elected to office. Very often he 
 does not even vote. He can't be elected to any office 
 except from the petty district in which he lives, and to 
 ask it from or to companion with the foreign-born-and- 
 fathered voters within whose gift it too often is, goes 
 too much against the grain. Furthermore, he knows that 
 if he did get into the town council or the state legislature 
 he would meet there such a collection of limited spirits 
 as representatives from their limited districts, that he 
 could effect little for the worth-while things. And so 
 the Hereditary American keeps out of politics and his 
 countrv suffers "in the head and in the members" and 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 99 
 
 our "democratic institutions" get the blame and the scorn ! 
 Doubtless this writer would have blamed them too, 
 but that it was her privilege many years ago to hear the 
 disappointment explained and the remedy offered by 
 the briUiant and profound Charles Sanders Peirce of Har- 
 vard, later distinguished as the originator of the cele- 
 brated "Pragmatic Philosophy." 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 A philosopher's political diagnosis. 
 
 The period was that within five years after the Civil 
 War, when, as already stated in Part I of this work, the 
 two influential New York editors, E. L. Godkin, of the 
 Nation, and George William Curtis, of Harper's Weekly, 
 had begun their propaganda for Civil Service Reform 
 after the British model as the sole possible salvation for 
 American politics. 
 
 Mr. Peirce's comment upon their movement was as 
 follows. 
 
 These fellows are on the wrong track. The radical trouble 
 in American politics is not that men are appointed to office 
 without due examination as to fitness, though I grant this 
 to be an evil and that their demand for compulsory examina- 
 tions for civil service offices ought to be conceded. But sup- 
 pose these desired examinations established and all Civil 
 Service aspirants obliged to pass them; the chief failure in 
 modern American poHtics would not be remedied, and this 
 is, — that our best men are no longer attracted to or found 
 either in Congress, in our State Legislatures, or in our town 
 and city councils. 
 
 In proportion we have as many able and high-minded men 
 in the country as there were in the days of the Founders, 
 but they don't and won't go into politics, and so politics are 
 left to the inferior types among us, — to the petty Americans 
 and to venal foreigners. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. lOl 
 
 And why? Because the working of the ward and district 
 election-systems which we brought over from England bars 
 our great men. 
 
 No man can be elected to Congress save from the con- 
 gressional district wherein he resides. No man can be elected 
 to a town or city council save from the ward wherein he 
 resides. A man can not go independently before this whole 
 State of Massachusetts, for instance, which sends ten men 
 to the House of Representatives in Washington, and say to 
 the voters : "Such and such are my national political prin- 
 ciples. If one-tenth of the voters of the State are in sym- 
 pathy with them, and from my life-record believe that I can 
 adequately represent them, and will vote for me accordingly, 
 then these principles of ours can be voiced on the floor of 
 Congress." 
 
 Nor can a man's friends put him in independent nomination 
 before all the voters of Massachusetts and say: "This can- 
 didate stands for principles which are also our principles, and 
 such and such is his record in his community for character 
 and ability. Will one-tenth of you help us elect him? If 
 you will, we shall then be worthily represented in Wash- 
 ington." 
 
 No, (continued Mr. Peirce) let a man's principles, character 
 and achievement be what they may, he can only be nominated 
 and voted into legislative office in his own residence-district, 
 and if to all his other qualifications he can not add personal 
 popularity with the Toms and Dicks and Pats and Mikes of 
 that district, he can not be elected. 
 
 And suppose he is elected. His term is but for two years, 
 and while he is serving in Congress some man in his dis- 
 trict is ceaselessly wire-pulling to supplant him, so that he 
 can feel little or no security or satisfaction in his legislative 
 position. 
 
 Since, then, it is the "personal equation" and not a man's 
 merit or his talent that decides his political fate, respected 
 and self-respecting Americans — men able and accustomed to 
 command success in other directions chiefly on their talents 
 
102 NEW YORK: A hVMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 and merits, will not demean themselves to this condition. 
 The result is, as I said before, that our best men are not in 
 politics, and what is a still worse betrayal of our institutions, 
 a large proportion of our citizens are as perpetually deprived 
 of representation as if they had no legal vote at all. 
 
 Massachusetts illustrates this in the most glaring manner 
 ^for our ten representatives in Congress are perpetually Re- 
 publican — yet only six-tenths of our voters are Republicans.* 
 Three-tenths are Democrats and one-tenth are, so to speak. 
 Eccentrics; that is, they are the extremists and the faddists 
 who would properly be represented by Wendell Phillips, the 
 most golden and brilliant orator in the nation to-day, Yet 
 Wendell Phillips could neither be elected from his own city 
 of Boston nor from any other congressional district in Massa- 
 chusetts, because the Republicans hold the balance of power 
 in all the districts, and they don't want him. But if our 
 Congressmen were elected at large from the whole State, 
 Phillips would go in every time. 
 
 True that, being an extremist, he would probably carry no 
 measures that he introduced; but he would undoubtedly 
 modify many measures, and anyhow he ought to be in Con- 
 gress because one-tenth of the voters of his State prefer him 
 to any other man, and besides, he would add such brilliancy 
 to its debates that equally for the glory and prestige of the 
 nation he ought to be there. 
 
 Yet this splendid genius is perpetually debarred from his 
 natural sphere in Washington because of this most unfor- 
 tunate Election-district System ! 
 
 Of course our State Legislatures suflPer similarly from the 
 same system, and so do our town and city councils from 
 our Ward System. The best and ablest city voters usually 
 reside near each other in one or more wards. The other 
 wards contain comparatively few men fitted by training and 
 experience to cope with the legislative and administrative 
 
 * In 1905, nearly forty years after the date of the above conversation, 
 though the Democrats of the great State of Illinois numbered 500,000— 
 they had only one representative in Congress! 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 103 
 
 problems of a corporation organized and existing solely for 
 the public good; consequently our cities are run by mere 
 ward politicians and the results are precisely what might be 
 expected. 
 
 "What then is the remedy?" Mr. Peirce was asked. 
 
 The very simplest thing in all the world : Simply abolish 
 the town and city Wards and legislative Election-districts, 
 and let every voter cast one vote (as he does now) for his 
 town alderman, but let him cast it for whatever candidate 
 within the town limits he prefers ; and similarly for his State 
 Representative and Senator and for his Congressional Repre- 
 sentative and Senator; let him vote for any men in the 
 State he prefers, — one for each office. Very fortunately, — 
 providentially, rather — the Ward and District Systems are not 
 a part of the Constitution of the United Sates, and therefore 
 any State can abrogate them for itself at any time. As I 
 said before, Massachusetts sends ten men to Congress. If 
 five are elected each year, let every voter in the State have 
 one vote for a representative in the lower House and let the 
 five men highest on the list after the votes are counted be the 
 men elected. 
 
 Of course, to prevent the massing and thereby throwing 
 away of votes on extremely popular candidates, some or- 
 ganization would be required. On election day, for instance, 
 voting after the first two hours could be suspended until the 
 vote as deposited could be counted and telegraphed over the 
 State, so that voting for any man who has received his quota 
 could be stopped. If the process took longer than one day. 
 that is as nothing compared with the importance of electing 
 standard men — our best men — to our State Legislatures and to 
 Congress. In 'England a Parliamentary election may take 
 several weeks. 
 
 As for the proposed electoral reform of the Englishman, 
 Thomas Hare, which would allow voters to vote each for 
 
104 ^^^^ YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 first, second, third, and fourth choices — so that every man's 
 vote would be sure to be counted for somebody, — it is alto- 
 gether too cumbersome and complicated for our huge and 
 heterogeneous constituencies. Mr. Hare is so anxious to 
 have an absolutely perfect representation — a representation 
 wherein each and every individual voter shall be represented 
 by some one, that he has fatally handicapped his own reform. 
 His plan is not practfcal 
 
 But give every man one vote for the one man he prefers 
 out of all the candidates offering themselves or nominated 
 by their friends, and on the common sense principle that no 
 man will throw away his vote upon a "nobody" who can't be 
 elected when he has the chance to throw it for a "somebdy" 
 who can, — we would soon find our very best men in our town 
 councils, in our State Legislatures, and in our National 
 Congress; and moreover, such men would be as eager to 
 serve the public in such positions as now they are determined 
 to keep out of them. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 MEMPHIS. 
 
 It was perhaps ten years after the uttering of the 
 foregoing views by Mr. Peirce that the city of Memphis, 
 Tenn., justified the acumen of the youthful philosopher. 
 
 That unfortunate municipality, depopulated and im- 
 poverished by three successive yellow fever epidemics, — 
 due solely to the shameless neglect of her continually 
 corrupt and incompetent city council, — was totally bank- 
 rupt, and her public property was about to be sold by the 
 State for her long arrears of taxes. "All that she had 
 to show for her many years of existence," said her local 
 historian, "were about eleven miles of rotting wooden 
 pavement V From sewers to schools every department 
 without exception was demoralized and disintegrating; 
 her population had dwindled from 45,000 to 15,000, two- 
 thirds of whom were negroes, and her once flourishing 
 river commerce had practically disappeared. 
 
 In this extremity her leading citizens united to devise 
 and carry out some adequate plan of rescue. One of 
 them — an influential lawyer — declared and insisted that 
 the city's ruin had come through incompetent and venal 
 politicians, placed and kept in power through the Ward 
 System. 
 
io6 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 "Abolish the Wards, and elect a council from the city 
 at large" was his re-iterated, persistent suggestion. 
 
 The advice was heeded, A bill was piloted through the 
 Legislature by which a council or board of eight men 
 elected from the city at large should take absolute charge 
 of all its affairs. Three were to be salaried members and 
 five to serve without pay; they themselves were to elect 
 one of their number chairman, and he was to be the 
 acting mayor. 
 
 Given thus the chance to choose their rulers from the 
 whole community, so wisely did the voters select the 
 eight all-important reorganizers, that a very few years 
 saw Memphis a transformed and prosperous city, — her 
 bankruptcy ably tided over, her population and her busi- 
 ness swiftly growing and expanding, and herself a mu- 
 nicipality as ambitious and progressive as previously she 
 had been utterly the reverse. 
 
 About twenty-five years after Memphis had thus bril- 
 liantly abandoned the Ward System, two Texas cities, 
 Galveston and Houston, carried out a similar revolution. 
 The voters of each elected from their whole city limits a 
 small board which was given entire charge of all munici- 
 pal affairs. The new departure was entitled "Commis- 
 sion Government," and so successful and therefore popu- 
 lar has it proved that it is being imitated by municipalities 
 large and small all over the United States. Such chron- 
 icles of the movement as I have read, however, invari- 
 ably give the credit for the original "commission" ex- 
 periments to Galveston and Houston, though that credit 
 belongs absolutely to Memphis of Tennessee and to her 
 statesman-lawyer, Colonel Gantt. Why thus far the 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 107. 
 
 American public has not been set right in this matter, 
 and honor given where honor is so remarkably due, re- 
 mains to be explained. 
 
 Meantime, if Hereditary Americans do not care to see 
 the whole machinery of their government from Washing- 
 ton down to the rural village eventually in the hands of 
 the foreign-born-and-fathered, they had better earnestly 
 ponder the pertinent questions once propounded by a Kan- 
 sas newspaper to its readers, and take such united state 
 and national and civic action as the present portentous 
 conditions call for: 
 
 Representation, 
 
 What is it? 
 
 Do you know? 
 
 Are you sure you do? 
 
 Are you represented in Confess? 
 
 Are you represented in the State legislature? 
 
 That is, are the men you voted for in Congress and the 
 legislature respectively? 
 
 If not, how, in the name of common sense, are you repre- 
 sented? 
 
 You have a right to representation in the legislature and 
 Congress, have you not? 
 
 If you are represented this time, have you always been? 
 
 Are all your neighbors represented? 
 
 If not, why not? 
 
 Have they not as good a right to be represented as you 
 have? 
 
 Didn't they vote? 
 
 Why wasn't their vote effective? 
 
 Is not representation the peculiarly "American" right? 
 
 Then what is the difference between disfranchising a man 
 
I08 NEW YORK: A SY^MriiuMC STUDY. 
 
 and not having his vote count towards the election of some- 
 body ? 
 
 Personal, instead of Ward and District Representation, is 
 the preliminary reform. Without it you may get, but can 
 never hold, any other. — The Pittsburg Kansan, 1893. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE WAY TO DO IT. 
 
 When, in 1909, the Hon. Raoul Dandurand, K. C, 
 speaker of the Canadian Senate, was in Chicago to ad- 
 dress the Association of Commerce, he said to an inter- 
 viewer: 
 
 To secure good city government is impossible as long as the 
 ward system is allowed to exist. The ward system must go 
 if you in America or we in Canada are to have good city 
 government. While we permit a condition by which the 
 corner liquor-sellers can govern us simply by debauching the 
 little sections in which they live, our city government will be 
 bad. We must make it so that the whole city can have a 
 voice in selecting the men who are to govern it. Then we 
 will have men of greater intelligence and ability seeking the 
 honor. 
 
