liiii80i«!;i;lA I ,u ,, "/jSftp* ^ft Bi^ki- '¦kist' 'fpt^SK Xolini^a^^tf a. Ctlfegt, h-ik Anonymous Gift ja2±L. The Geography of Genius BY THE SAME AUTHOR The Religion of Science The Faith of Coming Man By JAMES W. LEE 12mo, cloth, net $1.50 "An interpretation of Christianity according to modem modes of thought in the light of present-day conditions, in language simple, strong and brill iant. A remarkable restatement in clearness, comprehensiveness and in its spiritual tone. It shows what Chris tianity was, is, and shall be to the race. It is a book that earnest people who are not Christians will read and feel. Altogether, it will take its place as one of the best books on the subject." — Christian Evangelist. The Geography of Genius BY JAMES W. LEE, D.D. New York Chicago Fleming H. Revell Company {.ONDON AND EDINBURGH Copyright, 1920, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago : 17 North Wabash Ave. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street NOTE The authpr of these pages died in St. Louis, Mo., October 4, 1919. His last work prior to the accident which resulted fatally, was the prepara tion and editing of the pages following. His last literary effort was the dictation from his sick-bed of the preface to this book. The arrangement of this book during the Summer of 1919 was to him a labor of love. In view of the foregoing fact, I have added to this book a biographical sketch based largely on material which has appeared in recent years in the St. Louis Christian Advocate. It is felt that those who were interested in my father and his work would like to have this addition to the sub stantive chapters of the book. I. L. L. New York, N. Y. FOREAVORD IN the midst of a very busy life, as pastor and presiding elder of various churches, I have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity granted me by my people to travel extensively to different parts of the world. In my travels I have sought to establish the prin ciple that no places are of importance or value on this earth except such as have been made significant by association with great people, great battles or great events of some kind. So I have included in my description only cities, rivers and villages that have been illuminated and magnetized by some great person or historic deed. The whole idea appeals to me very deeply, and has led me to the recognition of the truth that this earth is a mere mass of inert matter except those parts of it that have been rendered important and attractive through relation to some great personal spirit. Very few people ever visit the Andes because the Andes is made up of rock and earth alone. Humboldt spent a short while in the neighborhood making scientific in vestigations, and he is about the only great man that has ever touched this vast range of rock viii FOREWORD and wood and earth with any significance. But the Alps, made famous in poetry, in song, in history and literature, is visited by thousands and thousands of tourists every year. No one would ever visit Ayr, Scotland, but for Burns. No one Avould have any particular interest in Concord, Massachusetts, but for Emerson and Hawthorne and other great spir its who have been associated with it. Many villages and country places are kept alive by the influence of people who have lived there, and who continue to draw admirers after they have passed away. St. Francis has given to Assisi spiritual value worth far more than mil lions of money, and he never had a dollar in his life after his conversion. His gift was that of his beautiful life. He has been supporting a mountain town of three thousand inhabitants through the contributions of tourists and .sight seers in sufficient numbers to actually maintain the people of his native place. Thousands of descriptions such as these will occur to most anyone, but to me it has been an endless source of inspiration. The general title of my book of travels develops the aims I have followed in the whole book. .James W. Lee. St. Louis, Sept. 15, 1919. CONTENTS I. The Geography of Genius 9 II. From St. Louis to Palestine and Back . . 15 III. The Oldest City in the World 29 IV. Jerusalem, the Capital of Christendom 44 V. The Most Celebrated Village on Earth . 59 VL The Most Beautiful City on Earth 67 VII. A Speck in Space 79 VIII. In the Footsteps of Washington 85 IX. The Westminster Abbey of the Quakers 96 X. John Wesley's Country Ill XI. In the Burns Country 128 XII. A Vacation in England 155 XIII. Mexico from a Car Window 168 XIV. The Unswept Halls of Montezumas 176 XV. Remarkable Mexican History 181 XVI. Maximilian and Carlotta 188 XVII. DownfaU of the Mexican Empire 199 XVIII. In Canada with Her Builders 207 XIX. The Most Interesting Island in the West ern Hemisphere 220 XX. Keeping Up with Newport 235 XXI. The American Home of Charles Wesley 250 XXII. San Francisco and Robert Louis Steven son 259 XXIII. In the Country of Whittier and White- field 267 Winter Days in the Dreamland of XXIV. Florida 283 JAMES WIDEMAN LEE Biographical Sketch James Wideman Lee was born at Rockbridge, Georgia, November 28, 1849, the son of Zachary J. and Emily H. (Wideman) Lee. He was edu cated at Bawsville Academy, Grantville (Ga.) High School and Emory College. Dr. Lee joined the North Georgia Conference in 1874 and was ordained to the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 1876. He was pastor of churches in Georgia at Spring Creek, Rockmart, Long Cane, CarroUton, Dal ton, Rome and Atlanta. He was pastor of Trin ity Church, Atlanta, 1886-87-88-89. He was pas tor of Park Street Church, Atlanta, 1890-91- 92-93. He was then sent to St. John's Church, St. Louis, Mo., and was pastor there in 1894-95- 96-97. Dr. Lee was appointed presiding elder of the St. Louis District and served the church in that capacity in 1S98-99-1900-01. He was sent back to St. John's Church the second time and was again pastor there in 1902-03-04-05. He was ap pointed again to Trinity Church, Atlanta, Ga., which he served the second time in 1906-07-08-09. He was sent back to Park Street Church and served that congregation again in 1910. He was xii JAMES WIDEMAN LEE transferred back to the St. Louis Conference and stationed at St. John's Church the third time, 1911-12-13-14. He was again made presiding elder of the St. Louis District, and served the church in that capacity the second time, 1915-16. He was then appointed chaplain of Barnes Hos pital, and served that institution 1917-18-19. Dr. Lee wrote nine books and edited six. He wrote : 1892— "The Making of a Man." 1895— "The Earthly Footsteps of the Man of Galilee." 1897— "The Romance of Palestine." 1897— "Henry W. Grady, Editor, Orator and Man." 1900— "Illustrated History of Methodism." 1904 — "History of Jerusalem." 1912— "The Religion of Science." 1915— "The Geography of Genius." 1916— "The Bible and Life." Among the books Dr. Lee edited and illustrated were : — 1897— "The Self-Interpreting Bible," in four volumes. 1902— "Young Folk's Life of Christ." 1902— "Young Folk's Bible." It was while pastor of Park Street Church, At lanta, that Dr. Lee wrote "The Making of a Man," which was published in New York and London in 1892 and was translated into Japa- JAMES WIDEMAN LEE xiii nese in 1893, into Chinese in 1904 and into the Korean language in 1908. In the Japanese language it had a sale of many editions, and in the Chinese it was presented to each of 2,000 of the officials and leading mandarins of China by Rev. Dr. Young J. Allen. It was during the last year of his pastorate at Park Street Church that Dr. Lee delivered the address before the World's Parliament of Re ligions, held in Chicago, 1893,. on "Christ the Reason of the Universe." This was published, under the direction of Rev. Dr. John Henry Bar rows, by the Parliament Publishing Company, in the two-volume edition of the work entitled "The World's Parliament of Religions." During the first year of his pastorate at St. John's Church, St. Louis, in 1894, Dr. Lee was invited by a publishing house to make a journey to Palestine to secure photographs and the data necessary for a book on "The Earthly Footprints of Christ and His Apostles." The work was pub Ushed in 1895. In portfolio form it was used as a premium by one daily paper in each of the large cities of the United States and Great Britain, with the result that more than a million copies of it were sold. It was afterward bound in a single volume and sold by subscription. This work on Palestine has had the largest circu lation of any book on the Holy Land ever printed. During the last year of his first pastorate at xiv JAMES WIDEMAN LEE St. John's Church, in 1897, Dr. Lee wrote "The Life of Henry W. Grady, Editor, Orator and Man;" and in the same year he edited and re vised the comments in "The Self-Interpreting Bible," in four volumes, using the same pictures to illustrate the work he had taken in Palestine. During the same year he also wrote "The Ro mance of Palestine." While presiding elder of the St. Louis District, in the year 1900, he wrote "The Illustrated History of Methodism," assisted by Dr. Naphtali, afterwards Bishop Luccock, and Rev. Dr. James Main Dixon. In 1902, during his second pastorate at St. John's Church, he edited and illustrated, with pictures taken in Palestine under his direction, "Young Folk's Life of Christ" and "Young Folk's Bible." In 1904, while pastor of St. John's Church the second time, Dr. Lee was invited to write for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, held in St. Louis, a book on Jerusalem, to be used as a guide-book to interpret the miniature Holy City, which was part of the exposition. While pastor of St. John's Church the third time Dr. Lee wrote, in 1912, "The Religion of Science," which has been translated into Japanese and is now in the third edition in this country. And while presiding elder of the St. Louis District for the second time, in 1915, he delivered before the Burns Club, in St. Louis, an address on Robert Burns entitled "The (Geography of Genius," which has been pub- JAMES WIDEMAN LEE xv lished in book form. While presiding elder of the St. Louis District, in 1916, on the occasion of the celebration of the Centennial of the Ameri can Bible Society, before the General Conference of the M. E. Church, held in Saratoga, N. Y., May, 1916, Dr. Lee delivered the Centennial ad dress. His subject was "The Bible and Life," and this also has been published in book form. As pastor Dr. Lee was a persistent visitor. He knew the names of not only the members of his congregation, but also the children in the Sunday Schools of his several churches. He early formed the habit of sending, during his va cations, postal cards or letters to the children of his Sunday Schools and to the members of his congregations. Some years ago, when he was given leave of absence to visit Palestine, he wrote from the Holy Land, enclosing flowers from the Garden of Gethsemane, to every family in St. John's Church and to every scholar in the Sun day School. He kept in touch with the mem bers of the different charges he served, from his first circuit clear down through all the other charges for 44 years. Dr. Lee made a record in raising money for the institutions of the church. He never had a charge without leaving some visible witness of having been its pastor. While at Dalton, Ga., he built a parsonage. In Rome, Ga., he built one of the most imposing churches in the state, at xvi JAMES WIDEMAN LEE a cost of $75,000. When he was pastor of Trin ity Church, Atlanta, his next charge after Rome, he practically rebuilt that ediflce in order to make it large enough to accommodate the people who wanted to hear the gospel. During his first pastorate at Park Street Church, Atlanta, he built another parsonage, and during his second pastorate at Park Street he built a stately church in Atlanta, at a cost of |80,000. In St. Louis Dr. Lee raised the money and built St. John's Church, at a cost of over |200,- 000, and left it without a dollar of debt ; and in connection with his work at St. John's, during his second pastorate, he secured perhaps the best parsonage in Southern Methodism. As presid ing elder he was successful also in raising money for the several churches, and for charitable and educational causes in the St. Louis District. Dr. Lee received invitations to lecture in dif ferent parts of the country from 1884 to the time of his death. During the first year of his pas torate at Rome, Ga., he was invited to the Chau tauqua platform by Bishop John H. Vincent. In 1886, during his first pastorate at Trinity Church, Atlanta, he was invited by Rev. Charles F. Deems to deliver an address before the Ameri can Institute of Christian Philosophy, which met that year at Key East, N. J. There were present many of the leading thinkers of the United States and Great Britain, such as Prof. Borden P. JAMES WIDEMAN LEE xvii Bowne of Boston University; Dr. Burr, author of "Ecce Coelum ;" Dr. John Bascom, president of the University of Wisconsin. Rev. Dr. Howard Henderson wrote an account for the Western Christian Advocate of Dr. Lee's appearance be fore this remarkable company of scholars, the subject of which was "Lee — Preacher, Poet, Phil osopher," which is given below. "On August 26th Dr. Lee was introduced; smooth-faced, almost boyish looking; evidently timid, and at first, hesitating; while handsome, faultless in dress, graceful in carriage and action — he did not seem a saga, and inspired more curi osity than confidence. Besides, he was from the South, and what could a Southerner know of metaphysics? Being myself from the South, as was President Deems, and a member of the Executive Committee, and hence somewhat re sponsible for his appearance, I was nervous with anxiety lest he should not measure up to the standard set by the magnates who had preceded him. The theme was an ambitious one for a tyro among academicians, 'The Correllation of Spirit ual Force,' and the speaker led off with a proces sion of technical terms, 'correllation, equiva lence, persistence, transmutability, indestructi bility of force, conservation of energy, that sug gested Tyndall, Spencer, Huxley, etc. Like the specter of Minerva that made Achilles tremble, I fairly quaked. By the aid of a quotation from xviii JAMES WIDEMAN LEE Prof. Balfour Stewart, he secured momentum and plunged in medias res, grasping his subject by the forelock. Soon analytical power showed itself, and lissome lips made the occult lucid. His kaleidoscopic phrasing made philosophy poetical, and in five minutes he had the most So- cratic by the ears as well as the Homeric. "The structure of his thesis was as solid and stately as a cathedral, and as brilliant as its diaphanous windows and colored effigies. He made philosophy radiant with rhetoric. "His paragraphs passed like platoons, his cli maxes like the saluted banners, his tones as the march music of heavy infantry — moving like the Macedonian Phalanx, each step supported and supporting, the kind of advance that makes an opening in the battle ranks of an enemy with no echo of retreat in the resounding tread of the in vincible corps. "When he flung a category of puzzling ques tions at his adversaries it was like the flring by a file of fusiliers. The peroration was a brilliant summary of Christ's achievements, put in sharp contrast with Mahomet's methods and success. 'The sun is the center of a system of nature des tined to end. Any system the center of which is gradually losing its force cannot last. The sun is gradually losing itself, to find itself no more forever. Christ is pouring His force into the system of which He is the center, but by such a JAMES WIDEMAN LEE xix process He is not losing His force, but increasing it. By losing Himself He finds Himself. The universal law of the system of which He is the center comes back to Him augmented by the per sonality of all who partake of it. Instead of be coming poorer by giving. He becomes richer. This great truth St. Paul saw when he said : "All things are yours," ' etc. "The silver trumpet of a Levite could not have breathed more mellow yet martial tones than those with which these words were transported from lip to ear. It was a fitting close to the sym posium by the sea. It lingers in memory like the murmur of the ocean in the shell. From that triumph hour Dr. Lee's position as philosopher and poet was secure." In 1905, during the last year of his second pas torate at St. John's Church, Dr. Lee was invited to preadh before the National Conference of Charities and Correction, in the Auditorium of the Lewis and Clark Exposition, at Portland, Ore., Sunday moming, July 16th. Of this ad dress Rev. Dr. O. E. Oline, of Portland, gave an account in the columns of the St^ Louis Ohristian Advocate, from which we quote: "Dr. Lee took Portland by storm. On Sunday, July 16th, he preached in the great auditorium of the Lewis-Clark Fair, for which purpose he was brought from St. Louis to speak to a countless multitude. Among the auditors was the Na- XX JAMES WIDEMAN LEE tional Congress of Charities and Corrections, the president of which. Dr. S. G. Smith of St. Paul, declared the sermon to be the greatest he ever heard. At the close the preacher, whose genu ineness of soul and unassuming manner had charmed everyone, was swamped completely with blessings and handshakings. This was published in the annual report of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections for that year. "On Monday night following Dr. Lee, by spe cial request, lectured before the Methodist Con gress, a gathering of Methodist preachers and laymen from Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana, in the First M. E. Church, on 'What Is Science?' The lecture was of great scope and keenest analysis, holding the audience in close attention from start to finish, interruptions con stantly coming from applause, which at the close became irrepressible till the speaker arose the second time for an off-hand Methodist talk, which the audience seemed determined to have. "In this the speaker showed the rare power of being able to rise to any occasion. The scene was unique. Everybody laughed and cried to gether, rising with one impulse to their feet with wildest applause." In 1908, during his second pastorate at Trin ity Church, Dr. Lee delivered, before the Third Annual Educational Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, held in Atlanta, Ga., JAMES WIDEMAN LEE xxi May 19th, an address on "The South of To morrow," which was published in pamphlet form. On February 14, 1909, while still pastor of Trinity Church, he delivered a memorial address before the Grand Army of the Republic and the United Confederate Veterans, in the auditorium of Trinity Church, on the one hundredth anniver sary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. This ad dress was published in pamphlet form by the O. M. Mitchell Post No. 1 of the Grand Army of the Republic, and circulated among the members of the Grand Army and the United Confederate Veterans all over the United States. On October 15th, the same year. Dr. Lee delivered an address at a banquet of business men in Macon, Ga., held in the interest of Wesleyan College, on the sub ject, "The Function of the College in the Struggle for Existence." This was published in pamphlet form by Wesleyan College. While pastor of Park Street Church the second time, on May 4, 1910, Dr. Lee delivered before the County School Officials' Association of Georgia, meeting at Athens, Ga., an address on "The Place and Importance of the Common School," which was published in pamphlet form by the Georgia County Schools Association. While pastor of St. John's Church the third time, he delivered an address, in November, 1911, at Central College, Fayette, Mo., on Benefactors' Day, entitled "The Discovery of the Philosopher's xxii JAMES WIDEMAN LEE Stone." This was published in pamphlet form by the Central College authorities. On May 24, 1914, during the last year of his third pastorate at St. John's Church, Dr. Lee delivered the fraternal address before the Gen eral Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church at Zanesville, O., on "Methodism and the South ; the Function of the One in the Struggle for Spiritual Existence, and the Function of the Other in the Struggle for National Existence." This also was published in pamphlet form. Also, in 1916, he delivered an address at a working conference on the union of American Methodism, in Harris Hall, Northwestern University, Evans- ton, 111., on the subject of "Climate and Unity," which was published in the volume entitled "A Working Conference on the Union of American Methodism." At a luncheon held in the interest of the war encampment fund under the auspices of the Knights of Columbus, at the Planters' Hotel, St. Louis, Tuesday, October 7, 1917, Dr. Lee deliv ered an address on "A Cathedral of Coopera tion," in which he made a plea for the cooperation of Catholics, Jews and Protestants in supplying places of recreation for the soldiers at home and abroad. A large edition of this was published in pamphlet form by the Knights of Columbus for distribution. In 1917, also, he delivered an address by invitation of the Nation's Birthday JAMES WIDEMAN LEE xxiii Association, at the drill grounds in Forest Park, St. Louis, on "The Making of the Flag." This was published in pamphlet form by the Nation's Birthday Association. Dr. Lee found his recreation through travel ing, not merely going about in an aimless way, but visiting places made famous by association with great persons and great deeds. In 1889, while, pastor of Trinity Church the flrst time, he spent three months in Europe, visiting the birth places and homes of famous men in England, France, Germany, Belgium, Holland and Swit zerland. In 1900, while pastor of Park Street Church the first time. Dr. Lee traveled all over the Re public of Mexico, acting as correspondent of the Atlanta Constitution. Among his writings at this time was an account of the interesting career of Emperor Maximilian and Queen Car lotta, from the time they left the beautiful Chateau of Miramar, at Trieste, on the Adriatic Sea, to their landing at Vera Cruz, on the shores of Mexico, in 1864, and through the period of their residence at the Castle of Chapultepec, in the City of Mexico, to the tragic death of the Em peror on the 19th of June, 1917. In 1907, while pastor of Trinity Church the second time. Dr. Lee attended the Sunday School Convention held in Rome, Italy, and used the time after the convention was over in wandering xxiv JAMES WIDEMAN LEE among the homes and haunts of distinguished people in Assisi, Florence, Milan, Amsterdam, The Hague, Cologne, Brussels, Paris and Lon don. In 1910, while pastor of Park Street Church the second time. Dr. Lee visited Europe again and continued his visits to interesting places in England and France. In 1911, the first year of his third pastorate at St. John's, Dr. Lee went to Europe and spent his vacation in visiting the homes and haunts of great people. He left enough material accumu lated through his various pilgrimages to make several books. The secret of Dr. Lee's success was in the fact that he was interested in everybody and man aged, in some way, to get into pleasant relations with the people in and outside of the Methodist Church in the community where he lived. He never met an acquaintance on the street without trying to say a word to him, happy and cheerful enough to keep him in good humor for the rest of the day. His work was seemingly a sort of luxury. He appeared as if he reveled in it. He knew the names and faces of more people in St. Louis than perhaps any other person in the city. Dr. Lee died in Barnes Hospital, St. Louis, on October 4, 1919, of injuries caused by a fall. CHAPTER I THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS THE publishers of Everyman's Library brought out a series of historical geogra phies, in which only the places, cities, towns of each country were put down that stand out above the dead level of terrestrial monotony, because of their connection with decisive battles, heroic deeds, literary triumphs or other extra ordinary achievements. In these books the patches of territory on the earth's surface, that have not been saturated with the personality of some great saint or hero are not considered at all Railroads, warehouses, vast fields of wheat, pork and beef plants, add in themselves alone nothing of permanent value to these countries, which are being mapped and geographically de scribed from the standpoint of historic people and historic deeds. The Andes would not be down in any of these historical geographies but for the fact that Alexander von Humboldt. climbed Chimborazo, one of its peaks, and made observations. If the geographical method of treating person alities were applied to all the great people who have ever lived, we would find that instead of a 9 10 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS few countries, such as we now know by the name of England or Germany or Egypt or Palestine, we would have thousands of them, such as we know by the name of Moses, Isaiah, St. Paul, Philo Judseus, Plato, Sir Walter Scott, Bums, and on through the list of all those, who, by liv ing or thinking or singing or serving, have lifted the places and things with which they were asso ciated, from the realm of time to that of eternity, from the domain of matter to that of spirit. Like immortal ships, the spirits of great men sail the Ocean of Time, bearing the treasures and archives of the civilizations which gave them birth, and also the names of places with which they were associated on earth. They outride the fury of all the storms and will sail on till ' ' The stars grow old. The sun grows cold. And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold." The nation is unfortunate beyond expression that has no son with genius wide and universal enough to convey to coming ages her history. Whatever may be her wealth and her commercial importance, she is without a future. It was the misfortune of ancient Tyre in Phe- nicia that she had no son among all her merchant princes, with genius universal and deep enough to bear distant ages a record of her inner life. Life in Tyre took the form of sails which were spread to every breeze, and the strokes of oars THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS 11 heard in the waters of every sea. Her life stood in many storied houses, rustled in the silk of Tyrian purple, and uttered itself in the ears of all the world. But what the people of Tyre thought about death, or immortality, or duty, or righteousness, or religion, or philosophy, or poetry, or literature, or farming, or plowing, or cooking, or even sea-faring or trade, we can never know. Her life simply lifted itself into the mam moth and unparalleled products of the mer chandise of ancient times. It took the form of wharves, of ships, of purple awnings, of revelry, of eating, of drinking, of low sensual pleasure; hence it has been utterly swept away. It stood only in masts, shipboards, ivory benches, sails, pilots, mariners, towers, silver, iron, tin, lead, brass, horses, mules broidered work fine linen, coral, agate, honey, oil, balm, wool, cassia, cala mus, precious clothes, chariots, lambs, spices, chests, riches, sardius, topaz, diamond, beryl, onyx, jasper, sapphire, emerald, carbuncle, tab-, rets and pipes. Of Tyre we know something from Ezekiel, and something from Strabo, and something from the Bible and historians among surrounding nations. But as far as the people of Tyre themselves are concerned, they have mingled with the dust or gone to the depths of the sea, without leaving a single record that enables us to know the history 12 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS of that splendid, wealthy, thundering commercial city. Tyre was so busy eating and dressing and drinking and trading and reveling that she failed to produce a son with soul large enough to be used as a ship in which to pack away her mer chandise of thought or religion or aspiration for the future. On the other hand, how secure is the Greece stored up in her great men! She has been de spoiled of her art treasures, her temples have fallen, the Parthenon is in ruins, but the years of her life, she deposited in her great people, are im mortal. No tooth of time, no war's bloody hand, no devastation of the years, can take from her the glory which she lifted and locked in the genius of her artists, her statesmen and her phil osophers. Plato and Aristotle still interpret her prob lems of destiny. Sophocles and Pindar still sing her glories. Herodotus and Thucydldes still keep the record of her victories. Demosthenes and Aeschines still declare her matchless elo quence. Appelles still gives expression to her conceptions of beauty. Her riches were sent to the future in the spirits of great men. The un folding centuries may look in upon them and enjoy them, but their passage through the years cannot be arrested. THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS 13 No nation under the sun ever sent so many ships from her intellectual shores laden with the merchandise of her spiritual life as sailed from Greece to all ages. These great vessels have ridden the storms of more than 2,000 years and will continue to voyage down the stream of the years forever. Think of their names, in addition to those mentioned above: Socrates, Pericles, Themistocles, Lysicrates, Xenophon, Epaminon das, Isocrates, Thucydldes, Phidias, Aristides, Alcibiades, Aeschylus, Hesiod, Euripides, Anac- reon, Theocritus, Epicurus, Epimenides, Pytha goras, Democritus, Empedocles, Carneades, Pherecrates, Hypocrates, Archimedes and Aris tophanes. The fact that Shakespeare lived at Stratford- on-Avon is worth more annually to the little English town than all the wheat produced year by year in the County of Warwickshire. The Palace of the Caesars does not occupy as much space in the Geography of Genius as the cottage at Chalfont St. Giles, in which Milton finished Paradise Lost and began Paradise Re gained. The County of Hampshire, England, where John Keble preached in Hursley twenty- five years, and where Gilbert White preached in Selborne twenty years, and where Charles Kings- ley preached in Eversley thirty years, is given more attention than to all Kansas, with area 14 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS enough to make more than a hundred counties as large as Hampshire. Concord, Mass., with its thousand inhabitants multiplied by Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne, occupies a larger place in the Geography of Genius than Buenos Ayres multiplied by more than a million of the common run of South Amer ican mortals. CHAPTER II FROM ST. LOUIS TO PALESTINE AND BACK ON the 24th of March, 1894, in company with Mr. R. E. M. Bain, I left St. Louis to visit the countries made sacred by the lives and deeds, the record of which is given in the Bible. We were invited to make this trip by an enterprising publishing firm. The publishers desired fresh and firsthand views of the monuments, cities, villages, moun tains, rivers, valleys, plains, and flowers made memorable by the lives of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob; Moses, Joshua, and Samuel; Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel, and most of all by the lives of Christ and the apostles. In no other age of the world would such a journey, with such happy advantages for fulfilling the purpose of it, been possible. We left with photography up-to-date on the New York, one of the greatest steamers ever built. We were going to the oldest regions on the earth to bring back pictures to gladden thfe eyes of the people who live in the newest. We were going from the midst of civilization large, 15 I I 16 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS rich, robust, and grown to get representations of the sky lines and landscapes which surrounded its humble birthplace and childhood. We were going to see and to get copies of that land. "Over whose acres walked those blessed feet, Whieh fourteen hundred years ago were nailed For our advantage on the bitter cross. ' ' In going back to Palestine, even if we only go through a picture or a book, we are returning to the place of our birth and childhood. We are all copies and reproductions of the civilization in which we live, and Palestine and the countries about the Mediterranean Sea constitute the cradle of our civilization. Here we were rocked in the infancy of our ancestors by the blue waves of the "uttermost sea." Here bent above us, in the years of our weakness and innocence, the deep kindly face of the Syrian sky. Here bloomed about us, when we were leaming to stand alone and to walk on the earth, the flowers which make Palestine a paradise. But for these lands and the lives which transfigure them, we would not be what we are, we would not have the names we bear nor the calendars we use, nor the history we know, nor the songs we sing, nor the books we read, nor the paintings we see, nor the homes we love, nor the religion which guides and blesses us from the cradle to the grave. FROM ST. LOUIS TO PALESTINE 17 Hence Bible countries, as the homes of our fathers, belong to us. The heroism that blest them we have inherited. The virtues that grew in beauty there, have come to live and bloom in our lives. The laws that were ordained and hon ored there, regulate our comfort. The hopes that were known and rejoiced in there, refresh our spirits. The Psalms that were felt and uttered there, feed our devotions. The prayers that arose from burdened hearts there, pass our lips and hush our sorrows. Upon the moral and spiritual production of the Bible lands we have fed for 2,000 years. The polar bear, by living in the arctic regions, copies its snow in his white skin, and thus gets a kinship and title to his cold abode by becoming like it. Spending all our lives in the presence of the inspirations and hopes and hymns and ideas of the people who wrote the Bible, we copy and reproduce by an unconscious process the color and texture of their spirits. In this way we come into ownership of all they loved and hoped for. We crossed the Atlantic in seven days, landing at Southampton. From thence to London, where we waited three days for the Peninsular and Ori ental express train. This magnificent dining and sleeping car goes from London through England France, and Italy to Brindisi, a distance of 1,600 miles. At Brindisi we took the steamer that 18 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS runs between London and India and landed at Port Said, April 11, just fourteen days from the time we left New York. Leaving Port Said, where the great steamers pass from the Mediter ranean into the Suez Canal and out into the Red Sea, we proceeded to Cairo. Here we remained eight days, visiting in the meantime Heliopolis, where Joseph married, and Memphis, where Moses lived, and the Pyramids, built fifty cen turies ago. We then went to Alexandria, the city built by Alexander the Great, and for a long time the home of Cleopatra, the beautiful Queen of Egypt. Here we took the Mediterranean steamer again and made our way to Joppa, land ing there on Sunday morning, April 22. Joppa is on a stormy and rock-bound coast, • and unless the weather is good it is impossible to reach the shore here at all. There is no harbor, and ships anchor far out a^ sea. If the waves are high the passengers are carried to some port further north. Between the place where the ships anchor and the beach there stretches a long line of rock rising just to the surface of the water. Through this ridge of rock there is a narrow opening wide enough for small boats to pass. But when the wind is strong the danger is that the small boat will miss the narrow passage and be thrown and broken into fragments upon the FROM ST. LOUIS TO PALESTINE 19 rocks. More people have found a watery grave here than at any other place in the world. The morning we came in sight of this famous sea town, however, the sea was perfectly smooth and quiet. No sooner was the great iron anchor cast out to hold us in place than seemingly a hundred row boats started from the shore to meet us. They came at the top of their speed, as if a large reward was to be secured by the one that reached us first. The noise and confusion and jabbering beggar description. It did not seem possible that we could ever get our glass plates through that wild scene of Arab confusion without breaking every one of them, but we finally succeeded in getting every box, together with ourselves, down into one of the little vessels, when two strong Arabs rowed us to the shore. , At Joppa we were introduced to our drago man, Abraham Lyons, a native of Jerusalem, but a Hungarian by descent. Before leaving London, we had arranged with Thomas Cook & Son for a month's camping expedition in the Holy Land. They furnished, us with an outfit consisting of thirteen mules and horses, four muleteers, a sleeping tent, a cook tent, a lunch tent, a first- class cook, a waiter, and the best dragoman in the East. All this array of people and animals, and cooking utensils and appliances for camping and traveling was notified to meet us at Joppa. 20 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS There they took charge of us with all our belong ings and appurtenances. A railroad runs from Joppa to Jerusalem, and a train passes to and from these cities daily, drawn by an American engine. But as our busi ness was to take pictures and make observations, we had to go slow. Besides, it did not seem quite proper to rush through the plains of Sharon and by the village of Emmaus in an American rail way train. We were to pass along the road over which Solomon hauled the timbers from Lebanon whieh the King of Tyre had shipped to Joppa with which to construct the flrst temple in Jeru salem. We were to pass through some of the great battleflelds of the world, and by many places celebrated in Bible history. It was Our first experience in the real land of the East, the clime of the sun. Every spot and every object in our novel and strange surround ings was interesting from associations which had been gathering about it for thousands of years. After a good night's rest in Joppa our tents, beds, baggage, and glass plates were strapped on the backs of mules, and with the muleteers to guard and guide them, were sent ahead to Jerusalem. With our dragoman we remained in Joppa until 12 o'clock on Monday, as we were to make this part of our joumey by carriage. Leaving our hotel, we passed through the gardens FROM ST. LOUIS TO PALESTINE 21 and by the house of Tabitha, out into the open country. We were astonished to flnd that every step of the way to Jerusalem was surrounded by wild flowers. They stood in rows and squares and diamonds. They ran up the mountains, they il luminated the valleys, they peeped out from the crevices in the rocks; they contested with the wheat for standing ground in the flelds, they seemed to be bent on claiming everything and occupying with their beauty every inch of soil that appeared in sight. I had read that flowers were the alphabet of angels, and it occurred to me, if this were true, that surely all the little angels in heaven must come to Palestine to learn their letters. The goodness of God, turned from the heart of man, here finds a place for expression in the fair bloom of the flowers. Eden here unable to re produce itself in its legitimate home, the life of man, spreads itself out in pristine beauty over the hills and the plains. It is as if heaven were determined, in spite of the meanness of man, to keep here witnesses in countless array of the glory of paradise. So about the forty-two miles of roadway between Joppa and Jerusalem the flowers bloom as fair and as fresh every spring as they did when Adam and Eve moved among them in the first garden of the world. 22 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS The traveler who makes this journey in the spring of the year passes literally through a wil derness of beauty — beauty in all conceivable shapes and sizes; beauty in ridge, fold, valley and mountain ; beauty in square, cube, triangle, and straight line; beauty in red, green, scarlet, and blue; beauty single, double, manifold, and multitudinous. Is it any wonder that Palestine was the home of song and parable and vision and great idea? Heaven there by mountain, water fall, bird, and flower invites men to be great and holy. One cannot live there without being mean by resisting or good by yielding to appeals of the Most High. In addition to the flowers which beguiled the tedium of our way to Jerusalem, every mile of the road was historic. We passed through Ram leh, the Plains of Sharon, the Valley of Ad j alon, Emmaus, and in sight of the birthplace of John the Baptist. At two o'clock on Tuesday, April 24, we came to Jerusalem, the home of the pil grim and the capital of Christendom. Here we made headquarters for a week, and using the Holy City as a base, made short journeys to Beth any, Jericho, the Dead Sea, the Jordan, Bethle hem, and Solomon's Pools. On May 1 our baggage and muleteers were sent ahead from Jerusalem and instructed to camp at Singil. We followed on May 2. Leaving the PROM ST. LOUIS TO PALESTINE 23 City of David, we pass on horseback the tombs of the kings, and soon come to the hill where we take the last sight of Jerusalem. We meet camels and donkeys coming in, loaded with roots to sell. The natives use roots for fuel. To secure this firewood they dig up the trees, but being destruc tive and thriftless, they do not plant any to take the places of the ones dug up. We soon enter upon a most rocky and difflcult road to travel. tVe follow single file. Sometimes the narrow path, the same historic way over which our Saviour passed, is so rough and fllled with so many round rocks and cut by so many deep gullies that we get down and walk, leading our horses. We passed Nob, where the whole family of the high priest was massacred by Saul. We came to Ramah, where Samuel was born and was buried. We saw Beeroth, where Joseph and Mary missed Jesus and tumed back to look for Him. At length we reached Bethel. Here we pitched our lunch tent and stopped for a two hours' rest. When our tent was raised and rugs spread on the ground to carpet it, our dragoman, on a white tablecloth, placed before us a bountiful repast, consisting of cold broiled chicken, sardines, eggs, and tongue. For dessert, lemonade, dried grapes, figs, oranges, and nuts. The meal was closed with small cups of black coffee, which the drago man made before our eyes. 24 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS After lunch, while resting on our rugs in the tent, the dragoman told us all about Bethel. Here Jacob dreamed as the ladder reach in his vision up to heaven. Here he saw the angels ascending and descending. Between this place and Ai Abraham built an altar to the Lord, when he came up from Ur of the Chaldees. Bethel is a small village containing only about forty fami lies. These are very poor, being taxed almost to the point of starvation by the government. Our way in the afternoon led through the valley of the figs. Hundreds of acres we found here in fig trees. The natives make brandy of this fruit, which is said to be fearfully intoxi cating. About flve o'clock we reached Singil, where we were to spend the night. Our tents were already up and the American fiag was over them, streaming in the breezes which came from the Mediterranean Sea, thirty miles to the west In our main tent we had a sitting room and bed room, table for writing, chairs and lamp. It was carpeted by some Oriental fabric, and the inner walls of the tent were made picturesque by highly-colored strips of oil calico, which were put together and sewed to them in various figures and patterns. At six o'clock we were called to a regular table d'hote dinner. We began with soup, then mut ton, then artichokes, then chicken and salad, then FROM ST. LOUIS TO PALESTINE 25 dessert, then oranges, dried grapes and nuts. We closed with small cups of black coffee made after the Turkish fashion. Our baggage, glass plates and photographic outfit were placed by the muleteers in our tent. After dark two police men came to guard us while we slept. TMs is the history of one day from Jerusalem to Singil. Thus we passed day after day as we made our way through the interior of Palestine, We will not speak of Shiloh, Samaria, Shunem, Nain, Nazareth, Cana of Galilee, Tiberias, Mag- dala, Bethsaida, Chorazin, Capernaum, Dan, and Csesarea-Philippi, all of which we visited on our way to Damascus. In Damascus, which rises up out of the desert like a vision from heaven, we spent five days. Upon arriving here we dismissed our cook, waiter, muleteers, and camping outfit, but kept our dragoman, who remained with us until we bade him good-bye on the wharf at Beyrout. On Friday, May 18, we left Damascus by dili gence at 4 o'clock in the morning and rode to Beyrout, a distance of seventy miles, by 6 o'clock in the afternoon. Six horses were hitched to our conveyance and were changed every hour. This kept us in fresh horses all the time, and much of the way was made in a sweeping gallop. Sunday, May 20, we left Beyrout by French steamer. But before getting to our ship we en countered another serious trouble with reference 26 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS to our glass plates. The custom-house officials insisted upon looking into our boxes again. It became necessary to enter into another conflict of words, which we did through our dragoman. After lengthy discussion a price was named, upon payment of which consent would be given to pass our boxes. At this point we never hesi tated, we paid the sum demanded, and left the Turks with thanks that we were rid of them. The American consul at Beyrout accompanied us to our steamer, and bade us adieu, after assuring us that the American flag would be flying from the United States consulate in our honor as we left the shores of Syria. Our steamer sailed by Cypress, Patmos, and touched for a day at a time at different places on the coast of Asia Minor. We spent two days at Smyrna and a day at Thessalonica. We were for two days in sight of Mount Olympus, and reached Athens Sunday morning. May 27. Here we remained, visiting Corinth and places of in terest, until Friday, June 1, when we left at 2 o'clock by Italian steamer for Italy, reaching Brindisi Monday, June 4. This place we immedi ately left on the morning train for Naples, arriv ing there the evening of June 4. From here we visited Puteoli, where St. Paul landed on his last journey to Rome and Her culaneum and Pompeii, in sight of the boiling FROM ST. LOUIS TO PALESTINE 27 Vesuvius. On June 7 we left Naples by early morning train for Rome, arriving there the after noon of the same day. We remained in the city of the Caesars for a week, after which we left for London and New York, arriving safely at the metropolis of our own country on June 29, just three months and one day from the time we left. On Thursday, July 5, we had all our plates back in the factory of the dry plate works in St. Louis, where for us they were specially manufac tured, and where Mr. Bain by. the proprietors was kindly invited to develop them. We can never express the sense of relief and gratitude we felt at sight of our seventy-pound white boxes of glass plates safe in the photogra pher's dark room in the city of our homes. Think of it, these boxes of fragile glass had traveled 15,000 miles, more than half way around the globe. They passed through the great historic cities of the world. They had been carried from place to place by railway cars, by express wagons, by carriages, by steamboats, by row- boats, by porters, by Americans, by Englishmen, by Frenchmen, by Italians, by Egyptians, by Arabs, by Turks, by Greeks. They had been in the holds of ships, they had been piled on the decks of steamers, they had been strapped on the backs of mules, they had been to the pyramids, they had been on the road traveled by our Saviour and the apostles, they had followed in 28 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS the footsteps of Paul in his missionary journeys, they had been in the city of Plato and Aristotle, and in the home of the Caesars. We had watched over them and slept by them and protected them throughout the ups and downs of a unique and wondrous journey. Now they were safe at home out of peril and secure from danger. They contained the record of our journey; but this record was unseen and invisi ble. They had to be developed. The chemicals of the photographer had to be poured over them in the darkroom to bring out the pictures they contained. So suspense was not over until they were developed. We had to see what objects the sun had painted on them. Good luck did not fail us. Each plate, as one by one Mr. Bain poured the developing fluid over it, revealed a scene of beauty. Just after our return the National Photographers Convention met in St. Louis. A dozen of the flrst were en tered to contest for a prize and they won it, and beside the additional declaration from leading photographers of the convention that they were the flnest photographs that ever came from the East. CHAPTER III THE OLDEST CITY IN THE WORLD ON the 13th of May, 1894, our caravan passed through the gateway in the west ern wall of Damascus, and we found our selves in the midst of this most remarkable city. For hours before we reached it we saw its gleam ing glory in the distance; the tall, graceful minarets rising from her more than three hun dred mosques. Perhaps one of the reasons why travelers praise Damascus so unstintedly is because of the delightful contrast it furnishes to the treeless, hot and verdureless country through which they pass on their approach to it. After a horseback ride from Jerusalem over one of the roughest roads on earth, through a country with few trees, one would be in condition to praise any city in which gardens, orchards and abundance of water were to be found; but when the contrast is pre sented between such a desert journey and the surpassing beauty of Damascus, one is justified for a measure of extravagance in his terms of commendation. We see its gardens, canals, fountains, deep and abundant, shadows cast from long, spreading branches of most charming trees. 