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McClure's Magazine December, 1895

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Title: McClure's Magazine December, 1895

Editor: Ida M. Tarbell


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE DECEMBER, 1895 ***

MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE.


Vol. VI. DECEMBER, 1895. No. I.




ABRAHAM LINCOLN.


EDITED BY IDA M. TARBELL.


II.


LIFE IN INDIANA.--REMOVAL TO ILLINOIS.--LINCOLN STARTS OUT IN LIFE FOR
HIMSELF AT TWENTY-ONE.--THE BUILDING OF THE FLATBOAT AND THE TRIP TO
NEW ORLEANS.--LINCOLN HIRES OUT AS A GROCERY CLERK IN NEW SALEM.--HIS
FIRST VOTE.


INDIANA REMINISCENCES OF LINCOLN.

Abraham Lincoln grew to manhood in Southern Indiana. When he reached
Spencer County in 1816, he was seven years of age; when he left in
1830, he had passed his twenty-first birthday. This period of a life
shows usually the natural bent of the character, and we have found in
these fourteen years of Lincoln's life signs of the qualities of
greatness which distinguished him. We have seen that, in spite of the
fact that he had no wise direction, that he was brought up by a father
with no settled purpose, and that he lived in a pioneer community,
where a young man's life at best is but a series of makeshifts, he had
developed a determination to make something out of himself, and a
desire to know, which led him to neglect no opportunity to learn.

The only unbroken outside influence which directed and stimulated him
in his ambitions was that coming first from his mother, then from his
step-mother. It should never be forgotten that these two women, both
of them of unusual earnestness and sweetness of spirit, were one or
the other of them at the boy's side throughout this period. The ideal
they held before him was the simple ideal of the early American, that
if a boy is upright and industrious he may aspire to any place within
the gift of the country. The boy's nature told him they were right.
Everything he read confirmed their teachings, and he cultivated, in
every way open to him, his passion to know and to be something.

There are many proofs that young Lincoln's characteristics were
recognized at this period by his associates, that his determination to
excel, if not appreciated, yet made its imprint. In 1865, thirty-five
years after he left Gentryville, Mr. Herndon, anxious to save all that
was known of Lincoln in Indiana, went among his old associates, and
with a sincerity and thoroughness worthy of great respect, interviewed
them. At that time there were still living numbers of the people with
whom he had been brought up. They all remembered something of him. It
is curious to note that all of these people tell of his doing
something different from what other boys did, something sufficiently
superior to have made a keen impression upon them. In almost every
case the person had his own special reason for admiring young Lincoln.
His facility for making rhymes and writing essays was the admiration
of many who considered it the more remarkable because "essays and
poetry were not taught in school," and "Abe took it up on his own
account."

[Illustration: REV. ALLEN BROONER.

A neighbor of Thomas Lincoln, still living near Gentryville. Mr.
Brooner's wife was a friend of Nancy Hanks Lincoln. The two women died
within a few days of each other, and were buried side by side. When
the tombstone was placed at Mrs. Lincoln's grave, no one could state
positively which was Mrs. Brooner's and which Mrs. Lincoln's grave.
Mr. Allen Brooner gave his opinion, and the stone was placed; but the
iron fence incloses both graves, which lie in a half-acre tract of
land owned by the United States government. Mr. Allen Brooner, after
his wife's death, became a minister of the United Brethren Church, and
moved to Illinois. He received his mail at New Salem when Abraham
Lincoln was the postmaster at that place. Mr. Brooner confirms Dr.
Holland's story that "Abe" once walked three miles after his day's
work, to make right a six-and-a-quarter-cents mistake he had made in a
trade with a woman. Like all of the old settlers of Gentryville, he
remembers the departure of the Lincolns for Illinois. "When the
Lincolns were getting ready to leave," says Mr. Brooner, "Abraham and
his stepbrother, John Johnston, came over to our house to swap a horse
for a yoke of oxen. 'Abe' was always a quiet fellow. John did all the
talking, and seemed to be the smartest of the two. If any one had been
asked that day which would make the greatest success in life, I think
the answer would have been John Johnston."]

Many others were struck by the clever use he made of his gift for
writing. The wit he showed in taking revenge for a social slight by a
satire on the Grigsbys, who had failed to invite him to a wedding,
made a lasting impression in Gentryville. That he was able to write so
well that he could humiliate his enemies more deeply than if he had
resorted to the method of taking revenge current in the country--that
is, thrashing them--seemed to his friends a mark of surprising
superiority.

Others remembered his quick-wittedness in helping his friends.