 Mr. Dandurand was prominent in the 1909 fight that 
 caused the abolition of the ward system in Montreal, and 
 he favors the reform for all the cities of the Dominion. 
 
 Let us now suppose a town-council of ten men who serve 
 two years each, one-half of them being elected each year ; 
 then — 
 
 A 
 
 Allow any voter, either of his own initiative or at the 
 
no NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 request of his friends, to be a candidate whose announce- 
 ment as such appears and is paid for at least twice a week 
 during the month before the election in the candidates* 
 column of the local paper or papers in terms something 
 like the two following: — 
 
 John Wright: Candidate for Town Council; Hereditary 
 American, Merchant, Baptist, Republican, will address the 
 citizens on the town policies he advocates nightly until election. 
 Places and dates in the daily papers. 
 
 Or, 
 
 "Thomas Fitzgerald: Candidate for Town Council: Irish- 
 American, Lawyer, Catholic, Democrat, will address the 
 citizens on the policies he advocates nightly until election: 
 Places and dates in the daily papers." 
 
 Have passed a law opening churches and school halls 
 to the candidates and their backers for speaking purposes 
 on each week-day evening during the month before the 
 election, collections to be taken at all meetings for the 
 heating, lighting, and janitor services for the buildings. 
 
 In return for the candidates' advertisements, on the day 
 before the election the newspapers by law to print a 
 Candidates' List or "Voters' Reminder" containing the 
 names, race, religion and occupation of all the town 
 council candidates, each under his own party heading, 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. in 
 
 if any, and if not, then in the column for "Independents." 
 
 On election day each voter to cast from this "Voters' 
 Reminder" one ballot for one candidate, and one only. 
 
 E 
 
 The five names heading the list to be the names elected. 
 
 It is evident that the men who become candidates at the 
 request of their friends will have the best chance for 
 election, but the defeated candidates will have had the 
 satisfaction of learning how they stand with their fellow- 
 men and what may be the encouragement for a more 
 successful canvass in the future. 
 
 So simple, direct, responsible, yet inexpensive a method 
 of nomination and election would so interest and appeal 
 to the community, that its most worthy and most able 
 citizens would 'generally be found at the head of the list, 
 and the whole ten of the council would thus constantly 
 represent its best elements. 
 
 Or take a great city like Chicago, where are seventy 
 aldermen, thirty-five of whom are chosen every year to 
 serve two years. Let the term of office be changed to 
 four years and the number of aldermen to seventy-two, 
 and let one-fourth of them be elected each year, allowing, 
 as in the case of the smaller town, any name to be voted 
 for which has been advertised as a candidate in the daily 
 press twice weekly for one month. On election day let 
 
112 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 every voter cast one^votc for one name, and one only, 
 from the "Voters' Reminder," and let the eighteen who 
 stand highest on the list be the men elected. 
 
 What w^ould happen? 
 
 The different foreign contingents of the Chicago voters, 
 — Irish, German, Jewish, Italian, Scandinavian, Polish, 
 Hungarian, Negro, and so on, — would put themselves 
 behind their best and strongest men; the Hereditary 
 Americans would put forward their best and strongest 
 men, and therefore the Men of Power and Prestige of all 
 the races would be elected, and the Chicago Board of 
 Aldermen would truly represent the worthiest manhood 
 of any race numerous enough to elect one, at least, of 
 the eighteen men found at the head of the list. In other 
 words, each alien race would have its due proportion of 
 the councilmen, and the Chicago Council would never 
 again be, as so often in the. past, overwhelmingly of 
 the most insignificant and often corrupt foreign-born 
 and foreign-fathered citizens, — with the Hereditary Amer- 
 icans left almost entirely out ! 
 
 Apply the same principle to the election of men to the 
 State Legislatures and to Congress. Let the area of each 
 State be free to all the voters of each State, thus enabling 
 any one of them to say to the State: "Such and such 
 are my political, and such my humanitarian principles; 
 such my specially American and such my specially foreign 
 policies, and such and such are my personal records as 
 a citizen and as a voter. If my personal record commands 
 your confidence and my political principles echo your con- 
 victions, and enough of my fellow-citizens will vote for 
 me to come in as one of the delegation to be sent this 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 113 
 
 year to the Legislature (or to Congress), then these 
 principles and the measures needed for carrying them 
 out will have in myself an advocate in the State Legis- 
 lature (or in Congress)." 
 
 Can there be a doubt that the best men of every nation- 
 ality in every State would be ambitious — nay, eager — to 
 serve their State in her Legislature and their country in 
 Congress; that often they would do their manhood-utmost 
 to attain the honor, and that in ten years our Legislatures 
 and our Congress, like the English House of Commons, 
 would be assemblages of all that is highest and broadest 
 and greatest in the American people? 
 
 Our Catholic citizens — the men whose souls and minds 
 and hearts are guided and governed by celibate bishops 
 and celibate priests — are here to ^^03;. By American law 
 they are entitled to political representation and political 
 office and therefore political power on the same terms as 
 are the hereditary non-Catholics. But it is for the non- 
 Catholics, both native and foreign, who together still 
 sextuple the Catholics — to decide and decide speedily, 
 whether our Catholic voters shall rule our non-Catholic 
 men, women, and children as now everywhere they are 
 ruling, — whether the "bishop" civilization of Italy, Ireland, 
 and the Spanish Americas shall overwhelm and sub- 
 merge, as it is deeply hoping and sleeplessly working to 
 submerge — the "Bible" civilization of our British and 
 Dutch and Scandinavian Founders and Forefathers. 
 
 When Lafayette, forty years after the surrender of 
 Yorktown in w^hich he had borne so vital and brilliant a 
 part, revisited the young Republic that his free and 
 /aliant spirit had helped to create, he was so impressed 
 
114 ^EW YORK: A SY)\1PH0NIC STUDY. 
 
 with its phenomenal growth and progress and with its 
 almost divine beneficence toward its citizens, that he 
 declared the United States to be impregnable against every 
 subversive influence save that of the Catholic Church. 
 "If," said he, and he reiterated it to more than one Ameri- 
 can, "the liberties of the American people are ever de- 
 stroyed, they will fall by the hands of the Romish clergy." 
 Yet the Catholics of that day in this country were so 
 few, so ignorant, and so poor that the then Catholicsm 
 on the American horizon was but as the scriptural "little 
 cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand." (I Kings, 18. 
 44). 
 
 Well did the experienced Lafayette — born, baptized, and 
 brought up in a Catholic country — realize the quenchless 
 greed for dominion and power that does and must burn 
 in the breast of a celibate priesthood, because, cut off as 
 are its poor unfortunates from all human ties and hopes, 
 the one thing it has to live for is the triumph of its 
 great priestly machine: — well, I say, did this far-seeing 
 Frenchman estimate the sleepless and mighty force that 
 from the nature of things would plot against this fair 
 and mighty land, and fully has his foreboding been justi- 
 fied. For the once "little cloud" has now overspread the 
 whole American sky, and in three leading States — New 
 York, Illinois, and Massachusetts— and also in their great- 
 est cities— New York, Chicago, and Boston, together with 
 many of their minor ones, the Irish Catholics are in the 
 governmental saddle, and American Protestantism is 
 'down and out," perhaps forever! 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 A NEW PATRIOTIC ASSOCIATION. 
 
 If as the result of the foregoing pages any non- 
 Catholic hereditary American wishes to aid in counter- 
 acting "what's wrong" with the city of New York, and 
 equally with the United States as following the lead of 
 New York, — let him urge his family and friends and 
 neighbors to join in forming a local lodge or chapter of a 
 "National Association of Heredivary Americans" of 
 which the following shall be the openly proclaimed 
 
 Objects. 
 
 I. The preservation, perfecting, and promotion of 
 American Institutions as founded by our Protestant fore- 
 fathers. 
 
 II. The uplifting, maintaining and enlarging of Ameri- 
 can Ideals. 
 
 III. The cherishing and continuing of American Cus- 
 toms and Usages, save where foreign customs and usages 
 are undeniably better or more beautiful. 
 
 IV. The restoring to and retaining in Hereditary 
 American hands of Local, State and National Government 
 everywhere throughout the Union. 
 
ii6 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 Membership. 
 
 American citizens of worthy life and of either sex, one 
 or more of whose ancestors voted for one or more of the 
 first nine presidents — Washington, Adams, Jefferson, 
 Madison, Quincy Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison — 
 are eligible to membership in this Association. 
 
 Adopted Membership. 
 
 Foreign-born-or-fathered citizens who believe in and 
 who advocate the Single Standard of Morals, Monogamic 
 Marriage, the Bible in the Public Schools, Co-education 
 in the Public Schools and in Colleges and Universities, 
 and Martial Law for Capital Sex Offenses, shall also be 
 eligible to membership in this Association, — because these 
 five principles are the deep foundation of the United 
 States and the latent dynamic of their power, and who- 
 ever holds to them is ipso facto a United States Man, 
 or "Bible" American, and to be welcomed and trusted 
 and elected as such. 
 
 Membership Dues. 
 
 The national membership dues in this Association to 
 be one dollar on entering and one dollar on every January 
 1st thereafter. Local chapters to decide upon their own 
 additional dues. 
 
 How Organized. 
 
 The local chapters of the National Association of 
 
iXEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 117 
 
 Hereditary Americans to organize themselves in two divi- 
 sions, — the Division of the Hereditary Sons and the 
 Division of the Hereditary Daughters, but the closing 
 meeting of each quarter to be a joint meeting of the two 
 divisions; the Sons to be seated in one-half of the 
 assembly-room and the Daughters in the other ; the officers 
 of both divisions to be upon the platform; the President 
 of the Sons to preside when the reports of past and 
 plans of future work are presented by the Sons, and the 
 President of the Daughters to preside when similar reports 
 and plans are presented by the Daughters. 
 
 Titles of Presiding Officers. 
 
 The titles of its presiding officers to be those asso- 
 ciated with Republican Institutions, as "President," or 
 "Chairman," never "Regent." 
 
A NEW POLITICAL PARTY. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 A NEW POLITICAL PARTY. 
 
 In order to achieve the objects of the Hereditary Ameri- 
 can Association, and especially the fourth, which is, to 
 get back the government of the American People into 
 American as distinguished from Foreign hands, it will 
 be necessary for its members to organize a new political 
 party with some, at least, of the planks and policies in its 
 platform hereinafter suggested both as the appeal and the 
 excuse for its existence. Its title should be: 
 
 '"the true AMERICAN PARTY, OR PARTY OF JUSTICE/' 
 
 because in every outlook and aim of the American People 
 it will uphold the Sisterhood of Woman equally with 
 and alongside of the Brotherhood of Man. 
 
 But in the following pages it will appear simply as the 
 "New Party.'' 
 
 Leadership of the New Party. 
 
 The state membership of the New Party will elect 
 in every county of the State a county standing commit- 
 tee to serve two years, one-half to be elected in alternate 
 years; and the chairman of these county committees shall 
 constitute the state standing committee. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 119 
 
 The state membership of the New Party will elect in 
 every State a president as state leader and chairman 
 ex officio of its standing committee, but the vice-president 
 and other officers of such committee shall be elected by 
 the committee. 
 
 All the state presidents shall constitute the National 
 Standing Committee of the New Party and shall elect one 
 of their number as Chairman and ex officio President of 
 the Party. 
 
 The state presidents and the national president of the 
 New Party shall alike be elected for four years, — their 
 terms to correspond with the terms of the President of the 
 United States. They may be elected for a second term, 
 but no more. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 PROPOSED PLANKS OF THE NEW PARTY. 
 
 For Restoring the Bible to the Public Schools. 
 
 Since the greatest possible wrong to the child and 
 equally to the country of which he is to become a citizen, 
 is not to teach him to know right from wrong, and as the 
 Bible is the Book of Right and Wrong which transcends 
 all others and is the basis upon which all the modern laws 
 and morals of Europe and the two Americas have been 
 builded up, the first and paramount duty of the Hereditary 
 American is to restore this Bible to the Public Schools 
 and to that end to pass the following amendment to the 
 First Amendment of the Federal Constitution. 
 
 This amendment begins : "Congress shall make no law 
 respecting an establishment of religion. . . /' 
 
 The New Party will seek to amend this amendment by 
 adding at its end: ''but nothing in this amendment shall 
 be construed as against the reading and memorising of 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. I2I 
 
 B 
 
 The New Party will introduce into the Legislatures of 
 all the States and Territories a law providing that, begin- 
 ning with Genesis and ending with Revelation, two chap- 
 ters of the Bible in regular course shall be daily read 
 aloud in unison by the pupils (but without note or com- 
 ment by their teachers) as the opening exercise of every 
 day in the grammar and high school grades; the New 
 Testament to be read through twice to the Old Testament 
 once, and the twentieth chapter of Exodus, the nineteenth 
 chapter of Leviticus, the first, the nineteenth, and the 
 hundred and thirty-ninth Psalms, the Sermon on the 
 Mount, the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, to- 
 gether with the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments 
 and the Beatitudes (and where possible, "My Duty toward 
 God" and "My Duty toward my Neighbor" from the 
 Common Prayer Book) to be gradually memorized by all 
 pupils between the ages of eight and fourteen, and there- 
 after to be either read or recited in unison several times 
 a year by the same pupils up to the date of grammar 
 school graduation; the verse-divisions of the Bible both 
 in reading and memorizing, to be retained, and those por- 
 tions of it only to be excluded as are uninteresting or 
 unintelligible to children — such being most of the Prophets 
 and of the Book of Job, the Song of Solomon, the Temple 
 ceremonials, the census lists and the genealogies; but 
 these exclusions to be determined by a national com- 
 mittee of three persons respectively from every religious 
 denomination that acknowledges the Bible as its Source 
 and Guide and enrolls half a million communicants: the 
 
122 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 three persons from such denomination not to be related, 
 and to be chosen by the ministers of the same, and one 
 of the three to be a Bible-trained and Bible-believing 
 woman. 
 