29 30 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS Certainly, the traveler may be allowed, at the pitch of his enthusiasm, to use the most ex pressive adjectives in his praise of the new-found paradise. Damascus is said to be the oldest city in the world. This may not be literally true, but we know something of its history for four thousand years. It has been ruled by kings from Nineveh, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome, and under all it has been a place of importance. Damascus is the chief city of Syria. It lies in a plain of extreme fertility, which extends between Mount Lebanon and the desert. It is about thirty miles in diameter, and owes its beauty and fertility to the River Barada, which comes down from the slopes of the Lebanon Mountains and spreads itself through the plain. The Orientals have ranked Damascus with Granada, as one of the paradises of the earth. It has been called "the mole on the cheek of nature," "the bright plumage of the heavenly peacock," "the neck of the dove," and "the collar of beauty." Mohammed himself called it "thrice blessed because the angels of God have spread their wings above it." It is about two hundred mUes north of Petra and one hundred miles north of Jerusalem. Jo- OLDEST CITY IN THE WORLD 31 sephus says it was founded by Uz, the grandson of Shem, and this makes it one of the most ancient cities of history. But little is known of Damascus until the time of David, who conducted a successful expedition against it because of the assistance the city had given to his enemy, Hadadezer, king of Zabah. A subordinate of Hadadezer, named Rezon, suc ceeded in securing a position in Damascus and establishing there a royal dynasty, so that throughout the reign of Solomon this Rezon seems to have been a constant enemy of the King dom of Israel. Israel and Syria were enemies one to the other to the days of Ahab. After the days of David and Solomon, it was involved in a succession of wars until about 1884 B. C, when it was attacked and captured by the Assyrians. At various times the Israelites and Assyrians were waging war against each other, or were combining their forces against other nations. The history of that time is a confused record of war and cruelty, infamy and slaughter. After 700 B. C. we hear nothing more of Damascus for a long period. In 333 B. C, after the battle of Issus, it was captured by Parmenio, one of the generals of Alexander the Great. In New Testament history, Damascus is mentioned only in connection with the conversion of St. 32 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS Paul, and his escape from Aretas, the govemor, by being lowered in a basket over the wall. In the year 150 A. D. under Trajan, Damascus became a Roman city. In 635 A. D., Damascus came under the dominion of the Mohammedans. The Crusaders attacked Damascus in 1226 but never succeeded in maintaining a hold upon it. It was the headquarters of Saladin during the wars with the Franks. Damascus was cap tured by the Mongolians in 1260, and recap tured by the Egyptians, under the leadership of Mamaluk Kotuz. It became a city of the Otto man Empire in 1516. It was captured by Ibra him Pasha, the Egyptian general, in 1832, and then revolted against Ibrahinl's tyranny in 1834. The city came under Turkish rule when the Syri ans were driven out in 1840 by the Allied Powers. The city of Damascus is situated on both sides of the Barada River. The waters of this river are carried by channels to all the houses of the city. Its beauty and charm are doubtless due, in a large degree, to the fact that it is almost com pletely surrounded by a barren desert, and it is the waters of the Barada River that make Da mascus blossom like a rose. After passing through the city, they flow out about twenty-five miles, and are swallowed up by the Syrian desert. The natives think the Garden of Eden was lo cated in Damascus. Some go so far as to assert OLDEST CITY IN THE WORLD 33 that the clay, which entered into the body of Adam, was taken from the banks of one of their rivers. To the north of the city, on a peak of a mountain overlooking it, the tomb of Abel is pointed out. It is said that Mohammed, on one of his journeys as a mule driver from Mecca, was permitted to look upon the city, with its gardens, from the top of a hill, and after seeing the place, turned away with the declaration: "Man can have but one paradise. My paradise is fixed above." And so he refused to enter Damascus. His guide, however, was so enchanted with the beauty of the scene that he exclaimed : "Here let me die!" A small building is pointed out as marking the grave of this guide. Minarets and glittering spires are seen in the morning, rising above the darkness of endless groves and gardens. Damascus is the metropolis of Romance and the capital of Oriental hope. The glowing imagery of its description in East ern poetry is beautiful, but it pales before the reality of it. No wonder the Moslems look upon Damascus as an earthly paradise. It is encompassed by gardens and orchards. These cover an area of over twenty-five miles in circumference. Here gtow olive, flg, walnut, apricot, poplar, palm, cypress, and pomegranate trees. In the richness 34 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS of its soil, in the salubrity and semitropical char acter of its climate, in its varied vegetation, we find the reason for the constant association of Damascus with the thought of gardens. It has been for four thousand years a garden. It is surrounded for mDes with this splendor of verdure. Its gardens and orchards and far- reaching groves, rich in foliage and blossoms, wrap the city around like a mantle of green velvet powdered with pearls. The apricot or chards seem to blush at their own surpassing loveliness, and the gentle breezes that rustle softly through the feathery tops of the palms are laden with the perfume of the rose and the violet. Tristram, in his account of what he saw, says: "Tall mud walls extended in every direction under the trees, and flowing streams of water from the Barada everywhere bubbled through the orchards, while all was alive with the song of the birds and the hum of bees. The great apricot trees were laden and bent down under strings of ripe golden fruit." Whatever changes may be made by the hand of man in Damascus, whatever changes in gov emment and in commercial activities, the city is sure to be for all time a paradise of fertility and beauty. It will not be pos^ble to give our readers an idea of order and relation in our presentations OLDEST CITY IN THE WORLD 35 of Damascus. We may, indeed, assert without fear of contradiction that there is no order in Damascus. It corresponds in its general make-up to the listless, indolent, happy-go-lucky element in human nature. It has been a city without a purpose. The people seem each day to seek only temporal enjoyment with as little personal exertion as possible. The whole city presents a perpetual invitation to lie down and rest. The trees, by the black shadows they throw across the roadside, call upon you to stop. The waters of the Abana wind their way through the gardens and courts of the houses, soliloquizing upon the blessedness of sleep and rest. The dress of the natives even when they walk — slippers half on, and with long, flowing robes — seems to say, "I am not walking much ; I shall soon lie down again." The gardens of Damascus are the paradise of the Arabian world. Coneybear, in his "Life and Epistles of St. Paul," says : "Damascus for miles around is a wilderness of gardens, wild roses among beautiful shrubbery, with fruit on the branches overhead. Everywhere among the trees the murmur of unseen rivulets is heard. Even in the city, which is in the midst of the garden, the clear rushing of the current is a perpetual re freshment." In St. Paul's day there were no 36 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS cupolas and no minarets. Justinian had not built St. Sophia and the Khalifs had erected no mosque, but the white buildings gleamed then as now in the midst of a verdant, incomparable paradise of gardens. Damascus has given itself up, in all ages, to trade in trinkets. It is a city of cotton bazaars, perfume bazaars, spice bazaars, cabinetmaker bazaars, slipper bazaars, sweetmeat bazaars, food bazaars. It is almost impossible to enumerate the vast variety of the curious bazaars, from their rich velvet down to brass pans and old clothes stores. The streets are crowded with files of camels plodding their way slowly along, guided by a very small boy, often perched on their neck. Mules and donkeys, with their gay caparisons, bestridden by some turbaned Eastern or izar- shrouded woman. The women all ride astride like the men, but their stirrups are much shorter and give them the appearance of almost kneeling on the donkey. The women are invariably engulfed in the white izar, a sheet about two yards deep and three or more yards long, which covers them from head to foot, the izar always having a fold, a couple of inches in depth, in the middle, or just where the wearer's waist would be — the object of OLDEST CITY IN THE WORLD 37 which I failed to make out, unless it arose from a delusion that a fold there rendered more veiled the grace of the wearer's flgure, which, however, is already entirely concealed by the thickness of the calico. In the streets of Damascus every Eastern na tion and tribe have their representatives. Da mascus merchants with flowing robe and em broidered turban; Turkish effendis decked in a caricature of Frank costume badly made and worse put on; mountain princes trotting along in crimson jackets covered with gold embroidery ; Bedouins, spare in form and dark in visage, their piercing eyes grancing stealthily on all who meet them; Druse sheiks arrayed gorgeously in silk robes interwoven with thread of gold and turban of white ; Kurdish shepherds in sheepskin caps ; stately Persians with long white robes and flow ing beards — these are the classes one is likely to see in the vicinity of the bazaars — "a per petual banquet of color." In the center of the city the houses bear evi dence of thrift and cleanliness. There is an ex tensive suburb on the south side of the city through which a broad street runs, and at its ex tremity it is called the "Gate of God," through which the pilgrim caravan leaves and enters the city in state every year. Many of the leading 38 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS streets to Damascus are covered, but this one is open. The uninviting exterior of the houses is not to be taken as an indication of their interior furnishing and decoration. The Damascenes care little for the outward appearance of their houses, but within flowers grow in profusion, fountains from the Abana play, and elegantly furnished reception rooms and parlors provide comfort and luxury for the inmates. "And there was a certain disciple at Damascus, named Ananias ; and to him said the Lord in a vision, Ananias. And he said, Behold, I am here. Lord. And the Lord said unto him. Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul, of Tarsus; for, behold, he prayeth." Acts 9: 10-11. The street called Straight is still the leading street in Damascus. It runs from east to west almost through the whole city. The leading carpet and silk shops are to be found on this avenue. It is narrow, and really it is a crooked ^ street, although called Straight. Changes have taken place within a few years, and now one may ride through the most of the street in a modern carriage — a feat which could not have been per formed a decade ago. OLDEST CITY IN THE WORLD 39 If the pilgrim enter the city of Damascus at its eastern gate and follow the street that is called Straight to the first lane at his right, he will soon reach what tradition calls the house of Ananias. It has been converted into a small church with a crypt and belongs to the Latins. The neighborhood is that of the Christian quar ter and has none of the signs of Oriental luxury. These are foimd in the Moslem and Jewish quar ters. Of course, it would be interesting to kno^ the precise place in which Ananias lived, and yet the knowledge of a specific locality can not add to the importance and impressiveness of an event itself. It would be satisfactory to identify the very house in which Ananias lived, but it is not likely that the house of Ananias was, as the eccle siastical tradition now insists, a mere cave, and, therefore, the chapel which has been built over the cave does not necessarily commemorate the precise locality, while it does recall the im portant conversation which took place between the Lord and Ananias in his home. The Grand Mosque of Damascus is one of the most interesting buildings in the East. It is quadrangular in form, one hundred and sixty- three yards wide by one hundred and eight yards long. A lofty wall of fine masonry surrounds it. A few years ago the building was almost de- 40 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS stroyed by fire. One of the most wonderful things about this mosque is an inscription which is pointed out to the tourist. It runs over an arch in the second story. It is in Greek and reads as follows : "Thy kingdom, O Christ, is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion en dureth throughout all generations." This is the Septuagint rendering of Psalms 145 : 13, with the simple addition of the name of Christ. What a curious inscription to find on a Moslem mosque ! And yet, how true it is that the kingdom of Christ is an everlasting kindom. To^ day the power of Mohammedanism is waning. The Oriental systems — all of them — ^lose their lustre in the presence of the shining of His name who is in the light of the world. It is surprising that Mohammedan fanaticism has allowed this remarkable inscription to re main here for more than twelve hundred years. The mosque was undoubtedly a Christian church, and before that, during the earliest centuries of the Christian era, it was probably a heathen temple. Thus the remains of the Christian pro fession pronounce a glorious fact to the sons of man in this present time. Outside the east gate of the city of Damascus^ on the banks of the Abana, is the leper hospital, which tradition tells us occupies the site of Naaman's house. Naaman was commander-in- OLDEST CITY IN THE WORLD 41 chief of the armies of Damascus. He was one of the greatest generals and greatest men of his age, but "he was a leper." In some warlike expe dition he carried away a little Jewish maid, who became his slave. Amid his sufferings the little maid exclaimed, "Would God my lord were with the prophet (Elisha) that is in Samaria! for he would recover him of his leprosy." Naaman went, but Elisha did not condescend to see him. He simply sent him a message saying, "Go wash in the Jordan." The proud Damascene was in dignant. He expected that the prophet would come out "and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and re cover the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them, and be clean?" But Naaman obeyed and was cleansed. He washed in the river again and again — seven times, according to the divine command of the prophet — and lo ! healing came ! The memory of Naaman clings to Damascus yet. Outside I have visited the lepers' hospital on the site of the house of Naaman, and when looking on its mis erable inmates, all disfigured and mutilated by their loathsome disease, I could not wonder that the heart of the little Jewish captive was moved by her master's sufferings. That child's voice still rings through the ages, and the rich man 42 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS and the poor, the great and the lowly, may find health and gladness in the rivers of salvation. But Damascus, like Petra, has never produced a man whose name is known in history. No na tive has ever walked through the city of Da mascus, great enough and rich enough in soul to make of the place of his birth a shrine. Though the rivers and gardens and trees and flowers in Damascus are so beautiful, they have never been touched with the spirit of any great personality. No person born in Damascus has ever breathed in that town, rich and broad and great enough to transflgure and glorify the city. It has never been consecrated by the presence of any vast spirit living in its neighborhood. The yellow primrose there has been a yellow primrose and nothing more, throughout all ages, because there were no eyes except such as were vulgar to behold it. No flower in any crannied wall there has ever opened its soul to any native poet. The airs which blow through the flower gardens there have never become instinct with unseen pres ences, so as to impress the sense of something in- flnitely mysterious and great. The world of Damascus has no partnership with the spirit, because there has never been a spirit native to the town great enough to appre ciate the beauty of the place. No art, philosophy OLDEST CITY IN THE WORLD 43 or romance has ever been exhaled from great in tellects there to leave their charm upon the ma terial surroundings of the city. All we know of Damascus we have learned from the history of those who have acted in and around the city, but from natives of the place we have learned abso lutely nothing. Damascus is one city that has lived entirely for the present. It has been under the dominion of many different rulers, but has generally pros pered because they have never forgotten that the object for which they lived was purely for the purpose of keeping up their trade, and enjoying themselves in the indolent, luxurious way that appealed to their ideas of life. Damascus has never had a purpose as a city in its entire exist ence. CHAPTER IV JERUSALEM THE CAPITAL OF CHRISTENDOM JOHN HYRCANUS, a Maccabean prince ruled over Jerusalem and the surrounding country from B. C. 135-104. In his will he nominated his eldest son, Judas Aristobulus as high priest, but left the govemment to his wife. Aristobulus, not satisfled with merely being high priest, starved his mother to death, and assumed the place of king also. He reigned only one year, and was succeeded by his younger brother, Alex ander Jannaeus, who was king of the Jews and high priest, too, from B. C. 103-76. On his death, his widow, Aledandra became queen, and his son Hyrcanus II became high priest. The queen's reign lasted from B. C. 76-67. She was succeeded by her second son, Aristobulus II, who reigned from B. C. 67-63. After Pompeius captured Jerusalem, in B. C. 63, the Romans took the political interests of this country into their own hands, but granted full power to rule Jerusalem itself to the high priest, Hyrcanus II. He reigned from B. C. 63-40, under the title of Ethnarch. 44 THE CAPITAL OF CHRISTENDOM 45 After the rearrangement of the political affairs of the country by the Romans at this period, we find for the first time the word Sanhedrin used to represent the Supreme Court of the Jews. The Jews were now placed under the govemor or province of Syria, and forced to pay tribute. In B. C. 40, the Parthians took Jerusalem, de posed Hyrcanus II and appointed Antigonus, son of Aristobulus II as king, who styled himself both high priest and king, and who reigned from B. C. 40-37. Herod was appointed tetrarch by Marc Antony, and in B. C. 40 king by the Roman Senate. He took Jerusalem from Antigonus in B. C. 37, and executed him. Herod reigned from B. C. 37-4. In 6 A. D., Judea was taken from Archlaus, the son of Herod, and made a subprovince of Rome, with a govemor of its own, called pro curator, an office to which Pilate succeeded in A. D. 29. Twelve years afterward Herod Agrippa, a grandson of Herod 'the Great, suc ceeded to all his father's dominion, and for four years ruled over united Palestine. The great siege of Jerusalem began in A. D. 70, under the leadership of Titus, and after the capture and destruction of the city, it remained for fifty years nothing more than the station of a small Roman garrison. 46 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS In the year 20, B. C, Herod began to erect the new temple. When Christ flrst visited it, it was one of the flnest buildings of antiquity. Never since Solomon's time had Jerusalem been such a center of interest and power. The Herods ruled from Sidon and Mount Hermon as far as the limits of Idumea nearly 300 miles to the south. With the new ports of Caesarea, connected by a highway with Jerusalem, the country possessed material advantages unknown in Solomon's day. The Jews of the dispersion scattered over the Roman empire, who had become wealthy, were accustomed to paying frequent visits to the city. Besides, there were Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, and in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya, about Cyrene, strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians. Down in the south of Arabia, in the district of Yenen, over which the Queen of Sheba had ruled, the Jews were found in great numbers, and thronged to Jerusalem at festival times by way of Petra and Hebron. The Jews seemed to have got as far east as China, and to have attained unto official rank there, as Joseph had done unto the Pharaohs. Some of them, it is said, became mandarins, and they tried to preserve their re- THE CAPITAL OF CHRISTENDOM 47 ligion and customs, by building in China a copy of the Love Temple at Jerusalem. This great body of sightseers would be anxious to return with souvenirs of their visits, and so the cloisters of the Temple were turned into a kind of bazaar. It is probable that Christ talked with the leamed doctors of these cloisters, which were much frequented by men eager for discus sion. Solomon's porch, the only remnant of the work of the first founder, stood on the eastern side of the Temple enclosure; and here Jesus was ac customed to walk out and to teach His unity with the Father. The early Christians gathered here, when they continued daily with one accord in the Temple. The Beautiful Gate, associated in our minds with the miracle of the healing of the cripple by Peter and John was on the east; and besides being the principal gate, was the richest in or namentation, and most imposing in size. Fash ioned out of flnely wrought Corinthian brass, it was so heavy that twenty porters were needed to open and close its double folds. The Holy House, with its porch, was 150 feet long, by a^s many broad. The Holy Place was 60 feet long and 30 broad, and the Most Holy 30 long by 30 broad. There 48 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS was a ^ space around the side and rear of the sacred ediflce 30 feet in width, and occupied by rooms devoted to sacred uses. These rooms, though three stories high, did not reach to the height of the main structure. Above the Holy and Most Holy Places were rooms, and tiie whole building was covered by a gabled roof of cedar, each piece of which had been nailed into position by a golden spike. There it stood on the summit of Moriah, in all its marvelous beauty of gold and snow, facing Olivet and the sun rising; the pride of every Jew ish heart, the center of the nation's thought, the earthly dwelling place of their God. In concep tion and execution, Herod's artificers had at last surpassed those of Solomon. An article or a book giving the political and physical aspect of Jerusalem in the particular period of its history between B. C. 37, when Herod became king, to A. D. 70, when the Ro mans destroyed it, would be easy to write. But no chronological fact, no description of valleys and hills, no measurement of walls and temples can convey to the mind any adequate idea of Je rusalem. Jerusalem is a city to call forth the powers of the heart and not a place to be treated by the dry details of the analyst. Jerusalem is the city, that, above all others, stands for the religious element in human nature. THE CAPITAL OF CHRISTENDOM 49 Man has always felt that he was more than the beasts that perish, and Jerusalem is the per petual' witness to the intensity of this feeling. Inland, lifted up, rock-bound and rock-under- girded, Jerusalem, by all the pinnacles that have pierced the heavens from her temples, churches, mosques ; by all the rocks that have gone into her massive walls; by all the wars that have raged around her devoted inhabitants ; by all the blood that has reddened her streets, and by all the prayers and hymns from the love of her saints, has perpetually voiced man's undying belief in God, and the necessity he was under to love and serve Him. No city has been so often pillaged, so often de molished ; yet the smoke has hardly ceased to go up from her fire-swept ruins before her people began to replace her palaces and to rebuild her walls. By turns, the nations surrounding her came up and emptied upon her devoted head all the resources of relentless fury, but amid it all and in spite of it all, this city of the conscience continued to weep and wail and sing songs and write prophecy and offer sacrifices. Her suffer ings have made her great and have tumed the very stones of her streets into objects of affection. For thousands of years human lips have been wearing away the stones of Jerusalem with their kisses. Jerusalem is a small city, and has never been large, but it has had more influence upon 50 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS the thought and sentiment and conduct of the human race than any other. Jerusalem has never had any commercial im portance. Its only trade consists of the symbols and objects of affection, such as mother-of-pearl crosses, and carvings of the Savior's face; flow ers from the holy fields over whose acres walked the blessed feet nailed for our advantage on the bitter cross; olivewood stamps and paper weights, and pictures of places connected with the Savior's life. Jerusalem is an unworldly city and ministers to the lofty and great and holy in man, and stands for the eternal in human nature. Jerusalem is the only- city on earth where every kind of money is current — Greek money, French money, Italian money, German money, American money, Egyptian money, Hindoo money, and every other sort of money is good, for to the city of David the tribes of all the earth continue to go up; there they all find welcome. Jerusalem is the city of man, and enjoys the distinction of being the only city the Son of man ever wept over. The walls surrounding the city contain forty feet of human history. For 4,000 years, Jerusa lem has been the altar, the confessional, the mourner's bench of the human race. This has been the place where human nature has medi tated, repented and aspired ; here the infinite, the THE CAPITAL OF CHRISTENDOM 51 undying and spiritual in man have expressed themselves in the melody of song and the impor tunity of ceaseless prayer; here the currents which drift toward God in human nature have come to shore; here their swell and sweep have lifted themselves into the psalms of David, the prophecies of Isaiah and the wailings of Jere miah. The place has an infinite charm for poor, tempted, frail humanity, because here is the spot where One of our own flesh and blood flrst con quered the world, the fiesh and the devil; here virtue and honor and purity and holiness and tenderness and pity and sympathy and charity were enthroned and invested with the prestige that comes from succeeding. They failed at Athens in Socrates, but they triumphed in Jeru salem in Jesus Christ. Human nature was digni fied and ennobled by the success of Christ at Je rusalem. He showed what man can be and do. Everything and every place about Jerusalem is interesting. There is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is the cathedral not only of Palestine, but of all Christendom. No sacred edifice on earth is the object of so much senti ment and affection. Here Ohristian belief in the resurrection has stood in mute stone for nearly sixteen centuries over the empty grave of onr Lord, witnessing with a force no words can equal, 52 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS to the fundamental and essential fact of the Christian religion. Here hard and unyielding rock has, by the power of creative Christian senti ment, been turned into the delicate tracery of lace-work. Here we have in small compass and under one roof an epitome of Christian history. Here all orders and denominations and nationalities, found often wide apart in the great, broad world, get together in a common center. It is interest ing and suggestive to know that under the roof of one Christian church on earth there is room for all faiths. In this church the whole world is rep resented; it belongs to no party or nation, but is owned by the Christian world, and because Christians have not yet advanced sufficiently in the spirit and charity of their Master to love one another as they ought, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is held in trust for them all by the Sultan of Turkey. There is the Via Dolorosa, or the Pathway of Pain. This is the street over which Christ bore the cross to the place of crucifixion. It extends from the praetorium, the residence of Pilate, to Golgotha, or from the Turkish barracks to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There are four teen stations along the way, each one represent ing some particular event in the last walk of our Lord on earth. It is strange that this short way THE CAPITAL OF CHRISTENDOM 53 should mark the beginning of western civiliza tion. Here the world learned a new secret of strength and a new method of life. Here began the street which has extended through the ages, and along which healthy, heroic, triumphant hu man life has walked ever since. There is the Garden of Gethsemane, visited by more pilgrims than any other garden on earth. The Garden of Gethsemane, where the second Man triumphed, balances the Garden of Eden, where the flrst man failed. Paradise, lost by transgression, is replaced by the paradise gained by obedience. The agony of Gethsemane meets and overcomes the sin of Eden. These two gar dens, because of their relation to the moral his tory of man, have become immortal. No emphatic disposition to locate the Garden of Eden has manifested itself. Men are not much inclined to make pilgrimages to the places which register the beginning of their lapses and wan derings, but the Garden of Gethsemane has been flxed by the devotion and sentiment of nearly 1,600 years. Stratford-on-Avon will ever be dear to the human race, for there lived the man whose creations have enriched the common mind; but Gethsemane stands, unrivaled and unapproached in human affection, because from thence came the t-eport that it is impossible for God ever to cease to love sinners. The intimation from heaven, 54 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS given in the agony of the last prayer in Gethsem ane, that God takes an interest in the affairs of men, is the secret that makes it the sweetest place on earth. Then there is the Mosque of Omar, where stood the great palaces and the temple of Solomon, the temporary and inferior temple built by Nehe miah, and the forgeous and magniflcent temple built by Herod. What an appeal it presents to the imagination ! Here in this mosque we have the rock, where Melchisedek offered sacrifices, where Abraham is said to have been in the act of offering Isaac; where, according to tradition, Jacob saw the lad der leading up to heaven ; where was the thresh ing floor of Araunah; where was the site of the altar of burnt offering for Israel, upon which David sacrificed; where was the altar of the temples of Solomon, Zerubbabel and Herod, and where it is said Mohammed prayed, declaring that one prayer from this spot was worth a thou sand elsewhere. Those who come with imagination to Jerusa lem and with knowledge of its marvelously ro mantic history will be able to see not one city only, but many. There is the Jerusalem of Melchisedek, living in his devotion, standing serene and beautiful THE CAPITAL OF CHRISTENDOM 55 above the storms and clouds and changing for tunes of time. There is the Jerusalem of the Jebusites, anchored forever to the threshing fioor of Araunah. There is the Jerusalem of David, with its palaces in song, its trees in song, its Mount of Olives in song, perpetually holding its place in the unending pulsations of divine music, refreshing the ear and charming the hearts of the saints of all ages. There is the Jerusalem of Solomon, with its temple covered with gold, gleaming under sun of the deep Syrian sky throughout all time. There is the Jerusalem of Nehemiah, built with a weapon of warfare in one hand, and an imple ment of industry in, the other, appealing to the strenuous of all ages. There is the Jerusalem of Isaiah, breathing in prophecy and falling in tears but rising in aspirations that are never to pass away. There is the Jerusalem of Jeremiah, changing with the cadences of his sad and moumful poem, but eternally fixed in the wailing and the tears of the prophet that God raised up to tell his na tive city of her sins. There is the Jerusalem of our Savior, with its temple, its palace of Herod, its Garden of Gethsemane and its Mount Cal vary, permanent in the New Testament Scrip tures. There is the Jerusalem of Titus, with its raging flre and mouldering ruins still buming and smok- 56 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS ing in the glowing periods of the historian Jo sephus. And then there is the Jerusalem of the crusaders, with its songs and gallant knights liv ing to-day in Tasso's verse, and loved to-day as in the time of Peter and Hermit. If we are to have any rational conception of universal history, we must study it from Jerusa lem. Condorcet said that had Xerxes been vic torious at Salamis, we might still be barbarians, and Gibbon remarked that but for Charles Mar- tel's victory, Mohammedan doctors might to-day be teaching the Koran at the University of Ox ford ; and Pascal went so far as to declare that if the nose of Cleopatara had been shorter, the whole face of the earth would have been changed. Whatever may be our estimate of the fancies of these great men, it is beyond question that had it not been for Jerusalem and the transaction which took place within her walls, human his tory as we know it had not been. The initial stages of the great consummation toward which all human activity moves, were inaugurated at Jerusalem. It is to this City of the Great King that the countries around the Mediterranean Sea owe their charm and interest. Among the great cities of the past it was humble in position and small in extent. To the west of her stretched Egypt, THE CAPITAL OF CHRISTENDOM 57 like a green ribbon for two thousand miles, pro ducing enough wheat every year to feed half the world. Under the very shadow of her mountains lay Tyre and Sidon, crowding with their ships every market under the sun. To the east of her was Babylon, dazzling and corrupting the na tions with her wealth. Somewhat further away on the west, was Athens, seated on her throne of hills by the sea, a queen of beauty, attracting students of the world by her art and learning. More distant still, was Rome, embracing by her arms of war all the peoples of the globe. Surrounded by cities strong, rich and imperi ous, Jerusalem seemingly had small chance for a career. Alexandria could rely upon her com. Tyre upon her purple dye, Babylon upon her wealth, Athens upon her beauty, and Rome upon her legions, but what had poor, rock-encompassed Jerusalem to rely on, as a reason for existence, or a future of influence. With her patches of environing soil held by terraces to her hills, with her narrow valleys hardly sufficient to produce bread for her people, with no army and no power, how could this weak mountain town hold up her head and compete for a place in the history of the world? While the cities about here were augmenting their wealth, and increasing their dominions and whitening the seas with their ships of trade and filling the world with the din of their battles; the 58 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS people of Jerusalem were writing poetry, chron icling their spiritual hopes, uttering their pray ers and reading from the interior depths of their souls the literature of heaven as God breathed it into the spirits of her inspired men. Now, in this far-off time, after the empires have passed, after the tumult of battle has ceased, after the temples have fallen,- after the forms in which material civilizations clothed themselves have vanished, we find alone remaining, to bring us news of the countries long gone, like a forgot ten dream, the prayers and chronicles and visions and dreams of a poor Hebrew people, who had faith in their day to trust in God and to conse crate their lives to His service. If some Hebrew dreamers had not been taken captive from Jeru salem to Babylon, the very name of that vast empire had doubtless passed from the memories of men. Had not the Jews, by the exigencies of fortunes come into relations with Egypt, interest in that wonderful land might never have been re vived. St. Paul, crucified with the Christ, who died on the cross in Jerusalem, preached a ser mon on Mar's HUl, that has done more to con serve the beauty lying by its side than all other things put together. Jerusalem's title to immortality is due not to any thing external, but to the devout, beautiful, interior lives of her saints. Their prayers have preserved the perfume of her flowers, and their sacriflces and sufferings have made her gates gleam with the radiance of heaven. CHAPTER V MOST CELEBRATED VILLAGE ON EARTH A GREAT personage imparts something to the place and time of his birth that glori fies both. H^nce it is that Bethlehem of Judea is the most famous town on earth, and the 25th of December the greatest day ever measured from eternity. Bethlehem is about six miles south of Jerusa lem, fourteen miles west of the Dead Sea, and thirty-nine miles east of the Mediterranean Sea. It stands on a projecting spur of limestone be longing to the central range of Palestine. On the eastern end of the ridge it crowns stands the church and convent of the Nativity. It looks like a great fortress and commands the valley or plain of the shepherds, which runs out toward the mountains of Judea on the east. Stranger and sweeter sound waves were never known than those the shepherds heard, passing over the fields around Bethlehem, when Christ was born. They were so full of music and beauty that they were not only heard by the ear but seen by the eye. The vibrations, which then fllled the sky with melody and light were created by the 59 60 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS songs of the multitude of the heavenly host, as St. Luke in the second chapter of his gospel teaches, seemingly sent from above to furnish music to celebrate the arrival of One sent from heaven to take personal and direct charge of the fortunes of humanity. The splendor that encompassed the manger was but the glow which flamed from the entrance of the Son of Man into the earthly environment of our human lot, just as the blaze of crimson glory we sometimes see radiating from the east as the king of day above the horizon, in the won drous pageantry of the morning is but the result of transactions caused by the trading of pencils of light with the elements of the atmosphere. I had the pleasure of being in Bethlehem, one beautiful morning in 1894, and was impressed, as I stood in that Judean town, with a sense of its extra,ordinary significance. The only expression of one's soul up to the style of such a neighbor hood is that of rapture and adoration. Bethlehem is no place to go with the logic- chopping, mechanical intellect striving to force events which transpired there into line with meager mental formulas. That the glory of the Lord should have shone about the shepheids, as they watched their flocks in the flelds around Bethlehem is perfectly in keeping with the un- MOST CELEBRATED VILLAGE 61 precedented wonders which have accompanied the career of Christ ever since He touched the shores of the planet. Many have no room in the meager horizon of their intellectual sky for the light and beauty that filled the heavens over Bethlehem when Christ was born. It is remarkable that such thinkers do not see that the wonder of Christ is not in the manner of His coming into the world, but consists of the universal enterprise He inaugurated and has been successfully conducting for nearly two thousand years. The extraordinary phenomenon which accompanied the entrance of Christ into humanity at Bethlehem, was but the beginning of a series of unparalleled happenings in connection with his career that have been repeated year by year down to the present time. The dazzling brilliance and unearthly beauty that literally wrapped the heavens in flame over Bethlehem, when Christ was born, have taken form in St. Mark's at Venice ; in Pisa's glorious pile; in the cathedrals of Milan, Modena, and Parma; in the lovely structures breaking into foam at Mayence, Worms, Basel and Brussels; in the vast marble blossoms which have come to flower in the churches of France, in the Abbey Church of Cluney, Chartres, Rouen and Notre Dame; in the wondrous expressions of frozen 62 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS music we see in the English cathedrals of West minister, Canterbury and Welles. The vast, awe-inspiring magniflcence that has made Bethlehem a shrine through the Christian centuries, has also expressed itself in the ora torios of the famous masters, and in the- rhythm of the greatest poets, as well as in the gorgeous colors the great painters have used to illuminate the art galleries of the world. People whose faith staggers over the unparal leled phenomenon that was seen lighting up the sky over Bethlehem nearly two thousand years ago should not flnd it necessary to travel back to the beginning of our era to flnd something con nected with Christ to stumble over. Why be dazzled to the blindness of unbelief by a frag ment of light that shone in Bethlehem when Christ was born, while we are forced to adjust ourselves to a hot, broiling, blazing sun of light directly over our heads, white enough with bril liance to put the world's eyes out? The problem of Christ to marvel at is the triumphant, dynamic, all-conquering Ufe He has lived in history. How a life that has expressed itself in the beauty of architecture, painting and poetry through the Christian centnries, should have come up out of Galilee, uncolored and untouched by any local Umits of place, or by any tra- MOST CELEBRATED VILLAGE 63 ditions of its time, or by any controversies of its age, is the miracle that throws reason from its throne and forces the human race to arrange itself into adjustment with a new and unparalleled fact. How life should rise out of a people, provincial to a proverb, and take charge of the fortunes of mankind and compel even time itself to capitulate in its presence, and forever measure its passing from a new date, is the prob lem that throws all our intellectual methods into brokenness and ruin. What confuses us is the difficulty of under standing how Christ so learned the ideal and es sential relations between God and man, as to be able to bring in the facts of his own life the power and method of harmonizing them. What the aver age man can never understand, by means of think ing, is how Christ managed to get so completely into league with events that He was able to deal with the universe of mind and the universe of mat ter and force the whole sum of things to conform to His purpose, and yet, without destroying the personality of any one man, to bring every man to a completer individuality through organizing all men into one social whole. What puzzles us is to know how Christ, having never traveled, learned so much about human nature that He was able to take the gifts intrusted to all men severally and show them how to use them in a perfectly balanced life. 64 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS The coming of so marvelous a Person as Jesus Christ into terms of flesh and blood nearly twenty centuries ago, is the vast, overwhelming event which makes Bethlehem famous. His coming meant the inauguration of the period when a fresh and beautiful and divine issue of humanity was to be published. It was the invasion of time by eternity. The litera ture of heaven was to be translated into the lan guage of the earth. The inflnite was to be domes ticated in terms of the flnite. In the light of these stupendous realities we can understand very well how Bethlehem and everything in it has been idealized and lifted from the realm of matter into that of spirit. The Church of the Nativity glows in the splen dor of unearthly light. The lofty columns of red dish, white-veined limestone, which form the nave, and side aisles, do not seem to be formed of mere matter, but appear to be possessed of a soul that everywhere pervades them. The Co rinthian capitals, which crown the pillars, seem in a way to be alive. And so with the fragments of ancient mosaics to be found here and there on the walls. The decorations and lamps which are suspended over the altar and are chiefly the gifts of distinguished kings and queens from various parts of the world, while having great material value in themselves, yet this is as noth- MOST CELEBRATED VILLAGE 65 ing to the spiritual value which has been lent to them by the devotion and worship of Christian disciples., This whole church is not simply a thing of beauty, but there is about it a subtle mystic power which gives to it the grace of a sacrament. Just under the high altar is the cavern or grotto in which Christ was born. In the floor