"We are indebted to Kate Roby," says Mr. Herndon, "for an incident
which illustrates alike his proficiency in orthography and his natural
inclination to help another out of the mire. The word 'defied' had
been given out by Schoolmaster Crawford, but had been misspelled
several times when it came Miss Roby's turn. 'Abe stood on the
opposite side of the room,' related Miss Roby to me in 1865, 'and was
watching me. I began d-e-f--, and then I stopped, hesitating whether
to proceed with an i or a y. Looking up, I beheld Abe, a grin covering
his face, and pointing with his index finger to his eye. I took the
hint, spelled the word with an i, and it went through all right.'"

This same Miss Roby it was who said of Lincoln, "He was better read
then than the world knows or is likely to know exactly.... He often
and often commented or talked to me about what he had read--seemed to
read it out of the book as he went along--did so to others. He was the
learned boy among us unlearned folks. He took great pains to explain;
could do it so simply. He was diffident then, too."

[Illustration: JOHN W. LAMAR.

Mr. Lamar was one of the "small boys" of Spencer County when Lincoln
left Indiana, but old enough to have seen much of him and to have
known his characteristics and his reputation in the county. He is
still living near his old home, and gave our representative in Indiana
interesting reminiscences which are incorporated into the present
article.]

[Illustration: LINCOLN IN 1860.

From an ambrotype in the possession of Mr. Marcus L. Ward of Newark,
New Jersey. This portrait of Mr. Lincoln was made in Springfield,
Illinois, on May 20, 1860, for the late Hon. Marcus L. Ward, Governor
of New Jersey. Mr. Ward had gone down to Springfield to see Mr.
Lincoln, and while there asked him for his picture. The
President-elect replied that he had no picture which was satisfactory,
but would gladly sit for one. The two gentlemen went out immediately,
and in Mr. Ward's presence Mr. Lincoln had the above picture taken.]

One man was impressed by the character of the sentences he had given
him for a copy. "It was considered at that time," said he, "that Abe
was the best penman in the neighborhood. One day, while he was on a
visit at my mother's, I asked him to write some copies for me. He very
willingly consented. He wrote several of them, but one of them I have
never forgotten, although a boy at that time. It was this:

  "'Good boys who to their books apply
  Will all be great men by and by.'"

All of his comrades remembered his stories and his clearness in
argument. "When he appeared in company," says Nat Grigsby, "the boys
would gather and cluster around him to hear him talk. Mr. Lincoln was
figurative in his speech, talks, and conversation. He argued much from
analogy, and explained things hard for us to understand by stories,
maxims, tales, and figures. He would almost always point his lesson or
idea by some story that was plain and near us, that we might instantly
see the force and bearing of what he said."

There is one other testimony to his character as a boy which should
not be omitted. It is that of his step-mother:

"Abe was a good boy, and I can say, what scarcely one woman--a
mother--can say in a thousand, Abe never gave me a cross word or look,
and never refused, in fact or appearance, to do anything I requested
him. I never gave him a cross word in all my life.... His mind and
mine--what little I had--seemed to run together. He was here after he
was elected President. He was a dutiful son to me always. I think he
loved me truly. I had a son, John, who was raised with Abe. Both were
good boys; but I must say, both now being dead, that Abe was the best
boy I ever saw, or expect to see."

[Illustration: WILLIAM JONES.

The store in Gentryville, in which Lincoln first made his reputation
as a debater and story-teller, was owned by Mr. Jones. The year before
the Lincolns moved to Illinois Abraham clerked in the store, and it is
said that when he left Indiana, Mr. Jones sold him a pack of goods
which he peddled on his journey. Mr. Jones was the representative from
Spencer County in the State legislature from 1838 to 1841. He is no
longer living. His son, Captain William Jones, is still in
Gentryville.]

[Illustration: PIGEON CREEK CHURCH.

From a photograph loaned by W.W. Admire of Chicago. This little log
church or "meetin' house" is where the Lincolns attended services in
Indiana. The pulpit is said to have been made by Thomas Lincoln. The
building was razed about fifteen years ago, after having been used for
several years as a tobacco barn.]

These are impressions of Mr. Lincoln gathered in Indiana thirty years
ago, when his companions were alive. To-day there are people living in
Spencer County who were small boys when he was a large one, and who
preserve curiously interesting impressions of him. A representative of
MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE who has recently gone in detail over the ground of
Lincoln's early life, says: "The people who live in Spencer County are
interested in any one who is interested in Abraham Lincoln." They
showed her the flooring he whip-sawed, the mantles, doors, and
window-casings he helped make, the rails he split, the cabinets he and
his father made, and scores of relics cut from planks and rails he
handled. They told what they remembered of his rhymes and how he would
walk miles to hear a speech or sermon, and, returning, would repeat
the whole in "putty good imitation." Many remembered his coming
evenings to sit around the fireplace with their older brothers and
sisters, and the stories he told and the pranks he played there until
ordered home by the elders of the household.