 As the most important moral study for the American 
 child after the Bible, the New Party will demand the 
 introduction of Universal History into all grammar and 
 high schools. Like the Bible, this branch should be 
 taught by reading aloud chiefly. The United States Com- 
 missioner of Education should interest able and judicious 
 women writers to prepare a series of History Readers 
 which could be recommended for adoption by the forty- 
 eight States. Relating in simple language suitable for 
 the very young the stories of the early simple empires 
 and their rulers, the series, always in easy narrative 
 form, should come down through the ages to the more 
 complicated governments as moulded and modified by the 
 ambitious personalities of the few or by the religious and 
 political agitations of the many. Thus the high-school 
 graduate, simply from such reading-lessons throughout 
 his school-life, would leave that life with a bird's-eye 
 view of the history of the whole human race stamped 
 upon his memory where without them would be but a 
 deplorable and inexecusable blank! 
 
 D 
 
 Because the Public Schools of the United States will 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 123 
 
 never be what they ought to become until the School- 
 Boards governing them are composed of the most respon- 
 sible citizens of their respective communities — the New 
 Party will urge that school-boards everywhere shall num- 
 ber not less than three well-educated men and three well- 
 educated women elected by the registered fathers and 
 mothers of the community, one of each sex to be chosen 
 each year to serve three years; in larger communities the 
 number of these school-committee men and women to be 
 not less than nine of each sex, one-third to be chosen 
 each year to serve three years. 
 
 Under school-boards so constituted, the principal of each 
 school should be made, as now in Wisconsin, the social and 
 civic secretary of the school neighborhood, and the school 
 building and grounds, when not occupied by the school 
 pupils, held available for social and political neighborhood 
 meetings and for out-door games and pleasures. 
 
 II. 
 
 Play-grounds for the Public Schools. 
 
 Since the population of the United States is rapidly 
 increasing and the price of land rapidly going up, no 
 time will be lost by the New Party in trying to create 
 a nation-wide movement for a play-and-garden-ground 
 around or adjoining every public school in the United 
 States; this ground to be ample enough for the national 
 
J 24 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 game of baseball to be played therein, and for a row of 
 shade-trees round the inside of the school fence and 
 beneath them two rows of seats wherefrom the game may 
 be watched by spectators ; these seats to be separated from 
 the "diamond" by a broad walk, and the back row to be 
 higher than the front one, circus-fashion. 
 
 To purchase such play-grounds, every school-board 
 should be empowered to borrow money at four per cent, 
 for which it should pay annual interest at five per cent,* 
 the extra one per cent going toward payment of the prin- 
 cipal until in the course of years the whole price would be 
 liquidated. Whether this required thirty years, fifty years 
 or one hundred years, the advantage to the children and 
 youth of every neighborhood of ample and tree-shaded 
 grounds around every school-house would be so trans- 
 cendant that the cost should not for one moment be con- 
 sidered. Such play-grounds for our children and young 
 men have simply got to he had and according to the 
 size of the school they must be from one to four acres 
 in extent. Around every school-building should also be 
 a flower-bed three feet wide which throughout the flower- 
 season the boys and girls themselves should keep in 
 blossom. One such border the writer once saw around a 
 big school-building in New York, and how joyous and 
 beautiful it was! 
 
 * This plan of borrowing at 4 per cent, and paying 5 per cent, in- 
 terest, was proposed by the Hon. Abram S. Hewitt and was adopted by 
 the city of New York in order to obtain the $30,000,000 needed for the 
 building of New York's first underground railroad. Mr. Hewitt's argu- 
 ment was that by this method the city would own the underground 
 free of debt, in thirty years. 
 
NEH' YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 125 
 
 III. 
 
 For Co-Education. 
 
 The New Party will endeavor to make the co-education 
 of boys and girls compulsory in all schools, colleges, and 
 universities that are maintained or aided by the States 
 or by the Nation; in school-hours the boys to be seated 
 with boys and the girls with girls, but both to recite 
 in the same classes; in play-hours they will practically 
 never be together, so that uneasiness on that score may 
 be dismissed, — it being the universal instinct and custom 
 of boys out of school to companion with boys only. 
 
 IV. 
 
 For the Abolition of Wards and Election Districts. 
 
 As the Foundation Political Measure for the reform of 
 American town, state and national government, the New 
 Party will strenuously endeavor to bring about legislation 
 abolishing in all towns and cities the Ward System for 
 choosing town and city councilmen, and in all States the 
 Election-district System for choosing members and sena- 
 tors to the State Legislatures and to Congress; substitut- 
 ing for the Ward System the nominations and election 
 at large from each community of all town and city coun- 
 cilmen, and for the Election-district System the election 
 of State and of Congressional legislators at large from 
 the whole State, — each voter in town and city elections to 
 have one vote for one councilman and no more, and each 
 
126 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 voter in legislative elections to have one vote for one 
 member of the lower House and one for the upper or 
 Senate, and no more, whether these be for the State Legis- 
 latures or for the Federal Congress. In other words, 
 there shall be no "first," "second," and "third" choices, 
 but each voter shall vote once, for one Senator in the 
 upper and once for one Representative in the lower House 
 respectively of his State and of Congress, and the names 
 found highest on the list shall be the names elected. 
 
 This reform, and this reform only, will place the law- 
 making of the nation and equally of its States and 
 municipalities in the hands of the Hereditary Americans 
 where it legitimately belongs, because their proportion is 
 two-thirds of the population; and at the same time it 
 will give representation to the different foreign elements 
 in proportion also to their numbers, — which is the very 
 utmost the foreigner can expect to have, or ought to 
 have, and far more than any other nation has ever 
 granted to the immigrant or the ahen. 
 
 V. 
 
 Of Nominations and Elections. 
 
 To get the best men into Town Councils and into State 
 and National Legislatures, the best men must be nomi- 
 nated. "Free" instead of "party" nominations were first 
 suggested many years ago by the late Josiah P. Quincy, 
 . Srd, of Boston; and if the suggestion were adopted it 
 would perhaps become, and surely it ought to become, the 
 pride and the delight of the young men — the men between 
 
i\EW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 127 
 
 18 and 35 — to secure the nomination oi the best men and 
 to work for their election. At the present time our young 
 men as factors in American politics are unpatriotic and 
 therefore unmanly ciphers. They don't know and don't 
 care who is nominated and very often they don't vote. 
 
 The New Party will therefore seek to obtain laws estab- 
 lishing and compelling Free Nominations either by the 
 method suggested (page 110), or by some better one de- 
 vised by the party organizers. Whether three, or five, 
 or ten, or twenty candidates are to be chosen to a town 
 or city council, or to a State legislature, each voter must 
 choose from the Candidates' List or "Voters' Reminder" 
 (printed according to law in all the papers the day before 
 the election) the one man he wishes for his personal 
 representative, and that name, after entering the voting 
 booth, he must himself write upon the ballot to which he 
 signs his own name. Then the three, or five, or ten, or 
 twenty candidates that stand highest on the list after 
 the votes are counted will be the men elected. The 
 popular men will of course always be found at the top 
 of the list, and the able man, who is, perhaps, not so 
 popular, near the bottom, but the able man will be in, 
 and that is the vital political requisite. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Of Votes for Women. 
 
 The New Party will advocate and urge the Representa- 
 tion of Women hy Women through the same election-at- 
 large method that it will urge for the representation of 
 
128 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 men by men. If they prefer, let them sit in the same 
 council and legislative chambers as the men members 
 but on opposite sides of the House — the object being to 
 mass men with men and women with women in order 
 thereby to bring out Quintessential Manhood on the one 
 side and Quintessential Womanhood on the other. 
 
 ''Representation" is what the entire American system 
 stands for, — Human Representation, — and it is all it 
 stands for. Men can not represent women per se nor 
 women represent men per se. Therefore, men alone should 
 elect men to represent Manhood in all American legislative 
 bodies and councils, and women alone should elect women 
 to represent Womanhood in the same bodies. Our State 
 and Congressional Legislatures should no longer consist 
 of two houses of men only. The Lawmaking Power of 
 every State and of the Nation should be either a House 
 of Men and a House of Women, or its two houses should 
 each be composed half of men and half of women, — the 
 Lower House of men and women Representatives elected 
 at large for two years; the Upper House of men and 
 women Senators elected at large for six years ; nor should 
 any measure become a law until it has been passed by a 
 majority of both sexes, voting separately. 
 
 VII. 
 
 To Limit Foreigners as Voters and Off ice-Holders. 
 
 The New Party will endeavor to pass laws forbidding 
 the naturalization of foreigners until they have been in 
 the country twenty-one years and also have learned to 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 129 
 
 speak, read, and write the English language. Also will 
 the party strenuously oppose the conferring of public 
 offices and positions that involve moral influence and 
 responsibility, — especially those of policemen and police 
 inspectors and of public-school teachers and public-school 
 officials and committee men, — on any foreign-born citizen 
 whatsoever. -Hereditary Americans must in future every- 
 where constitute the major element in the American police, 
 and they must also everywhere do the greater share of 
 the public-school teaching and must inspire and control 
 the whole system of public education. When the late 
 Abram S. Hewitt — for years acknowledged one of New 
 York's greatest men if not her very greatest — was mayor 
 of that city (1887-89) he said on the occasion of his 
 putting a stop to the display of the Irish flag from the 
 city hall, that the foreign-born ought not to be allowed 
 either to vote or to hold office. Mayor Hewitt was him- 
 self the son of an English immigrant, and in his great 
 iron-works in New Jersey was a large employer of foreign 
 labor. He never had a strike among his work-people, 
 which showed that he both understood and sympathized 
 with them. Yet his lifelong experience had led him to 
 the above non-popular, but too well justified conviction. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 For Surcease of Immigration and Minimizing of its Evils, 
 
 The abnormal and unhealthy growth of the cities of 
 
V 
 
 130 NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 the United States and the taking possession of most of 
 their lesser avenues of livelihood and of their political 
 offices by the foreign-born-ahd-fathered, together with the 
 immense, disgraceful, and ever-increasing number of the 
 unemployed, so clearly demonstrate the truth that the 
 limit for the American assimilation of foreigners is over- 
 passed, that the New Party will urge compul-sory decrease 
 of immigration by one hundred thousand souls annually 
 until zero is reached, after which no manual laborers of 
 any kind, from any quarter, or for any purpose, to be 
 admitted for twenty-five years. The Party will further 
 urge and demand that no unmarried male laborers of any 
 nationality whatsoever be hereafter admitted into the 
 country — the resulting demoralization from such male 
 celibate immigration being too deep and dreadful in both 
 the Atlantic and the Pacific coast cities to be longer 
 tolerated. 
 
 The Party will further urge and demand that all girls 
 between sixteen and twenty-one who are unskilled workers 
 and who are not required at home to assist their mothers 
 m home child-minding, cooking, cleaning, laundering, and 
 mending, shall go into service in responsible families until 
 they are of age, and this for two reasons; first, that 
 they may learn the language and become familiar with 
 "home" Americans and Americanism; and second, that 
 they may be trained in the domestic industries, habits 
 and ideals that will fit them, as the comins: wives and 
 mothers of naturalized foreigners, to carry 0:1 instead of 
 
XEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 131 
 
 dragging down American civilization. If Italians, Poles, 
 Hungarians, Jews, Greeks, and all the rest of them will 
 come over here, it must be at the price of accepting and 
 conforming to American ways and manners and usages. 
 ''Little Italys" and "little Ghettos" are out of place in" 
 big North America! 
 
 The New Party will further urge and demand the 
 exclusion of all Asiatics whatsoever save Asiatic-born 
 Jews and Armenians from United States soil, citizenship, 
 real estate ownership, and intermarriage, — the sole and 
 all-sufficient and imperative reason being their attitude 
 toward and treatment of their womankind as an inferior 
 caste, and their unblushing polygamy, profligacy, and 
 sodomy. Until the Asiatic races and governments for- 
 swear and abandon these wickednesses, adopt monogamy 
 and the three R's, and accept the New Testament standards 
 of Right and Wrong that we write into our own laws and 
 impose upon our own sons and daughters, Asiatics must 
 be kept out. Better our lands lie fallow, better our mines 
 go unworked, than expose ourselves to the contamination 
 of pagans settling among us and disseminating the loath- 
 some practices which have reduced themselves to the 
 moral lepers and intellectual echoes and effetes that they 
 so often are. Besides, what with Hawaiian, Phillipine, 
 and Negro licentiousness, have we not already more 
 paganism growing up with our Christian ideals and insti- 
 tutions than we are eliminating? 
 