of the recess, where the manger was, there is a silver star, placed in the pavement, around which are written in Latin these words: "Hic de Virgine Maria Jesus Christus natus est." (Here Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary. ) In this grotto more worshipers have stood to pray, meditate and adore, while looking upon the star, than ever stood in any other like space be fore. Here Christ, the Savior of the world, came to man in terms of his own life. We have dwelt so much on the fact that Christ died for us that we have been in danger, some times, of forgetting that He was born for us, was a child in His mother's arms for us, was a boy questioning the doctors in the temple for us. He saw the lilies and admired their beauty for us. He took dinner with Zaccheus in Jericho for us. Everything He did, every word He uttered, every prayer He breathed, was for us. There is not a single square inch of the entire surface of our being that Christ does not touch. When He entered humanity through Bethlehem 66 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS He took upon Him the whole reach and sweep of our earthly life. I cried aloud, there is no Christ In all this world unparadised! No Christ to go to in my need — No Christ to comfort me and feed I He passed in glory out of sight. The angels drew Him into light; Now in the lonesome earth and air I cannot find Him anywhere. Would God that heaven were not so far And I were where the white ones are. From the gray stones of the street, Where goes an ocean drift of feet, I heard a child's cry tremble up And tumed to share my scanty cup. When lo, the Christ I thought was dead Was in the little one I fed. At this I drew my aching eyes From the far-watehing of the skies And now, whichever way I turn, I see my Lord's white halo burnl CHAPTER VI THE MOST BEAUTIFUL CITY ON EARTH THINK of a petrified rainbow, of a cloud of gorgeous color, four thousand feet high and seven miles in circumference, turned into stone. Think of the deepest reds, the most brilliant purples, all shades of yellow, arranged in alternate bands, shading off into each other; curved and twisted into gorgeous fantasies, all standing up and out in rock, and you have the raw material out of which the City of Petra was cut. Think of this mountain of light, in the form of stone, with its heart puUed out, leaving a space three or four miles in circumference, surrounded by precipitous sides, and you have the ground plan of the strangest city under the sun. Think of an apple with the core cut out and you have a diminutive representation of the mountain in Arabia after some Titan had pitched out its heart, the Edomites used to build Petra. Not elsewhere in the world were there ever such perfect conditions formed by natural forces for a splendid city, and when you think of this three mUes of circular space, surrounded by walls five hundred to four thousand feet high, 67 68 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS with but one entrance into it and one from it, you get an idea of what a perfect fortress, what a per fect refuge from the peril of invasion this round pile of beauty became. A gorge two miles long, varying in width from twelve feet at its narrow est point to thirty-five feet at its widest, rising up from four hundred to one thousand feet high, furnishes the entrance to the enclosure where the city was built. Through these gloomy walls, called the Sik, near enough together to almost shut out the blue ribbon of the sky, we pass from the desert into the City of Petra. It is not strange, when we think of the marvel ous possibilities for a city formed by nature here, that man was tempted, from the beginning al most, of his career in Arabia, to use the precip itous cliffs of Petra for the purpose of cutting for himself homes, tombs, theatres, places of wor ship out of the solid rock. This region comes into history as Mt. Seir, in the days of Abraham. It was the home of the Horites, who emerge at the dawn of human history. Some time after Jacob had fied to Paddan-aram from the anger of his brother, Esau left Isaac, his father, and made his home in Mt. Seir. Mt. Seir is supposed to be Petra. The kings of Edom reigned here at the time the chUdren of Israel were in Egypt. A little more than half a century before the Chris tian era, the king of Arabia issued from his pal- MOST BEAUTIFUL CITY 69 ace in Petra, at the head of fifty thousand men, horse and foot, and entered Jerusalem, uniting with the disaffected Jews, he besieged Aristobu lus, the king in the Temple, and was only driven off by the advance of the Romans. In the time of Paul an Ethnarch under Aretas, the king of Petra, held the city of Damascus. Petra was once the central point to which the caravans from the interior of Arabia, Persia and India came laden with all the precious commodi ties of the East, and from which these commodi ties were distributed through Egypt, Palestine and Syria and all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, and even Tyre and Sidon derived many of their precious dyes from Petra. Here met the East and the West to trade and barter. It was also the great place of safety into which the caravans poured after the vicissitudes and dangers of the desert. Its wealth became fabu lous. In A. D. 106 the Romans seized the coun try and made Petra the capital of this vision of Palestine. According to the Koran, it was here that Moses struck the rock, and the same fountain still flows under his name through the Sik. It is a remark able tribute to a great man that there is hardly a single tent or house to-day in all that mountain region, without a Moses among its chUdren or old 70 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS people. Moses has taken possession of the coun try. After the triumph of the Mohammedans in the seventh century, Petra drops out of attention and was absolutely lost sight of until within recent years. Buckhardt was one of the first travelers to visit Petra in modern times. He was there in 1811. Irby was there in 1818. John Stephens was there in 1837, Steven Olin in 1840, Dean Stanley in 1852, Edward L. WUson in 1882, Gen eral Kitchener in 1883, Forder and Hornstein in 1895, Gray HUl in 1896, Brunnow in 1896, Sir Charles Wilson in 1898, Samuel I. Curtis in 1898, George L. Robinson in 1900, and W. B. Pal- more in 1903. Almost every traveler to Petra has come back with stories of the iniquity and perfidy of the people of that region. The historic associations of the place are ex ceedingly interesting, but travelers who have vis ited Petra can find no words capable of describ ing the beautiful natural colors of the sandstone out of which it is built. "It seems no work of man's creative hand. By labor wrought as wavering fancy planned ; But from the rock as if by magic grown. Eternal, silent, beautiful, alone! Not virgin-white like that old Doric shrine Where erst Athena held her rites divine; Not santly-grey, like many a minster fane MOST BEAUTIFUL CITY 71 That crowns the hill and consecrates the plain, But rosy-red as if the blush of dawn That first beheld them were not yet withdrawn; The hues of youth upon a brow of woe. Which man deemed old two thousand years ago. Match me such marvel save in Eastern clime, A rose-red city half as old as Time." Petra, as seen to-day, appears to be a great cas tellated mass of beauty. Whether seen in the gloom of the Sik or in the brUliant sunshine that kindles its craggy, bristling pinnacles into col ored flame, the city amazes and surprises every one. I have desired, ever since I read of this wonder ful city in the midst of the desert, to sometime behold for myself the indescribable beauties of the purples, the yellows, the crimsons and the many-hued combinations of the wondrous place. I have read of the stony ramparts, with veins of white and blue, red, purple and sometimes scar let and light orange running through it jn rainbow streaks. With the minds' eye I have looked within its chambers, and where there had been no exposure to the action of the elements, had seen the freshness and beauty of the colors in which their waving lines were drawn, giving effects hardly inferior to those of the paintings of Titian and of the great artists of Venice and Florence. I have read of the endless variety of bright and living hues, from the deepest crimson to the softest pink, verging also sometimes to 72 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS orange and yellow, and all these varying shades distinctly marked by waving lines and imparting to the surface of the rock a succession of brilliant and changing tints like the hues of watered silk. I have read of the red, purple, yellow and azure colors, woven into successive layers, or so blended as to form every hue and shade of which they are capable, as brilliant and soft as they ever appear in flowers or in the plumage of birds, or in the sky when illuminated with the most glorious sunset and so for years I have dreamed of seeing Petra. It has come to be known, within recent years that color and music and perfume are all formed by different wave-lengths. Music is made by the harmonious combination of sound waves pulsating at the rate of sixteen beats to the second on the lower scale and thirty-eight thousand beats to the second on the upper scale. Harmonious color is formed when light waves vibrate at the rate of four hundred trillion times to the second on the lower scales, and seven hundred trillion times to the second on the upper scale. What the artist does who paints a great picture is to arrange the pigments so that when the flngers of light come playing upon the canvas, we have an audible pic ture, a picture that we cannot hear by the ear, but by that more refined organ of sound called the eye, we can see. MOST BEAUTIFUL CITY 73 All the colors of the prismatic scale have been lodged by the Author of all beauty, in that petri fied rainbow of a mountain out of which Petra was built, and so when the light comes pouring down upon the different pigments of stone, it makes them sing just as do the fingers of Pad erewski make the notes of the piano sing when he touches them. The reason, therefore, the city of Petra captures the imagination and calls forth, in all lovers of the beautiful, a desire to see it, is because out there in the Arabian desert the whole city, under the pressure of the quadrillion- fingered light, has been singing since the days of Abraham. I have been in the neighborhood of Petra but never saw the city with my own eyes, but through a book entitled "Travels in Arabia," by Rev. W. B. Palmore, I have been permitted to visit that wonderful place. Without the perils and the expenses of an ac tual visit, I have been able to hear Petra sing through those bright and gorgeous colors, which her stones receive from the sun, and throw back into the sky in the form of the glorious melody of her music. I have been able to wander among the walls of rock, which glow under the power of the sunlight in more flaming colors than Eastern carpets or any other fanciful fabric ever woven by the loom of man. Through the eyes of another 74 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS I have seen the sun set in Petlra and the glory of the king of day coming up to make flame like torches of painted fire, the splendor of her castles, her temples, her facades, her theaters and her vast buildings as beautiful and brilliant to day as when they were first carved out of the rock. I have seen it glistening with the rain drops after the showers. I have seen it before sunrise and in the weird beauty of the after-glow. I have seen it under the noonday sun, and have been able to observe the way in which those an cient sculptors fixed the levels of their temples, tombs and dwellings so as to make the most ar tistic use of the beautiful strata in the mountain walls. I have been able to marvel again and again, as I wandered through the never-ending ravines, at how those ancient dwellers con sciously practiced a kind of landscape gardening, where instead of the beautiful effects produced by banks of fading flowers, they carved more gor geous out of the many-hued and easilywrought solid stone, which rival the hues the floweTs are able to throw back into the face of the sun. If you want to enjoy an hour of adventure, and revel in a wilderness of beauty, from the time you enter the door of the Sik until you come back through it to the edge of the desert, read a book on Petra. If you want to see the huge excavation the powers of nature have made out of a moun- MOST BEAUTIFUL CITY 75 tain, assisted by torrent and earthquake and fur ther helped by the hand of time, and frost, and tempest, in order to prepare the way for the most magniflcent abode the children of men have ever used for a dwelling place, read a description of Petra. Here, through the ages, to;wering cliffs, lifted into myriad fantastic forms, have been radiating a splendor and a glorious beauty with out any parallel on the earth's surface. One can travel as well by staying at home, if he has imagination, as he can by actually going over the earth's surface, and so through the imag ination of another, I have been able to enter the city of Petra by the winding valley of the Sik, to gaze at its stupendous walls of rock, which close the valley and encircle this ancient habitation, showing how man himself can imitate nature and adorn the winding passes of her circling walls with the beauty of architecture and art and temple and tomb and column, portico and pedi ment, and take the wild and savage forms of mountain summits and convert them into places of residence, into theaters and temples and castles, and make them places of enchantment that leave an impression upon the soul that once felt can never be forgotten. If the cathedral builders of the Middle Ages had found themselves living in Petra instead of France, they could have expressed their genius 76 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS in far more magniflcent fashion than they were able to do in the wondrous piles of beauty stand ing under the soft French skies at Chartres and at Amiens. The amazing cathedral at Chartres looks as if it were wrapped in the mystery of its own shadow, thick with the haze of rain, soar ing up lighter and lighter as it rises in the sky, aspiring like a soul purifying itself with increas ing light, as it toils up the ways of the mystic firmament. Its clustered columns spring up like tender sheaves their groups appearing so light as if they might bend at a breath, yet it is not until they reach a giddy height that these stems, curved over, flying from one side of the cathedral to the other, meet above the void, mingling their sap and blossoming at last like a basket of flow ers under the once gilded pendants from the roof. Now, if those who lifted up into the heavens this splendid structure, had lived in Petra, they might have found stone out of which to carve their human faces, ablaze with light and clothed in robes of fire, and left them to dwell through all time in an environment of glory. A cathedral like that of Chartres built out of the colored stone of Petra, would impress the beholder as a persistent conflagration. The builders there would have found the bugle cry of the red, the limpid confldence of the white, the repeated hai- MOST BEAUTIFUL CITY 77 lelujahs of the yellow, the virginal glory of the blue, all the quivering twines of untwisted light looking like a raveled rainbow, ready to hand for their cathedral. They would have had the ame thyst there to mirror humility, the chalcedony to represent charity, the jasper to stand as an em blem of faith and eternity, the sardonyx repre senting martyrdom, the sapphire for hope and contemplation, the beryl representing learning and long-suffering — indeed, they would have found a tabled harmony of gems to apply to their patriarchs and apostles, out of the natural ma terial of the rock. And the day will dawn when the human race shall come through the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a perfect man, then it may be that the most splendid and beautiful cathedral ever yet raised to the glory of God wUl be cut out of Petra. Petra came to desolation because aU her beauty was crowded into her magnificent buUd ings, and not into the souls of her people. Petra never failed outwardly. Her great edifices throw back into the heavens as much gorgeous color to-day as ever they did. Petra failed inwardly, because she never found men to match the splen dor of the mountain out of which the city was carved. She faUed because her people had no empires in their purpose, no new eras in their brains. 78 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS God gave to the inhabitants of Petra the raw material of a wondrous house, and they used it to build a city that has been the marvel of all the ages, but they gloried only in their outward wealth of temple, theater, tomb, and residence. They never paved a highway for the human spirit ; they never wrought out a kingdom for the ampler destinies of human souls. So now, for more than a thousand years, the owls and the bats and the wild beasts have been accustomed to domesticate themselves in the far-famed palaces of Petra. CHAPTER VII A SPECK IN SPACE WHEN Rev. Benjamin J. Kiely (now bishop of Savannah) came to Atlanta in 1886 I was pastor at Trinity Church. Soon after his arrival in the city, following the custom of ministers to call on new preachers, I felt it my duty to pay a visit to the pastor of the Church of the Immaculate Conception. He was then just from Wilmington, Del., where he la bored from 1873 to 1886. Instead of paying him a short, formal visit, I found him so interesting that our conversation must have lasted two hours. Upon leaving he presented me with two old leather-covered volumes which had been pre sented to him by a friend who was a Methodist preacher. The books were Massillon's sermons. My first meeting with Father Kiely marked the beginning of a friendship that has lasted to this day. I had spoken to Father Kiely of a long-cher ished wish of visiting the lands of the Bible some day, and he had remarked in response : "If you ever go to Palestine I will give you a letter to myirother in Egypt, and he will take pleasure in 79 80 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS introducing you to important personages there who will be of advantage to you." As soon as the way opened up for the journey to the East I wrote Father Kiely from St. Louis to send me the letter of introduction to his brother. In reply, he sent not only a letter to his brother, but also one to a friend in the American Catholic College in Rome. Anthony Kiely was the American judge in the Intemational Court of Appeals of Cairo, Egypt. I reached Cairo in the middle of AprU, 1894. The season for tourists was about over, and upon inquiry I learned that the international court had adjourned and that Judge Kiely had gone to England. So I had no chance to deliver my letter of introduction. I was the head of an ex pedition, the object of which was to visit all places in the East connected with the life of Christ and His apostles. Leaving Egypt after seeing the spot where, according to tradition, Joseph and Mary and the Child Jesus spent their sojoum after Herod's cruel edict, we proceeded through Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Greece and Italy. Finally on my way back I reached Liver pool. At the wharf, where it is the custom to wait for the little tugboat in which passengers are taken out to the steamer, it occurred to me that I had no change to pay the cabman who had A SPECK IN SPACE 81 brought me down from the station. No one around could change a five-pound note, the small est bill I had. I saw a fine-looking man standing beside a lot of hand baggage, who seemed to be waiting for the steamer. I approached him and asked : "Are you going on the Majestic?" "Yes," he said. "I am going on the same steamer," I remarked, "and will thank you very much if you will let me have three shillings till I can get my money changed." "With pleasure," he responded, giving me the money. By and by the steamer was reached, my money was changed and I went in search of the kind stranger to pay him and to thank him for his goodness. I found him in the dining room, sitting on one of the long-cushioned seats that runs around the wall. By his side I noticed a maga zine with the name of A. M. Kiely on it. "Is your name Kiely?" said I. "It is," said he., "Are you from Egypt?" I inquired. "I am," he responded. "Then," said I, "I suppose I have a letter of introduction to you from Father Kiely, in At lanta." "Yes," sa(id he; "I have a brother in Atlanta, Fath,er Kiely." 82 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS The impression I had was the world is not large. We crossed the ocean together and had many interesting talks. He was a charming con versationalist, and one of the most accomplished men it has ever been my good fortune to meet. I wrote Father Kiely that I failed to find his brother in Egypt, but being a little hard up in Liverpool, I found him and borrowed money from him. Leaving Damascus one morning before the raUroad over the Lebanon Mountains was com pleted, I reached Beyrout, 70 miles away, by omnibus, in time for 6 o'clock dinner. The horses were changed every hour and passed over much of the way in a gallop. Arriving at our hotel, we were soon ushered in to dinner. There were but two parties besides my traveling com panion and myself at the table. The gentlemen who had preceded us into the dining room were engaged in a somewhat animated conversation. One of the parties was doing most of the talking. He seemed to be an Englishman, and was abusing something or somebody, about what I was unable to find Out. The party who was saying just about enough to keep the talking man encouraged, finally made a remark, in which he referred to the State of Georgia. After awhile I took the liberty to ask him what he knew of Georgia. He A SPECK IN SPACE 83I said that he was a citizen of Augusta, Ga. He was the United States consul general at Beyrout, and had been the editor of The Augusta Evening News. His name was Thomas Gibson. When I told him that I had once lived in Atlanta, Ga., but had moved to St. Louis, he asked "What on earth could ever induce a man to leave Atlanta for St. Louis?" I told him that I was a Methodist preacher and that the bishop had sent me to St. Louis. Then he said, "You are Dr. J. W. Lee." This was the beginning of a most interesting experi ence in Beyrout. Mr. Gibson came to our hotel next morning with a carriage and two uniformed attendants furnished him by the Turkish govern ment, and showed us all the interesting places and buUdings around the city. After leaving Beyrout we next arrived at Athens, in Greece. The officers at Pierus, which is the port of Athens, refused to let our nine boxes of 9x10 dry plates out of the custom house. We were in Greece to take pictures of places connected with the travels of St. Paul. We were informed that if we would get an order from the American min ister stating that we were not trying to smuggle into the country whisky or tobacco we could take our boxes to the hotel. It is about four miles 84 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS from Prieus to the city of Athens proper. So the first thing in order after reaching the hotel was to see the American minister. I called promptly and sent in my card. He appeared and greeted me by telling me that he was delighted to see me, that he had known me since the appearance of a certain book I had written, and that he would do everything in his power to make my stay in Greece pleasant. His name was Dr. Eben Alex ander. He had been for many years connected with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He had been sent by Mr. Cleveland as our American minister to Greece. He is a brother-in- law of Judge W. T. Newman, of Atlanta. Leav ing his home that day after the interview the thought was uppermost in my mind that the world is not large. CHAPTER VIII IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF WASHINGTON I SPENT my vacation in England during the summer of 1910 tracing the footsteps of George Washington. I can only give glimpses, but I learned that there was far more of George Washington's history in Europe than in America. Washington occupied far more of the world's attention before he was born than after he was born. Something of George Wash ington sailed from Dives, France, in 1066, when William the Conqueror, started on his military expedition against Great Britain. According to the doctrine of the correlation of forces, the rising up of force in one place involves the subsidence of force in another place, the amount rising up being the exact equivalent of the amount subsiding. When a pine tree is cut down and split into small pieces and burned in the engine, just the same amount of heat is gath ered from it that it managed to garner from the sun in fifty years of its growth. If this principle holds good in the human world as it does in the natural, then we are furnished with a method by which to account for the output of a great man's 85 86 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS life, just as we can account for the output of flre locked in a coal mine. We can get nothing of value from a coal mine except the wealth it ac cumulated by trading with the sun for thousands and thousands of years. In the light of this doctrine we propose to con sider the immensity of Washington. It is true that every man is indebted in some degree for what he comes to be to the elements afloat in the immediate political, social and intellectual at mosphere which he breathes during his tem porary sojourn upon the earth. The richer the environment into which a person enters when he first touches the planet, by so much the more is he affected by it. But however luminous and full it may be of all things essential to the ample fur- nishment of a great man's life, he must come as a baby into it with vast treasures of inherited apti tudes and potentialities bequeathed by his an cestors and by them packed away in the depths of his soul. By action and reaction between the interior self and its environment, the reserves of faculty and force hidden away in one's life are called out. It is said that the giraffe of to-day gets its long neck by the persistent stretching by its an cestors for thousands of years toward the tops of the trees. It can be seen, therefore, that the IN FOOTSTEPS OF WASHINGTON 87 young giraffe that comes into the jungles after countless ages of neck stretching toward the tree tops on the part of its ancestors has a great ad vantage over the young giraffe born before the necks of its parents got long by stretching toward the high limbs of the forest. George Washington was born and grew up amid the crude and primitive conditions charac teristic of the Colonial period of our history. There must have been a great deal more within the depths of the child's life, born at Bridges Creek, Va., February 22, 1732, than there was in in the environment on the outside of it, or George Washington never could have come to be the first in war, the first in peace, and the first in the hearts of his countrymen. Such a man could never have come out of the wilderness had it not been that he began to breathe with the reminis- censes of more than a thousand years of conquest and triumph urging him on to self expression and victory. There was nothing in the environment of the Colonial period of American history to make the man who called forth from Lord Brougham the declaration (made in Volume III of Statesmen of the Reign of George III), "Surely Washington was the greatest man that ever lived in this world unsustaiued by supernatural virture," or to pro- 88 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS voke from Lord Macauley (in his essay on John Hampden) the statement that "England missed the sobriety, the self-command, the perfect soundness of judginent, the perfect rectitude of intention to which the history of revolutions fur nish no parallel, or furnishes a parallel in Wash ington alone" ; or to inspire the imagination of Lord Byron in his ode to Napoleon to say : Where may the wearied eye repose When gazing on the great. Where neither guilty glory glows Nor despicable state Tes — one — ^the first — the last — the best. The Cincinnatus of the West, Whom envy dared not hate. Bequeathed the name of Washington, To make man blush there was but one. As a psychological problem George Washing ton has been a puzzle to the students of history. His balance, his poise, his patriotism, his democ racy in the presence of the temptation of vain empire. Living in an age of the world when people were obsessed with the belief in kings, how Washington could hold in his hand the sword that had freed a nation and yet turn from a crown the people were ready to put on his head, is a wonder explorers in human nature have not been able to compass. An ordinary get-rich- quick mortal, rising all at once out of the Vir ginia woods to high position, would have ac- IN FOOTSTEPS OF WASHINGTON 89 cepted a throne for himself and his descendants world without end. George Washington was not a' common, every day run of mortal. He was not a get-rich-quick human accident happening to breathe between 1732 and 1799. History had been at work in the making of George Washington from before the time of Con stantine the Great. Someone will be ready to say more than that is true of every man, for does not every person date from Adam. So we may say every oyster found in Mobile Bay to-day dates from the first bivalve that ever made his way through the mud of the primal ages. So we may say that every long-necked giraffe dates from the first short-necked giraffe ever born in the jungles. But there is a vast difference be tween the neckstretching giraffes and those who were content to live on without attempting any commerce with the upper limbs of the trees. There is a line of descent between every human being of the present day and the first one who ever breathed on the earth, but the genealogy of the stand-pat, self-satisfied, ordinary person can not be traced for more than two or three genera tions back. George Washington belonged to that class of climbing, neckstretching human beings, whose 90 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS descent from the remotest ages can be definitely traced. Within the past few years the problem of Washington has been solved. His greatness was not accidental. Far more than in the ordi nary sense his birth was a forgetting. The soul that rose with him had elsewhere its setting, and came from the rulers and kings and conquerors of more than a thousand years. Students have made it possible now for us to start with the little child, born at Bridges Creek, Va., February 22, 1732, and make our way through all the windings and ramifications of the Washington ancestry. We can now go from George to his father, Au gustine Washington, and from Augustine to Law rence, then to John, and then to Lawrence and to Lawrence again, who married Margaret Butler. From Margaret Butler we can go to William Butler, and then to John Butler, who married Margaret Sutton. From Margaret Sutton to John Sutton, and then to Edmund Sutton, who married Joyce Tiptoft, and then to John Tiptoft, who married Joyce Cherlton, who was the daugh ter of Alinor Holland, who was the daughter of Thomas Holland, who was the son of Thomas Holland, who married Joan of Kent, who was the daughter of Edmund, Earl of Kent, who was the son of Margaret, the Queen of Edward I. Now Margaret was the daughter of Philip III, King of France. From Philip III we can pass IN FOOTSTEPS OF WASHINGTON 91 straight down through those rulers of France known in history as Louis IX, from whom our city is named, Louis VIII, and on and on in regular descent through Philip II, Louis VII, Louis VI, Phillip I, Henry I, Robert II, Hugh Caput, Hugh the Great, Robert I, Robert, Theoth- bert, Nivelor, to Childebrand. Then we can come back to Edward I again, the husband of Margaret, and from him pass straight down through Henry III, John, Henry II, Ma tilda, Henry I, William the Conqueror, Robert, Robert II, Guinolda, Synthia, Olaf, Biorn, Eric, Edmund, Eric, Edmund, Eric, Biorn, Harold Hildetana, Roric, Ivan Vidfama, Halfdam, Hilda, Hilderic, Hunneric, King of the Goths, who married Eudoxia, and on from Eudoxia to Valentinian III, next to Constans III, then to Constantine II, and then to Constantine the Great. Returning to Matilda, who married Henry I, we can pass on from her to Margaret, who mar ried Malcolm, and from Margaret to Edward, then to Edmund, then to Ethelred, then to Edgar, then to Edmund, on to Edward, and then to Al fred the Great. The names given above may be taken as repre sentative persons from each of whom it is possi ble to branch off in all directions, enabling us to touch sooner or later all the royal famUies of 92 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS Europe. We can reach out from one or the other of these names to the rulers of Ireland, the kings on Denmark, and of Scotland, and of Bergundy, and of Wales, Hungary, Germany. Through Margaret Butler, who married Law rence Washington, we reach the Plantagenet dyr nasty, descended from the Counts of Anjou, in France, whose ancestry begins with Ingelgerius. He was the father of Fulk the Red, who was Count of Anjou. He was succeeded by his son, Fulk the Good, who reigned from 941 to about 960. From him we came to Geoffrey "Greytunic," the next Count of Anjou, reigning till 987. "Greytunic's" son, Fulk the Black, succeeded his father in 987. In order to give token of his sor row for a great crime he went three times on pil grimages to the Holy Land, and an old legend tells that he caused his servants to scourge him all the way with branches of the broom plant, the Plantagenista, from whence the name of Plantagenet is said to have come to his race. From Fulk the Black and Hildegarde of Lor raine we go to Geoffrey Martel, "the Hammer." He became Count of Anjou on his father's death. The next Count of Anjou was Geoffrey IIL His successor was Fulk V. Count Fulk visited the Holy Land in 1120 and in 1129 he married Meli- sinda, the daughter of Baldwin II, King of Jeru salem. He became King of Jerusalem in 1131. IN FOOTSTEPS OF WASHINGTON 93 Two of his sons, Baldwin III and Amalric, fol lowed him on the throne of the Holy Land. Streams of life from all the royal shores of Europe met together in that vast personal sea we know by the name of Washington. If we could think of the sea Victor Hugo described as breathing and human, made up of life formed from the surging currents of ten thousand hearts, we would have a fltting representation of George Washington. In him were billows at ebb and flood, the inex orable going and coming, the noise of all the winds, the blackness and the translucency, the vegetation peculiar to the deep, the democracy of clouds in full hurricane, the eagles flecked with foam the wonderful star-risings reflected in mys terious agitations by mUlions of luminous wave tops — confused heads of the multitudinous sea — the errant Ughtnings which seem to watch. There were in the mysterious depths of that Washington sea of life the prodigious sobbings, the halfseen monsters, the nights of darkness broken by bowlings, the furies, the frenzies, the torments, the rocks, the shipwrecks, the fleets crushing each other; then within it there was the charm, the mUdness, the festivals, the gay white sails, the flshing boats, the songs amid the up roar, the shining ports, the mist rising from the shore. There were the wraths and the appease- 94 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS ments, that all in one, the unforeseen amid tlie changeless, which made the vast marvel of inex haustibly varied monotony — all this was in the mighty soul of Washington. In Washington's veins flowed blood from the Kings of Denmark, from the Earls of Salisbury, from the Kings of Scotland, from Duncan, who killed Macbeth, from the Saxon Kings of Eng land, from Alfred the Great, from the Kings of Castile, from Clovis the Great, from the Czars of Russia, from the Kings of France, from the Kings of Austria, from the Emperors of Ger many, from the Doges of Venice, from the Counts of Anjou, from the Kings of Norway, from the Kings of Hungary, from the Kings of Navarre, from the Kings of Italy, from the Earls of War wick, and from the Kings of Wales. He was Con stantine the Great, William the Conqueror, Charles Martel, and Frederick Barbarosa, all in one. The romance of Jerusalem, the chivalry of the Crusades, the enterprise of France, Italy, Ger many, and England were all packed into the per sonality of George Washington. The sum and substance of all royalty and kingship met in Washington to make of hijn the first universal democrat. All the kings and queens of civilized times united in Washington to make a man with a head too large to fit a crown. With Washington IN FOOTSTEPS OF WASHINGTON 95 the rule of the potentates ended and the reign of the people began. If as Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes said every man is an omnibus in which his ancestors are taking a ride, then more kings and queens and dukes and earls had seats in George Washington than were ever crowded into an American vehicle before in all history. CHAPTER IX THE WESTMINSTER ABBEY OF THE QUAKERS BUT twenty-five miles from London, under the great trees whose interlacing branches form a high roof above the yard around Jordan's Quaker meeting house, lies the sleeping dust of WUliam Penn. Amid the quiet surround ings of the same burying ground, small head stones mark the graves of his two wives, Gu- lielma and Hannah; his sons, Springett and John; his daughters, Letitia Aubrey and Mar garet Freame, and five of his chUdren who died in infancy. This cemetery in the heart of the woods may be regarded as the Westminster Ab bey of the Quakers. The marble forest support ing the roof of the Westminster Abbey in London, where kings and queens and other great people sleep the last sleep, was built by man ; the Westminster Abbey of the Quakers was lifted into the sky by the hands of Almighty God. Here in this solitary corner of the Chalfont country, far from the onward rush and bustle of the madding crowd, in a little patch of territory, the ordinary tourist could never find without a 96 WESTMINSTER OF THE QUAKERS 97 guide, hundreds of Friends are buried. They were distinguished in life by what they suffered, rather than by what they did. They were dis tinguished by the unseen battles they fought for the freedom of their own souls rather than for the battles they fought for place and power in the world. Their victories are not recorded in any book on the "Decisive Battles of History." The verities with which they had to do were not tran sient, but eternal. They believed unseeable things were the real things. It was because they adjusted their lives and conduct to the invisible principles of truth and righteousness and love that they were forced by the authorities of the time to spend a large por tion of their lives in jail. For preaching kind ness and sympathy and good will toward all men, they were locked in dungeons. They had the mis fortune to appear in an age when it was thought necessary to keep sweetness and light and sanity of spirit behind prison bars. They were the fore runners in England of the lamb at a time when a thousand hyenas prowled at large for every sheeplet that ventured to live and move and have its being. They were the spring coming out from the realm of warmth and bloom and color, at a time when frozen and black and heartless winter refused to be thawed or to give place to sweeter weather. 98 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS The most significant and highly favored trees in the British Isles are the tall monarchs of the forest which here unite their strength and beauty to form the Westminster Abbey of the Quakers. William Penn, because of his relation with the New World, is without doubt the mos,t distin guished citizen of the sylvan city of the dead around the Jordan's meeting house. He was buried here on Tuesday, August 5, 1718. WU liam Penn was the son of the brUliant naval commander. Admiral William Penn. He was bom on Tower Hill, in London, in 1644. He was five years old when King Charles I was executed. He was. fourteen years old when Cromwell died, and when his son, Richard, came to the English throne. And he was not quite sixteen when on April 22, 1661, he saw from a window in CornhiU King Charles II enter the city of London the day before his coronation. He was sent by his father to study at Oxford in 1660. He was greatly influenced there by the celebrated Dr. Owen, who was dean at the time of Christ's Church. Penn showed flrst his Quaker tendencies at Oxford by refusing to wear the cap and gown, and so was expelled from the univer sity. In 1667 Penn threw his lot completely in with the despised and persecuted Quakers, and from that time forward wore the Quaker hat. The old admiral, his father, stormed and raged WESTMINSTER OF THE QUAKERS 99 and threatened to disown him for giving up all hope of a career by identifying himself with a contemptible coterie of fanatics. But the young man was immovable. He determined, at any cost, to serve God according to the dictates of his own conscience. He refused even to take off his hat in the presence of King Charles II. Noting this, the king took off his own hat, where upon Penn said: "Friend Charles, wherefore dost thou uncover thyself?" "Friend Penn," re plied the king, "it is the custom of this place for only one man to wear his hat at a time." After this Penn was imprisoned in the tower for blas phemy, founded on the misconception of a pass age contained in the pamphlet he had written. Every effort was made to terrify the youth into a recantation. He was told that the bishop of Loudon would keep him in prison to the end of his life. His answer was : "My prison shall be my grave before I will budge one jot. I owe my conscience to no mortal man." After eight months he was released, but he made good use of the days of his confinement and wrote the re markable book, "No Cross, No Crown." In 1672 WUliam Penn went down into Buck inghamshire and was married at King's Farm, Chorley Wood, to Gulielma Springett, who was accustomed, it is said, to play on her fiute to the poet Milton while he lived at Chalfont St. Giles, 100 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS in the same neighborhood. The house in which Penn was married is in a good state of preserva tion, and the room is pointed out in which the wedding ceremony was performed. After his marriage William Penn and his bride lived for five years at Basing House, Rickman- worth. The house in which they lived is still standing, and the owners show a treasure in their possession, known as William Penn's armchair. Basing House, Rickmanworth, has been called the cradle of Pennsylvania, for it was here in the early days of his married life that Penn thought out his plans for a colony over the seas, where the persecuted Quakers might enjoy the liberty to worship God in their own way. In 1677 Penn took up his residence on his wife's Sussex estate at Warminghurst, and here he matured the plans for the Pennsylvania colony. The graai of land in America Penn obtained from Charles II was in payment of an old debt due from the gov emment to Admiral William Penn. It was in 1682 that Penn sailed from Deal in the ship Welcome, accompanied by about 100 Friends. They landed on the shores of the New World in October of the same year, and soon after Penn met a number of Indian chiefs in council, and there made "the only league between the white man and red man that was never sworn to and never broken." Penn at this time was thirty- eight years old. After remaining in the new WESTMINSTER OP THE QUAKERS 101 colony for two years he returned to England to represent the colonists before the king in a dis pute with Lord Baltimore. After his return to England he resided for a time at his old place at Worminghurst, in Sussex, and after his second marriage he lived at Rushcombe, in Berkshire, and in London. He died on July 30 at his Berkshire home at the age of 74, after a strenous life as Quaker preacher, and pleader for tolerance and religious liberty at the courts of Charles II and James II. His body was conveyed to the Quaker burial ground at Jordan's meeting house, near Chalfont St. Peter, and there it was placed by the side of his first wife, Gulielma, six days after he ceased to breathe. At William Penn's death he had two children living by his first wife, William and Letitia, and five by his second, John, Thomas, Margaret, Rich ard and Dennis. William being otherwise pro vided for, Penn left 10,000 acres of land in Penn sylvania to Letitia and 10,000 acres to each of William's children, Gulielma, Maria, Springett, and William. The residue of his property was to go to his wife, Hannah, and her five children. It has been said that "William Penn, the great legislator of the Quakers, had the success of a conqueror in establishing and defending his col ony among savage tribes without ever drawing 102 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS the sword ; the goodness of the most benevolent of rulers in treating his subjects as his own chil dren, and the tenderness of a universal father, who opened his arms to all mankind without dis tinction of sect or party." Macaulay declared : "A great commonwealth, beyond the Atlantic re gards Penn with a reverence similar to that which the Athenians felt for Theseus and the Romans felt for Quirinus." The Society of Quakers, of which he was a member, honors him as an apostle. By pious men of other persuasions he is regarded as a bright pattern of Christian virtue. Admirers of a very different sort also have sounded his praises. The French philosophers of the eighteenth century pardoned' what they re garded his superstitious fancies in consideration for his cosmopolitan benevolence impartially ex tended to all races and to all creeds. The name of Penn, therefore, throughout the whole world is a synonym for probity and phUanthropy. There is nothing more striking than the con trast between the honors paid to the memory of Penn in the country where he was bom and in which he died, and the honors paid to him in America, where he spent but two years of his life, and in which he founded a great state. A |5 marble slab marks his grave in England, a monu ment thirty-six feet high crowns a $25,000,000 City Hall in his memory in the City of Brotherly WESTMINSTER OF THE QUAKERS 103 Love. In his native land it is difficult to find the ground in which he is buried, in the state which he colonized it is impossible to get out of the range of his presence and his infiuence. He is hidden away in the heart of the woods in Eng land, his personality is multiplied by the area and wealth and power of Pennsylvania in Amer ica. He is crowded into a diminutive corner of the Old World, he is given a place in sight of all the Union in the New. If Pennsylvania could crowd and embody itself in one man that person would be William Penn with a Quaker hat on his head. In England he has passed almost out of sight with the diminish ing procession of the Quakers, who no longer live and move and have their being, as a sect, because the principles for which they contended no longer need them, since they have been translated into all the churches and into the lives of all the people. If ever a small company of saints found vindication in the verdict of history, the brave disciples of George Fox are entitled to the honor of achieving that distinction. The deep convic tions cherished in the souls of a few consecrated men, ready in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen turies to lie in jail or sleep in the grave, rather than surrender them, are