Captain John Lamar who was a very small boy in one of the families
where Lincoln was well known, has many interesting reminiscences which
he is fond of repeating. "He told me of riding to mill with his father
one very hot day. As they drove along the hot road they saw a boy
sitting on the top rail of an old-fashioned stake-and-rider worm
fence. When they came close they saw that the boy was reading, and had
not noticed their approach. His father, turning to him, said: 'John,
look at that boy yonder, and mark my words, he will make a smart man
out of himself. I may not see it, but you'll see if my words don't
come true.' The boy was Abraham Lincoln."

Captain Lamar tells many good stories about the early days: "Uncle
Jimmy Larkins, as everybody called him, was a great hero in my
childish eyes. Why, I cannot now say, without it was his manners.
There had been a big fox chase, and Uncle Jimmy was telling about it.
Of course he was the hero. I was only a little shaver, and I stood in
front of Uncle Jimmy, looking up into his eyes, but he never noticed
me. He looked at Abraham Lincoln, and 'Abe, I've got the best horse in
the world--he won the race and never drew a long breath;' but Abe paid
no attention to Uncle Jimmy, and I got mad at the big, overgrown
fellow, and wanted him to listen to my hero's story. Uncle Jimmy was
determined that Abe should hear, and repeated the story. 'I say, Abe,
I have the best horse in the world; after all that running he never
drew a long breath.' Then Abe, looking down at my little dancing hero,
said, 'Well, Larkins, why don't you tell us how many short breaths he
drew?' This raised a laugh on Uncle Jimmy, and he got mad, and
declared he'd fight Abe if he wasn't so big. He jumped around until
Abe quietly said: 'Now, Larkins, if you don't shut up I'll throw you
in that water.' I was very uneasy and angry at the way my hero was
treated, but I lived to change my views about _heroes_."

[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

From a photograph in the collection of T.H. Bartlett, of Boston,
Massachusetts.[A] Mr. Bartlett regards this as his earliest portrait
of Mr. Lincoln, but does not know when or where it was taken. This
portrait is also in the Oldroyd Collection at Washington, D.C., and is
dated 1856.]

[Footnote A: The collection of Lincoln portraits owned by Mr. T.H.
Bartlett, the sculptor, is the most complete and the most
intelligently arranged which we have examined. Mr. Bartlett began
collecting fully twenty years ago, his aim being to secure data for a
study of Mr. Lincoln from a physiognomical point of view. He has
probably the earliest portrait which exists, the one here given,
excepting the one used as a frontispiece in our November number. He
has a large number of the Illinois pictures made from 1858 to 1860,
such as the Gilmer picture, which we use as a frontispiece in the
present number, a large collection of Brady photographs, the masks,
Volk's bust, and other interesting portraits. These he has studied
from a sculptor's point of view, comparing them carefully with the
portraiture of other men, as Webster and Emerson. Mr. Bartlett has
embodied his study of Mr. Lincoln in an illustrated lecture which is a
model of what such a lecture should be, suggestive, human, delightful.
All his fine collection of Lincoln portraits Mr. Bartlett has put
freely at our disposal, an act of courtesy and generosity for which
the readers of MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, as well as its editors, cannot fail
to be deeply grateful.]


THE LINCOLNS DECIDE TO LEAVE INDIANA.

Abraham was twenty-one years old when Thomas Lincoln decided to leave
Indiana in the spring of 1830. The reason Dennis Hanks gives for this
removal was a disease called the "milk-sick." Abraham Lincoln's
mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, and several of their relatives who had
followed them from Kentucky, had died of it. The cattle had been
carried off by it. Neither brute nor human life seemed to be safe. As
Dennis Hanks says: "This was reason enough (ain't it?) for leaving."

The place chosen for their new home was the Sangamon country in
central Illinois. It was a country of great renown in the West, the
name meaning "The land where there is plenty to eat." One of the
family--John Hanks, a cousin of Dennis--was already there, and sent
them inviting reports.

Gentryville saw young Lincoln depart with real regret, and his friends
gave him a score of rude proofs that he would not be forgotten. Our
representative in Indiana found that almost every family who
remembered the Lincolns retained some impression of their leaving.