 In midsummer of 1901, the New York Sun gave figures 
 
132 NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 from the national census of the previous year, which said 
 that in 1880 the illegitimate negro births in the South 
 were 53 per cent, and that in 1900 they had risen to 68 
 per cent ! Was anything done or said in the United 
 States about this heinous condition? Think of it! Two- 
 thirds of an alien race which numbers among us many 
 millions — born out of wedlock; yet the Negro, like the 
 Japanese, complains and protests because he is not re- 
 spected and not wanted ! 
 
 IX. 
 
 Of M or monism. 
 
 The New Party will uncompromisingly demand the 
 prosecution of Mormon polygamists to the utmost rigor 
 of the law, nr i will advocate an amendment to the Con- 
 stitution forbidding polygamy throughout all territory 
 over which floats the United States flag. The Party will 
 insist that the Morman so-called "plural wives" be called 
 what they legally are, namely, "mistresses," and also their 
 children what they legally are. namely "bastards" without 
 rights of inheritance as against the lawful children. 
 On imprisoning the polygamist, let his property be divided 
 into as many shares plus one as he has so-called wives. 
 two of the shares to be given to the legal wife and her 
 children, and one to each mistress and her children. If 
 this provision be not sufficient to care for the children, 
 let them be trained as wards of the United States until 
 able to be self-supporting. In no other way than this 
 will Mormon polygamy ever be extirpated; the reason 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHOXJC STUDY. T.^3 
 
 being that too many unlettered women wish above every- 
 thing to be ''wives" and to be called "Mrs." Tearing away 
 the lie from their real status and that of their children 
 will alone root out polygamous Mormonism from the 
 United States. 
 
 Of Personal Inviolability. 
 
 The New Party will seek to introduce into Congress and 
 all the State Legislatures bills providing that in all lands 
 within the jurisdiction of the United States, in every case 
 of atrocious assault upon woman or girl by man or youth 
 over sixteen, the nine matrons who are the victim's nearest 
 neighbors, together with three others who are wives of the 
 nearest doctor, the nearest lawyer, and the nearest church 
 pastor respectively, shall be summoned as a jury to hear 
 the story of the victim and to confront her with her 
 assailant. The latter being identified, he shall at once 
 be delivered to the nearest resident captain of militia, 
 who, with a detail of twelve of his company, shall lead 
 him to the nearest convenient spot and there hang him by 
 the neck until he is dead. 
 
 The New Party will furthermore demand the same 
 court-martial retribution against the makers and vendors 
 of obscene pictures and literature, also against panders 
 and procuresses, and against men convicted of depraving 
 boys. 
 
134 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 XI. 
 
 Of the Extirpation of Vice, 
 
 With very few exceptions, the governments and also 
 the political parties of the world content themselves with 
 laws for the protection of life and property, while the 
 laws for the protection of feminine honor — every woman's 
 vital jewel and every nation's foundation rock — are as a 
 rule both inadequate and disregarded. Men everywhere 
 are not ashamed to maintain an enormous difference 
 between vice and crime, — "crime" being the wrongs 
 against one another which, if their perpetrator is caught 
 and convicted, will land him in prison or even conduct 
 him to execution, and "vice" being the fearful offenses 
 against womanhood which almost any man may, and 
 which many men do, commit with impunity. 
 
 As the "Party of Justice," therefore, the New Party 
 should decide to legislate for "vice" precisely as though 
 it were the "crime" which in fact it is, and since delight 
 in the nude for the nude's sake and delight in drinking 
 for drink's sake are the chief pre-disposers and tempters 
 to vice, the New Party should demand stern deterrent 
 penalties for immodest and suggestive woman's dress — 
 whether in the ball-room, on the stage, or on the street, 
 and for no dress on the stage, in the studio, and at the 
 banquet. The near-nude chorus-girl, with her wanton 
 plot, dialogue, and dance; the nude artist's model (who 
 also is so often a nude guest at masculine suppers), the 
 Isadora Duncans, Ruth St. Denises, Gertrude Hoffman?, 
 and Annette. Kellermans who now are educating coun^ 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 135 
 
 less audiences in non-modesty, must disappear from the 
 United States to return no more; while as for the saloon 
 and the resort, — those factories of hell whence come our 
 male wrecks and derelicts with their broken-hearted 
 wives, their broken up homes, and their devitalized, 
 inferior children, — they must be wiped out as implacably 
 as Southern Slavery was wiped out. 
 
 Listen to the wail of Kipling's "legions of the lost 
 ones — the cohorts of the damned," whose "pride it is to 
 know no spur of pride" ; 
 
 "We are done with Hope and Honor, we are lost to Love 
 and Truth, 
 
 We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung; 
 And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth, 
 
 God help us, for we knew the worst too young." 
 
 But who teaches these "too young" sons and daughters 
 the "worst"? Who but the Saloon and the Resort which 
 are licensed by the Law, — together with the Studio and 
 the Life-Class and the Stage which are licensed by Pub- 
 lic Opinion. 
 
 The imminent question is — "Shall we keep on allowing 
 this teaching by such forces, by such influences?" 
 
 Sex is not only the Source of Life, — it is the Founda- 
 tion of Character, — its bed rock so long as it is immacu- 
 late, its quicksand when it bcomes demoralized. Protec- 
 tion from both personal physical violence and personal 
 mental contamination is therefore the first and most 
 vital right to be secured to every human being, as well 
 as the right most important to the preservation of Repub- 
 lican Institutions — no instance in history being known 
 
136 NEW YORK. A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 of a free government long coexisting with prevalent pri- 
 vate profligacy. While then our first duty is to prevent 
 sex offences as much as possible by the direct training 
 of every child in strength and purity of mind and in 
 Strength and chastity of body, — the mature libertine or 
 wanton who for gain tempts and corrupts the adolescence 
 of either sex, thereby commits crime so horrible, so far 
 beyond any other, that death or incarceration for life 
 would be penalties none too severe if thereby others 
 could be frightened away from similar intolerable deeds. 
 
 Unless the American father wishes to see his sons 
 and his grandsons dropping down the virile ladder ''rung 
 by rung" — unless the Christian clergy wish to see our 
 half-Christian civilization lapse back into the lubricity 
 and licentiousness which are Paganism and Walt Whit- 
 mowtJW"— that paganism into which Germany, France 
 and Italy have already lapsed through their ruthless and 
 matter-of-course profanations of girlhood and woman- 
 hood — the paganism into which half the literary and the 
 art elite of England and America are longing likewise to 
 lapse, and of which the wild beast ferocity of Prussia is 
 but the other side of the shield (sensuality invariably 
 making men callous, remorseless, grasping and savage) ; 
 — if, I plead, the American father and the American 
 clergyman do not wish eventually to witness all this, they 
 cannot too soon unite in adamantine array against that 
 Cult of the Nude in Art, in Dress, by the Press, and on 
 the Stage which now, in a low-coiling and creeping but 
 determined sex-flame is silently consuming American souls 
 in battalions? 
 
 In 1870, the young artists of the city of New York 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 137 
 
 could secure but one professional model to pose for the 
 figure, but by the year 1905 there were enrolled five 
 thousand artists' models many of whom were of course 
 committed to such posing. Since then, the multiplication 
 of Art Museums with their Art Schools and "life" classes 
 throughout the land have created a great demand for 
 "life" models. To secure them, photographers persuade 
 young girls of fifteen and sixteen to pose before the 
 camera and they then show these unclothed portraits to 
 artists who pay fifty cents an hour to the originals to 
 "work" (so the models call it) for them. But business 
 and other men can and do pay much more than this for 
 the pleasure of unclothed girlhood at their "stag" ban- 
 quets — and thus the nefarious trafific flourishes! 
 
 Stage-managers now so insist on near-nude costuming 
 in vaudeville, farce, spectacular and comedy choruses, 
 that the day of the real nude on the theatre-boards 
 can not be far distant. Newspaper editors and adver- 
 tisers equally keep the woman form and limbs continually 
 before the eyes of their leaders; — nay, Anthony Corn- 
 stock being dead, in the last week of September, 1915, 
 several newspapers printed a full-length photographed 
 nude from life, together with her name and address, of 
 a pretty and smiling maiden of eighteen, whose faultless 
 symmetry of form enables her admirers to claim for her 
 the pedestal of Annette Kellerman. Our sculptors and 
 painters now flagellate imagination for subjects that give 
 them an excuse to model or to portray the nude, and the 
 profusion of nudes among the statues and mural decora- 
 tions of the Panama Exposition as compared with the 
 prevailing clothed figures of the Chicago Exposition only 
 
V 
 
 138 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY 
 
 twenty-two years before, proclaim how thoroughly Euro- 
 peanized American art and artists have become. 
 
 But should we continue our wicked abandonment of 
 American girlhood to the temptations resulting from this 
 Lust of the Eyes to which American manhood has so 
 largely surrendered? Should Christian matrons continue 
 to ignore the satanic fact that nude statues and paintings 
 are figure-portraits from life of the girl models who 
 pose for them and are the works of artists and sculptors 
 locked in with such models day after day, month after 
 month, year after year? Can the morals — can the minds 
 of average men and maidens stand this test unscathed? 
 Can the nation enjoying, condoning, encouraging the 
 Nude in so many manifestations as this nation is now 
 encouraging, fail of becoming utterly materialized and 
 sensualized ? Impossible ! 
 
 Nor any longer must the Law conspire with by licensing 
 the Saloon — whose bars, by the way, are said to be often 
 "lined with nudes" ! 
 
 The Law must license only Refreshment Rooms as open 
 and innocent as the day, wherein the usual drinkables, — 
 milk, bouillon, tea, coffee, chocolate, cocoa, postum, soda, 
 beers, mild wines, and fruit juices are sold in moderation 
 to any and all reputable comers: no "standing" alcoholic 
 drinks to be permitted nor any such supplied without 
 food; the price of every alcoholic drinkable to include 
 therefore a suitable edible; the waiting and the serving 
 to be done by reputable employes of both sexes; dis- 
 tilled liquor and decadent dancing to be rigidly excluded; 
 immoral women to be rigidly excluded and all other 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 139 
 
 matrons and maidens welcomed; and in the evening, 
 dancing and card rooms for both young and old under 
 proper chaperonage to be thrown open from these 
 Refreshment Rooms and closed promptly half an hour or 
 an hour before midnight. 
 
 Napoleon's profound saying, — "Nothing is destroyed 
 but that which is replaced/' is the first principle to stand 
 upon in planning the extirpation of vice. Christendom 
 has reached a stage in social evolution where Dancing, 
 the Drama, Card-playing, and Alcoholic Beverages have 
 got to be recognized as deep unconquerable human crav- 
 ings, in themselves innocent, which, like hunger and 
 thirst and drowsiness, must and will be satisfied, and 
 which, like them, can be satisfied in perfect blameless- 
 ness. On a date chosen for itself by each of the United 
 States, all the saloons of that State should close simul- 
 taneously and forever, and as soon as possible from that 
 date they should re-open, if at all. as the People's Refresh- 
 ment and Recreation Rooms outlined above. 
 
 As the champion of that Bible which nowhere forbids 
 alcoholic beverages, and whose Central Figure, Jesus 
 Christ, partook of meat and wine when offered to Him 
 (Luke 7:33, 34), the New Party could not consistently 
 endorse prohibition nor demand total abstinence from 
 any one who is not a dipsomaniac. Jesus changed water 
 into wine to make glad a wedding- feast ; He commended 
 the good Samaritan for giving it to the wounded traveler, 
 and He instituted in Bread and Wine the deepest, highest, 
 most intimate and most precious religious rite- the world 
 has ever known. No one who believes that Jesus Christ 
 was the human manifestation of the Omnipotent Eternal 
 
140 I^'EJV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 Son who as "God the Word/' ''created the heavens and 
 the earth," — can consistently be a prohibitionist. This 
 Creator-God made both the alcohol and the world-wide 
 human pleasure in and craving for it. In view of these 
 latter, some important purpose must have been intended, 
 — a purpose that will be balked if alcoholic beverages are 
 altogether and everywhere prohibited. As a sex, Ameri- 
 can women gave up three generations ago the homemade 
 beers and cider of their grandmothers, and as a substitute 
 doubled their consumption of coffee. This, the most 
 deleterious drink in the world, has now become our na- 
 tional beverage. It darkens the hair and eyes, yellows 
 the skin, takes away its roses, promotes kidney and intes- 
 tinal inflammations, and slowly but surely sensualizes the 
 race. If the stimulant and comfort of tea and coffee are 
 absolute necessities in our high-powered civilization, why 
 may not a modicum of alcohol be equally required in the 
 promotion of cheerfulness, the conservation of tissue and 
 the reparation of fatigue? 
 