now the common prop erty of all brave men of every name and order in the civilized world. While England pays but scant tribute to William Penn, in the way of 104 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS monumental honors, the country pays him in finitely higher respect in practicing in 1910 what he preached 250 years ago. The Quakers in all the world can very well af ford to go out of business, as a sect, since they have indoctrinated all Christian people with the sweeft reasonableness and charity of which they were the forerunners among English-speaking peoples in modern times. Penn said: "It is natural to man to have a supernatural light." So say the whole Christian world to-day. Penn said: "That which the people called Quakers, lay down as a funda mental rule in religion is this, that God through Christ hath placed His Spirit in every man to inform him of his duty, and to enable him to do it, and that those who live up to this are the people of God, and that those who live in dis obedience to it are not God's people, whatever name they may bear, or profession they may make of religion. By this spirit something that is divine, and though in man, yet not of man, but of God, and that it came from Him and leads to Him all those that will be led by it." Now, instead of being put into prison for such an utterance, the whole Christian world accepts and urges upon all men the truth contained in it. It is remarkable that what George Fox taught in the seventeenth century and what William Penn WESTMINSTER OF THE QUAKERS 105 practiced throughout his wonderful life has now come to be the common creed of the Church uni versal. Quaker Fox said Lamartine comprised all theology in charity, and that is precisely what Christ did in making the sum and substance of the law to consist in loving one's neighbor as one's self. Coleridge said that Spinoza's ideal of dem ocracy was realized by a contemporary, not in state, for that is impossible, but in the profession and practice of George Fox and the Quakers. Even Penn's political aphorism, "Any govern ment is free where the laws rule, and the people are a party to the law," was a forecast of demo cratic opinion held in all enlightened communi ties to-day. When we remember what a small number was ever comprised in the Society of Friends, it is amazing to think of the tremendous infiuence they have had on the religious opinions of the theological world. It is still more wonderful to recognize the fact that the ideal of life held by the Quakers is perhaps the clearest expression we have of the religious ideal of the English speak ing peoples to-day. Estimated from the time of his mature life, it has taken 250 years for the ideas of George Fox to get into circulation in universal religious thought. Fox, by his insight, put himself in league with the drift of events. He seemed to 106 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS foresee the direction things had to take in order to get anywhere, and into the stream of move ment he felt to be inevitable he threw himself, with the result that now, after the lapse of more than two centuries, we see Fox and Penn and the Quakers triumphant, while those who jailed them and persecuted them have passed into oblivion. What Fox and Penn taught in the seventeenth century Wesley preached and converted into a great religious movement in the eighteenth. These prophets, more than any others, compre hended the eternal order we are beginning to recognize to-day, and put their lives and thought into line with it. The thought of Fox and Penn on the subject of war is also coming to be the accepted view of the enUghtened nations of the world. The Hague Peace Conference, in which all the great powers take part, is but the practical embodiment of the spirit of William Penn. The world-wide revival of interest on the sub ject of childhood is but the breaking in to the minds of modem men of the light on the subject Penn and the Quakers were guided by more than a hundred years ago. Care of the young was regarded as one of the chief concerns of the Quakers. The modern Sunday school movement is one of the forms through which the spirit of the early Quakers WESTMINSTER OF THE QUAKERS 107 is expressing itself to-day. Their minds were constantly exercised conceming the moral and religious direction they were to give to the gen eration coming on. In their esteem sympathy with chUdren was a gift to be perpetually exer cised. The doctrine of the divine immanence, which is engaging the attention of theologians to-day as never before, was urged as self-evident and nec essary by Fox and Penn in their time. Even modem science, in so far as this view of the rela tion of God to the world and history is concerned, has been moving in precisely the same direction followed by the Quakers. Herbert Spencer de clared that there is no certainty more absolute than the one that we stand in the presence of and inscrutable energy from which all things proceed. What Spencer taught as absolute and phUosophic truth from the standpoint of science, the Quakers accepted as religious faith more than a hundred years before Spencer was bom, with the exception that they would have said, "We stand always in the immediate presence of an intelligent Creator from whom all things pro ceed." Modern science to-day holds that belief in God is a necessity of thought. The Quakers by intui tion, saw the same truth. What science has reached by logical processes and experiment, they 108 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS came to by faith and spiritual insight. That Fox and Penn should have seen the new day, the light of which is just now flooding the world with its glory and hope, is a distinct tribute to their pro phetic insight. The founding of a colony in the New World is regarded by many as Penn's greatest achieve ment, but this does not compare in importance with his work in the establishment of that uni versal colony of brotherly love, broad enough to furnish standing ground, not simply to the peo ple of one commonwealth, but for the inhabitants of all the earth. Penn's real country was not England, where he lived seventy-two years, nor Pennsylvania, where he lived two, but it was the realm of eternal love. From that illimitable home of the spirit he is calling perpetually to all men to lay aside hate and envy and malice, and to flnd themselves in service and good will to all God's children. The people of Philadelphia appealed to the trustees of Jordan's Meeting House, some years ago, for permission to remove the bones of WU liam Penn from the Westminster Abbey of the Quakers to the city he founded. It was the wish of the citizens of Philadelphia to build such a monument to Penn as would, in a sense, measure their devotiqn to his memory. The trustees of the Jordan's meeting house refused to entertain WESTMINSTER OF THE QUAKERS 109 the proposition to take the chief citizen of their city of the dead away from the quiet burying ground where it was his wish to sleep with his fellow saints away from the noise and tumult of the world. It was thought by his admirers in the New World that the ashes of Penn should be removed, like those of Alexander the Great, to the city which he founded, or like those of Napoleon, to his favorite city on the banks of the Seine. The Quakers thought that the desire to be borne across the sea to a distant city might have be- fltted the "Macedonian Madman," or the "Man of Destiny," but that it was distinctly alien from the spirit of the community, whose only monu ments of their dead during a century and a half were the turf of the sod and the daisies beneath which they slept. The Quakers were right. A vast mausoleum in PhUadelphia, or a place in Westminster A-hbej in London would befit great generals, captains or kings or naval commanders, but not the man whose whole life was spent in opposing war and pomp and pageantry. Penn's last resting place is exactly in keeping with his character. It is in a quiet corner, in a country of farmers, under the big trees, where rumors of war and deceit never come. He lived a serene and sweet and tender and gentle life, loving his family and his neigh bors, keeping company with ideals more akin to 110 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS heaven than to earth, and now it would be an outrage to disturb, after his death, an order of procedure he chose for himself in life. No man in history stands less in need of marble or brass to perpetuate his memory than Penn. His monument is Pennsylvania, with its 6,000,000 of people. ^ It is Philadelphia. It is the move ment for peace among the great powers. It is the institution that seeks to embrace the young life of the earth known as the Sunday school. It is the warmer atmosphere of federation and co operation the whole religious globe is breathing to-day. Penn identified himself with love, and wherever love is, in heart or home, or church or community, or nation, he has a monument. To undertake to crowd his memory into a marble shaft, or into a mausoleum, would be like trying to press summer into a single tree, or spring into a rose, or all April into a single garden. A mausoleum high enough and wide enough to in close him would be as tall as heaven and as ex tensive as humanity. CHAPTER X JOHN WESLEY'S OOUNTRY THERE has been a series of books pub lished in London on "The Scott Country," "The Dickens Country," "The Thackeray Country," "The Bums Country," and so on. It is a custom with the several writers to trace the steps of their respective heroes to every place in which they lived for a time, or sojourned for a night, or a week, and then credit up to them every spot associated with their lives, and call the whole sum of the places their country. According to this method, all, for instance, Dickens had to do to get an eternal claim on a certain region was to visit it. By stepping on a foot of soil, or but putting his head inside a house, or an inn, he made them his own. This is seemingly an easy way to secure a country for one's self. But it is more difficult than it looks. In order to get titles to land, hotels, houses and lecture halls, after this fashion, one must measure up to a cer tain level of personal and mental immensity. No little man can pick up and put into himself any thing except what he can eat. But if, in addi tion to the organs of physical digestion, a person 111 112 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS has the infinitely greater powers of mental diges tion and assimilation, he is given every scene he contemplates and every neighborhood he passes through. The ordinary mortal has no ownership of any thing except such as a fee simple exclusive title gives him. Lacking in comprehension, sympathy and appreciation, if he had such a title to the whole earth, it would not be his in any high sense no more than the splendid masterpiece hanging on the walls of a rich, wooden-headed man's house belongs to him. Such a work of art be longs to the person who has soul enough to com prehend it, outside of any mere title that can be recorded in a court house. The England of Shakespeare's time belong to him and not to Queen Elizabeth. The England Queen Bess knew was outside of her; the England Shakespeare knew was the country he had put inside his vast mind. Thus the principle in accordance with which the places associated with a great man's life are made over to him and called his is perfectly right and proper. In this way the skies belonged to Co pernicus, beauty to Raphael, music to Beethoven, and gravity to Newton. They owned these sev eral regions of constellation, art and natural law, because, more than any others, they appre hended, comprehended, digested and assimUated JOHN WESLEY'S COUNTRY 113 them. They not only lived on the outside of them as all do; they appropriated them, and used them for furnishment to their interior selves. Copernicus thus became a palpitating, living form Of the heavens, as did Raphael of harmony in color, as did Beethoven of harmony in sound, and as did Newton of the physical order. In line with these general principles, I propose to claim that England belongs to John Wesley more than to any other man who ever lived in Great Britain. He trod more of its soil than any other man in all its history. He was great enough of soul to make every nook and corner of it he ever penetrated his own. It was only a small patch of England that Dickens, even when all the places he ever saw in it are pieced to gether, ever saw. Wesley saw it all. He crossed and recrossed all its spaces and roadways. He passed by all its castles and abbeys and inns. He rode by all its estates and moats and manor houses. He was in all cities and vUlages. He preached under every stretch of its sky. Like Thackeray and Scott and Dickens, he was a creator. He differed from these in the respect that while they created imaginary men and women and situations out of their thought, Wes ley took the actual, unprivileged, wretched, pov- erty-strucken, sin-beridden men and women he 114 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS met and transfigured them, put new motives into their hearts, new horizons around their lives, new visions in their eyes and new ideals in their minds. He tumed actual drunkards into sober men, gamblers into honest working men. He took men out of the cock pits and engaged their tal ents in better work than making chickens fight, by transforming their love of a cruel sport into a determination to fight the devil of greed and dissipation. Scott introduced a new clime of romance into England. Wesley breathed on his country the atmosphere of heaven. Dickens deals in the hy pocrisy of fancy and gives it life and being under the name of Pecksniff. He has to do with ideal avarice and sets it up in human form and calls it Jonas Chuzzlewit; he creates cruelty and names it Quilp. His people are destined to live as long as the language in which they were given a place in the world of flction. Wesley took real hypocrisy embodied in human life and converted it into sincerity. He did not merely depict avarice; he found thousands of Jonas Chuzzlewits and made them self -sacriflcing and generous. He found multitudes of cruel Quilps walking about and by the grace of God made them tender and filled them with pity. JOHN WESLEY'S COUNTRY 115 The novelists made men out of air and gifted them with meanness, or kindness, or crtielty, ac cording as the story they were writing demanded. Wesley found his men already made by their own sins, mean, or wicked, or degraded. His work was to use all the means of grace to redeem them and make their lives new and happy and good. He was as practical as a blacksmith or a ship builder. He had to do with actual, not ideal, folks. To represent the Wesley country as Frederick G. Eltten has represented the Dickens country, one would be under the necessity of describing the entire surface of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, with Savannah, Ga. ; Charleston, S. C, and a little streak of Holland and Germany thrown in for good measure. If the wealth of Dickens and Wesley is to be measured by the real estate each put his foot on, then the coun try of Wesley is to that of Charles Dickens as a continent is to a turnip patch. For the past three weeks I have been doing England in an automobile. Day by day I have been making pilgrimages to places associated with the lives of great people. But there is no spot in this green and beautiful country, that the greatest evangelist since St. Paul, has not visited. With Baedeker's guide book and John 116 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS Wesley's Journal, it is easy to follow in the steps of Wesley, whUe looking up the historical places of interest. My average run a day is nearly one hundred miles, sometimes more, sometimes less. Here, for instance, is the round of one day: The starting point is Walton-on-Thames, twenty miles in the country from London. The hour of starting is 10 o'clock. First, Weybridge, where Edward VI kept court in 1548; where Philip and Mary came from Hampton Court to live a while in 1555; where Henry VIII had a private way, "with hanging gates," from Hamp ton Court; where Elizabeth came in the early part of her reign, in 1599, and again in 1602; where James I often came, and where his con sort, Anne, of Denmark, had her favorite resi dence; where the youngest son, Henry, of Charles I, was born; where the Duke of New castle built a "grotto." Still a show place, in which the Duke of York and his friends were accustomed to drink and gamble; and where Louis Phippe and his queen, Marie Amelie, were buried. Weybridge is just one mile from the starting point, but think of what one sees in this single mile. Now, think how interesting all this becomes when I turn to my Wesley's Journal and leara that there is not a road or spot in all the region he did not see. JOHN WESLEY'S COUNTRY 117 Then, three miles further, Chertsey is reached. Here Charles James Fox, the English statesman, lived, of whom Lord Broughan said, "He was the greatest debater who ever lived." Here at Chert sey, the Elizabethan poet, Cowley, lived and died. Here a great abbey was built in 675. Here a benedictive convent was established by Edgar in 964. Here, in the parish church, the remains of Henry VI were interred, and from which they were moved to Windsor by Richard III. Here, in the parish church, hangs the curfew bell, cast in 1310, about which the poem, "Curfew Must Not Ring To- Night," was written, by Rosa Hart- wick Thorpe, of San Diego, Cal., and it was this bell that tolled the death of King Henry VI in 1471. Here, in Chertsey Abbey, the first book of "Common Prayer" was, for the most part, com piled. Across the River Thames from Chertsey the famous Dr. Thomas Arnold taught school be fore he became headmaster of Rugby. Here Mathew Arnold, his eldest son, was born, and here the critic and poet is buried. It would take a whole article to tell of all incidents and events of Chertsey alone. Here Wesley tells us in his Journal that on Monday, the 5th of February, 1750, he preached. Here, on Monday, 12th of February, 1750, he was at Chertsey again. "Word," he said, "had been industriously spread 118 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS about the town that I would not come that night. However, many came to see whether I would or no; to whom I offered 'the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.' " WhUe making a tour of England in 1910 I had the privilege of attending service in a little Wes leyan Methodist chapel in Chertsey. There was first a hymn, then a short invocation, followed by reading a chapter from the Scriptures, then an other hymn followed by a five minutes' sermon to the children in the audience, then another hymn, followed by a longer prayer, then a second lesson from the Scriptures, then another hymn followed by the sermon. The minister was a Rev. Mr. Westlake, the superintendent of the circuit. The regular circuit preacher was just leaving for another field, having served out his three years. The superintendent made a beauti ful reference to the work of the pastor, and then read a text from the writings of St. Paul and proceeded to deliver one of the most spiritual, helpful sermons I have ever heard. It was simple, but direct, and impressed me as a mes sage straight from heaven. I noticed when each person found his seat, he bowed in silent prayer. Not a word was spoken by one to another until after the benediction was pronounced. Then the conversation was low and subdued as if they all felt they were in the house JOHN WESLEY'S COUNTRY 119 of God. Some of the people approached our party and expressed the hope that we had en joyed the service, and that we would retum to the evening service. I had a new insight from the sermon, the prayers, the hymns, of what an inestimable bless ing real worship is. The prayer of the minister bore up the congregation into the very presence of God. His every word was bread for the hungry soul. His sermon seemed to be the ut terance of one who stood inside the sacred pre cincts of the heavenly world. One lost sight of the meagerness of earthly cares and concerns, as he stood in the presence of things eternal. England looked little, the pomp and circum stances of royalty, the great thundering rush of the business world, all looked small and insig nificant in the face of the eternal realities the minister was disclosing. Temptations lost their hold, the things of time and sense lost their grasp on heart and mind, as the messenger from heaven unfolded the wealth and sweep of the Word of God. The world St. Paul faced was the same world poor guilty men and women face today. The comfort and inspiration, the great apostle found in Christ was just as accessible to those in the storm-tossed world now as they were to him. There was no way out of sorrow, and trial, and sin, except through Christ. Christ stood over 120 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS against human weakness as its only strength. He stood over against human despair as its only hope; He stood over against the meanness and littleness of human life, as its only significance and dignity. Christ was to the soul what bread is to physical hunger, what water is to Christ, what light is to vision, what fire is to zero weather. In Christ the soul had everything! Outside of Him it had nothing but husks and vanity and il lusion and afterward bitterness and death. Christ was not a dogma merely. He was not an intellectual proposition; He was not even a creed; He was the very life of our life ; the very truth of our intelligence, the very law of our will, the very beauty of our imagination. To take Christ out of humanity was like taking the sun out of the heavens ; Christ was a country, a climate, a living, all-enswathing force; He could be touched and felt, as the body could be touched and moved by flre. He needed no more to be defended than bread or gravitation needs to be defended. It was only necessary to move into Him and know Him, and catch the light of His life into our wom and weary faces, to recom mend Him to every dying man and woman. Christ won human hearts as flowers win us. No one could see Him reproduced in a life, without feeling He was the balm of every wound, the so lution for every problem, the light of every dark situation. Doubt might stand out against a de- JOHN WESLEY'S COUNTRY 121 fense of Him, logic might stand up against an argument about Him, or for Him, but no subtlety of reason could resist Him, as He lived His own blessed life, again in the spirit of His disciple and servant. The slaves of Christ were the only freemen. All this and more the preacher made plain, so that nothing except a heart, set on wickedness and disobedience could have resisted. It was easy to lift one's heart in thanksgiving and praise to God for the unspeakable gift of His blessed Son. I came away from the service feeling that I wanted to present Christ to the people as that man had presented Him to me and his congrega tion that day. I could not help praying God to forgive me that I had not leamed before to de clare Him in so winsome and appealing a fashion. It was a heart-searching time with one poor Methodist preacher in the little Chertsey Meth odist Church, and I wUl never cease to thank God for flnding the way to that chapel on Sun day moming. Fourteen mUes to Guildford, one of the most interesting and historic places in Surrey, of which It is the country town. It would take an article to describe this, so it is passed here. But the city and all that is in it belongs to Wesley, for he was often there on his way to Winchester and other places in the south of England. 122 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS Twelve miles more, over a most beautiful road, and we came to Farnham. Here is a wonderful old castle, the home of the bishop of Winchester. In 1136 Henry de Blois, bishop of Winchester, commenced to build a castle on the very ground occupied by the present one. To this castle Queen Elizabeth came often. She was here in 1567, when Robert Home was bishop. Here it was, in 1569, Queen Elizabeth invited the Duke of York to dine with her, and having suspicions that he was plotting to marry Mary Queen of Scots, she warned him to "be careful on what pillow he laid his head." Two years after that the duke was executed on Lomer Hill. James I came soon after to this castle and stayed as a guest so long that Bishop Wilson was led to ask him once if he looked upon Farnham as an inn. Here, in Farnham, William Cobbett, the political writer, was bom, and is buried. In Farnham Jonathan Swift, the author of "Gulliver's Travels," lived, and acted, in the be ginning of his career, as a sort of secretary to Sir William Temple. Here Swift was accustomed to meet Stella, a servant girl, in Sir William Temple's Hall, and here began the love affair between Swift and Stella, as celebrated as that of Petrarch, or Abelard. In Farnham, Toplady, the author of "Rock of Ages," was bom. JOHN WESLEY'S COUNTRY 123 This place, too, is made doubly signiflcant by its association with the horseback traveling of John Wesley. Eight miles more and we come to Alton. In this neighborhood still stands an old brick house in which Jane Austen lived. Here she wrote her immortal works of fiction. Ma cauley said her book, "Northanger Abbey," was worth all Dickens and Pliny put together. He says, further, "Shakespeare has had neither equal nor second, but among the writers who have ap proached nearest to the manner of the great mas ter, we have no hesitation in placing Jane Austen, a woman of whom England is justly proud." Just across the street from Jane Austen's house lives Walter Herries PoUok, once the editor of The Saturday Review, and an intimate friend of Tyndale, Huxley and the leading stu dents of science in England in the eighties of last century. He is a wonderfully bright man, and when I called to ask him about the book he had written conceming Jane Austen, he at once took down from his library "The Story of Jane Aus ten's Life," by an American writer, and requested me to put it in my pocket and keep it as long as I wanted it and then return it to him. Leaving Alton, the next place to see was Sel borne, where Gilbert White, the celebrated au thor of the "Natural History of Selborne,", lived. 124 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS By the letter of law Selborne belongs to Lord Sel borne and other landowners, but according to the principle we are applying it belongs to Gilbert White. Think of a man shut up in a little, struggling, out-of-way vUlage, studying birds, preaching the gospel and becoming the best-known observer of nature among all Englishspeaking people. At the little village hotel many names of dis tinguished men are inscribed in the volume kept for the purpose — those of Professor Huxley, Lord Napier, John Burroughs and many others. Across the country then we made our way to Haslemere, sixteen miles away. Here George Eliot lived, and Lord Tennyson, the poet; Pro fessor John Tyndall, Grant Allen, A. Conan Doyle, G. Bernard Shaw, and many others noted in some line of mental activity. All these places were visited. Not under the sun, surely, is to be found such a spot as that on which Tennyson built his "Aldworth," where he lived so long and where he died. To reach the house it is nec essary to pass through a deeply shaded road, called Tennyson's lane, for three miles. This roadway winds in and out and around and around as if it were leading in the direction of no place. One would be sure he would be lost if any other road led away from it. Once in it nothing is left the shrine hunter except to keep on. But JOHN WESLEY'S COUNTRY 125 finally we come into the very yard in the midst of which the poet's magnificent home was built. The place is as high above the valleys reaching out and lying below the house as the castle of Chapultepec, near the City of Mexico, is above the valley of Aspam, stretching out for a hun dred miles in front of it. Tennyson loved soli tude, and did not care to be interrupted by idle visitors, so he deliberately put all his wits to work to hide himself in the very depths of nature. The only side of it from which one can see the country is so high up above the level of the val leys below that an intruder could never make his way to the house. The other side, as I have shown, is guarded by the most puzzling, crooked road that ever, perhaps, led to a human habita tion. At the very entrance to this winding road, where the Tennyson estate begins, a sign is seen, on which, in big letters, the words "private grounds" are written. When we reached this forbidden line the chauffeur did not think we could afford to go in. But I commanded him to move forward. Having reached the house I proceeded at once to the front door and announced myself as call ing to see Lord Tennyson, the son, who has suc ceeded to his father's title and estate, but the servant said his lordship had just taken a walk. I missed seeing the owner of the place, but such a view of the country from the beautiful flower- 126 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS belined garden at the back of the house I will never forget. Calling at Tyndall's house I asked for Mrs. Tyndall, but learned from the servant that she was spending a few weeks in Switzerland. After Haslemere and its wonderful neighbor hood of great people, the time had come to start back home. In order to see more new towns the chauffeur is asked to go back as far as GuUd ford by a new road. Just a few mUes from Hasle mere, at Godalming, we came into the region where the State of Georgia had its beginning. Sir Theophilus Oglethorpe, the father of General Oglethorpe, lived at Westbrook Godalming. After his experiment in Georgia, General Ogle thorpe represented this region in parliament. We pass back through Guildford, and straight on then to Walton-on-Thames, the point from which we started at 10 o'clock in the morning. This round made it necessary to travel about eighty miles in the machine. It wUl be clear that many names of men and of places have been mentioned, but they are all in John Wesley's country, the Charles James Fox country, the Austen country, the Toplady country, the George Eliot country, the Tennyson country and the Tyndall country are only so many diminutive provinces in the Wesley country. JOHN WESLEY'S OOUNTRY 127 They made little patches theirs by association with them, but Wesley was in touch with all England as completely as they were with a few neighborhoods of it. All the great men outside of Wesley mentioned above have their limited constituencies, but John Wesley has a constitu ency one hundred and nineteen years after his death of 30,000,000 people. No Englishman, liv ing or dead, has such a record. Not only is the land in which he personally lived and wrought his, but if what Emerson says is true, that "an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man. Methodism of Wesley," then we may say, that through his lengthened shadow, Methodism, he has covered and touched the soil of the whole earth, and made the entire world his. Wesley said he looked upon the whole world as his parish, and now, after more than a hundred years, he is visiting his parishioners through thousands and thousands of ministers, his living representatives and disciples. CHAPTER XI IN THE BURNS COUNTRY SCOTLAND'S PLACE IN THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS THE geography enhanced by the genius of Robert Burns does not cover much of the earth's surface. A few little rivers and villages and towns and the City of Edinburgh were sufficiently illuminated by association with the poet to secure perpetual distinction in the Geography of Genius. Take the humble cottage in which the poet was born. It consists of but two small rooms paved with flagstones, and with but one window of four small panes, while the thatched roof forms the only ceiling. It is diffl cult to imagine a father afid mother and seven small chUdren living in such a place. THE HOUSE IN WHIOH BURNS WAS BORN AND THB TAJ MAHAL But this little home, multiplied by Burns, is of more value, from the standpoint of pounds, shillings, and pence, even, than the Taj Mahal multiplied by Shah Jehan. About fifty thou sand people a year visit the cottage in which Burns was bom. Suppose it costs $20.00 for each of these persons to go up from London to 128 IN THE BURNS COUNTRY 129 Ayr and return. That would equal one million dollars. This is an income, at five per cent., on twenty million dollars. We may say, then, meas ured by the annual income it produces that Burns' cottage, costing perhaps one thousand dollars to build, is worth twenty million dollars, whUe the Taj Mahal, that cost twenty million dollars to build, does not perhaps produce an in come of ten thousand dollars. It is certainly not through any reasoning or calculation that pUgrimages are made to places made famous because of their relation to great men. The disposition to see the Scotland of Burns does not grow out of the aesthetic sense or desire for trade and profit. MATTER SHOT THROUGH WITH SPIRIT The secret is one of the soul, and the environ ing conditions outside the soul. When a spot has become sacred to men, it is always in the first place because a great spirit has dwelt there, but another feature is the way in whi^h, in the mak ing of a shrine like the birthplace of Burns, for instance, the physical surroundings have man aged, in some way, to absorb the very soul of the poet; as though emanations from his spirit had been shot into the house in such a way as to hu manize it with the flavor of Burns' personality; and into the fields around the house in such a 130 THE GEOGRAPHY OP GENIUS way as to fill them with the aroma of Burns' spirit ; and into the little river flowing near the house in such a way as to put it to singing with music caught from the melody of Burns' songs. One feels, in the Burns country, as if there had been a subtle giving off of the poet's interior being, a passing of its essence into its immediate surroundings, a process which might be com pared to the outrush of electrons from an atom of radium. It is known that radium gives off heat enough to raise the temperature of objects near its pres ence, as much as three degrees. Radium, among the primal elements, we may use to illustrate what genius is among human beings. Radium has the power, it is said, of imparting some of its energy to everything with which it comes in con tact. A piece of wood that has been permeated with radiant matter continues, for a time, to give it off on its own account as if it were itself a sort of second rate radium. So we may say of genius. It is a form of mental energy that can be given off from a richer to a poorer mind untU the less highly endowed intellect comes into possession of power enough to give to others lower in the mental scale than itself. This subtle reaction of mind and matter is a very remarkable fact. Every feeling of Burns, IN THE BURNS COUNTRY 131 every aspiration, his own innermost heartbeats, are held and reflected by the environing condi tions in the midst of which he spent his short life of thirty-eight years. MELODY OF A SOUL SINGING IN ITS EARTHLY SURROUNDINGS As a violin, played on by a great artist, ac quires a new value because of the melody that manages to sink into its wood, so the earthly sur roundings of Bums have acquired infinite value because they are saturated with the wonder and mystery of the poet's soul. His spirit continues to vibrate through the physical surroundings with which he was associated. The peculiar quality of his dominating personality colors the whole impression made upon those who visit the country of the poet. More tourists visit the birthplace of Burns, two miles southward out of Ayr on the Maybole road, than ever see the birthplace of any other poet or literary man who ever lived. The cottage was built literally of clay by the poet's father, on a small holding of six or seven acres, which he had leased as a means of adding to his livelihood as a gardener. Because Bums first saw the light in this cottage, and because he spent the first six years of his life under its thatched roof, it has 132 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS come to have a large place in the Geography of Genius and in the imagination of mankind. BURNS BELIEVED HIS BIRTHDAY V70ULD BE OBSERVED It is a remarkable fact that Bums seemed to have intimations that his birthday would be noted among other great events. In a letter to his early patron, Gavin Hamilton, in 1786, he says: "For my own affairs, I am in a fair way of be coming as eminent as Thomas a Kempis or John Bunyan; and you may expect henceforth to see my birthday inscribed among the wonderful events, in the Poor Robin and Aberdeen Alma nacks, along with the Black Monday and the Battle of Bothwell-bridge." With these anticipations of Bums, concerning his own career, in his mind, Thomas Miller wrote : "Upon a stormy winter night Scotland's bright star first rose in sight; Beaming upon as wild a sky As ever to prophetic eye Proclaimed that Nature had on hand Some vfork to glorify the land. Within a lonely cot of clay, That night her great creation lay. ' ' Coila — the nymph who round his brown Twined the red-berried holly-bough — Her swift-winged heralds sent abroad. To summons to that bleak abode IN THE BURNS COUNTRY 133 All who on Genius still attend. For good or evil to the end. 'They came obedient to her call: "Then Coila raised her hollied brow. And said, 'Who will this child endow?' Said Love, ' I '11 teach him all my lore. As it was never taught before; Its joys and doubts, its hopes and fears. Smiles, kisses, sighs, delights, and tears.' Said Pity, 'It shall be my part To gift him with a gentle heart.' Said Independence, 'Stout and strong I '11 make it to wage war with wrong. ' Said Wit, 'He shall have mirth and laughter, Though all the iUs of life come after.' Warbling her native wood-notes wUd, Fancy but stooped and kissed the child; While through her fall of gaiden hair Hope looked down with a smile on Care. ' ' Said Labor, ' I wiU give him bread. ' 'And I a stone when he is dead,' Said Wealth, while Shame hung down her head. " 'He'll need no monument,' said Fame; ' I'll give him an immortal name; When obelisks in ruin fall. Proud shall it stand above them all; The daisy on the mountain side Shall ever spread it far and wide; Even the roadside thistledown Shall blow abroad his high renown. ' Said Time, 'That name, while I remain. Shall still increasing honor gain; Till the sun sinks to rise no more. And my last sand falls on the shore Of that still, dark and unsailed sea, Which opens on Eternity.' " 134 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS AUoway Mill, where the poet went to school, has a place in literature equal to that of a great university. When the poet was six years old, the little household moved over the hill to Mount Oliphant, and by so doing made that the most dis tinguished mountain in Scotland. There the next six years were spent. "We lived very poorly," said Burns, "I was a dexterous plowman for my age, and the next eldest to me (Gilbert) could drive the plow very well, and help me to thresh the corn." BURNS ENHANCED THE VALUE OF EVERYTHING HE TOUCHED At the same time, the future poet was imbib ing other influences. In the evenings, his moth er's ballads were supplemented by the stories of Jenny Wilson, an old woman who lived in the family, and whose astonishing store of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions and the like, ceased to be provincial and local, but became uni versal and eternal when touched by the genius of Burns. He read the "Life of Hannibal" and the "His tory of Sir William Wallace," and thus gave them a circulation wider than they had ever be fore attained. IN THE BURNS COUNTRY 135 In the town of Ayr itself, one may still see that other bridge, the "Auld Brig," which owes its preservation and the popular fervor of 1906, which produced ten thousand pounds for rebuild ing it, to the fact that it figures in Burns' poem, "The Twa Brigs." ( The farm of Mossgiel near Mauchline, secured and stocked by the poet and his brothers and sis ters when the clouds of ruin were gathering around their father's head, will outlive any other farm in Great Britain, because it was in the fields of Mossgiel itself that the incidents occurred which suggested the poems, "To a Mouse," "To a Mountain Daisy," "Death and Dr. Hornbrook," "The Twa Dogs," "The Cottar's Saturday Night" and "Halloween." THE BONNIE DOON LARGER THAN THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER In the neighborhood of this region is a little stream flowing through deeply wooded banks, known as Bonnie Doon, which is larger, meas ured by the space it occupies in the Geography of Genius, than the Mississippi River. Then there is the AUoway Kirk not far away, that is perhaps the smallest church that ever filled so large a place in the thought of the world. No grand and storied cathedral pile in all Europe is better known, and to no shrine of famous min- 136 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS ster do more pilgrims joumey, than to this little church immortaUzed by the pen of Burns. The most trifling and seemingly unimportant activities of Robert Bums, when multiplied by his personality, became significant. Not far from the Solway shore. Burns, with a small party of revenue officers, was left to watch the motions of an armed smuggling brig, which had got into shallow water, whUe a brother ex ciseman went to Dumfries for a guard of dra goons, and the superintendent went to Eccle- fechan on a simUar errand. While the party lay in the wet salt-marsh chafing at the exciseman's delay. Bums, on the hint of one of his men, com posed and recited on the spot his well-known set of verses, "The DeU's Awa' Wi' the Exciseman," and by so doing put the adventure of the day down in the Geography of Genius. THE MOST FAMOUS RESIDENCE IN THB WORLD Directly after the flush of his success and fame as a great poet, he came into Nithsdale and built the farmhouse of EUisland, which is still stand ing on the bank of the Nith, some six or seven miles from Dumfries. This house will stand for ever, not in outward material form but in the literature of all coming ages, because the ob ject for which he built it is expressed in his own lines : IN THE BURNS COUNTRY 137 "To make a happy fireside clime For weans and wife — That's the true pathos and sublime Of human life." Here in these happy days, after his marriage to Jean Armour, whUe superintending the building of the house in EUisland, the poet composed that most exquisite of aU love songs, in the music of which his house and his Jean will float down all the years of history. "Of a' the airts the wind can blaw I dearly like the west. For there the bonnie lassie lives, the lassie I lo'e best; There wildwoods grow and rivers row, and many a hill be tween But day and night my fancy's Alight is ever wi' my Jean." On the gable window of the house Bums built, which is still standing, looking south, one may still see the poet's handwriting. Under it's roof in those flrst halcyon days, he gave the place im mortality by writing such flne things as "Gae Fetch to Me a Pint o' Wine," "My Heart's in the Hielands," "WUlie Brewed a Peck o' Maut." The place is enhanced still more, because it was here, on the anniversary of the day on which he heard of the death of his early love, Mary Camp bell, and while stretched on a mass of straw in the barnyard, with his eyes fixed on a planet that shone like another moon, it is said he composed that noblest of all his ballads, "To Mary in Heaven" : 138 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS " Thou lingering star with lessening ray. That lov 'at to greet the early morn. Again thou usher 'st in the day My Mary from my soul was torn. ' ' WHEBE BURNS WROTE "TAM O'SHANTER" Below the house there still may be seen the path running along the bank of the Nith, which was his favorite walk, and where in the hours of a single day, he forged white-hot on the anvU of his genius, the most famous of all his master pieces, "Tam O'Shanter." He committed the verses to writing, it was said, on the top of a turf-dyke over the water, and when the whole was finished came into the house and read them in high triumph at the fireside. Many other spots in this neighborhood have been made Ulustrious in the poet's verse. But the farming failed and his work as excise man began toward the close of 1791, when Burns moved into Dumfries again. Here he wrote "Duncan Gray," "The Lee Rig," and "Highland Mary." HOW BURNS GAVE A PLACE IN THE SUN TO A SOLDIER His duties as an exciseman made it necessary for him to ride some two or three hundred miles every week, and in consequence the countryside far and near was illuminated by celestial fire, flaming hot out of his soul. At Brownhill on IN THE BURNS COUNTRY 139 the Glasgow road, one evening, Burns, noticing a weary soldier limp past the window, called him in, regaled him heartily, and after hearing his pathetic story, enshrined it in his fine stanzas, "The Soldier's Retum," and so conferred upon the soldier the glory of being permitted to limp forever past that window and to be hailed and regaled by Robert Burns. GIVING FAME TO A LANDLORD The same hotel at Brownhill saw the composi tion concerning Bacon, the landlord, who was in the habit of inflicting his company, uninvited, rather constantly on his guests, and this fact Bums immortalized, as follows: ' ' At BrownhiU, we always get dainty good cheer. And plenty of Bacon each day in the year; We've all things that's nice, and mostly in season. But why always bacon ? Come give me a reason. ' ' Not many landlords ever found such a chance to secure a place in the sun of the literary heavens. On a tumbler belonging to Mrs. Bacon, Burns wrote, increasing the value of the tumber from ten centfe to twenty thousand dollars, ' ' You 're welcome, Willie Stewart ; You're welcome, Willie Stewart; There's ne'er a flower that blooms in May That's half so welcome's thou art." Mrs. Bacon made so much ado about this dam age to her property that a gentleman present 140 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS paid her a shilling for the glass. This afterwards found a place among the most valued relics at Abbottsford. Thus Mrs. Bacon and her hus band will occupy places forever in the Geography of Genius — the one by inflicting his company, ^un invited, on his guests, and the other, by complain ing of the damage to her tumbler caused by the handwriting of Robert Burns. Among other spots in the neighborhood ren dered famous by the presence and the muse of Burns, the most interesting is Lincluden College ruin, close by the town. The green banks of the river there was a favorite walk of the poet's, and he mentioned it in at least two of his composi tions. By these walls, hoary with memories, within which lies buried the daughter of King Robert III, who was wife of Archibald the Grim, Earl of Douglas and Duke of Touraine, Burns composed his "Vision of Libert" : " As I stood by yon roofless tower Where wallflower scents the dewy air. Where the owlet mourns in her ivy bower. And tells the midnight moon her care. ' ' By heedless chance I tumed mine eyes. And by the moonbeams shook to see A stem and stalwart ghaist arise. Attired as minstrels wont to be. " IN THE BURNS COUNTRY 141 Other pieces written at this time in this neigh borhood were "My Nannie's Awa'," and "A Man's a Man for a' That." The convivialities of Dumfries made such drafts on the health of Bums that he could no longer bear them. One hotel in particular, is made signiflcant through its association with Robert Bums. The Globe, in its narrow entry off High Street, has changed little since he fre quented it. His writing is still legible on several of its windows, and in its dark, low-roofed, wain scoted parlor is preserved the rough round chair in which he used to sit and keep the mirth flying till the small hours. POSTING TO THE GRAVE THROUGH THB SNOW But his visits to the Globe were made at a ter rible cost. It was there he accepted an invitation to dine with his friends. He remained till three in the morning, and on leaving the company sat down on thestenof the tavem stable and there fell asleep. It was January and there was snow on the ground, and from that hour he felt the grasp of death upon him. BodUy pain and mental anxiety for the future of those dear to him made day and night alike a misery. "He erred, he sinned; and if there be Who, from his hapless frailties free, Eich in the poorer virtues, see His faults alone — To such, O Lord of Charity, Be mercy shown! 