"Neighbors seemed, in those days," she writes, "like relatives. The
entire Lincoln family stayed the last night before starting on their
journey with Mr. Gentry. He was loath to part with Lincoln, so
'accompanied the movers along the road a spell.' They stopped on a
hill which overlooks Buckthorn Valley, and looked their 'good-by' to
their old home and to the home of Sarah Lincoln Grigsby, to the grave
of the mother and wife, to all their neighbors and friends. Buckthorn
Valley held many dear recollections to the movers."

After they were gone James Gentry planted the cedar tree which now
marks the site of the Lincoln home.[A] "The folks who come lookin'
around have taken twigs until you can't reach any more very handy,"
those who point out the tree say.

[Footnote A: See November number of MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, page 502.]

[Illustration: GREEN B. TAYLOR.

Son of Mr. James Taylor, for whom Lincoln ran the ferry-boat at the
mouth of Anderson Creek. Mr. Taylor, now in his eighty-second year,
lives in South Dakota. He remembers Mr. Lincoln perfectly, and wrote
our Indiana correspondent that it was true that his father hired
Abraham Lincoln for one year, at six dollars a month, and that he was
"well pleased with the boy."]

[Illustration: THE HILL NEAR GENTRYVILLE FROM WHICH THE LINCOLNS TOOK
THEIR LAST LOOK AT THEIR INDIANA HOME.]

[Illustration: SAMUEL CRAWFORD.

Only living son of Josiah Crawford, who lent Lincoln the Weems's "Life
of Washington." To our representative in Indiana, who secured this
picture of Mr. Crawford, he said, when asked if he remembered the
Lincolns: "Oh, yes; I remember them, although I was not Abraham's age.
He was twelve years older than I. One day I ran in, calling out,
'Mother! mother! Aaron Grigsby is sparking Sally Lincoln; I saw him
kiss her!' Mother scolded me, and told me I must stop watching Sally,
or I wouldn't get to the wedding. [It will be remembered that Sally
Lincoln was 'help' in the Crawford family, and that she afterwards
married Aaron Grigsby.] Neighbors thought lots more of each other then
than now, and it seems like everybody liked the Lincolns. We were well
acquainted, for Mr. Thomas Lincoln was a good carpenter, and made the
cupboard, mantels, doors, and sashes in our old home that was burned
down."]

Lincoln himself felt keenly the parting from his friends, and he
certainly never forgot his years in the Hoosier State. One of the most
touching experiences he relates in all his published letters is his
emotion at visiting his old Indiana home fourteen years after he had
left it. So strongly was he moved by the scenes of his first conscious
sorrows, efforts, joys, ambitions, that he put into verse the feelings
they awakened.[A]

[Footnote A: Letter to ---- Johnston, April 18, 1846. "Abraham
Lincoln. Complete Works." Edited by John G. Nicolay and John Hay.
Volume I., pages 86, 87. The Century Co.]

[Illustration: JOHN E. ROLL.

Born in Green Village, New Jersey, June 4, 1814. He went to Illinois
in 1830, the same year that Mr. Lincoln went, settling in Sangamon
town, where he had relatives. It was here he met Lincoln, and made the
"pins" for the flatboat. Later Mr. Roll went to Springfield, where he
bought large quantities of land and built many houses. A quarter of
the city is now known as "Roll's addition." Mr. Roll was well
acquainted with Lincoln, and when the President left Springfield he
gave Mr. Roll his dog, Fido. Mr. Roll knew Stephen A. Douglas well,
and carries a watch which once belonged to the "Little Giant."]

While he never attempted to conceal the poverty and hardship of these
days, and would speak humorously of the "pretty pinching times" he
saw, he never regarded his life at this time as mean or pitiable.

Frequently he talked to his friends in later years of his boyhood, and
always with apparent pleasure. "Mr. Lincoln told this story" (of his
youth), says Leonard Swett, "as the story of a happy childhood. There
was nothing sad or pinched, and nothing of want, and no allusion to
want in any part of it. His own description of his youth was that of a
joyous, happy boyhood. It was told with mirth and glee, and
illustrated by pointed anecdote, often interrupted by his jocund
laugh."

And he was right. There was nothing ignoble or mean in this Indiana
pioneer life. It was rude, but it was only the rudeness which the
ambitious are willing to endure in order to push on to a better
condition than they otherwise could know. These people did not accept
their hardships apathetically. They did not regard them as permanent.
They were only the temporary deprivations necessary in order to
accomplish what they had come into the country to do. For this reason
they could endure hopefully all that was hard. It is worth notice,
too, that there was nothing belittling in their life, there was no
pauperism, no shirking. Each family provided for its own simple wants,
and had the conscious dignity which comes from being equal to a
situation.