 True that the matchless Bible-teacher Dwight L. 
 Moody, the ideal saint Frances Willard, and the tre- 
 mendous evangelist Billy Sunday, together with countless 
 others of the best Christian people our country knows, 
 oppose alcohol in every degree and in all its forms. But 
 so for a thousand years did all the leading saints and 
 teachers of the Christian Church think to reform sex- 
 morals by giving up marriage. They opposed marriage 
 as lowering, as sensual, as dangerous, and, therefore, if 
 possible, to be foresworn. Christ had told his Christians 
 they must be faithful to one wife. ''Impossible/* decided 
 the Christians. "If the case of the man be so with his 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 141 
 
 wife," said the disciples (that he could not divorce her 
 when he wanted to), "it is not good to marry" (Matthew 
 19:10). Consequently, from St. Paul on, all the elect 
 souls for centuries became monks and nuns. 
 
 It was fifteen hundred years after Christ before the 
 mighty Martin Luther decided that what God intended 
 for virtuous mankind was not celibacy, but absolutely 
 faithful marriage. He himself consummated and carried 
 out such a marriage and so did the entire body of the 
 Protestant ministry, all of whom could now see the wild 
 irrational mistake of the Christian Church throughout 
 those heart-breaking and licentious ages. Since Luther, 
 millions of the laity have regarded and have kept, and 
 multi-millions more of the laity will regard and will keep 
 marriage as Life-consecration to One ! 
 
 Its early crusade against marriage the Christian Church 
 is now imitating as against alcohol. In mild dilutions, 
 in mild beers and wines and punches and sangarees, alco- 
 hol was probably meant, like coffee and tea, to be used 
 as a pleasant and comforting adjunct to food. But when 
 people stop eating they should stop drinking. This is 
 the true — the divine — Imperative of Temperance — the 
 principle to which we should train the children, and the 
 sole pledge the people should be asked to sign. Used in 
 this way, alcohol would brighten, not inflame — would 
 cheer and not inebriate." 
 When God the Lord brought his people out of Egypt 
 and they had entered the Promised Land He more than 
 once warned them: "What thing so ever I command 
 you, observe to do it; thou shalt not add thereto nor 
 
142 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 diminish from it." But there is nothing to which the very 
 greatest saints are more prone than to be wise above 
 what is written and to add new sins to those already 
 forbidden by Omniscient Deity. John Wesley, for ex- 
 ample, was one of the most extraordinary preachers of 
 the pure and simple Gospel of Jesus that Christianity has 
 brought forth; yet to the Ten Commandments Wesley 
 practically added for church members: 
 
 ''Thou shalt not dance." 
 
 "Thou shalt not play cards." 
 
 "Thou shalt not go to the theatre." 
 
 "Thou shalt not read fiction" 
 and to these, his great and glorious denomination has 
 added "Thou shalt not touch alcohol," and also for its 
 ministers, if I am not mistaken — "Thou shalt not smoke!" 
 
 The "Christian Temperance Union" is therefore utterly 
 misnamed, for it means ''total abstinence" — whereas a 
 genuine Christlike "temperance" would hold and would 
 teach that as "exhilaratives" — alcoholic drinks be taken 
 only with food, and that they be not used daily, but 
 reserved chiefly for festivities, celebrations and reunions; 
 — and that as "restoratives" — alcoholic drinks be kept for 
 the elderly, the feeble, the fainting, the exhausted, the 
 prostrated, and the convalescing. 
 
 A more presumpuous affront to the Divine Son Eternal 
 in the Heavens than the unfermented grape-juice which 
 at the Communion has in our United States so generally 
 taken the place of the "wine" ordained by Him, it is hard 
 to imagine ! — and its result is what might have been 
 expected. The per capita drink bill in the United States 
 does not diminish, but millions of men and women who 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 143 
 
 Otherwise might be rejoicing and co-operating with God 
 in the Trinitarian Faith, now look upon Jesus as merely 
 man, and his teaching on the most tremendous subjects as 
 fallible and as mistaken as they believe to have been his 
 use and his consecration of alcohol. 
 
 "I believe in the Bible from cover to cover. I don't pre- 
 tend to understand it all. I would consider myself low down 
 and damned if with my infinitesimal mind and my jack-rabbit 
 and pig-headed intellect I should undertake to tell God that 
 I disapprove of his plan of salvation," 
 
 So declared Billy Sunday to one of his monster Phila- 
 delphia audiences; yet, judging from his total abstinance 
 teaching, he does, he must, — "disapprove" of the "bread 
 and wine" partaking instituted by the Lord Jesus as the 
 perpetual memorial to his infinite, ineffable sacrifice ! 
 
 XII. 
 
 For Equitable Taxation. 
 
 Industry being that by which men and women maintain 
 themselves in existence, it is therefore the equivalent and 
 pledge of Life Itself, and consequently it should be as 
 free and unhampered in seeking and appropriating its 
 own channels as are the currents of the winds and tides 
 and the meanderings of the rivers and streams of the 
 globe. 
 
 On the other hand, the benefits and blessings of a just, 
 stable, free, and enlightened government are so infinite 
 and so priceless, and they have been won through so 
 
144 N^^ YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 many generations of striving, tears and blood, that every 
 human being living under such a government should 
 make a direct personal contribution towards its expenses, 
 the "poor" as well as the "rich." The New Party will 
 therefore favor Trade as "free" between all the nations 
 of the globe as it is between the States of the Union, 
 and for the customs and duties and taxes now levied and 
 collected by the authorities will seek to substitute; — 
 
 1. The famous "Single Tax" of Henry George on all 
 the land within the United States. 
 
 2. An annual Head Tax of one dollar ($1.00) on every 
 man, woman, and child under the United States flag. 
 
 3. An annual poll-tax of one dollar ($1.00) on all 
 legal voters, — whether they vote or not, — with another 
 dollar as fine upon every voter that does not vote. 
 
 4. A franchise-due of five dollars ($5.00), obligatory 
 on all native Americans eligible to the American ballot 
 who are twenty-one years of age; but payable by foreign- 
 ers only in case of naturalization. 
 
 5. An invariable percentage of all inheritances, no 
 matter how small the inheritance. 
 
 6. A revenue stamp upon all bank checks and amuse- 
 ment tickets. 
 
 7. A revenue stamp upon all bills of sale whatsoever 
 of one dollar or over, — whether the sale be of services 
 from one person to another or to an organization; or 
 of immovables, like lands, mines and buildings; or of 
 movables, as furnishings, clothing, jewelry, books, edibles, 
 and drinkables; or of values, as stocks, bonds, and shares. 
 
 If all sales whatsoever of over one dollar required a 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 145 
 
 revenue stamp whose value would be decided by the 
 amount of the sale (as, for example, one cent 01 less on 
 all sales between one and ten dollars; two cents or less 
 on all sales between ten and twenty-five dollars, and so 
 on progressively), then the larger the sale the higher the 
 figure on the stamp. The working-classes purchase little 
 and would pay little: those better off would purchase 
 more and would pay more, up to the opulent, who, buying 
 a vast deal more, would pay in proportion to the amount 
 and value of their purchases and this would be Taxation 
 Justice! 
 
 This stamp tax on all sales was part of the revenue 
 system of the Diaz regime in Mexico under his enlight- 
 ened Secretary of the Treasury, Limantour, and is the 
 most ideally equitable tax the writer has ever heard of. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Of the Army and the Police. 
 
 The horrible onslaught of Germany against the peace 
 and happiness of nations, — with her bandit-robbing of 
 Belgium from the Belgians, demonstrates that peoples and 
 governments are not to be trusted, but that at any time 
 any nation, with strength and prowess enough may 
 attack and take possession of another. The sole safety, 
 then, is in being prepared; and to this end the New 
 Party, following the lead of Switzerland, will plead that 
 the standing army of the United States shall in future 
 consist only of native-born officers; and that the func- 
 tion and duty of these officers shall be to drill all the male 
 
146 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 youth of the country between fifteen and twenty-five in 
 military exercises and the use of firearms, so that at any 
 time a million soldiers may be swiftly mobilized, and 
 several millions more be ready to respond as soon as 
 wanted. 
 
 Foreign-born police officers should be given up, and the 
 police system everywhere entrusted to the officers of the 
 army and its ranks filled from the native-born young men 
 under thirty who have been drilled by these officers. 
 
 To guard and defend the nation, to protect life and 
 property, to keep down vice and crime, to seek out and 
 arrest the criminal — are high and solemn and masterful 
 functions which should be assumed and carried out only 
 by disciplined and incorruptible Hereditary Americans. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 For the Autonomy of Nations. 
 
 The New Party will vigorously uphold the principle of 
 the Autonomy of all Monogamous Nations, — each to have 
 its own territory, its own flag, its own language, and Its 
 preferred form of government. 
 
 Polygamous nations, like the Turks, or licentious peo- 
 ples, like the Hindus, and also savage races whose women 
 do all the work while the men only loaf, or fight, or feast, 
 — of all these the manhood is so emasculated and degen- 
 erated by sensuality and sloth that for the sake of the 
 womanhood they oppress and degrade, and to prevent 
 the inferior childhood which results, the}' deserve to be 
 taken posession of by consensus of stronger because mono- 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 147 
 
 gamous nations and held in tutelage for their own good 
 and the good of the world, until better laws and usages 
 shall have trained them nearer to the manhood and 
 womanhood standards of Christian civilizations. 
 
 In fact, it is the clear conviction of the writer that the 
 time is already here when the white men of the country, 
 in their several States, should enact legislation which will 
 rescue the black men of the land from their racial sloth 
 and licentiousness, by compelling them, — first: to daily- 
 wage-earning work five and a half days out of seven, and, 
 second: to practice the monogamic marriage and main- 
 tain the monogamous homes with which white manhood 
 for ages has uplifted and morally protected its own 
 women and their offspring. 
 
 XV. 
 
 An International Alliance of Republics. 
 
 The New Party will urge that negotiations be at once 
 started with all de facto Republics throughout the globe 
 for an International Alliance on the following basis : 
 
 Trade and Commerce to be as free between all the 
 Republics as they now are between the States of our own 
 Union ; 
 
 All the Republics to contribute their proportion of 
 soldiers, ships, munitions, and equipment for an allied 
 army and navy which will defend any Allied Republic 
 against the world; 
 
 The Allied Republics to hold a bi-cameral, two-sex 
 
148 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 Parliament every two years in the capitals of Washing- 
 ton, Paris, and Rio de Janeiro (or Buenos Ayres) in 
 turn; each Republic to send four delegates to the Parlia- 
 ment, — two leading men to the House of Men, and two 
 leading women to the House of Women ; the delegates to 
 serve four years, and one-half of them to be elected every 
 two years; 
 
 Dating from the assembling and organization of the 
 first of such Parliaments, any revolution or rebellion in 
 any of the AlHed Republics, if injurious to other nations 
 or in violation of treaty rights, to come before the Stand- 
 ing Judiciary Committee or Court of Appeal of the 
 Alliance, and the offending Republic to accept the dictum 
 of the Court until a special session of the Parliment of 
 the Alliance can be summoned and the case adjudicated 
 by majority vote of both Houses taken separately. 
 
 Had such an Alliance of Republics been in existence in 
 the last and in this century, the Boer Republics would not 
 have been wiped out, France would not have been attacked 
 by Germany in 1914 nor the "big stick" brought into play 
 against the protesting Philippines, nor Panama have been 
 torn from protesting Columbia, nor United States pro- 
 tectorates have been established over the feeble Central 
 American and Carribean Republics, nor threatened, as 
 during 1913-14, against the important Republic of Mex- 
 ico, — all of them precedents of the utmost danger to the 
 continuance of this our own Republic as such, li we 
 wish to kill American Republican ideals and institutions 
 and insensibly evolve into an Empire, we have, since the 
 year 1898. taken the surest way to achieve this betraynl 
 
XEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 149 
 
 of our forefathers and of their foundation principle that 
 "all just governments derive their power from the con- 
 sent of the governed." 
 
 XVI. 
 
 To Restore Palestine to Israel. 
 
 The New Party will appeal to the nations of Christen- 
 dom on behalf of the purchase of Palestine and its pre- 
 sentation to the Jewish people scattered throughout the 
 world, — this their own land to be restored to them as the 
 expression of the world's gratitude and recognition for 
 their inestimable gift to mankind of the Old and New 
 Testaments, as well as of the world's repentance for the 
 horrors inflicted upon their ancestors by the Christendom 
 of the past; each nation to contribute to the purchase- 
 money in proportion to their governmental income, and 
 the land to be presented, not as Palestine is to-day, but 
 irrigated and re-forested and re-fertilized. 
 
 Toward these last objects, each contributing nation to 
 keep in Palestine with its present pay and rations, a pro- 
 portional contingent of its standing army to work on the 
 irrigation canals until all are dug and completed, all 
 forest-lands replanted, and the phenomenal stones of 
 her fields measurably removed and ground into cement 
 for building and paving purposes. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Of a Seventh-day instead of a ^irst-day Sabbath. 
 The New Party will agitate throughout the Christian 
 
150 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 world the transfer of its weekly Rest Day from the first 
 day of the week, or Sunday, to the seventh, or Saturday 
 — the Sabbath to begin at the close of the preceding day, 
 Friday, as originally instituted by Moses and as still 
 observed by the orthodox Jews throughout the world. 
 