142 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS ' ' Singly he faced the bigot brood. The meanly wise, the feebly good; He pelted them with pearl, with mud; He fought them well — But ah, the stupid million stood. And he — ^he fell! ' ' All bright and glorious at the start, 'Twas his ignobly to depart. Slain by his own too afBuent heart. Too generous blood; And blindly, having list Life's chart. To meet Death's fiood. ' ' So closes the fantastic fray. The duel of the spirit and clay ! So come bewildering disarray And blurring gloom. The irremediable day And final doom. ' ' So passes all confusedly As lights that hurry, shapes that flee About some brink we dimly see. The trivial, great. Squalid majestic tragedy Of human fate. ' ' Not ours to gauge the more or less, The will's defect, the blood's excess. The earthly humors that oppress The radiant mind. His greatness, not his littleness. Concerns mankind. ' ' COLOlTlNG PLACES BY THB MOODS OF THB SPIRIT Not only did Burns enhance every place he passed, every object he saw, every spot upon IN THE BURNS COUNTRY 143 which he stood, but he left the color of his differ ent moods upon the places associated with him. Perhaps the happiest and gayest and most radi ant period of Bums' life was during the first two months he spent in Edinburgh. No city in all Europe ever had its palaces and towers, its halls of justice, its sons and daughters, lifted before all nations in such beautiful rhythm, and assured in so splendid a fashion of holding its place in the Geography of Genius forever. " Edina! Scotia's darling seat! All hail thy palaces and towers. Where once beneath a monarch's feet Sat Legislation's soverign powers! From marking sovereign powers! As on the banks of Ayr I stray 'd. And singing, lone, the ling'ring hours, I shelter in thy honour 'd shade. ' ' NO TWO SHRINES OF THE SAME COLOR The intimate partnership between the outside environment and the inside spirit of every great genius shows itself by the particular color left on the physical surroundings, in the midst of which he lived. As we go from shrine to shrine, we find ourselves coming under the spell of first one presiding genius, who magnetized the place of his abode by emanations from the depths of his individual soul of one kind, and then of another, who magnetized his environing conditions with emanations from the depths of his individual soul of another kind. 144 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS The Lake Country effects us very differently from that of the Border region. The one is domi nated by the contemplative, dreamy, mystical personality of Wordsworth, while the other is under the inspiration of the military, romantic spirit of Sir Walter Scott. Perhaps no poet of any age ever imparted so much of his own personality to the surroundings in which he lived as did Robert Burns. He lit erally saturated every road over which he trav eled, every lake he passed, every hotel he spent a night in, every field he walked through, and al most every human being he met, with the radiant energy of his own life. William Watson, a modern poet, felt the differ ence between the genius of Burns and that of all other British poets, when he wrote the lines : HOW^ BURNS DIFFERS FROM OTHER BRITISH POETS " What wooes the world to yonder shrine? What sacred clay, what dust divine? Was this some Master faultless-fine. In whom we praise The cunning of the jeweled line And carven phrase? ' ' A searcher of our source and goal, A reader of God's secret scroll? A Shakespeare, flashing o'er the whole Or Man's domain The splendor of his cloudless soul And perfect brain? IN THE BURNS COUNTRY 145 ' ' Some Keats, to Grecian gods allied, Clasping all beauty as his bride? Some Shelley, soaring dim-descried Above Time's throng. And heavenward hurling wild and wide His spear of song? ' ' A lonely Wordsworth, from the crowd Half -hid in Ught, half -veiled in cloud? A sphere-bom Milton, cold and proud. In hallowing dews Dipt, and with gorgeous ritual vowed Unto the Muse? " Nay, none of these — and little skilled On heavenly heights to sing and build! Thine, thine, O Earth, whose fields he tilled And thine alone. Was he whose fiery heart lies stilled 'Neath yonder bi,one. ' ' He came when poets had forgot How rich and strange th© human lot; How warm the tints of Life; how hot Are Love and Hate; And what makes Truth divine, and what Makes Manhood great." No people ever had the opportunity of sending the plain, simple, common everyday duties and relations of their lives down to the future, through so great a genius, as did the countrymen of Burns. THE SPIRIT OF JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS USED TO SHIP THE HISTORY OF GEORGIA TO THE FUTURE Joel Chandler Harris, of Georgia, did for the negro what Burns did for the Scotland of his 146 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS day. Into his spirit he gathered the whole civili zation of the old time South and gave it literary expression. Mr. Harris gave personality to the rabbit, fox, possum, and the other animals of his section, and through them expressed the very soul of the plantation negro as he was known in the South before the Civil War. It is recognized by all that a special quality of soul is necessary to give the peculiar religious flavor of feeling to a place that St. Francis im parted to his native town of Assisi. Assisi has a different aroma from towns which have become distinguished by association with literary genius alone. Perhaps there is not in all history a town that has secured a larger place in the Geography of Genius than has Assisi because of its relations with St. Francis. He so thoroughly identifled himself with the community that it is perfectly proper to say either St. Francis of Assisi or Assisi of St. Francis. St. Francis is the subject of which Assisi is the object, or Assisi is the subject of which St. Francis is the object. He has so thoroughly transfigured it and magnetized it that it con tinues to draw, from year to year, enough tour ists to support the four thousand inhabitants who live in the place. It is a small mountain town, three miles from the railroad, and would IN THE BURNS COUNTRY 147 not continue to exist if association with St. Francis were taken from it. ST. FRANCIS HAS SUPPORTED THE POPULATION OF HIS NATIVE TOWN FOR NEARLY 800 YEARS We have here the remarkable instance of a re- ligipus genius, who never had a dollar in his pocket after he was converted, supplying bread and meat and clothes for four thousand people who live in his community, nearly eight hundred years after his death. Burns, perhaps, came nearer doing for the Scotland with which he was associated, what St. Francis did for Assisi, than any other man ever did for his native place. He not only filled the country with the aroma of his spirit, but he left all the moods and tenses of it, all the gayety and bitterness of it, all the disappointments and tri umphs of it, on the surroundings in the midst of which he lived. Contrast the radiant moods with which Burns illuminated the beautiful city of Edinburgh with the sad, depressed state of mind in which he came to the viUage of Brow near Dumfries, on the Sol way shore, in the last fortnight of his life, to try what sea bathing and sea air might do for his failing powers. ' burns' last poem , Here it was he wrote the last song he was ever to pen, entitled "The Fairest Maid on Devon's 148 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS Banks." Here it was that he wrote that last letter to Thomson, his pubUsher, imploring five pounds to prevent a rascal haberdasher putting his emaciated body into jail. THE SADDEST LETTER IN LITERATURE This is perhaps one of the most pathetic letters ever written : "Beow, on the Solway Fisth, "12th July, 1796. "After all my boasted independence, curst necessity com pels me to implore you for five pounds. A cruel wretch of a haberdasher, to whom I owe an account, taking it into his head that I am dying, haa commenced a process and will in evitably put me into jail. Do, do, for God's sake, send me that sum, and that by return post! Forgive me this earnest ness, but the horrors of jail have made me half distracted. I do not ask this gratuitously, for upon returning health I hereby promise and engage to furnish you with five pounds worth of the neatest song genius you have seen. I tried my hand on the poem this morning. The measure is so difficult that it is impossible to infuse much genius in the lines. They are on the other side. Forgive me ! Forgive me ! ' ' ' ' Fairest maid on Devon 's banks. Crystal Devon! Winding Devon! Wilt thou lay that frown aside And smile as thou wert wont to do?" Here is a letter to his wife, the last he ever wrote to her : "My Dearest Love: I delayed vrriting until I could tell you what effect sea-bathing was likely to produce. It would be in justice to deny that it has eased my pains and I think has IN THE BURNS COUNTRY 149 strengthened me, but my appetite is still extren^ely bad. No flesh nor flsh can I swallow. Porridge and milk are the only things I can taste. I am very happy to hear from Miss Jessie Lewars that you are all well. My very best and kindest com pliments to her and all the children. I will see you on Sunday. Yonr affectionate husband." Then we can follow the poet to that low-roofed upper room of the house still standing in Dum fries, whither he returned to die. The room is still said to contain the round mahogany table at which he was sitting for one of his last meals, when a friend asked him how he felt and was answered by the ominous words, "Posting fast to the grave, madam." The last scene was not far off. It was the 18th of July when he returned home, with difficulty able to stand upright and reach his own door. On the 21st of July, 1796, he died. Not far away, in St. Michael's kirkyard, is to be seen the mauso leum to which the remains of the poet were re moved in 1815. Tens of thousands visit the shrine every year. ' ' No mystic torch through Time he bore, ' No virgin veil from Life he tore; His soul no bright insignia wore Of starry birth; He saw what all men see — ^no more — In heaven and earth; ' ' But as, when thunder crashes nigh, All darkness opes one flaming eye, And the world leaps against the sky — So fiery clear 150 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS Did the old truths that we pass by To him appear. ' ' A dreamer of the common dreams, A fisher in familiar streams. He chased the transitory gleams That all pursue; But on his lips the eternal themes Again were new." DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NATURE AND ART In the direction of this line of study, we learn the secret of why more than a hundred thousand people go to Europe every year and none to South America. The Rhine and the Rhone are tiny brooks compared with the Amazon. The Alps, the Apennines and the Pyrenees combined are but hills compared to the mighty chain of the Andes. WTiy does Europe draw the people while the vaster southern continent does not? It is because Europe has been idealized and lifted by genius out of the retilm of nature into that of art. THE AVON LARGER THAN THE AMAZON The Amazon River is mere hugeness and bulk of matter and does not interest the soul because the advent of man has not yet given it history and converted it into art. The Avon, the Thames, the Cam, the Isis and even the tiny rill of Bonnie Doon, are a million times larger because Shake speare, Milton, and Burns have made them great IN THE BURNS COUNTRY 151 and started their waters to flowing all around the globe. No one goes to Scotland to see the country God made, but to see the land made by Scott, and Bums, and Hume, and John Knox. The coun tries made by the Creator are less interesting than the countries made by great men — or rather, it is truer to say that the only countries which draw the people are such as God has made through man. SHAKESPEARE'S KING LEAR MORE BEAL THAN GEORGE III In the realm of pure creative art are not the names which the poet and the novelist have given us often more real to us than any historic char acter? King Lear is far more real than George III and Hamlet far more real than any man who ever enacted the part. William Pitt once said that he had learned from Shakespeare all he knew of English history. On reflection, we see the truth of this most preg nant saying. Within the limits of a single his torical play, like that of "Henry VIII," which can be read or enacted in a single evening, Shake speare has put into a single play the whole move ment — the essential truth — of a great epoch of history. 152 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS TRUE ART TRUER THAN FACT It might be granted that not one word which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of king or queen or cardinal was actually uttered by them. Yet these words express to us what these people stood for in the world, and what they did, far more truly, in fact, than would all the multitude of their actual words and deeds convey it to us if they could be recorded. And thus we arrive at the surprising truth that true art is truer than fact. It is not, therefore, nature herself that we love in the highest, most enduring way, but nature in terpreted and purified and transformed and en dowed by the genius of man. Nature does not in terpret herself. It is the penetrating eye of the man of spiritual insight which alone can do this; and, if his insight be 'true, he sees at the same time that higher than nature is art. Art is the articulate, the rational, the clearly spoken word. It is art which has, in very literal truth, given nature to our ' comprehension and love, and never nature which have given art to us. The presence of art in the world will only be explained when we see that it comes from the de mand of the soul of man to image to itself the true, the ideal, and hence the permanent; and this must be, in the case of art, the beautiful. IN THE BURNS COUNTRY 153 Art springs from the power of man's mind to create ideals and its impulse to realize them. Nature deals with the accidental ; art with what is permanent. Nature has no definite sesthetic purpose. Art selects, creates, and preserves and has definite aim and unity, and all with reference to the soul of man. True art is the portrayal of the true and ad mirable and divine in forms appreciable to the senses. The same quality Of our nature, which gives us through the medium of the senses, art, gives us in the realm of intellect, science and philosophy, and in the realm of conduct and the emotions, morals and religion. Viewed thus, we see that art is the product of reason, and takes its high rank along with the other rational prod ucts of — not nature, but human nature — man kind.IT IS LEFT TO MAN ALONE TO MAKE THE EARTH ATTRACTIVE Is it not the finest of all tributes to humanity that it is left to man alone to make our world significant and attractive? Man has universally and instinctively put his final award only on the highest qualities. Man has been often greedy and selfish, but to his credit it must be said he has never canonized greed and selfishness. He has called his cities 154 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS and his famous places after the names of his saints and heroes. There is a certain exaggera tion in this saying of Renan, yet a truth in it: "What is the whole of America beside a ray of that infinite glory with which a city of the second or third order — Florence, Pisa, Sienna, Perugia — sines on Italy? THE EARTH IS ONLY DUST UNTIL IT IS SATURATED BY SPIRIT The geography of the earth's surface repre sents only so much commonplace gravel until the whole is idealized and transformed and Ulumi nated by the genius of man. Thus we are able to see what genius has to do with the making of geography. They tell us that the earth will finally be left without heat and cease at length to be a dwelling place for man. One thing is certain, the parts of it associated with the lives of great men and women are eternally safe. CHAPTER XII A VACATION IN ENGLAND THREE days before leaving England in 1910, I made a pilgrimage to the ruins of the old Gorhambury palace, where Lord Bacon Uved and where he died, at St. Albans. It is a grand old ivy-clad pile, and is one of the most famous places in Great Britain. Here it was that Queen Elizabeth was accustomed to visit Sir Nicholas Bacon, when Francis, his son, was a boy. I was not only shown the ruins of the pres ent home Verulam by the earl himself, but had the privilege of seeing the pictures of his ancestors for five hundred years, each one of them painted by a master. I refer to this because I know of no case in EngUsh history that so well illustrates the re spect for law on the part of the English people, and so well serves to point out the danger of violating the law, as that furnished by the fall of Lord Bacon. He had reached, in his upward cUmb to position, the pinnacle of greatness. He had been raised to the peerage as Lord Verulam and had been created Viscount St. Albans. He was next to the king himself in honor and 155 156 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS wielded more power than the king as a distribu tor of patronage. At the meeting of parliament in 1621, a de mand was made for reform in connection with the oppressive monopoly patents. Bacon was ac cused of being a party to disgraceful transac tions by which the nation had been robbed. The chancellor had done nothing more than hundreds have been doing in this country, within recent years, who have been untouched by the law. But, in the case of Bacon, nothing could save him. He had used a high place for personal ad vantage. He was condemned and fined |200,000, and imprisoned in the tower during the king's pleasure. Besides, he was declared incapable of holding office in the state, or of sitting in par liament and that never again should he come within the verge of the court. He was a dis graced man forever. That was three hundred years ago. But the same strict adherence to the letter and spirit of the law prevails in Eng land to-day that hurled Bacon from position into disgrace in 1621. There is no respect in which the contrast be tween England and the United States is more striking than that which one observes between the respect for and obedience to law in the mother country, and the disregard of it in our own. A VACATION IN ENGLAND 157 On August 26, the day I sailed for New York, I secured the London daily papers. These gave a record of a day's doings in England for August 25. On September 2, I glanced over the New York dailies. These gave a report of a day's doings in the United States for September 1. I am not overstating the truth when I say that more lawlessness was recorded as having taken place in any one of our large States of the Amer ican union, with, say, its 4,000,000 of population, in one day, than was represented by the papers as having taken place in all England, with its forty-odd million population, in one day. There must be some underlying cause for this difference in the matter of lawlessness between the two countries. We are the same people, mainly, as to blood and traditions and ideals. We answer by the same Bible, we worship God after the same doctrines, hold to the same funda mental, political and religious conceptions. Why do our ancestors over the sea keep up the practice of our doctrines, political and other that we hold in common, whUe we, their descendants, main tain the doctrines in our heads and professions, while we have departed from them in our hearts and practices? This question brings before our minds something to study about. This is a mat ter for the most searching inquiry of which we are capable. 158 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS It is bad enough to rush hellward at all, if we are to represent our modern American activity by the lurid and picturesque word used by one of our recent orators, in defining the region toward which the American people are moving, but to move hellward without asking ourselves about our destination; without seeking to ac quaint ourselves with the character of the place toward which we are headed, indicates thaf we have not only lost our chart, but our pilot ; that we have not only lost our noble impulses, but our towering heads. To go to hell with our eyes open is possible, but then we but reap the consequences anticipated. To go to hell, on the other hand, with our eyes shut would imply that we were silly sheep and not rational human beings. In the language of Colonel Roosevelt, the American people, in the main, are sound in heart and disposition. They are not silly sheep, nor are they rushing blindly to hell. There have been recent perverse expressions of the national Ufe, but these furnish no grounds for pessimism, but reasons for universal heart-searching on the part of us aU. It is a time not for maiming the Ufe boats and jumping overboard, but for every man and woman to get busy stopping the leaks and mending the ship. A time of national awakening will come, both in poUtical parties and in churches. From graft- A VACATION IN ENGLAND 159 ing and jobbing and duplicity and political wick edness, sane leaders are crying : "Good Lord, de liver us !" From cant and coldness and spiritual indifference, earnest preachers are praying: "Good Lord, deliver us!" The deliverance will come. We will again be clothed and established in sanity, simplicity, soberness and righteous ness. The national ship is freighted with too much precious merchandise in which all mankind is interested to be wrecked but a few miles from shore. As a people we are hardly out of sight of land on the voyage our fathers planned for us only yesterday, in the lifetime of nations. There is no time for panic among the passengers. This is no time for leaders of the people to wail and wring their hands. Our machinery of state is not old, it has just been put together. The structure of our union is seaworthy. There is no trouble outside of us, either in sea or running gear. The only trouble is inside. The passengers have not been respecting one another's rights. They have not been pacing the deck in sight of the stars enough. They have kept themselves too completely down in the stuffy state rooms, and have not been taking into their lungs enough of ocean ozone. But the beauty about our situation is, we are beginning to feel that we cannot stand it much longer. The sense of inabUity to breathe under unhealthy conditions is driving the people 160 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS above. We will get normal and vigorous and sane in a little while. Then the joy of living will come back to us. Still, it is the duty of rational people to con sider the causes which have brougfit about our confusion. We cannot do better than to pay careful heed to the methods and habits of the people of our mother country. There they are on their little island still ruling the world. There they are, stiU sane and serious and masters of themselves. They are said to be slow and dull and dense enough to have American humor explained to them. But it strikes an impartial observer, that while they do move with cautious step, the point which they are slowest about reaching is the perilous one at which an Englishman can make up his mind to do wrong or to violate the laws made to regulate his conduct. I cannot see that a citizen of Great Britain steps any slower when moving toward a dollar he has honestly earned than an American. At least England manages to maintain its place as the clearing house of the world's money. The English are not particularly tardy when they are moving toward the solution of great financial, social, political and scientific proposi tions. It must be remembered that the British Association, which is an institution of Great A VACATION IN ENGLAND 161 Britain, is doing more to advance the cause of thought in the modem mind than all other sim ilar institutions on earth put together. Much has been said about the dullness and density of the English people, but if there is any high and honorable and rational and beautiful and good thing known among men that they do not get to as speedily as the people of any other realm, ancient or modern, I wish some alert American would point* out what it is. In my two month's observation last summer one thing became clearer to me than ever before, and that is, more English people find their way to church every Sunday morning, and reach the altars of God earlier and more speedily than do the inhabitants of any other country on the planet. The only thing the English are slow about is breaking the law. If he does happen to forget himself sufficiently to do it one time, then as sure as fate, the only hotel he will ever put up at any more is the jail. This was so before Lord Bacon ; it has been so ever since. They would cut off King George's head to-day just as quickly as they did that of Charles I, if he swerved from the straight way mapped by the law. From the king down to the veriest denizen of the slums, every one in England must keep the law, or else pay the penalty of its violation, as sure as the sun 162 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS rises and sets. Everyone recognizes this and, hence, everyone obeys the law. The result is the English people are disciplined. They are not offensively self-assertive. They are kind and polite. A policeman has the manners and the considerate speech of a first-class gentleman. Life is not cheap. Every railroad and every auto- mobUe must respect it. The high level of national greatness occupied by England is due to the fact that her i)eople re spect and observe the law. They seem to have sense enough to recognize the fact that there is a moral order over and around them as really as there is a physical order over them and around them. They appear as little inclined to violate the moral order as the physical. They appear to respectithe Ten Commandments as completely as they respect the laws of gravity. They seem to know as well that if they do wrong morally, they will be punished, as they know if they climb to the top of a church steeple and jump to the pave ment they will be punished. "Lawlessness is a reproach to any people." The present trouble with all people of the United States is lawlessness. This is not so much because our people are meaner than the English, their impulses are just as flne, but it is largely because we are not disciplined by long practice in the observance of the law. We have A VACATION IN ENGLAND 163 been swayed too much by the stupid and sense less rage of the mob. As a consequence, judicial blindness has fallen upon whole communities of our people. Judicial blindness is often found side by side with noble and generous feelings. A man is afilicted with judicial blindness when his intellectual wheels have ceased to tum, and when he is at the mercy of any chance impulse that happens to be imported from the mob into his emotional self. Such a man is stupid and dense enough to think that murder committed by a mob under so-called lynch law will wipe out the wick edness of murder committed by an assassin. Anyone with a spark of reason to light up his mind is obliged to see that lynching by a mob is just as much murder as is the cold-blooded act of the assassin in taking the life of his fellow man. The English have sense and training enough to see this. Hence, there has not been a case of lynching in England, so far as I have read, in five hundred years, and not in Canada since the country's foundation. And yet English and Canadians are of the same blood as our people. They differ not because they are naturally any better than our folks, they simply have more trained intelUgence. Our people are lawless be cause they are ignorant, untrained, undisci plined. 164 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS The English people have maintained their re spect for law through the hundreds of years of their history because they have been perpetually taught in home and church and school to rever ence those in authority and to respect and keep the laws. The English people have not advanced beyond the sense of duty resting upon them to attend regularly the church services. Every where I went, I found, whether in city or village, practically all the people accustomed to go to church. The places of worship were full of rev erent, devout people. They are so far behind the times over there that every person, upon flnding his seat in church, has no more idea of progress than actually to bow his head and pray. They are so backward and belated in England that no person ever speaks to another in the house of prayer until the benediction is pronounced, and then whatever may be spolcen is in a whisper, as if the hush of eternity was on his life. The foundation of English order and obedience to law in the country is the religion for which their churches stand to foster and feed. Take the churchgoing habits from the people and they will become as lawless as their kinspeople in America have become in the past flfteen years. This in difference to religion and the Church is a new thing with us, and it is not becoming. It is mak ing way for the sort of moral and spiritual re laxation that leads to lawlessness. We are young A VACATION IN ENGLAND 165 and will get over it, just as a man wUl learn to quit mince pie for supper, when he flnds out that his constitution cannot stand it. The human constitution breaks down very soon in its attempts to digest lawlessness. It is not wholesome; it cannot be assimilated and tumed into good, healthy blood and muscle. The people of this country have already had about all they can stand of the mince pie lawlessness ; they are turning from it with loathing and deep disgust. They are beginning to see that it is better to go to bed on plain mush and milk and secure pleas ant sleep and sweet dreams, than to retire on a wrong diet to dream about ruin and jails and falling into the clutches of old Satan all night. Evidences of retuming to sanity are to be read on every hand. A better, brighter day is soon to dawn on our great country. Our people will find their way back to the deserted altars of religion. They will cut away the briars which have choked up the gateways to them. They will again wear paths over the same old lines our fathers trod to the houses of God. The windows in the old build ings will be repaired. The sense of broken trust, of old memories despised, of God's altars stained and dishonored, will pass from inside the de serted shrines our fathers were taught to pray in, when we return from our wanderings and make 166 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS up our minds no longer to live on husks intended for swine and not for immortal souls. I attended, while in England, Church of Eng land cathedrals. Congregational houses of wor ship and Wesleyan Methodist chapels. The efforts of the preachers seemed to be con centrated on the on& object of arousing the people to accept the spiritual and eternal order represented by Jesus Christ as their only hope from barrenness and death in time and eternity. They seemed to be bent on advertising no nos trums, or facts, or so-called new ideas; what they did was to call the people from sin to holi ness, from death to life, from animality to spir ituality; instead of seeming to think the old gospel had lost its power, they preached it with a winsomeness and a dynamic intensity that led one to feel that the a, b, c's of the gospel had not yet been learned by the average preacher even. There were no apologetics, no halfway tentative sort of positions taken; every utterance was as positive and clear-cut as a policeman's club They apologized for nothing, no more than a sheriff would apologize for the severity of the law, when arresting a criminal. They were mak- ipg known a tried and well-worn way all civilized leaders had followed. To doubt its value as the only way to walk in, in order to get anywhere, was not only to write one's self down as wicked, A VACATION IN ENGLAND 167 but as utterly stupid. The wishy-washy, goody- goody, flabby sort of hearer one often meets over here, could not have endured such messages. They would have been declared as out of date and belonging to a by-gone time. But the English, being serious-minded and accustomed to think, accepted the sermons as sound and capable of being transmuted into the solemn duties of prac tical life. One could not doubt where the secret of the strength of the people lay after seeing them in their churches and recognizing the sort of spir itual food they were accustomed to take from their ministers. CHAPTER XIII MEXICO FROM A CAR WINDOW IT IS NOT easy to analyze the feelings with which one enters Mexico. They are mingled with the mystery which hangs around this strange land of romance and blood. It is in ac cordance with the structure of the human mind that Mexico captivates and holds the imagination in a more delightful bondage than any other country on the earth. This, because of what is disclosed and of what is withheld, enough comes to view, in the wealth of its climate, the variety of its products, the beauty of its scenery, and in the character of its history, to make up an unprecedented array of facts to meet the needs of the understanding for something solid, while enough is concealed in the form of myth and legend and dream to furnish an inflnite realm for the excursions of fancy. Mexico occupies the same parallel of latitude in the west that Egypt does in the east. She disputes with Egypt as to which has the oldest civilization, competes with Egypt in the number and wonder of her pyramids, equals Egypt in her odd hieroglyphics, and parallels the Phara- 168 MEXICO FROM A CAR WINDOW 169 ohs of Egypt with the long line of her ante-Toltec Montezumas. What Mexico lacks of having all zones by her location on the globe she pushes her Popocatepetl and her Citlaltepetl nearly two thousand feet into the heavens and makes by her altitude. Be tween the snow on Orizaba and the guava fruit in Tabasco there are degrees of temperature all the way from 20 to 100 above zero, and the dif ference between Russia and southern Italy. Mexico has 768,500 square mUes of territory, reacMng 1,900 miles in length and 750 in width, divided into twenty-seven states, a federal dis trict and a territory, and having an ocean and gulf front of 600 miles. The remarkable combination of climates and altitudes in the republic invites to the division and specialization of labor. A. particular state, because of the zone in which it flnds itself, and because of its position above sea level, easily de velops a partial monopoly in some line of busi ness. It takes less outlay of labor to secure large re sults in Mexico than in any other country. Coffee trees are planted flve feet apart. A tree four years old costs 11 cents. It yields the fourth year two pounds, worth 20 cents; cost of gath ering, 5 cents. This makes a proflt of 15 cents per tree. 170 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS A banana plantation can be put out at a cost of 5 cents per plant, which includes every ex pense up to the time of bearing fruit. At the end of the first year the plant produces one bunch, which can be sold in New York for $2.50 to |3. One thousand banana trees, costing $50, will bring f 1,000 in one year. The second year the product is double that of the first and almost wholly without expense. One man can cultivate seven to eight acres of orange trees. One tree will yield 5,000. Taking half this figure as the yearly yield, each tree will bring |25, and each acre of seventy trees $1,750, making an income of $12,250 on seven acres. One thousand pineapple plants can be put out on two and a half acres. A crop of corn sown among the plants pays for the expense of culti vation. On the ground the pineapples sell for 38 cents per dozen; exported to the United States, they sell for $6 per dozen. Two thousand dollars, it is said, can be made per acre, and one man can cultivate six acres. Wheat yields twenty bushes per acre, and com thirty bushels per acre. Napoleon said Holland was an alluvian of French rivers, the Rhine, the Scheldt, and the Meuse, and with this pretext added it to the em pire, but Mexico is the creation of volcanic fires. Holland is beneath the sea, but Mexico is higher MEXICO FROM A CAR WINDOW 171 than any other country above it. Man made Hol land, but with the making of Mexico man has had absolutely nothing to do. It has been thrown up between the oceans and divided between table lands and mountains. The tablelands furnish the soil for food and fruit, while the mountains stand to tower, turret and pinnacle the whole. The mountains piled in majestic folds along both sides of the Mexican National Railway for nearly a thousand miles, beggar description. They are now split into numberless peaks, stand ing out in the dim distance like sentinels ap pointed to their posts from the foundations of the world. Then they come together and, in one giant form, command the plain for miles around. The ride from Laredo to the City of Mexico would sometimes grow tedious with so many miles of desolate cactus-covered plains to pass through were it not for the million forms of the Sierra Madre Mountains. They seem bent on keeping you entertained. About the time you think you have exhausted the situation and throw your self back for a little bit of reading a new com bination is sprung on you, and you are ready to regard yourself as stupid for daring to turn from the car window one single moment. After a while you surrender, and as soon as nature sees you have leamed enough to pay attention she begins to show you sights sure enough. 172 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS She presents you with mountains single and mountains double, mountains in rows and moun tains out of order, mountains in platoons and mountains in regiments, mountains square and mountains round, mountains pinnacled and mountains fiat. They stand, they lie, they roll, they lean back, they come forward. They are blue. They are gray. They are brown. They are black. They look solemn. They look jocular. They jut square up from the earth, they rise by gradual ascent. They welcome you, they defy you. They elicit your admiration, they remind you of your littleness. Friendly enough now to bid you abide in their presence, now lonely and . forbidding enough to make you dread the acci dent that would keep you in their sight an hour. They seem to be the symbols which nature used in her attempt to utter some awful and great message to man. They speak directly to the soul, and in a language that no one can translate, yet a language one must be without a soul not to un derstand. They constitute the Uterature of some primeval time, and speak in prose, poetry, com edy and tragedy. The great period of Grecian history was when the national life was expressed in the genius of her generals, her statesmen, her poets, her artists and her philosophers. These mountains were lifted up in the Homeric period of the world's formation, and as the wealth of Greece transmitted into the spirits of her great MEXICO FROM A CAR WINDOW 173 men is fixed in everlasting form. So the earth's fires that lifted themselves into these magnificent works of natural art are stereotyped forever. It is a matter of unaccountable wonder why people, who have time and opportunity to travel, do not visit Mexico first. When this country is seen nothing in natural scenery will ever sur prise any more. In the esteem of most people Switzerland has had a monopoly of the sublime in mountain scenery for a long time. Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn and the Jung Frau have been the acknowledged leaders of the mountain peaks for ages. They have preempted the sky by a triple aristocracy that will be hard to down. But when the tide of travel turns toward the Tropic of Cancer, if they maintain their stand ing, it will be by grace, and not by altitude or snow. Popocatepetl has on its top as much snow as Mont Blanc, and about 2,000 feet the ad vantage in altitude. The events which have transpired around the Alps are on record and are known the world around. Napoleon in the act of crossing them is fixed by the artist's brush and hung in the palace at Versailles. This is all in favor ^f the Alps But many a Toltec warrior has crossed the Sierra Madres whose name has been forgotten, and many a dusky maiden has lived in a cottage at their base whose sorrows furnish themes for 174 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS romance as rare as any ever woven from the grief of woman in Italy or Switzerland. She wept her tears and uttered her sighs amid the cacti which encircled her humble home, and no famous ro mancer ever heard her story to publish it to the world. This is all against the Sierra Madres. If some one could only do for these mountains what Sir Walter Scott did for the Scotch lakes, every one in Europe and America would want to see them. One thing is certain, whether any story-teller ever comes to place the charm of legend around their hoary heads or not, they are here, and hav ing maintained the meager place they have held in the world's esteem without regret, they will receive the praises of men when they come with out vanity. The Mexican National Railway people have raised a pyramid exactly on the line between the temperate and the torrid zone. At this place the train stopped, that the passengers might contem plate the point at which they passed from one zone into another. A kodak man took a snap of our party as we stood beside this pyramid. So, in addition to an unparalleled ride through the mountains, we had the good fortune to see our pictures hung on the girdle of the earth. San Luis Potosi is a Uttle over half way be tween Laredo and the City of Mexico. It is the capital of the State of San Luis Potosi. The city MEXICO FROM A\CAR WINDOW 175 contains many fine buildings, the most notable being the state capitol, the business exchange, the state museum, the mint and the public li brary. The public library contains between sev enty and eighty thousand volumes. There are more two-story buildings here than in any other city I have seen in the republic. There are many fine churches, and a bronze statue of the patriot Hidalgo. This patriot is called the Washington of Mexico. He was unlike Washington, in that he added to the qualities of a great warrior, the merits of a noble, self-sacri ficing priest, and while seeking to win the inde pendence of his country from the Spaniards, he put in his spare moments in trying to save his people from the thraldom of the devil. CHAPTER XIV THE UNSWEPT HALLS OF THE MONTEZUMAS PLINY mentions a celebrated mosaic of Sosos of Pergamos, caUed the "Unswept Halls." This was a pavement of inlaid wood, representing the crumbs and fragments left on the floor after a banquet. The natural features of Mexico look as if they might be vast crumbs and fragments left on the floor of Mexi can tablelands after a banquet of primal Titans. The political upheavals of Mexican history con stitute another wild lot of crumbs and fragments left on the floor of that beautiful country after the riotous and unholy banquet of the nations, bent on robbing and murdering its people. For nearly 400 years, foreign nations, races, institutions, customs and laws have been seek ing to domesticate themselves in Mexico. Slowly, by an ordeal as of flre and violent strain on the anvil of experience, they have been seeking to weld out of the profuse varieties of material brought from all countries, some kind of orderly government, but up to this time they have failed. The flowers of Mexico constitute a mosaic. The varieties of Mexican flowers peculiar to her 176 UNSWEPT HALLS OF MONTEZUMAS 177 hot lands, her temperate lands, and her cold lands, deep, rich, are intense in color, and ex haust all the hues of the prismatic scale. They glow like stars in the sky. They Ue upon the meadows, reach down the deep gorges, and run up the mountain sides, Uluminating plain, and ravine, and crag with the brilliant colors of the rainbow. By a Uttle use of the imagination the calla lilies, the camelias, the poppies and the ten thousand specimens, which make up the unriv aled flora of this sunny land, may be regarded as covering the earth in accordance with the order , of the chromatic scale, and to move from every side of one in octaves, illustrating as they go all the tints the light can make. Standing upon some of the mountains abbut Orizaba, overlooking the tropical forests of the surrounding country, we get a vision which comes in response to the play of the trillion-fold flngers of the sun as they strike the notes lodged in the blue, the scarlet, the crimson of these flowers, which, once having seen, one can never forget. It is the music of color, too subtle and reflned for the ear, but rising in symphonies, silent and radiant, to regale the imagination through the eye. The birds lend enchantment to slope and grove and field. In plumage and song the birds of Mexico are entitled to the first place. In song 178 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS they lead the world's choral union among the feathered singers, who from their throats pour streams of melody through the corridors of God's first temples. In plumage, according to Senor Don Antonio Garcia Cubas, the fifty varieties of humming birds, alone, form a chromatic scale of brilliant tints, running from sea-green, through bluish-green, to emerald-green, and from the lightest straw color to the deepest scarlet and fiery red. Here, too, is a marvelous combination and mix ture of races, Toltec, Aatec, Spaniard, pure and mixed. In the language these races speak we find the rugged strength and picturesque struc ture of the Aztec, set off as the mountains do the plains, the soft, sunny fiow of the Spanish. The states of the RepubUc vary in the char acter of their soil, the quality of their mines, the color of their flowers, the plumage of their birds and in the nature of their scenery. A particular state, because of its position above sea level, and because of the special qualities of its mines, its woods, its soil, flnds it easy to develop a partial monopoly of some lines of business. Queretaro has a corner on the beauty which flames in her opals, and provokes the industry of her people to supply them to the markets of the world. Pueblo hangs her hopes for fortune upon the UNSWEPT HALLS OF MONTEZUMAS 179 onyx, which her people make into ornaments that they may secure the money of the unsuspecting tourist. Aguas Calientes is an agricultural cen ter, and lives by supplying the country with com aud beans. Chihuahua raises horses and cattle. Oaxaca teems with its splendid harvests of indigo and cochineal. Tamaulipas offers luxuriant flelds for the herdsman and the shepherd. Zaca- tecas and Guanajuato are famous for the enor mous amount of silver contained in their mines. Vera Cruz is studded with an endless variety of useful and ornamental timber. So, of all the rest, each is noted for some particular capacity of soil or mine. The history of Mexico partakes of the manifold diversity of the surface, products, races and lan guage of the country. Looking back to its