[Illustration: SANGAMON TOWN IN 1831.
Drawn by J. McCan Davis with the aid of Mr. John E. Roll, a former
resident.]


FROM INDIANA TO ILLINOIS.

The company which emigrated to Illinois included the families of
Thomas Lincoln, Dennis Hanks--married to one of Lincoln's
step-sisters--and Levi Hall, thirteen persons in all. They sold land,
cattle, and grain, and much of their household goods, and were ready
in March of 1830 for their journey. All the possessions which the
three families had to take with them were packed into a big wagon--the
first one Thomas Lincoln had ever owned, it is said--to which four
oxen were attached, and the caravan started. The weather was still
cold, the streams were swollen, and the roads were muddy, but the
party started out bravely. Inured to hardships, alive to all the new
sights on their route, every day brought them amusement and
adventures, and especially to young Lincoln the journey must have been
of keen interest. He drove the oxen on this trip, he tells us, and,
according to a story current in Gentryville, he succeeded in doing a
fair peddler's business on the route. Captain William Jones, in whose
father's store Lincoln had spent so many hours in discussion and in
story-telling, and for whom he had worked the last winter he was in
Indiana, says that before leaving the State Abraham invested all his
money, some thirty-odd dollars, in notions. Though the country through
which they expected to pass was but sparsely settled, he believed he
could dispose of them. "A set of knives and forks was the largest item
entered on the bill," says Mr. Jones; "the other items were needles,
pins, thread, buttons, and other little domestic necessities. When the
Lincolns reached their new home, near Decatur, Illinois, Abraham wrote
back to my father, stating that he had doubled his money on his
purchases by selling them along the road. Unfortunately we did not
keep that letter, not thinking how highly we would have prized it
years afterwards."

The pioneers were a fortnight on their journey. The route they took we
do not exactly know, though we may suppose that it would be that by
which they would avoid the most watercourses. We know from Mr. H.C.
Whitney that the travellers reached Macon County from the south, for
once when he was in Decatur with Mr. Lincoln the two strolled out for
a walk, and when they came to the court-house, "Lincoln," says Mr.
Whitney, "walked out a few feet in front, and after shifting his
position two or three times, said, as he looked up at the building,
partly to himself and partly to me: 'Here is the exact spot where I
stood by our wagon when we moved from Indiana twenty-six years ago;
this isn't six feet from the exact spot.'... I asked him if he, at
that time, had expected to be a lawyer and practise law in that
court-house; to which he replied: 'No; I didn't know I had sense
enough to be a lawyer then.' He then told me he had frequently
thereafter tried to locate the route by which they had come; and that
he had decided that it was near to the line of the main line of the
Illinois Central Railroad."

[Illustration: LINCOLN, OFFUTT, AND GREEN ON THE FLATBOAT AT NEW
SALEM.

From a painting in the State Capitol, Springfield, Illinois. This
picture is crude and, from a historic point of view, inaccurate. The
celebrated flatboat built by Lincoln and by him piloted to New
Orleans, was a much larger and better craft than the one here
portrayed. The little structure over the dam is meant for the Rutledge
and Cameron mill, but the real mill was a far more pretentious affair.
There was not only a grist-mill, but also a saw-mill which furnished
lumber to the settlers for many miles around. The mill was built in
1829. March 5, 1830, we find John Overstreet appearing before the
County Commissioners' Court at Springfield and averring upon oath
"that he is informed and believes that John Cameron and James Rutledge
have erected a mill-dam on the Sangamon River which obstructs the
navigation of said river;" and the Commissioners issued a notice to
Cameron and Rutledge to alter the dam so as to restore the "safe
navigation" of the river. James M. Rutledge, of Petersburg, a nephew
of the mill-owner, helped build the mill, and says of it: "The mill
was a frame structure, and was solidly built. They used to grind corn
mostly, though some flour was made. At times they would run day and
night. The saw-mill had an old-fashioned upright saw, and stood on the
bank." For a time this mill was operated by Denton Offutt, and was
under the immediate supervision of Lincoln. A few heavy stakes, a part
of the old dam, still show themselves at low water.--_Note prepared by
J. McCan Davis_.]

[Illustration: LINCOLN'S AXE.