 To the best being and achievement of the human race 
 one Day of Rest in seven is indispensable. The far higher 
 ratio of scientific thought and will-force of the peoples 
 who rest and relax one day in seven is proven by the 
 great time-and-space-and-labor-saving inventions of the 
 Sunday-keeping Scotch and English and Americans be- 
 yond anything comparable in the inventions of those who 
 do not thus set aside one seventh of every week. 
 
 Of course it is the principle of the thing that is im- 
 portant, and not whether the rest-day be observed on the 
 seventh or on the first day of the week. Unfortunately, 
 the Jews, who, like the Christians, came to our shores in 
 search of liberty and prosperity, declined to recognize the 
 Christian sabbath and kept to that instituted by Moses 
 more than three thousand years before, — namely, from 
 Friday sundown to Saturday sundown. Then they claimed 
 that, having kept their own rest-day, they must in justice 
 be permitted to work and to trade on the Christian rest- 
 day. 
 
 As this seemed fair, this was allowed; but with the 
 unforeseen result that the American ''Sunday" sabbath 
 is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. The Day of Rest 
 for all employed men and women is by many continually 
 more and more devoted to long hours of labor, — especially 
 to those labors that minister to "pay" amusements and 
 recreations, such as news stands, soda fountains, saloons. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 151 
 
 and restaurants; or as surface cars, railroads and steam- 
 boats ; or as concerts, theatres, shows, and games of every 
 description. Save in their brief summer vacations, em- 
 ployed men and women by millions in this country now 
 know no rest-day, because they are serving their fellow- 
 beings in the above vocations every day in the week and 
 doubly so on Sundays. 
 
 That this sabbath-breaking by both the money-earning 
 amusers and the money-spending amused must in the end 
 seriously fatigue and deteriorate the hitherto alert and 
 able and sinewy American mind, and render it unable to 
 think and to will in the future as it has in the past, is 
 as clear as the sun in heaven. Between the Jewish Satur- 
 day sabbath and the Christian Sunday one, the land now 
 has little or no sabbath. But with the Day of Rest put 
 back to its ancient Sinai-given place at the end of the 
 week, and beginning with the close of the day before 
 (according both to its original institution and also its 
 restoration by the Scotch and English and New England 
 Puritans),— the Jewish Bible believer would be so at 
 one with the American Bible believer in demanding its 
 genuine and general observance, that together they could 
 hardly fail of securing it. 
 
 Should the Christian world decline to change its Day of 
 Rest from the first to the seventh day of the week, the 
 New Party will at least attempt legislation whereby the 
 Sabbath shall begin on Saturday afternoon, at five o'clock, 
 and all stores, saloons, games and theatrical amusements 
 be closed from that hour until the next day at noon. 
 As the seventh day of the week draws to its close, such 
 universal pause and hush should descend upon the land 
 
152 AEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 that its dwellers must perforce rest and relax not only 
 from toil but also from excitement — remaining in their 
 homes to renew their affections, or assembling in their 
 churches and halls to lift up their souls. 
 
 "The world is too much with us; late and soon — 
 Getting and spending — we lay waste our powers." 
 
 "The sabbath was made for man," said the Lord Jesus, 
 "not man for the sabbath." 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Against a Third Term. 
 
 The New Party will seek to amend the Constitution of 
 the United States by prohibiting a third term to the 
 President and by enacting that ex-presidents shall auto- 
 matically become ex-officio United States Senators-at- 
 large for life and shall receive from the nation the salary 
 of a senator. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Of Postmasters. 
 
 As the only common-sensible plan, postmasters should 
 be elected by the voters of their jurisdiction for life or 
 good behavior and they should be confirmed by the Sec- 
 retary of the United States Post Office Department. The 
 President of the country should have nothing to do with 
 them, and so the New Party will maintain. 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 153 
 
 XX. 
 
 Of Government Ownership. 
 
 In the belief that the ruin of Americanism lies that 
 way, the New Party will actively and ardently oppose all 
 laws and all government enterprises that look to govern- 
 ment ownership and operation of public utilities other 
 than those by long prescription already in public control, 
 — as roads, water-works, the mails, and so on. 
 
 One of the most original and remarkable principles of 
 American statesmanship was that of the great Jefferson : 
 "The best government is that which governs least" — an 
 axiom that could have been evolved and followed only 
 by a determined and gifted people who came to a virgin 
 continent with but their own hands and feet to help them 
 subdue it. Under its infinite freedom and inspiration the 
 United States has attained the financial leadership of the 
 world, and it is foreignism pure and simple, foreignism 
 as born and reared for centuries by Catholicism and 
 Kaiserism, foreignism that wants neither to think, nor 
 to plan, nor to initiate for itself — American fashion — 
 but to have all these done for it, which is now demand- 
 ing that American Business shall be brought under gov- 
 ernment control, and thus the whole land become a vast 
 bureaucracy, with amply paid and generously pensioned 
 government places as "snug harbors" for life for every 
 foreign-born and foreign-fathered man that wants one ! 
 
 Wheresoever the carcase is, there the vultures are 
 gathered together! 
 
 That the government ownership of public utilities and 
 
154 A'£^ YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 "big business" in all its forms would enormously increase 
 the number of civil service positions, and that this in- 
 crease is the motive of the majority of those pushing 
 this foreign gospel throughout our land, is self-evident; 
 but let it once be nationally accepted and adopted, this 
 gospel, and its inevitable fruit will be the gradual slow- 
 ing-down and eventual stagnation of our hitherto up- 
 springing, irrepressible, ever-inventing and progressing 
 Americanism. Beginning with Egypt (Genesis 42:34-35), 
 plenty of nations have tried paternalism, just as plenty 
 have also tried separation of the sexes in education. 
 Do we wish to echo them? Germany may excel in "re- 
 search," but where are the great transforming Inventions 
 of Germany compared with those of Great Britain and 
 of this Republic which have blessed and advanced man- 
 kind? 
 
 The Wilson Administration is amiably and pleasantly 
 deferring to its great Catholic (otherwise foreign) po- 
 litical and labor element. It employs Catholic secretaries 
 and clerks, attends Catholic masses, and sends the sailors 
 of its wa^ ships to pay their respects to the Catholic 
 Pope. Against the non-paternalism of Thomas Jefferson, 
 it is laying a heavy hand on American business. It is 
 striving to go into government ship-owning and through 
 the parcel-post and municipal markets it is carrying on 
 retail distribution between farmers and housewives in- 
 stead of exhorting and encouraging the latter to organ- 
 ize their own retail trading. It is not clear to the writer's 
 mind that for this last it could not be impeached as going 
 beyond its constitutional limits. In Part One of this 
 book I said that the Democratic Party is dead. The 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 155 
 
 country thinks it has come to life. If by that Party is 
 meant the party of Thomas Jefferson— it has not. 
 Thomas Jefferson was a native-born, non-Catholic Ameri- 
 can. The present-day Democratic Party is guided and 
 controlled by the Catholic foreign-born-and-fathered-and- 
 grandfathered of its constituency. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Of Copyrights and Patents. 
 As the "party of justice" the New Party will demand 
 that the property-rights of authors in their writings and 
 of inventors in their patents, shall continue as long as 
 they live and be transmissible to their heirs and hy their 
 heirs precisely as is every other property. One of the 
 mcredible oversights of the law is the appropriation after 
 a brief period by publishers and manufacturers of the 
 money rewards of talent and genius in authorship and 
 invention. What fortunes, for example, must have been 
 made out of the books by Charles Dickens, that joy and 
 idol of English-speaking millions; yet a few years ago 
 two, at least, of his children were so reduced in cir- 
 cumstances that a life-fund had to be raised for them by 
 his countrymen ! 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Three Needed National Commissions. 
 The New Party will demand the creation of three Na- 
 tional Commissions on behalf of the following investiga- 
 tions : 
 
156 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 First, — a Commission composed of leading historians 
 who shall collect and review all the evidence obtainable 
 as to the personal moral character of that George Wash- 
 ington who for a hundred years was adored as the match- 
 less and immaculate Father of his Country, but who, since 
 the accusation against him by an Irish-American editor 
 in the presidential campaign of 1884*, has become more 
 and more discredited, until now — not Washington but 
 Lincoln is the supreme idol and ideal of the American 
 people. 
 
 The two influential journalists, E. L. Godkin and Will- 
 iam Elroy Curtis who (the latter many years after the 
 former) in their newspaper columns attributed also to 
 Washington the so-called "vices of a gentleman" which 
 in the cases of Franklin, Jefferson, and Hamilton can 
 not be denied — never gave in print the degrading story 
 which for generations has haunted the Washington clubs 
 and which probably originated in Virginia, where Wash- 
 ington was scorned, detested and maligned by the colonial 
 landed aristocracy which through his triumphant leading 
 of the Revolution lost its right of primo-geniture and its 
 passionately cherished allegiance to the British crown; 
 but that the story in question has now been whispered 
 from one end of the Union to the other is evident from 
 the widely separated sections and social classes in which 
 one may come upon it. It is the highest time, therefore, 
 that if not true it be authoritatively branded as false and 
 forever laid to rest.t 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was a divinely-planned and divinely- 
 
 • See Part I, pp. 436-439. t Read letters, Appendix B. 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 157 
 
 missioned man, and not one throb of love and gratitude 
 toward him from the American people would the writer 
 abate; but to compare his rescue ability in saving the 
 Union with Washington's constructive ability in creating 
 it, is like comparing the fireman who quenches the blaze 
 in a splendid State house with the architect who designed 
 and builded it, and to measure the gratitude we as Ameri- 
 cans owe to Lincoln with that we owe to Washington 
 would be to value the paid doctor who in a crisis saves 
 one's life, with the father who gave the life to begin 
 with, and then — through long devoted years of striving, 
 struggle and fidelity — fully and freely nurtured, sustained, 
 trained, and magnificently endowed it! 
 
 A second National Commission should find out, — 
 a. How many foreign-born-and-fathered-and-grand- 
 fathered adults and youths, both naturalized and non- 
 naturalized, are in civil-service positions throughout the 
 United States and her island possessions, — from the 
 scrub-women and street-sweepers employed and paid by 
 towns, states, and the nation, up to town, county, state, 
 and national teachers, mayors, governors, clerks, senators, 
 representatives, judges, or any other public-service office? 
 b; How many men and officers of the Army and Navy 
 are foreign-born-or-fathered? 
 
 c. What is the race, religion, education, and political 
 party of each and every one of the foreign-born-or-fath- 
 ered who are in the public service ? 
 
 d. In what town and State is each of them living? 
 
 e. What proportion do these foreign-born-or-fathered 
 public service incumbents bear to the hereditary American 
 
158 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 incumbents of similar offices in the same towns and 
 States ? 
 
 f. How many owners, editors, sub-editors and report- 
 ers of newspapers and magazines are among our foreign- 
 born-or-f athered ? 
 
 g. How many of our greatest criminals and of our 
 lesser, of our drunkards, of our saloon and dive and 
 gambling-place keepers, of our panders, procurers, pro- 
 curesses and prostitutes, of our chorus-girls and artists- 
 models, are foreign-born-or-f athered ? 
 
 The findings of such a Commission on the Foreign- 
 born-or-fathered are urgently needed by hereditary 
 American voters, that they may know where our country 
 stands, both morally and politically, and may decide in- 
 telligently whether they will continue to be ruled and 
 governed and depraved by the foreign-born-or-fathered 
 national minority which in many towns and cities and sev- 
 eral states is now a state and local majority, and will also 
 continue to allow more and more of these aliens to land 
 and settle among us with the inevitable result that sooner 
 or later their now local majorities will become a national 
 and universal one ! 
 
 The Third National Commission suggested should in- 
 vestigate and estimate 
 
 a. The probable financial value to the family and to 
 the community of the universal indoor labors of woman- 
 hood and girlhood before the age of steam-machinery as 
 compared with the outdoor labors of manhood and boy- 
 hood during the same era; — and 
 
 b. The expense to their families and to the nation 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. IS9 
 
 of the servant-keeping American womanhood which to- 
 day in its homes is wholly supported by its fathers and 
 husbands. 
 
 The writer believes that such an investigation would 
 demonstrate that this approximately two million educated 
 wives and daughters who are not giving any financial 
 equivalent for their up-keep — are a daily drain upon the 
 pocket-books of their bread-winners and therefore a 
 dead-weight upon the nation equal to the present daily ex- 
 penditure of the British Empire in the German War; 
 but she also believes that this economic condition once 
 authoritatively demonstrated to educated American 
 women, they will seriously address themselves to the 
 only possible solution of the problem by everywhere or- 
 ganizing themselves as the Retail Distributors of the 
 Family Food and Clothing Supply of the nation, thereby 
 saving to their bread-winners the cost of paying "a mil- 
 lion small merchants" to do what they, as its home- 
 makers, could do far better, and also saving to the world 
 the now simply awful wastage of their own womanhood 
 time, talent and energy. 
 