his tory since 1821, we see Emperors, Presidents, Dictators, Provisional Governors, Regents, and Ad Interims rising and falUng, coming in and going out, thus weaving a piece of historic patch work such as the eyes of men never saw in any other country. It is historically stated that from 1821 to 1863 there were seventy-five execu tives, an average of almost two a year. Revolu tion has been the national game of Mexico. Hi dalgo, Iturbide, Pedraza, Bustamente, Santa Ana, Comonfort, Zuloago, Miramon, MaximiUan, 180 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS Juarez and Diaz have in tum engaged in the play, along with other notable Mexicans. There is not a country in history that fumishes a story so tragic, so pathetic, as that of Mexico. Naturally the most beautiful country on earth and with resources of gold, silver, coal, oU and marble surpassing that of any other, and yet this is the region that has been called upon to suffer more in the past four hundred years than any other land under the sun. CHAPTER XV REMARKABLE MEXICAN HISTORY SOME curious records in the form of pic torial writing yet remain in Mexico, princi pally in the national museum at the capital. After the last of the Toltec king in 1097 this people seem to have been the controlling one in Mexico, until about the year 1325, when they were overthrown and driven away by the Aztecs. The rulers of the Aztecs were known as the Mon tezumas. They built up a civilization noted for its barbaric and extravagant splendor. The Toltecs worshipped the sun, moon and stars. They offered to their gods flowers, fruits and the life-blood of small animals. The Aztecs introduced the awful rites of sacri ficing human beings. When Cortez came from Cuba, in 1519, to con quer Mexico, Montezuma II was on the throne. He is represented as one of the most extravagant of voluptuaries. According to the Spanish writers, the ornaments worn by him must have been equal in elegance and value to the crown jewels of any imperial family in Europe. Monte zuma died a miserable death at the hands of Cortez, and Guatemozin, the last of the Aztec 181 182 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS emperors, was hanged by the Spanish conqueror. After this Spain ruled Mexico for three hundred years. Spain found this Egypt of the Westem hemi sphere and at once appointed herself its guard ian. She destroyed her temples of worship, despoiled her of her gold, parceled out her lands, and burnt off the feet of the last Montezuma in the vain attempt to make him tell where he had buried the Aztec treasures. For three hundred years Spain played the part of doctor to Mexico. She forced the Mexicans, as far as she was able, to swallow her civiUzation as so much needed medicine, but instead of improving, Mexico at length became sick unto death, and in 1820 began the series of revolutions that have continued ever since. From the home of shepherds Mexico be came the rendezvous of warriors. The pruning hook was tumed into the dagger. Many scholars sought the cause of the variety and velocity of the Mexican revolution. It was not in the climate — the air and the scenery tended to peace and tranquility. The world now knows what the matter was. Mexico had too much of Spain. She had been dosed with Span ish civilization long enough to know that death was preferable to another swallow. She swore by all the proud lineage of her Toltec and Aztec REMARKABLE MEXICAN HISTORY 183 ancestors, by the last of her kings — ^the unrecon structed Guatehmoc, who, when hanging on the cypress, addressed to the dying sun the requiem of his race — that she would have no more of it. But Mexico was so weak and sick that her first attempts to break the folds of the Castilian ana conda that had fastened itself about her national life were fitful and unavailing. She would rise in her delirium, conscious of her weakness, but remembering her wrongs, and stagger, and shoot and butcher a while, then fall back exhausted and despairing. Gaining fresh strength and fresh hope, she would come again with renewed vigor and strike the second time with more effect. For forty years this was continued. France, Spain and England, not interpreting properly the cause of the Mexican revolutions, and finding it impossible to collect their national debts from her exhausted treasury, entered into a tripartite alliance. In 1861 three European powers signed an agreement in London that they would send soldiers to Mexico and force the country into some sort of a national organiza tion, so that they could collect the money due them. Spanish and French and English troops landed at Vera Cruz, but by some manner Juarez, the president, settled the claims of England and 184 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS Spain, leaving only the French to prosecute the war with Mexico. ARCHDUKE MAXIMILIAN CALLED TO THB THRONE It was not many months before the French troops were victorious in all the southem part of Mexico. In 1863 Napoleon III called all the Mexican notables together for the purpose of determining the kind of govemment they would have. At his suggestion doubtless, they declared in favor of a limited monarchy, and selected Archduke Maximilian, of Austria, as emperor. A committee was appointed and proceeded at once to Trieste, the home of MaximiUan, on the Adriatic Sea, to inform him of the action of the notables. The archduke refused to accept the throne until the people of the whole country should have the opportunity to express by vote their choice. The notables came back to Mexico and went through the farce of taking the baUot. In six months the same committee were at Miramar, the castle of Maximilian, again. They declared to him that he was the unanimous choice of the Mexican people. Then he at once accepted the crown and made preparations to leave for Mexico. REMARKABLE MEXICAN HISTORY 185 BENITO JUAREZ The greatest man ever produced outside of the United States on American soil was Benito Juarez. At the time when Napoleon was at the height of his power after Austerlitz, when he had put one brother on the throne of Holland and another on the throne of Naples, there was born among the mountains of Oaxaca an Indian boy who was destined to give the flnal blow to Napoleonic am bition. In 1521 Luther stood before Charles V to plead for the liberty of conscience, and gained it for the world. In 1867 Don Benito Juarez signed the death warrant of a lineal descendant of Charles V. Luther plead before Charles V in 1521, for the principle that led Juarez to sign the death warrant of Maximilian, a blood relation of Charles V. Such is the nemesis of history. The affection which the Mexican people cherish for the memory of Juarez will be understood in some degree when I say that the last anniversary of his death, $60,000 worth of flowers were hung around his tomb. They were made in France of porcelain and imported, one single wreath cost ing $3,000. At the next recurring anniversary the tomb will be covered with new flowers sent hither by his friends all over the world. It is in teresting to know that the wreath referred to above as costing $3,000 was sent by friends as a 186 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS gift from France. Juarez is among the great men of Mexico what Popocatepetl is among her mountains. When Maximilian landed in Mexico he sent a letter to Juarez and other republican leaders ask ing for a conference, hoping, he said, thereby to see if all parties could not be induced to come to peaceful relations with the new empire. Juarez replied that he could not consent to such a con ference, and, in closing a long letter to Maxi milian, which is one of the most remarkable docu ments ever written, he said: "In the course of history, it is sometimes permitted men to invade the domain, violate the constitutional rights and take the property of a people powerless to resist, but there is one thing from which there is no escape — that is, the everlasting verdict of his tory. It will judge us." It has judged them already. The Maximilian pageant has well nigh faded from our view. But of Juarez the eminent Spanish orator, Emilio Castelar, said, while the Maximilian empire was in its glory and while Juarez was hiding, with a few faithful followers, in the desert plains of the northern part of the empire: Heroism in prosperity is beautiful, but in ad versity it is sublime. The men who rise against the whole world are the great men of history. Conquered and aban- REMARKABLE MEXICAN HISTORY 187 doned by America, cursed by a theocracy that desires at any cost to preserve its perishing goods, handed over to a foreigner by a group of traitors, the sword of the first empire of Europe pressed against his forehead, Juarez, the repre sentative of a fallen race, the chief of a people without hope, did not abandon his place. Serene and inflexible he rose amid the ruins surrounding him, as the sacred personification of the Repub lic. If Washington ennobled the cradle of one republic, Juarez sanctified the sepulchre of an other. "And from the sepulchre thus sanctified it will be resurrected strong and eternal." These words spake Castelar in 1864. He was not only an orator, but more — a prophet. CHAPTER XVI MAXIMILIAN AND CARLOTTA MAXIMILIAN wag the son of Francis Charles Joseph, Archduke of Austria, and the younger brother of Francis Joseph, the Emperor of Austria. He was born in 1832. He was a cousin of Victoria and in some way related by blood to nearly all those who at that time occupied the important thrones of Europe. He was an accomplished scholar, the author of seven or eight volumes, and had trav eled in the leading foreign countries of the world. He had been the guest of Dom Pedro in Brazil, and had written a book concerning that empire. He was a favorite at all courts, and had the best royal blood in his veins. He had manners be fitting the prince that he was, and, besides, had the wide information of the student and the traveler. Carlotta was the daughter of Leopold I, King of the Belgians. She was the granddaughter of Louis Philippe, King of France, and is a sister of Leopold II, the second king of Belgians, who was a staunch friend of the explorer Stanley. She was bom in 1840. 188 MAXIMILIAN AND CARLOTTA 189 MaximiUan and Carlotta were married in 1857. He was twenty-five and she was seventeen years of age. When they left Miramar, in 1864, she was twenty-four and he Was thirty-two years of There is nothing sadder in history than the departure of this young prince and his hand some bride from their castle on the Adriatic Sea. All that heart could wish and imagination con ceive was theirs. They enjoyed society at Vienna and Brussels, or at London and Paris, Berlin and Stockholm, with flowers and music, and sea and books, and love at Miramar. Born to fortune and to purple ; coming by inheritance into the world's thought and admiration ; surrounded from birth by aU the tender ministrations of affection and wealth, it was enough to make the heart sick to think of this conflding and tender couple leaving such scenes and surroundings to play the last act on the bloody stage of Mexico. Would that some counsel of father or mother had held them back. They were too good and noble to become the victims of Napoleon's am bition or of the righteous vengeance of the Aztecs. They had done nothing worthy of death, or of the agony that flung reason from its throne. All their lives they had been accustomed to gracious words. No Ul winds had blown about their child hood homes at Vienna or Brussels, or around 190 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS their marble castle at Miramar. They had been reared like deUcate plants in royal gardens, and were unsuited to the soil volcanic flres had lifted between the gulf and the ocean. They were un suspecting, sympathetic and generous. If they coveted a throne earUer than one came to them in the order of events, that was pardonable, for they had been taught that they were born for dominion and empire. Of the resources, scenery and magnificent cU mate of Mexico they had read. Having been greeted with universal favor everywhere in Eu rope, they felt they would be received with the same consideration in that land of everlasting spring. So Miramar was to be exchanged for Chapultepec ; a castle by the Adriatic Sea for a castle overlooking Lake Tezcuco; the proba bilities of a throne in Austria for the certainty of a throne in Mexico. They signed away their rights in Austria, which were prospective, for a place in Mexico, which was present and cer tain. They left their friends with the blessing of the pope and the pledges of the Emi)eror of France. On the ship Novaro, they left amid the booming of cannon and the huzzas of the loved ones. Never was fairer morning succeeded by redder or stormier noon. Never was brighter hope re placed by gloomier fate. Never were happy hearts beaten and tom out and utterly crushed MAXIMILIAN AND CARLOTTA 191 by direr and deadlier conflicts. They left a bed of roses to be racked and pierced on a bed of thorns. They exchanged ease for agony, and a life of rosy, radiant outlook for a life of haggard, unspeakable misery. No sooner were the saUs of their ship unfurled for the voyage to the west, than their doom was sealed and set in blood. Because of the astute brain of the patriot Juarez, because of his undying pledge to the traditions of his fathers, it was sealed. Because of the treachery and unblushing falsehood of Louis Napoleon, and because of the secret deter mination of the United States, that no more em pires should be estabUshed on American soil, it was sealed. Because of the weakness and flckle- ness and corruption of the party that invited him to a throne, it was sealed. Yet the good ship Novaro was now bounding over the waters of the Atlantic, bearing two hearts as true and generous as ever beat in hu man breasts. They were sailing — one to death, the other to a lunatic's dungeon. They stood upon the deck, they talked of their prospects, they saw the waves rise and pass, marking the distance between them and their native land. They thought of the time when, clothed with do minion, settled in their royal home at Cha pultepec, they would surround themselves with friends from the courts of Europe. 192 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS They had with them their silver, their linen, their. cut glass, and all costly furnishings for their table. They had their carriage lined with richest satin and covered with burnished gold, the finest in which king or queen ever rode. In the ancient grove surrounding the stone-but tressed castle of the Montezumas, they will put thousands of nightingales and place here and there rare specimens of statuary from the old masters. Little did they suspect that the land they were called to rule had an accumulation of three hun- d:red and fifty years of unavenged wrongs to be met and settled. The machinery which turned the mills of the gods was rumbUng in the dis tance, and they may have mistaken this for the murmur of the sea. The blood of the Indians whose feet were burned off in boiling oil, cried from the ground. The invisible frame- work of the temples Cortez had tom down in his mad greed, stood upon the plains and waved their shadowy minarets, calling for vengeance. The ghosts of the long line of Aztec kings walked the streets of the City of Mexico, at night, and bade their living descendants rise and claim the country they had civilized. The ashes of the manuscript of legend and myth, and history, the Spaniards had burned, rode upon the wings of the wind and struck dirges to the long moss of MAXIMILIAN AND CARLOTTA 193 the almaceda, inviting the natives to vindicate the wrongs of their fathers. The pallid faces of Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl silently repri manded the people for the indolent ease that per mitted them to sleep untU Mexico was free. Into this land of ghosts and voices, and ashes and blood ; into this land of unsettled accounts, Maximilian and Carlotta were coming, called by bankrupt notables, as treacherous as they were cowardly. They landed at Vera Cruz in May, 1864; the welcome they received was tumultuous and over whelming. The fiowers, the mountains, the cli mate, the keys of the city, the homage of the mul titude, the rhetoric of the authorities — all were theirs. They left amid the acclaim and devotion of the people for the capital of the new-made em pire. At Cordova, at Orizaba, at Pueblo, they passed under the arches made of poppies, of camelias, of calla lilies, of heliotropes. Their carriage was too fine to touch the earth, it rolled over the orchids— red and scarlet, and blue, and green, plucked from the tropical trees of the country. Reaching the City of Mexico, the scene was un precedented in that capital, accustomed to splen did pageants and display. The ten thousand bells 194 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS in all the churches waked the echoes of the dis tant mountains with their jubilant greeting. The gay young senoritas and senors expressed their joy in music from harp and guitar, as they moved in their boats among the far-famed hanging gar dens of the city. The city was held as if in a whirlwind of excitement. For a time it seemed as if the republican stars had faded from the view, in the light of the im perial sun which had come from the east to il luminate and bless the land. Juarez, and Diaz, and Escobedo, and Gonzalez, had suddenly fallen from their position as great generals, to the place of petty leaders of starving banditti. Maxi milian, however, desiring to be magnanimous to republican leaders, addressed them a letter, in viting them to a conference in the capital. The terms of this they refused to accept. To die rather than yield was their unfaltering deter mination. After this, through the influence of General Bazaine, the leader of the French forces, the em peror was induced to sign the "black decree." In accordance with the provisions of this decree, all found in arms against the imperial govern ment were to be shot. Several brave republican generals were executed in accordance with this order, afid among them, Salazar and Artteago. This infamous proclamation, issued at the insti- MAXIMILIAN AND CARLOTTA 195 gation of the French, it was, that led at length to the execution of Maximilian. Settled in their adopted home, the emperor and his wife began the work of organizing the government. Carlotta had a drive laid out from Chapultepec to the center of the city, adorning it "with statuary and monuments of distinguished men. It is perhaps the finest to-day in the world, and is called "Carlotta's Drive." Maximilian appointed a cabinet and did his best to reclaim the country from the chaos and confusion in which he found it. But, in 1865, Mr. Seward addressed a communication to Napoleon III, of France, letting him know in un mistakable terms that the relation between the United States and France would be jeopardized unless French troops were withdrawn from Mex ican soil. This gave heart and hope to the re pubUcan generals in Mexico. In 1866 Carlotta left for France to see Napoleon, and for Italy to see the pope. But neither emperor or pope gave her any encouragement. From an audience with Napoleon she left heart-broken, and from an au dience with the pope she left a hopeless maniac. In the closing part of 1866 Maximilian left Chapultepec for Queretaro, a city about one hun dred and seventy miles from the capital. From that beautiful city of fountains and opals he 196 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS watched the empire as it slowly sank in blood. There he was captured in the outskirts of the city, at the hill of bells — Cerro de las Campanas — ^by General Escobedo, on the 14th of May, 1867. A court-martial was soon held, and the em peror and the commanding officers with him, Miramon and Mejia, were condemned to death. On the 19th of June, 1867, was performed the last act of that terrible tragedy, and Maximilian, Miramon and Mejia were shot by order of the court-martial, with the sanction of the command ing officers. General Escobedo and President Juarez. They were executed on the Cerra de la Cam panas, about one hundred paces from where they were arrested. Maximilian called the seven sol diers who were to fire upon them, to him ; he gave to each an ounce of gold and asked them to aim well at his heart. He then approached Generals Miramon and Mejia and embraced them cordially three times, saying to them, "In a few moments we wUl meet in the other world." At first Maxi miUan was in the center, but turning to Mira mon he said, "General, a brave man is admired by monarchs. I want to give yon the post of honor," and placed him in the center. Then, tuming to Mejia, he said : "General, what is not rewarded on this earth will be in heaven." Mejia was very low spirited, because a few moments before, his wife, who had just been delivered, ran crazy MAXIMILIAN AND CARLOTTA 197 through the streets of Queretaro with a new-born child in her arms — a scene that would have brought tears to a tiger's eyes. Advancing a few steps, the emperor, with ex traordinary coolness and a loud clear voice, spoke as follows: "Mexicans, men of my class and my origin, who are animated with my senti ments, are destined by providence to make the happiness of people or be their martyrs. When I came among you I did not bring illegitimate ideas, as I came, called by the Mexicans, who in good faith, desired the welfare of their country, and who to-day succumb with me. Before step ping into the grave, I wUl add that I take with me the consolation of having done all the good in my power. Mexicans, may my blood be the last spilled, and may it regenerate Mexico, my unfor tunate adopted country." He then stepped to one side and with one foot advanced, his hands crossed on his chest, his eyes toward heaven, he quietly awaited death. Before the execution he wrote the following to his wife : "My beloved Carlotta — if God per mit that your health get better, and you should read these lines, you will learn the cruelty with which fate has stricken me since your departure for Europe. You took along with you not only my heart, but my good fortune. Why did not I give heed to your voice? So many untoward 198 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS events. Alas! So many sudden blows, have shattered all my hopes, so that death is but a happy deliverance, not an agony to me. I shall die gloriously, like a soldier, like a king van quished, but not dishonored. If your sufferings are too great and God should call you soon to join me, I shall bless His divine hand, which has weighed so heavily upon us. Adieu, Adieu. Your poor Max." So the curtain falls at the close of the last act of forty-seven years of tragedy in Mexico. CHAPTER XVII DOWNFALL OF THE MEXICAN EMPIRE THE downfall of the Mexican empire shocked the civilized world. The crash was sudden, and complete. In no national project on earth had more been invested. Prouder hands had never wrought in ancient or modern times, to give expression to an ambitious ideal, than had been engaged in this last mighty enterprise of failing purple. This empire had been called into existence by the most powerful nations at the time, upon the earth. France had within her keeping the glories of a thousand years of battle and conquest. Her flag had floated in triumph over every capital of continental Europe. She had reduced the bar barians of Northern Africa to the laws of civili zation. She had stayed, with the help of Eng land and Sardinia, the proud advances of im perial Russia upon the Bosphorus and Darda nelles, and saved the keys of southem Europe and northern Asia from falling into its hands. She had left the footprints of her power and civilization in Pekin, the oldest capital in the world, in Cochin China, Madagascar, and in the Friendly Islands. Her imperial flag had been 199 200 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS bome in triumph beside the cross, into the Holy Land by Louis XI, the imperial eagles of the first Napoleon had crowned the towers of the Krem- elin, and floated from the pyramids and the Alps. They had been carried by Napoleon III to the Crimea and to the plains of Magenta and Sol- . ferino. At last they had come to protect a monarchy in the realms of the Montezumas. On the throne of this monarchy had been placed a lineal de scendant of Charles V, the son-in-law of Fer dinand and Isabella, and himself, one of the greatest men of all ages. In Maximilian was represented all the power and prestige of royalty. The foundations of the empire were as seemingly impregnable as the bases of the majestic mountains, which stand like grim sentinels appointed to their posts from the foundations of the earth. It was set on the solid dominion that ruled the world for centuries. It was invested with dignity and position, won in the battles which had determined the direction of history. High and lifted up it had come with a lineage undoubted and a descent unquestioned to replace the barbaric splendor of the Aztecs, with a kingdom wrought in the throes of civilized conflict. Every throne in Europe shook when the empire fell. DOWNFALL OF MEXICAN EXPIRE 201 They had all contributed to its strength and to its dizzy height. They had helped to raise it in the plains of Anahuac. In its overthrow notice was served on the princes, that royalty had been on trial, and that the verdict of mankind was forming against it. In toppling to ruin, with all its health of plan, its wealth of column, its curve of arch, its depth of foundation, it advertised to the world that eras, and epochs and civilizations have had their day and their doom. Like temples they may rise from the earth without sound of hammer or clink of trowel; into their walls men may go down as living stones and they may house for a while the hopes and the interests of nations, but the growing aspirations and widening purposes of peoples make a change inevitable. The index flnger on the dial plate of time declares the dawning of a new day, and they are leveled with the ground. Larger and fairer structures are reared in their places, such as furnish room for a nobler man hood, and a wider national life. The downfall of the Maximilian empire was simply the utterance of events that it was im possible for kingly ambition to project itself further down the opening years. It was the an nulment and the obliteration of the so-called divine rights of kings. It was the decadence of one man's wUl, that the wills of a nation of free- 202 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS men might be enthroned. It was the transfer ence of the prerogatives of dominion from the one to the many. It was the distribution of the purple, the extension of authority and the pul verization of a throne that the dust of it might fall under every man's feet. In the displacement and destruction of roy alty in Mexico many old scores were settled. Many national debts were paid off. On the bal ance sheet of a downtrodden race many new cerdits were set down. Unmitigated wrongs and unholy usurpations found compensation at last. The fires which had set the oil to boiling in unctuous fury when Cuathemoc's feet were bumed off had never gone out. The light they gave was dim and flickering often, but for 350 years they had kept company with the unper turbed ice on the brow of Popocatepetl. Fed by Juarez's patriotism, they now flamed to heaven and flashed among the stars the vindication of the Indian race. New luster was added to the glory of Hidalgo's name. It found itself written in fresh flowers and filled with new meaning. Under the beaming sky of that unchanging sum mer land justice had come to walk amid her ba nana plantations and her coffee groves and to lend new beauty to her crimson and scarlet flow ers. The music in her 10,000 plazas would fall upon the evening and morning air with sweeter DOWNFALL OF MEXICAN EXPIRE 203 harmony; the tales of love, young senors breathed through lattice windows into the ears of bright senoritas would have in them more of self-reliance and manUness. The sympathy of the human race is perhaps well nigh unanimously with Juarez and his brave Aztec leaders, as far as this Mexican ques tion is concerned. But men everywhere, without respect to nationality or clime, will never cease to regret the fatal mistake that led Maximilian and "Poor Carlotta" to reach Mexico just in time to be caught and overwhelmed in the ruins of an unwelcomed empire. The relations of Maximilian and Carlotta were beautiful, ideal. They were rich, titled and crowned in mutual, holy affection. Unlike many alliances in royal life, they loved each other as tenderly as ordinary people. It was their love for one another sustained amid all the dark days which came to them, more than anything in their titles or their blood, that won for them the good will of all nations. By the accidents of birth and fortune they were separated from the mass of mankind, but in their devotion to each other's in terests; in their simple, faithful, unfaltering love, cherished and growing amid misfortune, they were one with the good and the virtuous of all the earth. 204 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS Carlotta's sufferings have lifted her to a high place in the esteem of every good man and woman in the world. Of the house of Orleans, young and happy and rich, she united her fortune with those of the heir to the throne of Austria when just past sixteen. At twenty-six years of age the sun went out of the day of her life, and now for thirty-seven years she has groped in darkness, unrelieved by a single ray of hope. In the castle at Miramar, where once she roamed the spacious grounds with her lover in bounding hope, she bore for a whUe her never-Ufting sorrow. The wild waves of the Adriatic murmured of her girl hood. The generous noble man whose lUe had thrown around her young womanhood such a radiant and rosy charm, wUl never come from over the sea any more. His heart ceased to beat on "the hills of the bells." No incident of the sad event could stop the downflow of one single tear, except the knowledge of the fact that the last prayer of Maximilian was for his "Poor Car lotta." The last order ever signed by Maximilian was for 2,000 nightingales with which to stock the groves of Chapultepec. The state carriage of Maximilian cost $47,000. It has not been used since his death, and is kept along with the other trappings of the empire in the national museum. DOWNFALL OF MEXICAN EXPIRE 205 The salary of Maximilian was put by the au thorities of Mexico at $5,500,000. He would not consent to receive more than $500,000. Having no child of his own, and with a view to strengthening the empire with the natives, MaximiUan and Carlotta adopted the grandson of Iturbide, the first emperor of Mexico. The mother of young Iturbide consented at first to this, and even sent the playthings of the young prince to the royal palace at Chapultepec. But her heart yearned for her child. She plead with Maximilian to give him back to her, but he re fused. She then appealed to Napoleon III and the dignitaries of the Church, and after long and determined effort, sustained by the love found in none other than a mother's heart, her boy was restored to her. This same young man is now, I am told, in Washington city, and is known as "Prince Iturbide." Carlotta is at Miramar, the white marble castle at Trieste, on the Adriatic Sea. The day before the execution of MaximUian he wrote a letter to his physician requesting him to see that Mrs. .Miramon, the wife of his dear companion in arms, be sent to Austria, where she would be pro vided for by his mother. Mrs. Miramon and Princess Sam Sam have been with Carlotta at Miramar ever since. Had not Maximilian ac- 206 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS cepted a throne and crown in Mexico, he would to-day have been the emperor of Austria. The same ship, Novaro, that brought Maxi milian and his beautiful and accomplished wife to Vera Cruz, was sent by his relatives from Aus tria to convey his lifeless body to Vienna, where it now rests with his royal ancestors. CHAPTER XVIII IN CANADA, WITH HER BUILDERS 44 \ COMPANY of pioneers organized for r\ gain and adventure in the early days of Western Canada called themselves 'Lords of the North.' No better descriptive sen tence could be devised to represent the whole population of the Dominion to-day. Not on the whole face of the earth has any people ever waged a fiercer warfare with the elements than the Canadians have fought since the country was permanently settled by Champlain in 1608. And now, after 300 years of unparalleled hardship and bravery, the people have conquered. "These men of the high North have caught in their eyes the light of the wild sky that blazes above them. They have Uved in the midst of opal islands, afloat on silver seas, and the wondrous, streaming splendors, kindled by the aurora bore alis, until they have woven into their very beings something of the mystery and magnificence of their environment. "Golden argosies of beauty from the radiant Northern sky have moved down from the heights through pale ports of amber into the very depths 207 208 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS of their souls. So that they are in love with the region in which they have found themselves and the vast fortunes which have at last crowned their labors. They began as monarchs, but their subjects were nothing but wolves and bears; their thrones were mountains; their cars were rivers ; their couches were forests ; their candles were stars, and they depended upon the crash of the bull moose to call them from sleep with the breaking day. Now, they are steel-braced, straight-lipped, enduring, dreadless in danger and dire in defeat. "Canada is so immense that even a provincial does not have to open his eyes very wide to see sights and wonders that he never dreamed were realities on the continent of North America. "The average citizen of Uncle Sam's country is accustomed to think of the United States as cov ering a vast stretch of the planet, but Canada is larger in area than the United States, including Alaska, by 111,992 square mUes. Canada has a bay as large as the Mediterranean Sea. Canada is eighteen times larger than the republic of France and thirty-three times larger than the kingdom of Italy. "England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales could all be put down in Canada and then leave enough territory to make thirty more United Kingdoms just as large. Canada is nearly as large as the IN CANADA WITH HER BUILDERS 209 whole of Europe. Canada's 13,000-mile coast line equals half the circumference of the earth. It would take 2,983 states as large as Rhode Island to equal the area of Canada, and if Canada was as thickly settled as Rhode Island, she would have a population of 1,275,545,430, nearly equal to that of all the human beings on the globe at the present time. "It would take 327 kingdoms as large as that of Belgium to equal Canada, and if the Dominion was settled as thickly as Belgium, she would have a population of 2,159,476,035, or 659,476,035 more than all the mortals now breathing on the globe. "Canada has one-half of all the fresh water sur face of the earth. There are 50,000 lakes between Port Arthur and Winnipeg. The lakes between Sarnia and Port Arthur one sails over in coming from Detroit to Canada, show more small bodies of land surrounded by water than any in the world, and the land between Port Arthur and Winnipeg shows more small bodies of water sur rounded by land than any other territory of the same size on earth. "Canada begins the Twentieth Century with the same population the United States had at the beginning of the Nineteenth. A Canadian has said: 'The Nineteenth Century belonged to the 210 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS United States, the Twentieth Century belongs to Canada.' "Twenty years ago the United States produced eighteen bushels of wheat to Canada's one. The United States now produces but six to Canada's one. Canada's wheat-growing belt is four times that of the United States, and the average yield per acre of wheat area for the past ten years has been eighteen bushels, while the average for our State of North Dakota for the same period has been twelve bushels per acre. Canada has the largest continuous wheat field in the world, 900 miles long by 300 miles wide. Canada has the largest wheat elevator in the world at Port Arthur. In 1880 the United States exported 180,000,000 bushels of wheat and flour and Can ada only 7,500,000 bushels. In 1906 our country exported 97,000,000 bushels, while Canada ex ported about half as much, 47,000,000. "Think of a farmer sowing his wheat in May and just ten days more than three months after sowing it having it harvested and on the way to market. It is one hundred days between sowing and harvesting of spring wheat in Canada. Think of the sort of bank Mother Earth is to the Canadian farmer. He deposits a bushel of wheat in May and takes out twenty-four bushels three months and ten days thereafter. If he put in one IN CANADA WITH HER BUILDERS 211 bushel and took out two in twelve months he would make 100 per cent., but when he puts in one and takes out twenty-four in three months, he is dealing with a bank such as no human being could run, but such as only the Creator Himself could manage. Canada's wheat is now trans ported to the European markets through the Great Lakes from Port Arthur to Buffalo, or through the St. Lawrence River to Montreal, where it is changed to ocean steamers and sent on its way. This way of reaching the European markets is found too distant and too expensive. "A railroad is already projected and partly built to Port Churchill, on the Hudson Bay, di rect from Winnipeg, the center of the Western Canada wheat trade. The completion of this railway is only the question of a short time, for it is only 650 miles from Winnipeg to Port Churchill. After this road is %iished the wheat of Western Canada will go in trains to the new port, and there be loaded on enormous ocean freight ships and sent direct to Liverpool or Hamburg or Naples. "By this new line of transportation the wheat growers wUl cut the distance to Liverpool about 1,200 miles, and besides save the enormous ex pense of changing steamers at Montreal or of loading on cars at Buffalo for New York or Bal timore. Hudson's Bay is navigable for six 212 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS months every year and 2,000 miles of its southem coast line is in the temperate zone. It is thought now that they will not only ship wheat and other products from Port Churchill, but will, in a few years be raising immense crops on the soil sur^ rounding the lower half of it. Already wheat is grown 2,000 miles north of St. Louis." Until within recent years western Canada was a wilderness. It constituted a part of the vast area of mountains, heaved to heaven, and of black canyons, through which the rapids roar. Jack London calls the "WUd." Indians here and there camped upon its foothills, and a stray ad venturer from civilization now and then roamed over its ranges. For a good part of every year it was a region of white sUence, through which trails were broken only on snow shoes. The buUding of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, opened this un known, wondrous territory to civilization. When the scream of the steam engine breaks the sUence of the map's void spaces, then the restless peoples from the crowded populations of the world rush in. They began pouring into this region a little more than a quarter of a century ago. The coun try is only touched on its outer edges as yet, but enough has been learned of the marvelous re sources of this part of the world to make it clear IN CANADA WITH HER BUILDERS 213 that here in the years to come is to fiourish a great and robust people. The foolish and the feeble can never live here. Those who have been cradled in custom and soaked in convention until their nerves are flabby had better keep away from this northern land. Amid the stern, severe conditions of these wild, wide borders they can not survive. Only strong men, girt for the combat with the elements of climate and soil and western custom can make their way here. That class of citizens is now di recting the fortunes of this new patch of the earth's surface. The misfits and the failures have been weeded out. Lord Strathcona, who more than any other man has been instrumental in making western Canada a fit place for the habitation of man, is himself a fine illustration of what this country can do to make a man. He came here a boy sev enty-three years ago to fill an engagement as a clerk for the Hudsons Bay Company. He spent thirteen years upon the shores of that inland northern sea and so won the confidence of his company that he was given the chief place in that wealthy organization. He accumulated a vast fortune, but better than that, he made of himself, for probity, for integrity, for moral worth, one of the greatest men of his time, and of all times. 