This broad-axe is said to have been owned originally by Abram Bales,
of New Salem; and, according to tradition, it was bought from him by
Lincoln. After Lincoln forsook the woods, he sold the axe to one Mr.
Irvin. Mr. L.W. Bishop, of Petersburg, now has the axe, having gotten
it directly from Mr. Irvin. There are a number of affidavits attesting
its genuineness. The axe has evidently seen hard usage, and is now
covered with a thick coat of rust.]


A NEW HOME.

The party settled some ten miles west of Decatur, in Macon County.
Here John Hanks had the logs already cut for their new home, and
Lincoln, Dennis Hanks, and Hall soon had a cabin erected. Mr. Lincoln
himself (though writing in the third person) says: "Here they built a
log cabin, into which they removed, and made sufficient of rails to
fence ten acres of ground, fenced and broke the ground, and raised a
crop of sown corn upon it the same year. These are, or are supposed to
be, the rails about which so much is being said just now, though these
are far from being the first or only rails ever made by Abraham."[A]

[Illustration: MODEL OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S DEVICE FOR LIFTING VESSELS
OVER SHOALS.

The inscription above this model, which is shown to all visitors to
the Model Hall of the Patent Office, reads: "6469 Abraham Lincoln,
Springfield, Ill. Improvement in method of lifting vessels over
shoals. Patented May 22, 1849." The apparatus consists of a bellows,
placed in each side of the hull of the craft, just below the
water-line, and worked by an odd but simple system of ropes and
pulleys. When the keel of the vessel grates against the sand or
obstruction, the bellows is filled with air; and, thus buoyed up, the
vessel is expected to float over the shoal. The model is about
eighteen or twenty inches long, and looks as if it had been whittled
with a knife out of a shingle and a cigar box. There is no elaboration
in the apparatus beyond that necessary to show the operation of
buoying the vessel over the obstructions.]

If they were far from being his "first and only rails," they certainly
were the most famous ones he or anybody else ever split. This was the
last work he did for his father, for in the summer of that year (1830)
he exercised the right of majority and started out to shift for
himself. When he left his home to start life for himself, he went
empty-handed. He was already some months over twenty-one years of
age, but he had nothing in the world, not even a suit of respectable
clothes; and one of the first pieces of work he did was "to split four
hundred rails for every yard of brown jeans dyed with white walnut
bark that would be necessary to make him a pair of trousers." He had
no trade, no profession, no spot of land, no patron, no influence. Two
things recommended him to his neighbors--he was strong, and he was a
good fellow.

[Footnote A: Short autobiography written in 1860 for use in preparing
a campaign biography. "Abraham Lincoln. Complete Works." Edited by
John G. Nicolay and John Hay. The Century Co. Volume I., page 639.]

[Illustration: LINCOLN IN 1857.

From a photograph loaned by H.W. Fay of De Kalb, Illinois. The
original was taken early in 1857 by Alex. Hesler of Chicago. Mr. Fay
writes of the picture: "I have a letter from Mr. Hesler stating that
one of the lawyers came in and made arrangements for the sitting so
that the members of the bar could get prints. Lincoln said at the time
that he did not know why the boys wanted such a homely face." Mr.
Joseph Medill of Chicago went with Mr. Lincoln to have the picture
taken. He says that the photographer insisted on smoothing down
Lincoln's hair, but Lincoln did not like the result, and ran his
fingers through it before sitting. The original negative was burned in
the Chicago fire.]

His strength made him a valuable laborer. Not that he was fond of hard
labor. Mrs. Crawford says: "Abe was no hand to pitch into work like
killing snakes;" but when he did work, it was with an ease and
effectiveness which compensated his employer for the time he spent in
practical jokes and extemporaneous speeches. He would lift as much as
three ordinary men, and "My, how he would chop!" says Dennis Hanks.
"His axe would flash and bite into a sugar-tree or sycamore, and down
it would come. If you heard him fellin' trees in a clearin', you would
say there was three men at work by the way the trees fell." Standing
six feet four, he could out-lift, out-work, and out-wrestle any man he
came in contact with. Friends and employers were proud of his
strength, and boasted of it, never failing to pit him against any hero
whose strength they heard vaunted. He himself was proud of it, and
throughout his life was fond of comparing himself with tall and strong
men. When the committee called on him in Springfield, in 1860, to
notify him of his nomination as President, Governor Morgan of New York
was of the number, a man of great height and brawn. "Pray, Governor,
how tall may you be?" was Mr. Lincoln's first question. There is a
story told of a poor man seeking a favor from him once at the White
House. He was overpowered by the idea that he was in the presence of
the President, and, his errand done, was edging shyly out, when Mr.
Lincoln stopped him, insisting that he _measure_ with him. The man was
the taller, as Mr. Lincoln had thought; and he went away evidently
more abashed at the idea that he dared be taller than the President of
the United States than that he had dared to venture into his presence.