 The most beautiful, as surely it is the sole all-compre- 
 hending definition of "love" — is that "Love is the estab- 
 lishing of right relations." 
 
 The imperious, the well-night frantic demand of the 
 present hour is for the establishing of right relations be- 
 tween the sexes, — the closest mutual relation of human 
 life. Alas, at the very foundation of their earthly exist- 
 ence lies the question of their financial relations ! Unless 
 
V 
 
 l6o NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 these are "right," national happiness is impossible, na- 
 tional prosperity is impossible, national virtue is impos- 
 sible ; for a "supported" instead of a self-supporting wom- 
 anhood is by the very nature of things the target for all 
 the slings and arrow^s of outrageous fortune, and is, 
 therefore, and must be, the Victim and the Sufferer par 
 excellence of that "v^^hole creation which groaneth and 
 travaileth together in pain until now." 
 
 Mr. Edward A. Woods, president of the National Asso- 
 ciation of Life Underwriters, recently said in the Asso- 
 ciation News that the traffic in women and virtue, or 
 "commercialized vice," costs the city of New York sev- 
 enty-five million dollars, and the country directly and in- 
 directly over three billion dollars a year! 
 
 Can a more awful indictment be brought against the 
 manhood of a city or of a country than this demoraliza- 
 tion and destruction of its girlhood? Can manhood ex- 
 cuse and extenuate this stupendous guilt by accusing 
 girlhood and womanhood of being willing partners in 
 their own degradation ? 
 
 ''Woman is non-dependable" said in debate the influ- 
 ential Methodist divine of New York, Dr. James M. 
 Buckley ; "like music, she lends herself with equal facility 
 to the church, the ball-room, and the orgy." 
 
 This is true, though true not because of woman's char- 
 acter, or of her physique, or of her mind, or of her 
 heart — all of which to the last fibre are homologous to 
 those of man. The difference, nay, the contrast in her 
 nature which betrays her to him and makes her his moral 
 victim, is in her temperament. 
 
 Character can be transformed, mind can be enlightened, 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. i6] 
 
 soul can be enlarged, — but temperament is unchangeable, 
 imperishable, ineradicable. The temperament of woman 
 is fluid; the temperament of man is stable; and herein 
 is the master-key to this world-tragedy of the Social 
 Evil — as a certain nature-comparison, so it seems to me, 
 most wonderfully illustrates. 
 
 For the earth on which we live is a great sphere of 
 two features and two only — Land and Water. 
 
 All over the earth this land runs under and sustains 
 this water and also in continents and islands it rises 
 above and shapes the water; and all over the earth this 
 water seeks and clings to and caresses the land — in 
 streams, rivers, ponds and lakes everywhere diversifying, 
 fertilizing and adorning it, in vapor, mist, and cloud 
 mounting above even the loftiest peaks to brood and float 
 over its surface, then descending again upon it in the 
 dews and rains and snows lacking whose never-failing 
 ministry every plant and animal upon it would die, and 
 the whole sphere become a stony or a sandy desert. 
 
 On the other hand — without the fixed and dominating 
 land, the water would and could be but a shoreless and 
 aimless waste of tossing billows. 
 
 What a magnificent and perfect symbol of the sexes 
 in their deepest inter-relations is, then, our God-made 
 earth with its two contrasting, co-working divisions! 
 How divinely do they daily and nightly plead with their 
 human prototypes to fulfil toward each other those an- 
 swering obligations which build up ideal humanity — the 
 World-brother everywhere sustaining, guiding, uplifting — 
 the World-sister everywhere bestowing and beautifying, 
 
i62 NEV/ YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 sympathizing and softening, inspiring and quickening— 
 the deepest cry of her heart, the inmost motive of her 
 action, whether conscious or unconscious, being ever 
 and always : 
 
 "I will be near him or will die ! 
 I will grow round him in his place — 
 Grow, live, die, looking in his face — 
 Die, dying, clasped in his embrace!" 
 
 Tremendous is the responsibility of manhood toward 
 womanhood on account of this contrast of her tempera- 
 ment with his own. Whatever may be true of the self- 
 dependence and self-guidance of individual women, the 
 woman masses of a nation can no more help conforming 
 to the men of that nation than water can help conforming 
 to the land. Whatever ideals manhood may cherish for 
 his womankind — whether to be pure as snow, chaste as 
 ice, wise as the ant, industrious as the bee, or inconse- 
 quential as the butterfly — he has but to intimate and she 
 will respond; but alas, equally if he plunges into the 
 baleful abyss of the passions, will she companion him 
 there. 
 
 And how many supreme peoples of the world have dis- 
 appeared down those abysses! The earth is strewn with 
 the ruins of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, India, 
 Greece, Rome, — and who knows which of the nations 
 struggling to-day in this hellish war (1915) will emerge 
 on top? One thing alone is certain. It will be the nation 
 of which the motherhood has most been encouraged to 
 walk on the heights with manhood as those "Plain People," 
 
NEW YORK: A ^YMFHUMC bTL'DY. 163 
 
 Billy and "Ma" Sunday, are now walking and thereby 
 achieving incredible things ! 
 
 The pure, limpid, live-giving, heaven-born Water! 
 The pure, limpid, life-giving, heaven-born Feminine ! 
 When manhood shall understand that it is net because 
 she is gross and sensual to begin with that woman to her 
 own defiling has so often yielded to him, but because it 
 is the constitution of her soul to answer his soul, yes, even 
 to making his evil her good — will he thereafter make a 
 covenant with himself nevermore in the future to tempt 
 her down into the sewers of his nature, but rather, in 
 fellowship with her more spiritual one — 
 On eagle wings 
 To mount — to fly — 
 And soar on high 
 Until they reach 
 Eternity f 
 With the manhood resolve and conduct in this connec- 
 tion rests the continuance or the disappearance of the 
 Social Evil. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THE LAST WORD. 
 
 Should any Hereditary Americans honor by reading 
 this semi-articulate book, let themv .not dismiss it from 
 their minds without pondering seriously, each one of 
 them, on the crying need of a True American Party, or 
 Party of Justice, as in the foregoing pages suggested; 
 "True American," instead of simply "American," because, 
 unless our Republic wishes to perish within this century, 
 it mu§t, — it simply must, — by substituting Personal for 
 its present Ward and District Representation, get itself 
 out of the foreign hands which are exploiting and under- 
 mining it back into the native hands and hearts which 
 will love, uphold, and upbuild it; and equally the 'Tarty 
 of Justice" because for the first time in the history of 
 the world, through it will be extended to the feminine 
 half of the race Representation in legislative and alder- 
 manic bodies by as many women nominated and elected 
 by women, as on the manhood side of the house there 
 are men nominated and elected by men. 
 
 Owing to our criminal supineness, mushy sentimental- 
 ity, base want of respect for ourselves and of reverence 
 for our ancestors, together with craven, unmanly fear 
 of Catholic blackmail and assassination — a foreign-born- 
 and-fathered-and-grandfathered Denominational Minor 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 165 
 
 ity is ruling and governing these United States, though 
 they themselves have recently declared in public that 
 they number but sixteen millions, — about one-sixth of our 
 population, that is, and they hold probably but one-tenth 
 of our wealth. 
 
 Sixteen millions dominating nearly one hundred mil- 
 lions! What dazzHng triumph for them! What black 
 ignominy for us ! 
 
 Not our Catholic or our Jewish immigrants, but our 
 Protestant forefathers and foremothers planted and 
 reared these our Federated Republics, watering them with 
 their sweat, their tears, and often with their blood. Their 
 beginnings as colonies were within the first ten years of 
 the seventeenth century (1607), and it was but eleven 
 years before the end of the eighteenth, (1789) that the 
 United States of America inaugurated their first Presi- 
 dent. One hundred and eighty years, then, did it take the 
 conquerors of the North American forests to evolve amid 
 those forests the institutions that have so exalted their 
 descendants in the scale of nations and so incalculably 
 benefitted mankind. 
 
 These institutions belong first of all to Our Posterity. 
 To surrender our children's inheritance to any hut those 
 children is not only flagrant injustice to and spoliation of 
 our own flesh and blood; it is flat treason to them, to 
 ourselves, and to our ancestors. Yet for seventy years 
 now we have been doing this as fast and as fully as we 
 can, with the consequence that in many centres of wealth 
 and population the machinery of government from top 
 to bottom is nearly as much in the hands of foreigners, 
 and its pay-rolls as practically their special property, 
 
l66 NEW YORK: A SY)\IPH0NIC STUDY. 
 
 as though they had come here with fleets and armies and 
 taken possession of us by force. The thanks we get for 
 thus placing them in control of our Protestant Institutions 
 is that they regard a Protestant as "some awful thing," 
 and that their street-boys jeer at one another in oppro- 
 brium, — "O you Protestant!" 
 
 For our own sakes, and for the sake of our children 
 and of our children's children, surely this should stop. 
 Hereditary Americans must make common cause, must 
 "get together" in the sense in which our foreigners have 
 got together so that they stand now on our soil in solid 
 racial and religious phalanxes of Irish, of Germans, of 
 Italians, of Jews, of Poles, of Slavs, of Orientals, of 
 Negroes, — ^yes, in "phalanxes" of nearly every alien 
 tongue and race and creed on earth, and all with the 
 same object — to milk and drain this passive and richly- 
 giving United States Cow, and then to ride that Cow ! 
 
 But these foreigners, multitudinous though they be, 
 are racially and collectively in the minority in this land, 
 and the privileges and perquisites of the minority only 
 can they "justly" expect. Henceforth the American 
 policy must be that of all other nations, and even as Brit- 
 ish offices are for the British, German offices for the 
 German, French offices for the French, so in the future 
 American offices must be for the Americans one or more 
 of whose ancestors voted for one or more of the first 
 nine presidents, and for such only of the foreign-born- 
 and-fathered-and-grandfathered as sympathize and agree 
 with them. 
 
 North American manhood in the past made an abysmal, 
 — an almost suicidal mistake. It was so anxious to be 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 167 
 
 generous, to be the ^'brother" of all mankind, that it 
 has not been true to itself, true to its own children, true 
 to its own fathers, true to its own God.' But now gen- 
 erosity must have a vacation, and "justice" must take its 
 place. If for nothing more than to stop the ever-swelling 
 stream of burglaries, larcenies, hold-ups, fires, murders 
 and worse that daily distress and despoil American ex- 
 istence, American manhood must take back into its own 
 hands the police reins it so long ago abandoned; for the 
 Irish manhood entrusted with them is utterly incompetent 
 either to prevent crime, to hunt crime down, or to con- 
 vict and punish crime when found. 
 
 In short, if life in the United States is to continue 
 worth living, things have got to be readjusted. If He- 
 reditary Americans still count two-thirds of the American 
 people, and if they will get together and stand together, 
 the game is still in their own hands. By the "majority 
 rule," which is the quintessential of our politics, two- 
 thirds of the offices should easily be ours. It is only the 
 outworn Ward and District systems, — only the represen- 
 tation in our legislatures and town councils of the life- 
 less land instead of the representation of the living souls 
 upon the land, — which is keeping our American-descended 
 citizens out of their own. 
 
 Sweep them away! — these political survivals from a 
 Homogenous British Past ! We are in a Heterogeneous 
 American Present, and our voting regulations must meet 
 our conditions, or the Republic — this most Mighty, most 
 Magnanimous, most Beneficent of all Free Governments 
 is swamped! 
 
I68 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 The Republic is ''up against" a proposition with three 
 faces, but a single soul : 
 
 Is she Catholic or Protestant f 
 
 Is she South European or North American? 
 
 Is hers a "Bishop'' or a "Bible" civilization f 
 
 If Protestant and not Catholic, if North American and 
 not South European, if of and for the Bible and not of 
 and for the Bishop, then let every Hereditary American 
 throughout the land, — man, woman and child, — buckle on 
 the armor of our Protestant History, take the sword of 
 the Divine Word, and flinging to the sky the snowy ban- 
 ner of the Divine Spirit, stand shoulder to shoulder on 
 behalf of American Ideals in a solidarity more adaman- 
 tine than is the foreign solidarity against us, and then 
 we shall — we must — 'Svin out"; for ours is not only the 
 numerical majority, — 
 
 "We have the Brains 
 We have the Strength 
 We have the Money too!" 
 
 Ascription. 
 
 O Trinity Divine — Infinite — Eternal in the Heavens! 
 O Source and Centre and Circumference of the Uni- 
 verse! — by human womanhood thy Ineffable Names of 
 "Father, Motlier and Holy Son" be ever exalted and 
 adored, in that thy Threefold Love did guide to these 
 North American shores a God-loving and Bible-believ- 
 ing Manhood! May the perfect Wisdom, the perfect 
 Justice, the ideal Chivalry, which dwell forever in the 
 Councils of thy Divine Unity, be so reflected in the 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 169 
 
 councils and decisions of this Chosen Manhood that, first 
 transforming into good whatever is amiss within his own 
 boundaries, he may thereafter throughout thy World he 
 thy Forerunner and Champion for Happiness Every- 
 where — until Thy Joyous Triune Kingdom he come and 
 thy Blissful Triune Will he done on Earth as it is in 
 Heaven. — A men. 
 