214 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS In Lord Strathcona westem Canada has found a human embodiment of itself. In him this brood ing land, with its turbid torrents, its singing pines, its endless plantations of snow, its weird northern lights, streaming up from the frozen zone, as from an exhaustless mine of burning radium, has found a beautiful, triumphant, per sonal expression of itself. He is nearly ninety years of age, but when he arose to speak before the British Association at the opening of the meeting here last Wednesday night, 2,000 per sons sprang to their feet to cheer him, as if they faced in human form the immensity and beauty of the aurora borealis. It was such a tribute as only a man who at the same time had become a country and a climate could call forth. Lord Strathcona claims Winnipeg as his home, though as the imperial commissioner of Canada he spends most of his time in England. He is a Scotchman by birth, and has a face, while dis closing Canada in front, reveals reminiscent in timations of Scotland at the back. But that which gives to him his sublimity of bearing is the fact that beneath Canada and Scotland, which advertise themselves in his tall, rugged form, there may be seen the faith and mysticism and tenderness of the religion of John Knox. The people of Canada love him as they do no other living man. When he stands before the English Govemment to represent his over-the- IN CANADA WITH HER BUILDERS 215 sea adopted country, all Canada is present. The Indians believe in him, and from all parts of Manitoba they have been calling this week to pay their tribute of love to him. James J. Hill, an ex-Canadian, but now an American, and a great power in the railway world, left, for a few days, his pressing interests just to see and visit, as he said, his old friend. Lord Strathcona. It was exceedingly interesting to see these two men, each of whom is a genuine world power, on the same platform, before the Winnipeg Board of Trade, and to hear them speak of their early struggles in the wilds of Western Canada. One can not remain five minutes in the pres ence of James J. Hill without feeling himself in the neighborhood of an enormous force. He has, especially when he begins to talk, a winsome, won drous face. Joel Chandler Harris was accus tomed to chuckle with merriment when a par ticularly interesting and amusing idea started on its way to expression from his lips. He seemed to enjoy it as he felt it rising and then again he had a double experience of delight after it was expressed, in participating in the pleasure he had given his company by the impartation of his fancy. So Mr. Hill seemed himself to be filled with a sense of the significance of what he was about to 216 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS say before he said it. You could tell by the way he threw out his arms, as if he were grasping at immensity itself, that something valuable was on its way through his lips to the ears of his hearers, and when the truth he had to utter did get itself slipped over the waves of the atmosphere to the mental ports of his audience, it was clear to all that freight of supreme value had come to shore. He did not talk of atoms and ether and radium and of positive and negative electricity as Sir J. J. Thompson, the president of the British As sociation, did in his opening address before that body, but his remarks were nearer to the compre hension of the average member of the Board of Trade than would have been those of the English scientist. Mr. HUl talked of the value of manure, and said that it was worth one-third of that part of the crop fed to, cattle and horses. He declared that experts should be appointed to teach the farmers how to farm. He said that the Great Northern Railway paid a salary to Professor Thomas Shaw, formerly of the experimental farm at Guelph, to do such work along its west ern lines. He said he attributed his vigor at sev enty-one years of age to taking good care of him self; that he retired early and never worried. He declared that Canada never had a public man who had shown the unselfish devotion to the Do minion Lord Strathcona had. IN CANADA WITH HER BUILDERS 217 Mr. Hill said he first met Lord Strathcona in 1869. Afterwards he met him in 1873, he said, when they together arranged to purchase the bonds of the old St. Paul and Pacific Railway. He said he was interested with Lord Strathcona and Lord Mount Stephen in the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railroad west of Winnipeg. He said the first section from Winnipeg to Broadview was constructed in 1882 and that his car was the first to cross the Saskatchewan River when the line reached that point. He said his interests were so extensive in the South that he sold his interests in the Canadian Pacific to Lord Mount Stephen. After the visit of Mr. Hill to Winnipeg was over, he was driven to the station in an automo bile, accompanied by Lord Strathcona. In leav ing the head of the Great Northem placed his arm affectionately about the shoulders of Can ada's grand old man, whom he had known for forty years, and assured him of the pleasure their meeting had given him. A newspaper man asked Mr. Hill if he thought aviation would ever supplant the railroads in the handling of freight and passengers. His reply was that "when they begin to use airships to transport freight it will be by means of hot air." But in saying that Mr. Hill's speech before the Winnipeg Board of Trade was nearer to the 218 THE GEOGRAPHY OP GENIUS comprehension of his hearers than would have been the address of Sir J. J. Thompson, I would not be understood as conveying the impression that Sir Joseph Thompson's was not as im portant. In fact, the address before the British Association was far more important. Had it not been for the work of members of the British As sociation like Sir J. J. Thompson, in studying atoms and heat and ether, such men as Lord Strathcona and Lord Mount Stephen and James J. Hill would never have been able to build the Canadian Pacific Railroad. The practical men get the credit for buUding the immense commer cial institutions of civUization, but it is in reality the quiet, scientific students who furnish the knowledge of nature's secrets by which they ac complish all their practical work. The practical men come in for the glory and the pay, but the students make both possible. The expansion of western Canada to-day is but the extension of the conquests of science. A stay of five weeks in Canada has convinced me that we do not know everything there is to be learned down in Georgia, and also that they do not know everything there is to be learned, even in this favored region of creation. We can learn much from the Canadians and they can learn much from us. They can beat us on wheat, but we can beat them on cotton. They lack in IN CANADA WITH HER BUILDERS 219 many instances the things we have, and we also lack in many points where they are advanced. They have no lynchings up here, but then, strange to say, they do not have as much sym pathy for the poor and helpless as we have. The man who fails here is simply down and out, and that is the end of it. They have no sympathy with what one of their poets calls "the pallid pimps of the dead line," except to drown them like rats in their rivers, or to starve them, like curs, on their plains." They have but little time to waste in commiserating those who are willing to be ' ' steeped in the slime at the bottom, dead to a decent world, Lost 'mid the human flotsam, far on the frontier hurled; In the camp at the bend of the river, with its dozen saloons aglare, ^ Its gambling dens ariot, its gramophones all ablare. Crimped with the crimes of a «ity, sin-ridden and bridled with lies." But fortune smiles here, and the people smile upon all who husband their resources of body and mind and transmute them into the hard work that brings success. This is why such out bursts of applause were called out from the hearts of these "lords of the North" to Lord Strathcona and James J. Hill. They had met the terrors of a hard environment, such as all the people face, and they had conquered. CHAPTER XIX THE MOST INTERESTING ISLAND IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE LOCATED in»a world of marsh that borders . a world of sea, St. Simon's Island is the center of a region richer in natural feat ures and historic associations than any other in the western waters of the Atlantic Ocean. It is made up of a small patch of the planet twelve miles long and six miles wide, not yet finished. It is not far away from Brunswick, Ga. Sir Charles Lyell, the distinguished geologist, came here all the way from England to take lessons direct in world-building. Here "sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmer ing band of the sand beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land." Here "in ward and outw^ard, to northward and southward, the beach lines- linger and curl," enabling one to see how all the shores of our earthly ball were «nade. The Creator is here to-day, measuring off the "terminal blue of the main," and fixing boun daries between it and the finished land. 220 THE MOST INTERESTING ISLAND 221 Sir Charles Lyell discovered here evidences of the presence of the horse on these shores long before Columbus discovered America. John Bartram, of Philadelphia, appointed bot anist for America by George III, came here in the Eighteenth Century to study plants. Lin naeus declared him to be the greatest natural bot anist in the world. Here he discovered a species of the bay tree, the only one of its kind ever found on the earth. He took the seed of this tree, from which descendants of the species have been preserved in the different botanical gardens of the world. Were you to go into the Shaw Botanical Gar dens of St. Louis, or in the botanical gardens of Leyden, in HoUand, or into any other in the world, and ask for the history of the gordonia pubesGus, or gordonia Altawuiha, the technical name of the species in question, you would be told that the only species of the tree ever known was discovered by John Bartram in the neigh borhood of St. Simon's Island. Places receive far more of significance and charm from association with heroic, noble hu man Ufe than from the possession of striking natural features. Students may be attracted to a region because of its unparalleled geographical, botanical or other natural aspects, but the masses 222 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS of the people will make pilgrimages only to places that have been enhanced by their connec tion with great deeds and great persons. The hill rising from the sea and overlooking Smyrna, in Asia Minor, where Polycarp was put to death, interested me more when I passed the city in 1894 than all the rest of the metropolis put together. That hill had been baptized by the blood of a heroic soul. Even drops of water from the muddy River Jordan have a market value be cause taken from the stream in which Christ was baptized. The English lake country has been glowing with unearthly splendor ever since Wordsworth put upon it the brilliant colors of his genius. The woods around Concord, Mass., are winsome and affable in the deep glooms of their shade be cause the free spirit of Thoreau once moved through them. Any museum would welcome as a sacred reUc a time-dried shoe made by the hand of William Carey. The timber Stradivarius used to form his vioUns is almost priceless. The touch of his fingers was enough to turn lumber into gold. It is because of the historic associations that have been interwoven with St. Simon's Island that give to the small patch of territory its charm. This limited stretch of soil is humanized and im mortalized by the spirits of famous people who THE MOST INTERESTING ISLAND 223 have lived in its neighborhood. Its live oaks would be as commonplace as any in Georgia had not Sidney Lanier turned every one of their limbs into torches to burn forever with the light of his genius. Its vast, wide-reaching plains of marsh, "candid and simple and nothing-with holding and free," would not today be publishing themselves to the sky and offering themselves to the sea had not the Georgia poet lifted them out of the sand and the water to grow and play with ideal winds and ocean forever in the realm of thought. Lanier did for the marshes of Glynn, which surround St. Simon's Island, what Burns did for Bonnie Doon — he made them universal and he made them immortal. The solid land will doubt less in days to come be built up here fast and hard against the waves of the relentless sea, but "the length and breadth and sweep of the marshes of Glynn," which encompass this beau tiful island Lanier saw, are safe from the en croachments of earth or the enterprise of men. They will stand "waist high, broad in the blade, green, and all of a height, unflecked with a light or a shade," and "stretch leisurely off in a pleas ant plain, to the terminal blue of the main" throughout all time. What a pity that all the islands of Georgia could not for a time have claimed the presence of Lanier, that he might have given to their trees 224 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS some flxed and secure place iu all future time. Just a touch of genius is sufficient to change "Bingen on the Rhine" from an obscure village to one of the best known places in the world. On St. Simon's Island lived General James E. Oglethorpe, the flrst governor of Georgia. He had for his private secretary no less a person than Charles Wesley, whose devotion sings in more hymns than were ever written by any other man in the Christian centuries. The auth(|r of "Jesus, Lover of My Soul," took up his work as private secretary to the governor of Georgia here in 1736. His brother, John Wesley, came down from Savannah and preached here to the soldiers. Not far away, under the direction of General Oglethorpe, Was fought, in 1742, the battle of Bloody Marsh, which settled the question as to whether Spain or England should direct in the beginning the fortunes of this commonwealth. Oglethorpe returned to England in 1744 and, being a friend of Oliver Goldsmith, doubtless re lated to him some of his experiences in America. In his "Deserted Village" Goldsmith refers to this region as the wild home of some of his coun trymen who had left "Sweet Auburn," and de scribes them : Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go. Where wild Altamaha murmurs to their woe. THE MOST INTERESTING ISLAND 225 Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray. And fiercely shed intolerable day. Those matted woods where birds forget to sing. But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling. Those poisonous flelds with rank luxuriance crowned, Where at each step the stranger fears to wake The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake. The picture Goldsmith gives of the region of St. Simon's Island, being drawn mostly from his imagination, incorrectly represents this beauti ful realm of island, marsh and sea. Fredericia, on St. Simon's, Was in the early days the rival of Savannah, and here is the only ground the flrst governor of Georgia ever owned. In later times many of the most wealthy and cul tured famUies of Georgia Uved on St. Simon's Island. Shell roads were made from one end of the island to the other. There were twelve or fourteen families settled here, with elegant resi dences, beautiful grounds and flourishing cotton plantations. They owned among them 4,000 or 5,000 negroes and raised the famous sea island cotton. The hospitality shown by the owners of these great estates amazed famous travelers, who vis ited here from all parts of the world. Sir Charles Lyell, who was the guest of Mr. James Hamilton Couper while making his geological observations, speaks of it in his books. So does Frederika Bre- 226 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS mer, the popular Swedish novelist, who also vis ited the home of Mr. Couper. The Hon. Amelia M. Murray, one of Queen Victoria's maids of honor, was here in 1855, and, writing from the home of Mr. Couper, she said : "I forgot to mention that there are from 300 to 400 negroes on this estate. Mr. and Mrs. Couper have no white servants ; their family consists of six sons and two daughters. I should not like to inhabit a lonely part of Ireland, or even Scot land, surrounded by 300 Celts. I believe there is not a soldier or policeman nearer than Savannah, a distance of sixty miles. Surely this speaks vol umes for the contentment of the slave popula tion." Open house was kept on the island for all comers, while picnics and regattas were con stantly taking place. A visit to one home meant a visit to all. Major John Couper, the father of Mr. James Hamilton Couper, a Scotchman by birth, settled here in 1792. At the northern end of the island was the home of Major Pierce Butler. At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War he was an officer in the Brit ish army. He had married an heiress, a Miss Middleton, of South Carolina. When the war with the mother country came on he resigned his commission as major in the English army and cast in his lot with the colonists. After the war THE MOST INTERESTING ISLAND 227 was over he moved to St. Simon's Island, bring ing with him 800 slaves. Major Butler was a friend of Aaron Burr, and after the duel in which he killed Alexander Ham ilton in 1804, he was invited to visit St. Simon's Island. Here Burr found a refuge from the storm that raged round him at the time. Major Butler was descended from a famous Irish family, the head of which was created a baronet in 1628. Major Butler, being the third son of his father, could not succeed him. The same title, however, is maintained in the Butler family in Ireland to-day by Sir Richard Pierce Butler, the eleventh baronet. Sir Richard's fa ther. Sir Thomas Pierce Butler, served in the Crimean War in 1855, when he was only nineteen years of age and carried the queen's colors of the Fifty-sixth Regiment on the Sth of September, 1855, at the taking of Sebastopol. He died March 9, 1909, and was succeeded by his son. Sir Rich ard Pierce Butler, who lives at BaUin Temple, TuUow, County Carlow, Ireland. Our American Major Butler, who came from South Carolina to St. Simon's Island, had two children, a son and a daughter. The son went to England to be educated, and, not agreeing with his father's political opinions, expatriated himself and never came back to America. The daughter married Dr. Mays, of Philadelphia, and 228 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS two sons were born of this union, John, the elder, and Pierce, the younger. At the death of Major Butler his will declared that his eldest grandson, John Mays, should in herit his entire estate, upon the condition that he change his name to Butler. This John at flrst refused to do, but Pierce Mays, upon arriving at majority, consented to change his name to Butler, and thus complying with the conditions of his grandfather's wUl, came into possession of the estate. After this Pierce Butler made a pri vate arrangement with his brother, John Mays, by which he consented to give him a half Ufe in terest in the property if he would change his name to Butler. This the elder brother did. Then the two brothers further agreed that if sons were born to them the estate should go to the elder son of the elder brother. If no sons were born to them the property was to descend to the heirs of the younger brother. It so hap pened that neither brother had any sons. John had one daughter and Pierce had two. So the daughters of Pierce inherited the estate. Pierce Butler married, in 1834, Frances Anne Kemble, the brilliant English actress. Their eldest daughter was named Sarah. She married Owen Jones Wister, of Philadelphia. They had one son, Owen Wister, the author of "The Vir ginian" and "Lady Baltimore." Their youngest THE MOST INTERESTING ISLAND 229 daughter was named Frances. She married Hon. and Very Rev. James Wentworth Leigh, D.D., dean of Hereford, England, since 1894. He was the third son of the flrst Lord Leigh, and is now the uncle of the present Lord Leigh, of Stone- leigh Abbey, Kenilworth, England. They had one daughter, Alice Leigh, Who was married in 1906 to Sir Richard Pierce Butler, above re ferred to. Mrs. Frances Kemble Leigh died in England in November, 1910. Mrs. Fanny Kemble Butler, though married to Pierce Butler in 1834, continued to live on her husband's place near Philadelphia till 1838. In November of that year she came with her hus band to the Georgia plantation, and remained there until about the 1st of April, 1839. She was not happy in Georgia. The' institution of slavery she hated with all the power of her remarkably strong nature. She wrote a book while on St. Simon's Island, enti tled "Life on a Georgia Plantation," that makes one's blood run cold to read even now. It is the most direct and brUliant and merciless arraign ment of slavery ever printed in English. Though written in 1838-39, it was not published until 1863. It was in the form of letters, and these had been passed alround and read by her friends in England and America. A strong movement was on foot in England to recognize the Southem Confederacy. The 230 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS friends of abolition were terribly concemed to defeat this. It has been said, therefore, that "Life on a Georgia Plantation" was published at the solicitation of influential people in this coun try like Henry Ward Beecher and Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe with the view of having it read in England before the question of the recognition of the Southem Confederacy was flnally deter mined. Anyhow, it is said that John Bright read the book, and John Bright defeated the move ment looking to the recognition of the Southern Confederacy. It is remarkable that such a book should have been written by the wife of the owner of a thousand slaves. Owing to incom patibility of temper Pierce Butler obtained a di vorce from his wife in 1849, the conditions being that the children should spend six months with their mother and six months with their father. Fanny Kemble was the most brUliant woman of the Nineteenth Century, and Pierce Butler was a man of the very highest character. During the war between the states he lived in Philadel phia, but aU his sympathies were with the South ern cause. He visited the Southem soldiers in Northem prisons and assisted them by his own means. After the war, in 1866, he came with his daughter Frances back to the plantation. More than half of his servants engaged to work for him for wages. Pierce Butler died on his plantation in 1867. Frances Butler managed THE MOST INTERESTING ISLAND 231 the plantation for ten years after her father's death. She wrote a very interesting book about her experiences here, entitled "Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation." In the early part of 1867, before her father died, she tells of a serenade the negroes gave her on her birthday. A dear old servant by the name of Uncle John came up to her and, taking her .hands in his, said: "God bless you, missus, my dear missus !" Her father, standing near and being touched by the old man's devotion to his children, put his arm around the old man's shoulders and said : "You have seen flve generations of us now, John, haven't you?" "Yes, massa," said Uncle John ; "Miss Sarah's Uttle boy be de flfth, bless the Lord." Miss Sarah's little boy, referred to, was Owen Wister, at that time about seven years old. I walked over the grounds of the old Butler homestead. Cedars are growing in Fanny Kem ble's garden, higher than the shabby walls of the old house. The place is still owned by the fam ily, but is now utterly neglected. The roofs are off the walls of the houses, built of shell and lime, and the cedars are growing up through them. Some day a great Southem story will be written, the scene of which will be found in this neighbor hood. Owen Wister could never have written "Lady Baltimore" but for his knowledge of the 232 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS men and women who once lived in this charming region, which must have been a very paradise. One might say with far more meaning about St. Simons Island what Goldsmith said about "Sweet Auburn :" No more thy glassy brook reflects the day. But, choked with sedges, works its weedy way; Along thy glades a solitary guest. The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest; Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies. And tires their echoes with unvaried cries; Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all. And the long grass o'ertops the mouldering wall; And, trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand, Far, far away thy children leave the land. While standing in Fanny Kemble's garden the verses of Goldsmith came to me : Near yonder copse, where once the gardens smiled. And still where many a garden flower grows wild ; There, where a few tom shrubs the place disclose. . I thought of that beautiful, accomplished woman, laboring to make grow in the ground the flowers which, alas, under the circumstances in which she found herself placed, could not grow in her heart. In the neighborhood of St. Simon's Island "The Wanderer," the last slave ship to cross the ocean, landed its 500 negroes. The citizens of Fredericia, on St. Simon's Island, once the capi- THE MOST INTERESTING ISLAND 233 tal of Georgia, were the first in the history of this country to sign a protest against the intro duction of slavery. It contained these words: "Introduce slaves and we cannot but believe they will one day retum to be a scourge and a curse to our chUdren or children's children." This docu ment was signed by every man living in Fred ericia in 1749. In the neighborhood of St. Simon's Island Gen. Nathaniel Green, the greatest commander next to Washington in the Revolutionary War, spent his decUning years. Here, after his death, lived his daughter, Mrs. Shaw. It was while upon a visit to her that "Light-Horse Harry" Lee, father of Gen. Robert E. Lee, died. Here he was buried, and his distinguished son. Gen. Robert E. Lee, visited his grave just a little while before his death. It was near here that Eli Whitney, while living in the home of Gen. Na thaniel Greene's family, invented the cotton gin. To say that St. Simon's Island is the most famous twelve miles of land surrounded by water in the Atlantic Ocean is to make a statement strictly in accordance with truth. With wha;t other small patch of territory in Western waters is associated so many great people, whose names are household words in modem history? What other pinch of a paradise, gleaming in the Western seas, can make claims to association with such famous people as Gen. James Oglethorpe, 234 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS who lived longer on earth than any other English general ever did; as John Wesley, the greatest preacher since St. Paul; Charles Wesley, who wrote more hymns than any other man in the Christian centuries ; John Bartram, the greatest natural botanist of his time, according to Lin naeus ; Sir Charles Lyell, the founder of modem geology; Oliver Goldsmith, the friend of Dr. Samuel Johnson; Nathaniel Greene, the great est general, after Washington, in the Revolution ary War; "Light-Horse Harry" Lee, ^the father of Robert E. Lee, the greatest general America ever produced ; Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin; Fannie Kemble, the most accom plished woman of the Nineteenth Century ; Owen Wister, one of America's greatest novelists; Sidney Lanier, who wrote the "Marshes of Glynn," the greatest poem ever written by an American, which he wrote to celebrate the waters surrounding St. Simon's Island; Aaron Burr, vice-president of the United States and grand son of Jonathan Edwards ; Hon. Amelia M. Mur ray, one of Victoria's maids of honor, and Fred erika Bremer, the most popular Swedish novelist of her time. CHAPTER XX KEEPING UP WITH NEWPORT VACATIONS furnish one the opportunity of improving his mind and of enlarging his outlook upon the world. My vacations have been used to make pilgrimages to places in different parts of the world made famous by asso ciation with the lives of great people. This chap ter has to do with a month spent in the neighbor hood of Newport, Rhode Island, a few years ago. In his story, "Keeping Up With Lizzie," Irving Bacheller identified the fortunes of Pointview, Connecticut, with the life of its leading citizen. The personality of Lizzie Henshaw is represented as being charged with meaning enough to lend significance to the town in which she lived. She illuminated her local environment from day to day with light out of her soul,^and did not, like the chameleon, take the color of her being from things on the outside of her. Lizzie and Point- view, in the course of events, became different names for the same reality. Pointview became an extended, spread-out edition of Lizzie, and Lizzie became a breathing, epitomized edition of Pointview. "Keeping Up With Lizzie" meant 235 236 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS keeping up with Pointview, and keeping up with Pointview meant keeping up with Lizzie. In representing Lizzie as the human definition of Pointview, and in portraying Pointview as a center of population rescued from oblivion by the good fortune of having produced a distinguished citizen with whose Ufe to link its history, the novelist conforms to a custom as old as Utera ture. The message of Amos, for instance, has gone into all the world, but Tekoa, a small vil lage in Palestine, is always connected with it, so that one can never know what the prophet thought without learning at the same time where the prophet lived. The light of Aristotle's ' genius has kept the heavens of speculative thought briUiant for nearly 2,500 years, but from Stagira it has al ways shone, and not a ray of it has ever illumi nated a single human mind without throwing upon its walls a picture of the spot on the Stry- monic Gulf where the thinker was born. To keep up with Aristotle is to keep up with Stagira, and no one has ever been able to keep up with Stagira without keeping up with Aristotle, the Stagirite. The only Stagira th^e is today is the universal, eternal little town that from a place has become an atmosphere and now circu lates throughout the world in the philosophy of Aristotle. KEEPING UP WITH NEWPORT 237 The city that has come into association with no great spirit, or with no universally known historic event with which to link its name and its activities, is like an harbor from which no vessel ever goes to sea. What ever raw material of tragedy or romance on incident there may have been piled upon such a shore, it can never get into the intellectual commerce of the cen turies, simply because no man or woman ap peared among its people with soul detached from its local surroundings enough to serve as a ship, to bear its merchandise of deed or thought, or hope, or fear, or faith, to future ages. These preUminary remarks furnish a basis for the general conclusion that keeping up with a town means keeping up with the person who, by association with it, has given to its name and scenery a larger place in the common mind of humanity than any other of its citizens. Mere places on the earth's surface do not go anywhere. The inhabitants of patches of territory here and there on the world's round face who are content to eke out a provincial existence, bounded by the skyline of the horizon in which they breathe, never go anywhere. Places rise and float through out the seas of universal intelligence as they are lifted from the stationary coasts of matter by the tides of human thought. 238 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS In the early morning of its history, George Berkeley, the most distinguished philosophic thinker ever produced among English-speaking peoples, lived three years in Newport. In the en virons of Newport, Berkeley bought the only 100 acres of land he ever owned and upon it resided in the only house he ever built. Berkeley was 44 years of age when he ar rived in Newport. He was already the most dis tinguished English thinker on the planet. He had written, while a student at Trinity College, Dublin, his Commonplace Book, when he was 20 years of age; his Treatise on a New Theory of Vision he had published when he was 24; his Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge when he was 25, and his Three Dialogues Be tween Hylas and Phylonous when he was 28. He had traveled on the continent of Europe with Lord Peterborough and had written his Italian Journey. He was the intimate friend of Gay, Addison, Steele, Pope and Swift, the greatest Ut erary men of his time. He was a favorite at the Court of King George II and one of the most val ued friends of Queen Caroline. Everybody knows that William EUery Chan ning and Commodore M. C. Perry were born in Newport, but it will be admitted by all that George Berkeley was not only the most famous character who ever resided in Newport, but the KEEPING UP WITH NEWPORT 239 most potent and influential man from an intel lectual point of view who ever touched the shores of America. Many person with more than local influence have been associated with Newport from the time of Rev. James Honeyman, who preached there in Trinity Church from 1704 to 1750, down to the present time. There have been among those of the past and the present, distinguished officers of the United States Navy, such as Chadwick, Fu nis, Everett, Fullam, Sims, Hobbs, Luce, Rees; authors like Maude Howe Eliott and Mrs. U. King Van Rensselaer ; lawyers like Elbridge T. Gerry, George Wellington Green, Judge Darius Baker, Sampel Robertson Honey and Lispenard Stewart; without any question every one will admit that George Berkeley was not only the greatest man who ever lived in Newport, but the greatest speculative philosopher who ever lived in this country. A vacation spent in the neighborhood of New port furnished me the opportunity to study the town. The island, upon the southem tip end of which Newport is situated is about thirteen miles long and three and a half miles broad. As far as physical features can combine to render a strip »f territory remarkable from every geographical point of view, the island of Rhode Island is, per haps, the most notable patch of land surrounded by water on the planet. Encompassed by the 240 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS waters of Narragansett Bay, the denizens of New port enjoy the opportunity of breathing sea air as completely as if they Uved on the deck of a vast steamer out in the ocean. As a spot to Uve, and breathe and be in, no other place under the sun can compare with it. The sense of being enisled in this gorgeous and glorious region is enough to tempt one to surrender himself to the luxury of mere physical existence. Berkeley married the daughter of Judge John Foster, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, in 1728. She is said to have been a devoutly re ligious mystic, Fenelon and Madame Guyon be ing among her favorite authors. "I chose her," Berkeley tells Lord Percival, "for her qualities of mind and her unaffected inclination for books. She goes with great thankfulness to America to live a plain farmer's wife and wear stuff of her own spinning. I have presented her with a spin ning-wheel." They sailed in September for Rhode Island, where Berkeley intended to winter and purchase an estate to settle a correspondence and trade between that island and the Bermudas. He arrived in Newport in January, 1729, having touched at Virginia on the way. There is not in the whole history of romantic adventure anything to compare with the enter prise which was the occasion of Berkeley making KEEPING UP WITH NEWPORT 241 his home in Newport. He conceived the scheme of building a college on the islands of the Ber mudas in the Atlantic Ocean for the better sup plying of churches on the English plantations and for converting the savage Indians to Chris tianity. He proposed to convert the most iri-' descent dream that ever flit across the mind of a human being into a vast world-transforming reality out in the wilds of the sea. It is a most remarkable fact that he was fasci nating and magnetic enough to persuade King George II and the British Parliament that his program for a college in the Atlantic Ocean was feasible and workable. Even Sir Robert Wal pole, while never approving the scheme, did con tribute out of his private means to it. A charter was granted by Parliament for a college to be known as St. Paul's, of which Berkeley was to be the head, and for the establishment of which $100,000 was granted by the English Govern ment. In addition to this, personal friends from all over the kingdom promised large sums from their personal fortunes for the college. Miss Vanessa Vonhombrigh, known as one of the celebrated women loved by Jonathan Swift, who accepted the attentions of the distinguished dean as equiv alent, practically, to an offer of marriage, willed her property, consisting of $40,000, to him. 242 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS When "Stella," the other lady celebrated by her association with Swift, informed "Vanessa" that she herself had already been married secretly to the dean and distinguished author of "The Tale of a Tub," Miss Vonhombrigh destroyed her orig inal will and left half of her property to Berke ley, whom she had met at dinner but once and to whom she is said to have been introduced by Swift. So, with the promise of the king and the Brit ish Parliament and the actual bequest of Swift's "Vanessa," Berkeley left England with his wife and a few friends and sailed for Rhode Island. He was received with such marked attention when he arrived at Newport that when Rev. James Honeyman, who was delivering a sermon at Trinity Church, heard that Berkeley was in the harbor, he dismissed his congregation and with all the people went out to meet the dis tinguished visitor. Berkeley buUt a house in the environs of New port on the ground he had purchased, which he named Whitehall. As the money of Swift's "Vanessa" doubtless, was used in the purchase of this property, it would not be inappropriate to call it "Vanessa's" Cottage, as the house in Farn ham, Surrey, in which lived Swift's other lover, is caUed "Stella's" Cottage. KEEPING UP WITH NEWPORT 243 The grant of the English Government made for Berkeley's College was to be paid out of the pro ceeds arising from the income of St. Christopher's Island, one of the Leeward group, which had been ceded to England by France under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, entered into by the two countries in 1714. When Berkeley leamed that England was reg ularly receiving retums from St. Christopher's Island and that no part of it was being paid to ward his college enterprise, he became discour aged. Sir Robert Walpole wrote him that the money would be paid, but added that as no par ticular time had been fixed for its payment, and as the EngUsh flnances were somewhat depleted, he could give him no deflnite assurance as to when it would be paid. Berkeley took this as an intimation that the money would never be paid. So, wearied by the long delays of the govern ment, Berkeley at length gave up his residence in Newport and sailed from Boston back to Eng land in September, 1731, just three years after his departure from England. Berkeley gave Whitehall with the land belong ing to it to Yale College to be applied to the maintenance of three students of said college dur ing the time between their flrst and second de gree, and such students to be known as "schol ars of the house," to be elected by the head of the 244 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS college jointly with the senior Episcopal mis sionary of Connecticut after an examination in Latin and Greek. The Berkeleyan scholarships and prizes thus estabUshed have been regularly awarded since 1733, and the Ust of those who have received these honors include the names of some of the most distinguished graduates of Yale College. The Whitehall farm was leased by the college in 1762 for a period of 999 years for an annual rental of $150. It can easily be seen that by the year 2761, when the lease will have expired, Berkeley's gift to the institution, including in terest calculated on the first rental of $150 for 998 years, and then on down trough all the years till its expiration, principal and interest so compounded year by year, would amount to an enormous sum, greater, perhaps, than that paid to Yale by any friend of the college. If the principal and interest on this money since 1733 had been used in the making of more money sim ply, it would by this time equal a greater sum than any college in the world has for its endow ment. For such a man as Berkeley merely to have re sided in Newport for three years was sufficient to throw about the place the enhancement a great personality confers upon any region in which he happens for a time to live. For a man like Berke- KEEPING UP WITH NEWPORT 245 ley to spend a night in a hotel and to have left his name upon its list of guests was sufficient to throw interest for all future time around the hos telry. If Berkeley had done nothing but walk the streets of Newport, this would have been enough to make them gleam forever, but he did a great thing in Newport — he wrote there his most popular book, by means of which he lifted its meadows and shore lines and beaches and rocks from the plane of matter to that of spirit. The color and beauty and sweetness of Newport's environs were converted into Alciphron, or. The Minute Philosopher, and into the poem in which the line occurs, familiar to all readers of English literature, "The course of empire westward takes its way." Newport's hanging rock, its old stone tower, its bay, its jagged-edged shores, were lifted from the commonplace level of material fact and made to shine through all time in the magical colors of Berkeley's genius. Berkeley was the only man who ever lived in Newport who converted the physical features of the town into terms of universal thought. Just as Bonnie Doon through Burns flows around the world, so Newport through Berkeley found a place on the map of the common mind of man. He did for Newport what Sir Walter Scott di^ for Scotland. Take Wordsworth out of the Eng Ush lake country and who would care to see 246 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS Grasmere? Take Byron out of the Dukeries, and who would visit Newstead Abbey? Of course, it is true that rohiance and poetry appeal immedi ately to the rank and flie of the reading pubUc, while the writings of such a man as Berkeley create for him no immediate constituency. Berkeley was an intellectual world builder. Along with writers, like Aristotle and Descartes and Spinoza and Locke, he was engaged in open ing up territory for writers, like Wordsworth and Coleridge and Scott and Byron, to range in. Because of this, Berkeley's residence in Rhode Island has not invested the place with the gen eral interest among the masses of the people it should have received from association with so vast a genius. But the day will come when he will be put into possession of it as surely as Michael Angelo has an eternal title to Florence. Fee simple, exclusive titles, can never stand in the higher courts of thought against the title a man has to a town, who lifts its scenery from the realm of matter to that of spirit. The man I engaged in Newport to take me around the ten-mile drive pointed out the houses and gave something of the history of each family living in the several mansions on the way. When I asked him about "Whitehall," where Berkeley had Uved, he had heard of it and conducted some KEEPING UP WITH NEWPORT 247 lone pilgrim to'see it, but he could not tell who had lived there or why anybody should want to visit it. I called at all the bookstores in New port, but there was not a page or pamphlet or book in one of them about Berkeley. There was not a post card of "Whitehall" in one of them. I did succeed in buying a post card of "WhitehaU" from the caretaker who looks after the house for the Colonial Dames, who have purchased the lease from Yale College, but there was not one in all Newport, nor was there a photograph of Berkeley. If one were to judge of Berkeley's ownership of Newport by the hold he seems to have on the average citizen of it to-day, he would be apt to conclude that the greatest philosopher among English-speaking people had never seen the town. In its power to regale the sensuous imagina tion, Newport has no rival among the resorts of fashion on the earth. If the leading halls and castles of the English aristocracy were all lifted from the center of vast estates in which they sev erally stand and crowded together along ten miles of sea beach, they would make no greater show than is made by the vast summer homes of Newport. The money spent in maintaining the functions of Newport exceeds that ever paid in the same di rection by any other brilUant center of sport. 248 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS The Emperor Tiberius is said to have spent for tunes on costly viands, but he lived like an ordir ary mortal in comparison with the summer devotees of high living in Newport. The function that cost LucuUus $10,000 is recorded as having no paral lel in history, but this is a modest repast in com parison with what is ordinary in Newport. Dances, dinners, canoe races, water frolics, tennis tournaments succeed one another at Newport after a fashion that is simply amazing. Ball rooms are constructed with mirrors framed in the panels of the walls so as to reflect and mul tiply many times the throngs of dancers with their gay decorations. The gowns worn by the women of Newport's summer colony are so gorgeous that the vocabu lary of the newspaper reporter furnishes no lan guage subtle and highly colored enough to de scribe them. There are costumes which are dreams in mustard colored linen, combined with Persian colored embroidery ; in long purple satin coats, embroidered with floss, covering gowns of blue and striped voile; in white serge skirts with short coats of Dresden chintz; in white eyelet embroidered linen and amethyst colored tussor cloth ; in gowns of white linen covered with pale green shoulder scarfs and white striped chiffon; and in white serge embroidered in yellow. KEEPING UP WITH NEWPORT 249 There are visions in black hats with plumes; in purple straw hats topped with white plumes ; in biright red straw hats wreathed in bright red poppies; in black chip hats topped with ai grettes; in purple straw hats wreathed with deep rose colored double hollyhocks; in yellow Leghom hats wreathed with pink flowers, and in black straw hats topped with natural wheat. There are brilUant fancies in slippers studded with diamonds ; in blue satin slippers with dia mond buckles ; in silver slippers with silver but terfly bows ; in gold slippers with butterfly bows of small pearls. Keeping up with modern Newport involves no labor greater than is necessary to acquaint one's self with a blazing array of millinery and dia monds and pearls and Oriental stones. But the Newport of mansions and functions and millinery and sparkling gems is not going anywhere. That Newport will fade like a splen did pageant and leave not a trace of its tem porary existence, except such as those who visit the town in the years to come will find in its ruins. But the Newport of Berkeley lives and will live through all eternity in the universal mind of man. ^ "With meaning won from him, forever glows Each air that Newport feels and star it knows." CHAPTER XXI THE AMERICAN HOME OF CHARLES WESLEY IN HIS journal dated Tuesday, March 9, 1736, Charles Wesley writes : "About three in the afternoon I first set foot on St. Simon's Island." Here in a town called Fredericia lived General Oglethorpe, the first governor of Georgia. Charles Wesley's Journal, beginning March 9, 1736, gives an account of his arrival at Freder icia and of his experience as the secretary of Gen eral Oglethorpe. St. Simon's Island, the only town of which is Fredericia, is a diminutive area, but has more of interesting events, heroic deeds, and famous lives associated with its history than that of any other small body of land surrounded by water in the Western Hemisphere. The fact that it was the home of the greatest hymn writer of all the ages would be sufficient of itself to make it a center of perennial interest. Here in Fredericia, on St. Simon's Island, Charles Wesley lived long enough to identify its name and scenery with his own beautiful 250 HOME OF CHARLES WESLEY 251 life. The very gloom of its oaks is interfused with the perfume of his personality. The deep green of its sod, clinging to the earth like a carpet of velvet moss, is reminiscent of his foot steps. The little yellow flowers that grow here on the soil, like enameled stars, dropped from the sky to light up the plain, glow with a radi ance borrowed from the light of his character. The notes the waves here strike on the shore fill the air with a melody, seemingly intermingled with something caught from the energy of his spirit. Fredericia is known as the dead town of Georgia, but the Fredericia of Charles Wesley is not dead. Through its relations with the poet it has been transformed with its wide-spreading oaks, magnolias, and trailing garlands of wild jessamine into an ideal paradise of unchanging beauty. This town in the early morning of its earthly Ufe, when its natural flowers filled the air with sweetness and covered the earth with curtains of blooms, as Charles Wesley knew it, must have been a very vision of loveliness. That fair and fresh and sweet little city back there under the magnolias within sound of the ocean, gleaming in the opening dawn of Georgia's history, is the Fredericia fixed through all the changing years beside the rhythmic sea of Charles Wesley's music. Its forts and barracks and pioneer people are safe from invasion, either by 252 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS the death-dealing inroads of time or the destruc tive fires of alien armies. And it is the primal Fredericia, encompassed, enhanced, enchanted, possessed by the morning light of Charles Wes ley's spirit, that keeps the very ground upon which it stood eloquent with mysterious mean ing, producing in one who stands here the feel ing that Tennyson knew when he wrote : "Moreover, something is or seems That touches me with mystic gleams. Like glimpses of forgotten dreams. Of something felt, like something here; Of something done, I know not where; Such as no language may declare." The year 1708, when considered through the light of the events that were taking place in England, was a remarkable one. The death of Prince George of Denmark had placed the scep ter in the hands of Queen Anne. The first Brit ish Parliament, elected after the union with Scotland, held that year its first session. But the greatest thing that happened in Eng land in 1708 was the birth of Charles Wesley. He was the youngest son and the eighteenth child of remarkable parents. He was, as a boy, bright, attractive and fun-loving. Mr. Garrett Wesley, a rich landowner in Ireland, offered to adopt him while in his teens. The choice of becoming the heir of a great estate or remaining in the humble home of his parents was left with the boy. He HOME OF CHARLES WESLEY 253 elected to stay in the place of limitation rather than enter the larger realm of earthly wealth. The young man Garrett Wesley did adopt was named Colly, and he became the grandfather of the Duke of Wellington. Charles Wesley came to Fredericia to live when he was twenty-eight years old. He was not happy here. He was misunderstood, persecuted, and passed through the ordeal of deep personal afiiiction. At the end of five weary months he was ordered home, and landed in England just fourteen months after leaving his native land. The period of his sojourn in Fredericia was a time of trial and discipline. The fountains of melody in the depths of his soul, however, were getting ready to flow. When he left Fredericia he felt the weight of the wrongs he had endured heavy on his spirit. Arriving in England he found himself longing for freedom and reaching out for the clear light of a wider day. He had lived a legal, limited, and pinched Ufe. His soul had been struggling against the barriers of self-imposed forms and ceremonies. He was worn and wearied and sick at heart. In the early moming of May 21, 1738, he felt he could proceed no further without a blessing direct from heaven. He began to cry out: "O Jesus, thou hast said, 'I will come unto you.' Thou hast said, 'I will send the Comforter unto 254 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS you.' Thou hast said, 'My Father and I will come unto you and make our abode with you.' Thou art a God who canst not lie, I wholly rely upon Thy most true promise, accomplish it in Thy time and manner." Then it was that he found peace and exclaimed: "I believe! I be lieve !" On the first anniversary of his spiritual birth. May 21, 1739, he wrote : ' ' On this gla^ day the glorious Sun Of Righteousness arose; On my benighted soul he shone. And filled with repose. " O for a thousand tongues to sing My great Redeemer's praise! The glories of My God and King, The triumphs of His grace." After his complete release from the shackles of bondage to form and fear, he entered and lived till 1788 a universal life. He wrote be tween 1738 and 1788 seven thousand hymns. Supposing that he slept and rested twelve hours of each day of these fifty years, the amazing fact is revealed that he wrote a hymn every thirty-one of the working hours he lived after his return from Fredericia. Such a record was never made before by mortal man. He built out of words enough ships of song to send the wealth of heaven's soul and mercy into the ports of every human soul on earth. For HOME OF CHARLES WESLEY 255 more than a hundred years, during every minute of every day, thousands of Charles Wesley's sa cred transports have been landing their imperish able merchandise into the harbors of human spirits. They are seaworthy and well built. Isaac Watts declared that he would rather be the author of "Come, O Thou Traveler unknown, whom still I hold, but cannot see," than of all the hymns he had written. Charles Wesley's hymns are vessels of song set sailing between the gates of glory and the shores of earthly sin and pain and sorrow. John Wesley was a greater preacher and a greater organizer of men, but Charles Wesley has touched far more vitally and deeply the heart of humanity with his hymns than his brother ever did with his sermons and ecclesiastical ma chinery. The Methodists claim John Wesley, but no denomination