[Illustration: NEW SALEM.

From a painting in the State Capitol, Springfield, Illinois. New
Salem, which is described in the body of this article, was founded by
James Rutledge and John Cameron in 1829. In that year they built a dam
across the Sangamon River, and erected a mill. Under date of October
23, 1829, Reuben Harrison, surveyor, certifies that "at the request of
John Cameron one of the proprietors I did survey the town of New
Salem." The town within two years contained a dozen or fifteen houses,
nearly all of them built of logs. New Salem's population probably
never exceeded a hundred persons. Its inhabitants, and those of the
surrounding country were mostly Southerners--natives of Kentucky and
Tennessee--though there was an occasional Yankee among them. Soon
after Lincoln left the place, in the spring of 1837, it began to
decline. Petersburg had sprung up two miles down the river, and
rapidly absorbed its population and business. By 1840 New Salem was
almost deserted. The Rutledge tavern the first house erected, was the
last to succumb. It stood for many years, but at last crumbled away.
Salem hill is now only a green cow pasture.--_Note prepared by J.
McCan Davis._]

Governor Hoyt tells an excellent story illustrating Lincoln's interest
in muscle and his involuntary comparison of himself with any man who
showed great strength. It was in 1859, after Lincoln had delivered a
speech at the State Agricultural Fair of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. The
two men were making the rounds of the exhibits, and went into a tent
to see a "strong man" perform. He went through the ordinary exercises
with huge iron balls, tossing them in the air and catching them, and
rolling them on his arms and back; and Mr. Lincoln, who evidently had
never before seen such a thing, watched him with intense interest,
ejaculating under his breath every now and then, "By George! By
George!" When the performance was over, Governor Hoyt, seeing Mr.
Lincoln's interest, asked him to go up and be introduced to the
athlete. He did so; and, as he stood looking down musingly on the
fellow, who was very short, and evidently wondering that a man so much
shorter than he could be so much stronger, he suddenly broke out with
one of his quaint speeches. "Why," he said, "why, I could lick salt
off the top of your hat."

[Illustration: THE NEW SALEM MILL TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO

The Rutledge and Cameron mill, of which Lincoln at one time had
charge, stood on the same spot as the mill in the picture, and had the
same foundation. From the map on page 18 it will be seen that the mill
was below the bluff and east of the town.]

His strength won him popularity, but his good-nature, his wit, his
skill in debate, his stories, were still more efficient in gaining him
good-will. People liked to have him around, and voted him a good
fellow to work with. Yet such were the conditions of his life at this
time that, in spite of his popularity, nothing was open to him but
hard manual labor. To take the first "job" which he happened
upon--rail-splitting, ploughing, lumbering, boating, store-keeping--and
make the most of it, thankful if thereby he earned his bed and board
and yearly suit of jeans, was apparently all there was before Abraham
Lincoln in 1830 when he started out for himself.


FIRST INDEPENDENT WORK.

Through the summer and fall of 1830 and the early winter of 1831, Mr.
Lincoln worked in the vicinity of his father's new home, usually as a
farm-hand and rail-splitter. Most of his work was done in company with
John Hanks. Before the end of the winter he secured employment which
he has given an account of himself (writing again in the third
person):[A]

"During that winter Abraham, together with his stepmother's son, John
D. Johnston, and John Hanks, yet residing in Macon County, hired
themselves to Denton Offutt to take a flat-boat from Beardstown,
Illinois, to New Orleans, and for that purpose were to join
him--Offutt--at Springfield, Illinois, so soon as the snow should go
off. When it did go off, which was about March 1, 1831, the country
was so flooded as to make travelling by land impracticable; to obviate
which difficulty they purchased a large canoe and came down the
Sangamon River in it from where they were all living (near Decatur).
This is the time and manner of Abraham's first entrance into Sangamon
County. They found Offutt at Springfield, but learned from him that he
had failed in getting a boat at Beardstown. This led to their hiring
themselves to him for twelve dollars per month each, and getting the
timber out of the trees, and building a boat at old Sangamon town on
the Sangamon River, seven miles northwest of Springfield, which boat
they took to New Orleans, substantially on the old contract."