 THE END. 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN. 
 
 By Rudyard Kipling. 
 
 The beginning of the poem of seven verses and its end, are 
 as follows: — 
 
 Kipling. 
 
 "Take up the White Man's burden- 
 Send forth the best ye breed — 
 
 Go, bind your sons to exile 
 To serve your captives' need; 
 
 To wait in heavy harness, 
 On fluttered folk and wild — 
 
 Your new-caught sullen peoples, 
 Half devil and half child. 
 
 "Take up the White Man's burden- 
 In patience to abide, 
 
 To veil the threat of terror 
 And check the show of pride; 
 
 By all ye cry or whisper, 
 
 By all ye leave or do, 
 The silent, sullen peoples 
 
 Shall weigh your Gods and you. 
 
 "Take up the White Man's burden- 
 Have done with childish days — 
 The lightly proffered laurel, 
 
V 
 
 172 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 The easy ungrudged praise; 
 Comes now, to search your manhood 
 
 Through all the thankless years, 
 Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom, 
 
 The judgment of your peers." 
 
 "THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN" A^^SWERED* 
 
 America. 
 
 "You call me to my duty. 
 
 And think I need the call. 
 My daughters now would answer you; 
 
 Were you beneath the pall, 
 Or were six feet of earth 
 
 Your haughty heart upon, 
 Your brilliant soul should hearken 
 
 From realms beyond the sun.* 
 
 "For, if we 'take the burden,* 
 
 We'll shoulder it in full; 
 Not halve it, like you English, 
 
 Who play with an edged tool! 
 My Sons, though tense and mighty 
 
 And deadly in the fray, 
 Will listen to their Sisters, 
 
 And thus their Sisters say: 
 
 The Sisters: 
 
 "Brothers — if ye be 'White Men- 
 Lift the Dark Woman high, 
 
 And reverence her womanhood, 
 Because our God is nigh; 
 
 • When, in 1899, the writer's indignation moved her to pen this 
 reply to Mr. Kipling's insolent poem, the latter was lying critically ill 
 in a New York hotel a few blocks away. 
 
NEIV YORK: A SYMPHOXIC STUDY. 173 
 
 And teach the swarthy fathers 
 
 That daughters must be free, 
 So shall the dark souls gladden, 
 
 Nor longer 'sullen' be. 
 
 "Hail the deep mother-pulses 
 
 That loathe the Rule of Force, 
 But since they must be mastered 
 
 Prefer their own, of course! 
 No wonder they are 'sullen,' 
 
 No wonder they are fain 
 To stab the English 'white' men 
 
 Who fought their sons for gain. 
 
 "Be not that 'White Man' — traitor! 
 
 The Anglo-Indian 'fou,' 
 Who first the dark girls scorning, 
 
 Scorns next his consort, too; 
 Who seeks them in their vileness, — 
 
 Dark women and their lords. — 
 And shapes his ways to match them 
 
 And sells them their False Gods!* 
 
 "This 'White Man' back in England; 
 ' 'What?— Lady?— No, not I. 
 A Female, — that is all I want. 
 
 No 'woman-mind' to spy! 
 Dark maidens here are absent, 
 
 But white ones plenty be. 
 They pleasure me in music-halls, — 
 
 In homes they bend the knee. 
 
 "Ah, 'stately Homes of England,' 
 Oft based on woman's shame! 
 
 * Many of the idols bought and worshipped in India are manu- 
 factured in Birmingham. 
 
174 ^^^ YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 
 
 Ah, 'Royal Oak of England/ 
 
 Rooted so near hell-flame! 
 That flame is eating higher, 
 
 That oak is sinking down; 
 Some day that land may be, like Spain, 
 
 But ashes 'neath a crown ! 
 
 "Brothers,--if ye be 'White Men,'— 
 
 Keep the White Woman high; 
 She is your very soul of soul, 
 
 She gives you sigh for sigh. 
 You are her Aspiration, 
 
 Let her be yours in turn ; 
 So shall the Sun of Freedom 
 
 For both forever burn! 
 
 "Fear not the White Man's burden; 
 
 Cheer the White Woman higher; 
 And see each generation 
 
 Climb still beyond its sire. 
 Enfold her to your bosom, 
 
 Share with her all your crown; 
 For ages has she labored, — 
 
 Then, would you keep her down? 
 
 "For ages she has labored. 
 
 For ages has she loved. 
 For ages has she waited, — 
 
 How far from you removed! 
 Now hearken to her counsel, 
 
 Now ponder on her Fate; 
 God meant her for your helpmeet, — 
 
 It is not yet too late. 
 
 "'What is the White Man's "burden?"'— 
 Faith to the one white wife, 
 
AEIV YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 175 
 
 No matter though the tempter 
 
 Tempt to the end of life. 
 Bind Monogamic Law 
 
 On your divided soul 
 Until it weld to unity, 
 
 Steel-true from pole to pole. 
 
 "Accept this 'White Man's burden;' 
 
 And shackle manhood lust, — 
 His madness for the visible 
 
 Which swiftly falls to dust; 
 Soar to the Rejilm of Spirit, 
 
 Take Woman with you there, — 
 Back where her Maker placed her 
 
 Unutterably fair. 
 
 "Not as a weary 'burden' 
 
 Of Wifehood on your back — 
 God dowered her to run, to fly 
 
 On in her own bright track; 
 Share all your problems with her, 
 
 Your puzzle is Herself 
 Oh, let her try the solving — 
 
 Not keep her on the shelf ! 
 
 "Nor as a dreary 'burden' 
 
 Of passive Womankind — 
 She mothered many Arts, 
 
 Can you ignore her mind? 
 She mastered myriad arts. 
 
 Unresting as the bee; 
 Now lend her as her payment 
 
 Your giant Servants Three!* 
 • Combined Capital, Organized Labor, Freedom of Action. 
 
 "For why the madding 'burden' 
 Of gaunt-eyed Poverty 
 
176 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 You took on with the Retail Store 
 
 To clog your liberty? — 
 Let Wifehood keep the store, 
 
 And keep the household, too; 
 And rich America keep free 
 
 Between her oceans blue! 
 
 "Farewell the White Man's 'burden/ 
 
 Soon as the dear White Wife, 
 With women-friends unites her time 
 
 Her money, thought, and life- 
 Working in happy bands • 
 
 From morn to evening dew, 
 To fashion the Home Beautiful, 
 
 And make it fit for you! 
 
 "Send then your armies forth, 
 
 As soldiers of the Lord, 
 With consorts skilled and wise 
 
 To teach his Living Word; 
 To live his Law of Love 
 
 In sweetest wedded state, 
 Until the swarthy husbands 
 
 That sweetness emulate. 
 
 "Oh, cease to monkey England,— 
 
 That Hypocrite of lust. 
 For money and for titles, 
 
 With woman in the dust; 
 And for our purse-proud daughters 
 
 Who play in England's hands, 
 Exile the poor degenerates 
 
 For aye to alien lands ! 
 
 "Exile their fathers, too, 
 Deep traitors to the State, 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY, 177 
 
 Who leave one son their gold 
 
 And dare discriminate 
 Between their children dear 
 
 That they may 'found a line' 
 And build an aristocracy — 
 
 Off with them o'er the brine ! 
 
 "Choose for that White Man's banner 
 
 Our fathers floated high 
 Either more 'stars' of Freedom, 
 
 Or 'stripes' of bloody dye. 
 Take Washington or Kipling 
 
 Your leader in the fight, 
 The Prince of Peace, or Prince of Wales,— 
 
 They can not both be right !* 
 
 "0 for the 'white' man's glory! 
 
 A government of grace, 
 When Force can smiling sleep. 
 
 For Love is in his place. 
 O for surcease from scorning, 
 
 From fault so glad to find! 
 O for George Washington again,— 
 
 That 'white' man ever kind ! 
 
 "We Sisters crave your Glory, 
 
 A Brotherhood of Strength, 
 Founded upon the Justice 
 
 That must be yours at length; 
 Based on our Maker's Truth, 
 
 Burned on your deepest heart: — 
 
 • When these verses were written Queen Victoria was still living 
 and her eldest son still that Prince of Wales who for so long was the 
 glass of fashion and the mould of morals both for the British aristocrncy 
 and for our American toadying ditto. 
 
178 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 Honor is Woman's Breath of Life; 
 White Men must take her part. 
 
 *'The White Man must protect — 
 
 Nay — reach her toward the sky, 
 Must ring out — 'Perish everything 
 
 Before her Sanctity!' 
 So shall Dark Mothers gladden, 
 
 Till snowy babes be born ; 
 And so the God-Head triumph, 
 
 And Hell, persuaded, turnl" 
 
APPENDIX B. 
 
 The following are replies to the author's inquiries of 
 an American statesman and of two American historians 
 as to the truth of the Irish bodkin's accusation against 
 Washington in 1884. The statesman was the late Senator 
 Bayard of Delaware, so long her distinguished leader 
 in Congress; one of the historians was that standard 
 biographer of Revolutionary statesmen, Mr. John T. 
 Morse of Boston; the other the famous John Fiske of 
 Cambridge, since deceased. 
 
 Wilmington, Del. 
 
 August 22, 1884. 
 Madam : 
 
 Upon my return home I found your letter of the 10th 
 and mailed to you the speech made by me in Chicago as 
 you desired. 
 
 Your letter refers in distress to a recent newspaper al- 
 legation against the private character of General Washing- 
 ton. In response to your regard for Washington I am glad 
 to write to you of him. 
 
 Undoubtedly such charges were current in certain circles 
 in his day. But I have now before me his own comments 
 which he intended to embody in his Farewell Address, but 
 was induced afterward to omit. 
 
 He refers to "the malicious falsehoods and "virulent 
 abuse," wounding to his "reputation and feelings" with which 
 the press had "teemed." But he concluded "as heretofore, 
 to pass them over in silence" — "never having myself nor by 
 any other with my participation or knowledge, written or 
 published a scrap in answer to any of them." 
 
 In my years of public service I have met a class of men 
 
NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. l8l 
 
 who sought to degrade the reputation of Washington in 
 order to bring him down to the standard of their own level. 
 
 Such persons have repeated in my hearing instances of 
 grossness and vulgarity on the part of Washington. Indig- 
 nant, disgusted and incredulous I have hunted down these 
 alleged "facts" and never found one to be true. I also 
 remember a careful and thorough student of the history of 
 Washington saying to me in reference to this very class of 
 scandals, that "the more he read and discovered of Wash- 
 ington the whiter grew his name." 
 
 Therefore, Madam, I congratulate you and our country 
 that Washington stands in his own niche of fame beyond the 
 flight of the arrows of scandalous assault, which will always 
 either fall short, or shatter themselves against the adamant 
 of truth. 
 
 Very respectfully yours, 
 
 T. F. Bayard. 
 
 Mrs. Melusina F. Peirce, 
 New York City. 
 
 Beverly Farms, Mass. 
 
 August 20, 1884. 
 My dear Madam : 
 
 My reply to your letter of the 10th inst., which has only 
 just found me, is—that there have been rumors, all very 
 vague and general, concerning Washington.* I never heard 
 but one story which could be called in the least degree 
 specific. Evidence of any of these scandalous gossipings I 
 believe there is absolutely none. I have never come across 
 any and I have asked three of my acquaintances as likely 
 as any I know of in the country to be informed on such a 
 point, and they have only been able to say: "There were 
 stories." In a word, to the best of my knowledge and belief, 
 it can only be said that Washington, like other people, has 
 been "talked about." But unlike the other men mentioned 
 by the Nation, nothing has been established against him. 
 
i82 NEW YORK: A SYMPHONIC STUDY. 
 
 nothimg is known; he is entitled to all the benefit of *he doubt, 
 at least. 
 
 I confess that I was astonished and annoyed at the bold 
 assertion of the Nation — one that such a newspaper could 
 hardly be expected to put forth unless it could be sustained. 
 Nevertheless, in my present state of information, I do not 
 believe that it can be sustained. 
 
 I wish I could give you a more conclusive reply; but, 
 as has been often said, in such matters a negative can never 
 be proved. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 John T. Morse, Jr. 
 Mrs. Melusina Fay Peirce, 
 New York. 
 
 22 Berkeley St.,, Cambridge, Mass. 
 
 December 6, 1894. 
 
 My dear Mrs. Peirce: 
 
 With regard to the remarks to which you refer, casting 
 aspersions upon the moral character of George Washington, 
 I may say that I have never discovered any basis for them. 
 For many years, I have been accustomed to hear persons hall 
 jocosely speak of Washington as if he were not entirely 
 above reproach, but I have never found any one who could 
 point to any evidence for such a belief. The subject has 
 so far interested me that I have made many inquiries with 
 regard to it, but I have never found, anything, and my own 
 belief is that his character was absolutely spotless. I suspect 
 many people get tired of hearing Aristides called the Just, 
 and in their desire to pick flaws the wish becomes father to 
 the thought. 
 Believe me, 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 John Fiske.