can monopolize Charles. His hymns are as universal as mercy and as wide as the goodness of God. He set redemption to music in the present age of the world. The cross in his songs vibrates with a subtle, penetrating power that breaks and makes over the heart estranged from God through guilt. Charles Wesley took the dogmas of the Church that were hard and fast and flxed and fused them so that they flowed in streams of melody warm out of his soul. He converted the Bible into 256 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS rhythm. He put all the prophets of the Old Tes tament to singing the old songs to new tunes. He put old Jacob to wrestling for peace with God through the strenuous hours of a new night, and sent him happy from the prayer of triumph into a new morning. He humanized and modernized the old, yet ever new, truths of salvation. He played his music to the multitudes in thirty-three meters, more than any single singer was ever able to use before. Every place and every event of Providence furnished him a theme for poetry. Once, when riding with a condemned criminal to the scaffold, he composed a hymn, on the way, to sing just before the poor man's soul left the body. Once he was interrupted in a seaport town by a company of half -drunken sailors, who had come to church to break up the service with a song of the street called "Nancy Dawson." He Ustened to their song, mastered its tune and meter, and composed on the spot a hymn of the same measure and gave out the following to the tune of "Nancy Dawson" : ' ' Listed into the cause of sin. Why should a good be evil? Music, alas! too long haa been Pressed to obey the devil. Come, let us try if Jesus' love WiU not as well inspire us; This is the theme of those above. This upon earth shall fire us." HOME OF CHARLES WESLEY 257 Once he wrote in his Journal : "Near Ripley my horse threw me and fell on me, my leg was bruised and my hand sprained and hy head was stunned." But the only serious result that he saw in the accident was it kept him from writing a hymn that day. Amid the consternation that seized the people of London in 1750, when Eng land was shaken by an earthquake, Charles Wes ley sought to allay the terror by sending forth in a hymn his own confidence : ' ' Let earth 's inmost center quake And shattered nature mourn ; Let the unwieldly mountains shape And fall, by storms uptorn — Fall with all their trembling load, Far into the ocean hurled. Lo! we stand secure in God, Amidst a ruined world." The secret of Charles Wesley's success in the accomplishment of so much permanent work is not hard to find. He yielded his life to God in complete surrender, and then raised the gates of his soul -that spiritual power might flow in song to refresh humanity. He did not create the force of which his life was the channel. He simply let it flow through his consecrated person ality from heaven to earth. The floods of spir itual energy he turned into the world are as easily explained as are the currents that flow along the trolley Unes from the power house. It 258 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS was simply adjustment to the sources of energy and constant compliance with the conditions upon which the power works. Any man who will repeat the experiment of Charles Wesley will find himseU, not perhaps writing hymns or preaching sermons as John Wesley or making violins as Stradivarius, but turning out from God some work to bless man kind. George Eliot made the old violin maker of Cremona say : ' ' If my hand should slack, I would rob God, Since he is fullest good, leaving a blank instead of violins, For God Himself could not make Stradivarius violins without Antonio. ' ' The hymns of Charles Wesley are from heaven, but sent to the earth through the soul of a saint, and had his hand slacked he would have robbed God, leaving a blank instead of songs. CHAPTER XXII SAN FRANCISCO AND ROB^^RT LOUIS STEVENSON THE pen used by a great man to sign an important state document at once becomes of priceless value. A button from the coat of George Washington is of more interest than a diamond. A pebble, worn round by the waves of Lake Galilee, is esteemed like a jewel. A drop of water from the River Jordan is worth more than a million gallons from the Amazon. Reflections like these passed through my mind as I stood by the monument erected by public subscription in the Plaza of San Francisco to Robert Louis Stevenson. It is a granite pedestal supporting a bronze galleon, designed by Mr. Bruce Porter. Upon one side of it are carved the following words taken from Stevenson's own writings: "To be honest, to be kind, to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to re nounce, when that shaU be necessary, and not to be embittered, to keep a few friends but these without capitulation, above aU, on the same grim . condition, to keep friends with himself — here is 259 260 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy." Stevenson came to San Francisco from Scot land in August, 1879, but was so much shaken by the long journey that he looked upon his ar rival, like a man at death's door. To recover his health, he immediately went south about one hundred and flfty miles and camped out by him self in the coast range of mountains beyond Monterey. After this, he went down to Monterey, noted the world over for its beautiful hotel in the midst of ample grounds where he remained until the middle of December. But while there was a magnificent hotel at Monterey, Stevenson did not stop there. He lodged with a doctor and got his meals at Simon- eau's restaurant. Stevenson describes it as hav ing a barber shop in front and a kitchen at the back. The dining room was a little, chill, bare, adobe affair, and upon the table was always to be found a dish of green peppers and tomatoes. At any time, just before a meal, Simoneau the pro prietor could be heard all about the kitchen rattling among the dishes. With Simoneau Ste venson says, "he played chess every day and dis cussed the universe." After the middle of December he went back to San Francisco and remained there until May 19, 1880, when he was married to Fanny Van de SAN FRANCISCO AND STEVENSON 261 Grift in the house of Rev. Dr. Scott. Immedi ately after his marriage he went to the country, fifty miles north of San Francisco to seek health in the mountains. Here he took possession of all that was left of an old mining town, and found the data for that interesting work of his, "The Silverado Squatters." In July he left California, and with his wife, returned to Scotland to visit his father. He was, therefore, at this time, in California not quite a year. He returned to the United States in 1897 and by the 7th of June, 1898, he was back in Cali fornia. Soon after, he sailed with his family on the Casco for a long cruise in the South Seas, where among its islands he spent the remainder of his life. While sojourning in San Francisco, before he sailed away for the last time, he and Mrs. Stevenson lodged at the Occidental Hotel. The details of Stevenson's life in San Fran cisco are given to show that while he was there but a short time, it was long enough to give now interest and color to every spot and hotel and person he met. It was long enough to awaken in terest sufficient in him to secure a monument to his memory. Not one of the multi-millionaires on Knob Hill lent as much interest to San Fran cisco in all his life as did Stevenson by a few month's residence there. Not that milUons are counted in public esteem against a man, but more than millions or billions is the man himself. If 262 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS the man who comes into the possession of mil lions of money, happens to be one who uses his wealth as Stevenson used his genius, to bless mankind, then the millionaire will be honored not because of his money simply, but because he used it nobly. After his various cruises in the South Seas, he bought for himself a plantation of four hundred acres of land in the Island of Upolo, in the Sa moan group. Here, overlooking Apia, the capital and port of the island, he built a house and lived in it until he died. Having permanently settled himself, he spent his time when not writing, in improving his estate and in advancing the men tal, moral and political conditions of the poor native he found living around him. He attended church, taught a Sunday school class, and held in his household family prayers daily. He died on the 3d of December, 1894. On the evening before his death, which was Sunday, he uttered in the presence of his family the following prayer which he composed for the occasion : "We beseech Thee, Lord, to behold us with favor, folk of many families and nations gathered together in the peace of this roof, weak women, and women subsisting under the covert of Thy patience, be patient still; suffer us yet awhile longer; with our broken purposes of good, with our idle endeavors against evU, suffer SAN FRANCISCO AND STEVENSON 263 us awhile longer to endure and (if it may be) help us to do better. Bless to us our extraord inary mercies ; if the day comes when these must be taken, brace us to play the man under af fliction. Be with our friends, be with ourselves. Go with each of us to rest ; if any awake temper to them the dark hours of watching; and when the day returns, return to us, our Sun and Com forter, and call us with morning faces and with morning hearts — eager to labor; eager to be happy, if happiness shall be our portion — and if the day be marked for sorrow, strong to endure it. We thank Thee and praise Thee; and in words of Him to whom this day is sacred, close our oblation." By his own direction he was buried on the Summit of Vaea near his island home, and after the Samoan fashion, a large tomb was built above his grave. On either side of the tomb there is a bronze plate. On one of them is written his own requiem beneath his name thus : Alpha. Bobert Louis Omega. 1850. Stevenson. 1894. ' ' Under the wide and starry sky. Dig the grave and let me lie; Glad did I live and gladly die And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill. ' ' 264 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS Stevenson profoundly believed in Foreign Mis sions. In an address made to the Women's Mis sionary Association and Members of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of New South Wales, at Sydney, March 18, 1893, he said at the opening of his remarks : 'I suppose I am in the position of many other persons. I had a great prejudice against missions in the South Seas, and I had no sooner come there than that. prejudice was at flrst reduced and at last anni hilated. Those who deblaterate against missions have only one thing to do, to come and see them on the spot. They will see a great deal of good done; they will see a race being forwarded in many different directions, and I believe if they be honest persons, they will cease to complain of mission work and its effects. The true are of the missionary, as it seems to me, an outsider, the most lay of laymen, and for that reason, on the old principle that the by stander sees most of the game, perhaps more than usually well able to judge — ^is to proflt by the great, I ought really to say the vast — Amount of moral force reservoired in every race, and to change and to flt that power to new ideas, and to new possibilities of advancement.' " Mrs. Stevenson, in the introduction to a little book entitled "Prayers Written at Vailima, by Robert Louis Stevenson," says : "As soon as our household had fallen into a regular routine, and SAN FRANCISCO AND STEVENSON 265 the bonds of Samoa's life began to draw us more closely together, Susitala (the name the natives gave to Robert Louis Stevenson) felt the neces sity of including our retainers (servants) in our evening devotions. I suppose ours was the only white man's family in all Samoa except those of the missionaries, where the day naturally ended with this homely, patriarchal custom." "With my husband," continues Mrs. Stevenson, "prayer, the direct appeal, was a necessity. When he was happy he felt impelled to offer thanks for undeserved joy; when in sorrow or pain, to call for strength to bear what must be borne." One of the most beautiful of Stevenson's prayers is as follows : "Lord, behold our family here assembled, we thank Thee for this place in which we dwell ; for the love that unites us; for the peace accorded us this day; for the hope with. which we expect to-morrow; for the health, the work, the food, and the bright skies, that make our lives delight ful; for our friends in all parts of the earth, and friendly helpers in this foreign isle. Let peace abound in our small company. Purge out of every heart the lurking grudge. Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Of fenders, give us the grace to accept and to forgive offenders. Forgetful ourselves, help us to bear cheerfully the forgetfulness of others. Give us 266 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS courage and gaiety and the quiet mind. Spare to us our friends ; soften to us our enemies. Bless us if it may be in all our innocent endeavors. If it may not, give us the strength to encounter that which is to come, that we be brave in perfl, constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath and in all changes of fortune, and down to the gates of death, loyal and loving one to another. As the clay to the potter, as the windmill to the wind, as children to their sire, we beseech of Thee this help and mercy for Christ's sake." That one with such wealth of mind and heart should have lit up the South Seas with a new light is not strange. Pilgrims in the years to come will climb that lonely hill above his home in the island of Upola where he sleeps, the last sleep, to stand again amid the scenes of his clos ing years. CHAPTER XXIII IN THE COUNTRY OF WHITTIER AND WHITEFIELD EARLY one morning Mr. S. M. Kennard and myself left his home in Magnolia to make a pilgrimage of love to Whittier's country. We spent the day in Newburyport and Ames bury. We called on Rev. Dr. Hovey, the pastor of the old South Church. We rode in a carriage from "Joppa Flats to Grasshopper Plains." We saw the ancient house of Lord Timothy Dexter, who made in his day wooden statues of the great men of his time, and stationed them upon the posts of his fence and greeted them by name as he passed them in leaving his home for his place of business. The man who made a for tune out of warming pans, which he shipped to the West Indies, and who, late in life, had a mock funeral, when a grand oration was delivered in his honor, and who, before the occasion ended, whipped his wife because, in his esteem, she did not seem sufficiently heartbroken to shed as many tears as he thought she ought. We saw the old elms and the old mansions of what we united in thinking the most quaint and 267 268 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS beautiful old out-of-the-way town in all New England. Amesbury, where Whittier lived and where his house still stands, is almost a suburb of New buryport, where Whitefleld died and is buried. There is a continuous town along a beautiful roadway, over the chain bridge across the Merri mac River, and by the picturesque home of Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford on Deer Island, from the larger Newburyport to its suburb, made famous by one of America's most loved poets. This whole region has been idealized by Whit tier, so that the country one visits here now, is really Whittier's country, just as Scotland is Sir Walter Scott's country. Over it all, Whittier has thrown the color of his own imagination, and given to it an eternal mental existence. Whit tier, through sympathy and appreciation, appro priated the land, not "from Dan to Beersheba," but in reality" from Joppa Flats to Grasshopper Plains," as the natives here say. The Merrimac River, the great elm trees. which stand along the streets of the towns and the roads between, the hills which rise and fall over the green plains ; the boulders and granite blocks left scattered about after creation, all of these are Whittier's. He was not satisfled with making his own miles of country which border the ever-tumbling sea in this neighborhood, but THE COUNTRY OF WHITTIER 269 with pardonable poetic covetousness, he lent an aspect of mystery and wonder to his estate, to many leagues far out into the ocean, the blue water, too. So that both ocean and shore in this part of New England, all belong to John Greenleaf Whittier, the Quaker poet, and the lover of his fellow man. The curious, old-time dwelling places, with their Yankee inmates, have been touched by Whittier's thought, and somehow made to remind one of the poet's gentle spirit. By living here he has increased the value of every acre of its soil. Everything in the realm breathed upon by his genius has caught something of the significance and worth genius lends to things. A leaf from a tree in Whittier's country, sent in a letter to a friend, is treasured and kept. A very pebble, worn round by the waves, in Whit tier's country, is thought of sufficient value to be placed in the family cabinet of curios. A picture of his house, or of the church he attended, or of the tree where he carved his name when a boy, or of any object with which he was associated com mands a price everywhere. Earth, roads, gates, sea, stones, grass, sheep, everything in the com munity about Newburyport has passed through the verse of Whittier, from the realm of matter into the realm of thought. He eternalized his 270 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS native home by putting upon it the eternal stamp of genius. The Methodist evangelist, George Whitefield, came, after preaching in the open air two hours at Exeter, N. H., to Newburyport, in the after noon of September 29, 1770, where he was to preach the next day. But he was seized, dur ing the night with asthma and died on Sunday morning, September 30. He was buried in the old South Church and his bones may be seen in the crypt. His funeral was observed in many parts of the country and a sermon in honor of his memory was preached in London by John Wesley. Thus we see that the great evangelist spent only one night in the town of Newburyport. That was enough, says Whittier, to "hallow the ancient town." The coming of Whitefield to Newburyport and his death and burial in the old South Church there, called forth one of the most beautiful and characteristic of Whittier's poems, that one entitled "The Preacher." At first the poet describes the old sea-blown town of Newburyport : Its windows flashing to the sky. Beneath a thousand roofs of brown. Far down the vale, my friend and I Beheld the old and quiet town; The ghostly sails that out at sea Flapped their* white wings of mystery; THB COUNTRY OF WHITTIER 271 The beaches glimmering in the sun. And the low wooded capes that run Into the sea mist north and south; The sand-bluffs at the river's mouth; 'ihe swinging chain-bridge, and, afar,- The foam line of the harbor-bar. Over the woods and meadowlands A crimson-tinted shadow lay. Of clouds through which the setting day Flung a slant glory far away. It glittered on the wet sea sands, It flamed upon the city's panes. Smote the white sails of ships that wore Outward or in, and gilded o'er The steeples with their veering vanes! Awhile my friend with rapid search O'er ran the landscape. "Yonder spire Over gray roofs, a shaft of fire: What is it, pray?" — "The Whitefield Church! Walled about by its basement stones. There rest the marvelous prophet's bones." Then as our homeward way we walked. Of the great preacher's life we talked; And through the mystery of our theme The outward glory seemed to stream And nature's self interpreted The record of the dead. Here Whittier introduces Jonathan Edwards, preaching in Northampton and working and waiting for a revival. He represents Edwards "Waiting long to hear The sound of the Spirit drawing near." 272 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS The great New England metaphysician and marvelous preacher of the Gospel had, by prayer, and visiting from house to house among his fiock, prepared the people until : ' ' Hearts are like wax in the furnace ; who Shall mould, and shape, and cast them anew? Lo! by the Merrimac Whitefleld stands In the temple that never was made by hands — Curtains of azure, and crystal wall. And dome of the sunshine over all — A homeless pilgrim, with dubious name, Blown about on the winds of fame; Now as an angel of blessing classed, And now as a mad enthusiast. Called in his youth to sound and gauge The moral lapse of his race and age. And sharp as truth the contrast draw Of human frailty and perfect law; Possessed by the one dread thought that lent Its good to his fiery temperament. Up and down the world he went. As John the Baptist crying, repent! ' ' And the hearts of the people where he passed Swayed as the reeds sway in the blast, Under the spell of a voice which took In its compass the flow of Silva 's brook. And the mystical chimes of the bells of golds On the ephod 's hem of the priest of old — Now the roll of thunder, and now the awe Of the trumpet heard in the mount of law, A solemn fear on the listening crowd Fell like the shadow of a cloud. The sailor reeling from out the ships Whose masts stood thick in the river-slips Felt the jest and the curse die on his lips. Listened the fisherman rude and hard, THE COUNTRY OF WHITTIER 273 The calker rough from the builder's yard; The man of the market left his load, The teamster leaned on his bending goad; The maiden, and youth beside her, felt Their hearts in a closer union melt. And saw the flowers of their love in bloom Down the endless vistas of life to come. Old Age sat feebly brushing away From his ears the scanty locks of gray; And careless boyhood, living the free. Unconscious life of bird and tree, Suddenly wakened to a sense Of sin and its guilty consequence. It was as if an angel's voice Called the listeners up for their final choice; As if a strong hand rent apart The veils of sense from soul and heart, Showing in light ineffable The joys of heaven and woes of hell! All about in the misty air The hills seemed kneeUng in silent prayer; The rustle of leaves, the moaning sedge, The water's lap on its gravelled edge, The wailing pines, and, far and faint, The wood-dove's note of sad complaint, — To the solemn voice of the preacher lent An undertone as of low lament; And the roU of the sea from its sandy coast, On the easterly wind, now heard, now lost. Seemed the murmurous sound of the judgment host." After describing the effects of the great revival Whittier closes this wonderful poem on White- field in the following beautUul words : ' ' Under the church of Federal Street, Under the tread of its Sabbath feet, Walled about by its basement stones, 274 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS Lie the marvelous preacher's bones. No saintly honors to them are shown, No sign nor miracle have they known; But he who passes the ancient church. Stops in the shade of its belfry porch And ponders the wonderful life of him Who lies at rest in that charnel dim. Long shall the traveler strain his eye From the raUroad cars, as it plunges by. And the vanishing town behind him search For the slender spire of the Whitefield church; And feel for one moment the ghosts of trade, -^ And fashion, and folly, and pleasure laid, By the thought of that life of pure intent, That voice of warning yet eloquent. Of one on the errands of angels sent. And if where he labored the flood of sin Like a tide from the harbor-bar sets in, And over a life of time and sense The church spires lift their vain defense. Still, as the gem of its civic crown. Precious beyond the world 's renown. His memory hallows the ancient town. ' ' At the age of fifteen, Whitefield was employed by his brother to serve ale behind the counter at the Bell Inn. It was remarkable that the first money he earned he devoted to the purchase of the "Manual for Winchester Scholars," by the saintly Bishop Ken, and even when he was a com mon drawer of beer he spent his intervals of leis ure reading romances, which he exchanged for a time for the devotional pages of Thomas a Kempis, and busied himself also with the comi)o- sition of several sermons. It is very clear that THE COUNTRY OP WHITTIER 275 the whole bent of his being was toward preach ing. After his entrance as a servitor or domestic at Pembroke College, he heard of the band of young students at Oxford, who, like himself, were striving to live by rule and method, and after an interview with Charles Wesley he be came a member of the Holy Club. John Wesley organized the evangelical movement, in the Eighteenth Century, Charles Wesley was its hymn writer, and George Whitefleld was its preacher. He was the first to engage in open-air preaching. The first service of this kind he ever held was in Bristol, where he preached to a com pany of two hundred, who were impelled by curiosity to hear him. It was a good show to see a clergyman in gown and cassock declaiming in the open air like a Merry Andrew, but Whitefield felt that the ice was broken, and while the step he had taken shut the doors of the Bristol Church upon his as an unlicensed preacher, who had disgraced the cloth, he had crossed the Rubicon and found himself in the possession of new pow ers. It is said that while he stood in the open air addressing that crowd of smutty-faced, rude miners, he felt that the prophet's mantle had in truth fallen upon him. All his wonderful gifts of appeal, persuasion and exaltation were mani- 276 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS fested^in their full strength and splendor, and soon thousands thronged to hear him, and they were spellbound as if by a magician's wand. When he pleaded with these vast multitudes in the fields for his Savannah Orphanage, it is said his hat came back so full of coins that he had to ask for assistance to hold it. The Rev. Dr. Gillis, a cotemporary college di vine, says of Whitefield, that he was graceful and well-proportioned ; his stature was rather above the middle size; his complexion was very fair; his eyes were of a dark blue and small but sprightly; he had a squint on one of them, oc casioned either by the ignorance or carelessness of the nurse who attended him with measles when he was about four years old; his features were generally good and regular; his counte nance was manly, and his voice exceeding strong, but both were softened by an uncommon degree of sweetness. He was always very clean and neat, and often said pleasantly that a minister of the gospel ought to be without spot. His de portment was easy, without the least stiffness or formality, and his engaging polite manners made his company unusually agreeable. He was able to cast a spell over audiences, affecting not only the ignorant but also the educated and refined. THE COUNTRY OF WHITTIER 277 The wife of Jonathan Edwards said of him, that his voice was deep-toned and yet so clear and melodious that he speaks from a heart all aglow with love, and pours out a torrent of elo quence almost irresistible. As a preacher, I suppose that Whitefield im pressed the world of his day more than any other living minister. He could be distinctly heard in the open air by twenty thousand persons at once, and was accustomed to speak in the compass of a single week as many as forty hours, and he kept this up for years. I suppose it may be safely said that his voice was heard by more persons during the period of his active career than by any other man of his day. Something of his force may be understood by the tremendous impression he made upon the people. He excited more opposi tion by far than did John Wesley or any of the preachers associated with him. Cowper says of him: ' ' Assailed by scandal and the tongue of strife. His only answer was a blameless life. ' ' Sir James Stephen, in his essays of Ecclesi astical Biography," says: "If ever fellowship burned in the human heart with a pure and in tense flame, impressing the whole family of man, in a spirit of universal charity, it was in the heart of George Whitefield. He loved the world that hated him." 278 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS The Arabians have a proverb which says : "He is the best orator that can turn men's eyes into tears." Whitefield had the peculiar faculty of so dramatizing his speech that it seemed to move and walk before the eyes of his hearers. He was accustomed to draw such vivid pictures of the things he was handling that his hearers could be lieve that they actually saw and heard them. Isaac Taylor, one of the greatest writers of his time, says that Whitefield must be allowed to occupy the luminous center upon the field of Methodism. W. E. H. Lecky, in his History of England, declares that Whitefield lived perpetu ally in the sight of eternity, and that a desire to save souls was the single passion of his life. Praxton Hood calls him the Orpheus of the pul pit. Orpheus, we have been told, by the power of his music drew trees, stones, frozen mountain tops, and caused the floods to bow to his melody ; and so, Whitefield, by the power of his gospel caused a change to pass over the natures of stock- ish, hard men, full of rage and fury, as they came under his spell. In 1749 the Countess of Huntington opened her noble mansion in Park Street, London, as a preaching place, and appointed Whitefield her domestic chaplain. Here he met many of the dis tinguished people of his day, such as William Pitt, the great commoner. Lord North, the Earl THE COUNTRY OF W0ITTIER 279 of Chesterfield, Horace Walpole, Viscount Bolen- broke, Frederick, Prince of Wales, Sarah, Duch ess of Marlborough, and other leaders in politics and in society. While most of them came and went with seemingly no permanent change of character, two Scottish noblemen, the Earl of Buchan and the Marquis of Lothian, were ex ceptions. Horace Walpole heard him here and said: "The Methodists love your big sinners, and in deed they have a plentiful harvest." Henry Fielding, in his earliest novel, "Joseph An drews," published in 1742, makes his character of Parson Adams proclaim himself as utterly op posed to "Whit^eld's" enthusiasm, saying, "None but the devU himself could have the confi dence to preach his doctrine of faith." Whitefield made his first visit to New England in 1740. The effect of his preaching at Boston is described as extraordinary. The effect upon Harvard College was powerful and lasting. "At Cambridge," writes Dr. Coleman, a Boston clergyman, in a letter to Whitefield, "college is entirely changed. The students are full of God, and will, I hope, come out blessings in their gen eration, and I trust now are so to each other. Many of them are now, we think, truly born again, and several of them happy instruments of conversion to their fellows. The voice of prayer 280 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS and praise fill their chambers, and sincerity, fervor and love and seriousness of heart sit visi bly on their faces. I was told yesterday that not seven out of one hundred remain unaffected." A similar effect attended his preaching at Yale College in New Haven. He was welcomed in North Hampton by Jonathan Edwards, and he records in his diary his impressions of this visit. He says, "On the Sabbath felt wonderful satis faction in being at the house of Mr. Edwards. He is a son himself, and hath also a daughter of Abraham for his wife. A sweeter couple I have not seen. Their children were dressed not in silks and satins, but plain as becomes the chil dren of those who in all things ought to, be ex amples of Christian simplicity. She is a woman adorned with a meek and quiet spirit, and talks so feelingly and so soUdly of the things of God, and seems to be such a helpmeet to her husband that she caused me to renew those prayers, which for some months I have put up to God that He would send me a daughter of Abraham to be my wife." The college finally located at Princeton, New Jersey, in the year 1757, now known as Princeton University, has many associations of Whitefield, who received from it an honorary degree. Nas sau Hall, the acorn cup which held the oak of Princeton University, received a Methodist bap- THE COUNTRY OF WHITTIER 281 tism at its birth. Not only did Whitefield in spire and encourage its leaders, but the Method ists in England gave it funds, and one of its presidents, Davies, was a correspondent of Whitefield, honoring him as a restorer of the true faith. Dortmouth College had a similar origin. In its beginning, it was nourished by funds con tributed by English Methodists. Whitefield, in prosecuting his evangelical la bors, crossed the Atlantic thirteen times. To his zeal and marvelous eloquence various religious bodies owe their later religious life and earnest ness. The Congregational churches of New Eng land, Presbyterian of the Middle States, and the Baptist of the South were alike quickened by this apostolic man. Though he did not organize his labors in the New World, he prepared the way for the coming of Wesley's itinerancy at a later time. The last sermon that Whitefield ever preached in the open air was at Exeter, Mass., from this text : "Examine yourselfs, whether ye be in the faith, prove your own selves ; know ye not your own selves how that Jesus Christ is in you, ex cept ye be reprobates." After preaching at Exeter he rode on to Newburyport with his friend, Jonathan Parsons, at whose house, close by the church, he was wont to stay. In the eve- 282 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS ning, people, having learned that he had come to the town, gathered around Jonathan Parson's house that he might speak to them a few words. He stood with a candle in his hand on the door step and spoke earnestly to them regarding eter nal salvation, until the candle almost burned away, then he withdrew and ascended to his bed chamber until six o'clock the next morning. His last act before going to bed had been to read from the Bible and a volume of Watts' Hymns. Benjamin Franklin heartily acknowledged how beneficial had been the influence of White fleld upon society at large, and John Wesley asked: "Have we read or heard of anyone who has been the blessed instrument of bringing so many sinners from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God?" The qualities that made George Whitefield the greatest preacher of his time were simplicity, di rectness, marvelous descriptive power, earnest ness, pathos, action, voice and fiuency, and these qualities, according to Dr. Ryle, the Bishop of Liverpool, he possessed in unrivaled combina tion. When Whitefield appealed to audiences it was soul speaking to soul. Some one has said that Whitefield was the soul of the evangelical movement, John Wesley was its system, and Charles Wesley was its song. CHAPTER XXIV WINTER DAYS IN THE DREAMLAND OP FLORIDA AN interesting thing about Florida is that it is made up of many states piled one above the other. The first layer of this dream land region is Spanish. A journey to the Span ish slice of Florida is like a visit to Seville, Gran ada, Valencia, Barcelona, Toledo, Cordova, and Madrid. This layer of Florida is made signifi cant by association with Columbus, who discov ered America, with Juan Ponce de Leon, who dis covered Florida and who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage to America, and with Fer nando De Soto, who first attempted the conquest of Florida. Next we have a Huguenot Florida, associated with Captain Jean Ribaut, who came here with Laudonnier in 1564. Then, above this, we have another Spanish Florida, associated with Pedro Memendez, who settled St. Augustine in 1565. Next, an Indian layer, because the Indians, under Saturvia, began war on the Spaniards in 1566. Next, again a French Florida, associated with de 283 284 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS Gourges, who landed in Florida* to revenge the massacre of the French by Menendez in 1568. Then we have a little section of English Flor ida, associated with Sir Francis Drake, who at tacked St. Augustine in 1586. Next Governor Moore, of South Carolina, invaded Florida, and attacked St. Augustine in 1702. General Ogle thorpe, governor of Georgia, whose private secre tary was Charles Wesley, the hymn writer, at tacked St. Augustine and besieged the fort in 1740. Then we have again a Spanish state, associated with Don Alonzo Fernandez de Herrera, who was appointed governor of Florida in 1755, and who completed Fort Marion in 1756. Then we have a layer of EngUsh again, when Nicholas TurnbuU brought the Minorcans to Florida and settled them near New Smyrna in 1767, after Florida had been ceded to England. Florida was first ceded to England in exchange for Cuba in 1762, then in 1784 it was ceded back to Spain in exchange for the Bahama Islands. The Spanish then occupied Florida until July 12, 1821, when the red and yellow banner of Spain gave way to the Stars and Stripes of the American Union. Andrew Jackson, for whom Jacksonville was named, was appointed governor of Florida while it was still a territory in 1821. THE DREAMLAND OF FLORIDA 285 A study of the history of the State from 1513 down to 1919 reveals the fact that the various strata of the peninsula — Spanish, French, Span ish, English, Spanish and American — have all been made out of dreams. In this part of the world every foreign settler has been a dreamer. Here men have come to secure those magical lights that dawn and generaUy fade within them. It is, physically, a many-colored land, vying in outward appearance, seemingly, with the many national colors which unite to make up its his tory. According to the teachings of an ancient scrip ture, it was said that to whatsoever place one would travel that place one's own self became. So all the various pilgrims to this land of adven ture and dream have been converted into the image and likeness of the country to which they came to make their home. It has been said that every man is a Shakespeare in his dreams and that the dreamer of a landscape is really superior to a Tumer who paints one, because a dreamer makes his trees to bend before the wind and his clouds to move in fleets across the sky. If this be true, Florida has the distinction of being as sociated with more Shakespeares than any other region of the same size under the sun. 286 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS The truth is, the moment we close our eyes to the material objects around us and get face to face with our thoughts and our dreams, we flnd ourselves alone with mystery and miracle. The entire history of Florida reads like a dream. I visited the house in St. Augustine once owned by Colonel Frederick Dent, father-in-law of General Ulysses S. Grant. It is now occupied by Mr. Arthur Barrett, a former citizen of St. Louis. At this place General Grant, General Sherman and General Sheridan once spent a day together on a visit to Colonel Dent, and each one of the three generals planted an orange tree in his garden. The most remarkable event in the history of Florida was the coming of Henry M. Flagler to the State in 1883. He was the flrst man to reach Florida who, in addition to a wealth of dreams, brought also millions and milUons of money with which to convert his dreams into realities. He came to a land that, in the language of the poet, was: A tangled wilderness, or trackless shore, Unused, untrafBcked, spread beneath the skies. This land lay, till it woke with glad surprise To see the long neglect of years was o 'er. And waste and wilderness should be no more; For one had come who read the future; wise And skilled to view the land with prophet's eyes, Who yielded freely, richly, of his store, And where undreamed of beauty slept before, His faith has been repaid with Paradise. - THE DREAMLAND OF FLORIDA 287 From far and near there comes a joyful host, To share the glory of the land and sea. While prosperous towns and fruitful groves we boast. His name will be remembered gratefully. And will not be forgotten ou this coast, TiU Time is shadowed by Eternity. He came there dreaming of flelds to be sown, and he sowed them. He came dreaming of flelds to be reaped, and he reaped them. He came dreaming of railways, and he planted them. They were all folded in the depths of his soul when he arrived in Florida. He appeared in dreamland to convert it from a swamp into a habitation for human beings. He was a vision ary, but his visions were workable. His visions were startling and immense, but when they be gan to flash out of his imagination into great hotels and cities and railroads people felt that a dreamer had at last come to Florida capable of giving to the state something from the hidden world of his imagination to make it blossom as the rose. He came to Florida with a soul full of palaces. He converted them into vast hostelries for tourists to dream his own dreams after him in. He seemed to be the most impractical child in the shape of a grown man that ever lived, be cause he proposed, as a magician, to bring out of dreams experienced as the deeps of sleep a com monwealth of beauty. 288 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS People could not resist the impression when they saw him that divine realities are still around us and are related to us ; that they await us ; that they beckon us to come up to them and sit in high places with them. He seemed to say to those who had lost their bearings, "You are all lost princes, herding obscurely on levels of life beneath you." He said to them : "The romance of your spirits are the most marvelous stories." He made the impression that the possible wan derings of every soul were greater than any ever made by Ulysses of classic fame. He seemed to say that every man is a bird of paradise and should not live as a wingless outcast, huddled under the rocks, without hope and without in spiration. He had come to the fountain of youth, seem ingly, to teach the people that the land of im mortal youth everyone might find for himself in the depths of his own life. He seemed to feel that earth can become magical and sweet to all who are willing to throw sweetness and light into it. He believed in the eternity of the spirit, because it was only in the light of such a belief that he could interpret himself to himself and understand how he could take the myriad images and dreams, pouring from the depths of his soul, and use them as so much raw material out of THE DREAMLAND OF FLORIDA 289 which to make grounds for Wall Street to come every winter to play golf on. The first thing Mr. Flagler did to excite world wide attention to himself as a dreamer and vis ionary was to convert the history of Spain into three of the most remarkable hotels ever built on earth. Mr. Flagler was the son of a Presbyterian preacher, whose salary was about $400 a year. There is not a better place on earth in which to develop a dreamer than inside the home of a Presbyterian preacher. All the training he ever had at school was obtained before he was four teen years old, so he left home at that age and walked ten miles to the town of Medina, in Ohio, carrying a carpet bag. At Medina he got aboard a freight boat on the Erie Canal and went to Buffalo. He arrived at the little viUage of Re public, in Ohio, and got a position at $5 a month and his board in a country store, but he worked hard and he saved money. When he had accumulated a little money he moved to Belleville, a small place in the next county, and went into the grain business. John D. Rockefeller was then a commission merchant in Cleveland, and Flagler sent him a good many carloads of wheat, which he sold as his agent. He afterward went to Saginaw and tried to 290 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS manufacture salt. There he lost the little for tune he had accumulated and owed about $50,000 to about 500 Irishmen who had been working in his salt factory. He borrowed enough money to pay his debts, and then went to Cleveland and engaged in the corn and produce commission business. John D. Rockefeller and William Rockefeller and Samuel Andrews had started a small oil refinery in Cleveland on the side of a hill. When the second refinery was buUt, in 1867, Stephen Harkness loaned him $100,000 to enter into partnership with Mr. Rockefeller and his associates. As other refineries sprung up they bought them, and in 1870 they orgamzed the Standard OU Company. In 1885 Mr. Flagler paid his first visit to Flor ida and became impressed with the business pos sibiUties presented there by the railroad field in connection with the development of winter re sorts. The State of Florida is very largely his creation. He not only brought the world to see her beauty and her resources, but he transformed her wilderness into towns, and placed churches and schools and farms where only the hunter and the pioneer had made their homes. Owing to the abuse of rich men and great cor porations, the public has been led to believe that they are the enemies of the common people. It has been claimed that a man who owns $100,000,- THE DREAMLAND OF FLORIDA 291 000 has $99,000,000 which belong to the poor la borers who contributed to the wealth of that rich man. Of course, such ideas pushed a little fur ther lead to anarchism, lawlessness, a division of property, the destruction of all corporation work and Bolshevism. When Henry M. Flagler passed away he was one of the richest men in the world. He went to a state fit only for oranges, malaria and early vegetables. He built 152 miles of railroad from Jacksonville to Key West. One hundred and six miles of this was buUt over the ocean. The over sea part of this road is the greatest triumph of engineering skUl ever known. It spans the waters of the South Atlantic and reaches the hitherto inaccessible southernmost point of the nation's domain, the Gibraltar of America. Through his engineers and superintendents of construction, he went to school to the ocean, and the lessons leamed from the sea they converted into arches that span the ocean for 106 miles. His pastor. Dr. George Ward, asked him once his purpose in Florida. Dr. Ward wanted to know what he was trying to do in Florida. He asked, "Is this investment or philanthropy or are you anxious to pose as a state builder?" "That is pertinent enough," repUed Mr. Flagler, and he went on : "I believe this state is the easiest place 292 THE GEOGRAPHY OF GENIUS for many men to gain a living. I do not beUeve anyone else would develop it if I do not. This is a safe kind of work for me to do, and I hope to live long enough to prove I am a good business man by bietting a dividend on my investment." According to the testimony of Mr. Ward, Mr. Flagler one day called him into his office and showed him a map of Florida, with a red line drawn through the Keys down to Key West. "What do you think of that?" asked Mr. Flagler. "Why," answered Dr. Ward, "it looks to me like a very fair map of Florida. What is there unique about it?" "You notice that red line?" asked Mr. Flagler. "Yes, what is it?" "That is a rail road I am going to build," was Mr. Flagler's an swer. "What! a railroad in that God-forsaken section?" "Yes." "Well," said Dr. Ward, "you need a guardian." He took a deUght in overcoming difficulties. He was always looking for new worlds to con quer. He was a very devout, regular attendant at the Presbyterian Church at Palm Beach. He was fond of a poem which reads as follows : Is aU the beautiful and good Delusive and misunderstood? And has the soul no forward reach? And do indeed the facts impeach The theories the teachers teach? And is this immortality The child of ideality Delusion or reality ? THE DREAMLAND OF FLORIDA 293 And yet — at times — We get advice That seems like chimes From Paradise; The soul doth sometimes seem to be In sunshine which it cannot see; And times the spirit seems to roam Beyond the land, above the foam, Back to some half -forgotten home.