Sangamon town, where Mr. Lincoln built the flatboat, has, since his
day, completely disappeared from the earth; but then it was one of the
flourishing settlements on the river of that name. Lincoln and his
friends on arriving there in March immediately began work. There is
still living in Springfield, Illinois, a man who helped Lincoln at the
raft-building--Mr. John Roll, a well-known citizen, and one who has
been prominent in the material advancement of the city. Mr. Roll
remembers distinctly Lincoln's first appearance in Sangamon town. To a
representative of this MAGAZINE who talked with him recently in
Springfield he described Lincoln's looks when he first came to town.
"He was a tall, gaunt young man," Mr. Roll said, "dressed in a suit of
blue homespun jeans, consisting of a roundabout jacket, waistcoat, and
breeches which came to within about four inches of his feet. The
latter were encased in raw-hide boots, into the top of which, most of
the time, his pantaloons were stuffed. He wore a soft felt hat which
had at one time been black, but now, as its owner dryly remarked, 'it
had been sunburned until it was a combine of colors.'"

Mr. Roll's relation to the newcomer soon became something more than
that of a critical observer; he hired out to him, and says with pride,
"I made every pin which went into that boat."

[Footnote A: Short autobiography written for use in preparing a
campaign biography. "Abraham Lincoln. Complete Works." Edited by John
G. Nicolay and John Hay. Volume I., page 639. The Century Co.]

[Illustration: PRESENT SITE OF NEW SALEM.]


LINCOLN'S POPULARITY IN SANGAMON.

It took some four weeks to build the raft, and in that period Lincoln
succeeded in captivating the entire village by his story-telling. It
was the custom in Sangamon for the "men-folks" to gather at noon and
in the evening, when resting, in a convenient lane near the mill. They
had rolled out a long peeled log on which they lounged while they
whittled and talked. After Mr. Lincoln came to town the men would
start him to story-telling as soon as he appeared at the assembly
ground. So irresistibly droll were his "yarns" that, says Mr. Roll,
"whenever he'd end up in his unexpected way the boys on the log would
whoop and roll off." The result of the rolling off was to polish the
log like a mirror. Long after Lincoln had disappeared from Sangamon
"Abe's log" remained, and until it had rotted away people pointed it
out, and repeated the droll stories of the stranger.


AN EXCITING ADVENTURE.

The flatboat was done in about a month, and Lincoln and his friends
prepared to leave Sangamon. Before he started, however, he was the
hero of an adventure so thrilling that he won new laurels in the
community. Mr. Roll, who was a witness to the whole exciting scene,
tells the story as follows:

"It was the spring following the winter of the deep snow.[A] Walter
Carman, John Seamon, myself, and at times others of the Carman boys,
had helped Abe in building the boat, and when he had finished we went
to work to make a dug-out, or canoe, to be used as a small boat with
the flat. We found a suitable log about an eighth of a mile up the
river, and with our axes went to work under Lincoln's direction. The
river was very high, fairly 'booming.' After the dug-out was ready to
launch we took it to the edge of the water, and made ready to 'let her
go,' when Walter Carman and John Seamon jumped in as the boat struck
the water, each one anxious to be the first to get a ride. As they
shot out from the shore they found they were unable to make any
headway against the strong current. Carman had the paddle, and Seamon
was in the stern of the boat. Lincoln shouted to them to 'head
upstream' and 'work back to shore,' but they found themselves
powerless against the stream. At last they began to pull for the wreck
of an old flatboat, the first ever built on the Sangamon, which had
sunk and gone to pieces, leaving one of the stanchions sticking above
the water. Just as they reached it Seamon made a grab, and caught hold
of the stanchion, when the canoe capsized, leaving Seamon clinging to
the old timber, and throwing Carman into the stream. It carried him
down with the speed of a mill-race, Lincoln raised his voice above the
roar of the flood, and yelled to Carman to swim for an elm-tree which
stood almost in the channel, which the action of the high water
changed. Carman, being a good swimmer, succeeded in catching a branch,
and pulled himself up out of the water, which was very cold, and had
almost chilled him to death; and there he sat, shivering and
chattering in the tree. Lincoln, seeing Carman safe, called out to
Seamon to let go the stanchion and swim for the tree. With some
hesitation he obeyed, and struck out, while Lincoln cheered, and
directed him from the bank. As Seamon neared the tree he made one grab
for a branch, and, missing it, went under the water. Another desperate
lunge was successful, and he climbed up beside Carman. Things were
pretty exciting now, for there were two men in the tree, and the boat
was gone.

"It was a cold, raw April day, and there was great danger of the men
becoming benumbed and falling back into the water. Lincoln called out
to them to keep their spirits up and he would save them. The village
had been alarmed by this time, and many people had come down to the
bank. Lincoln procured a rope, and tied it to a log. He called all
hands to come and help roll the log into the water, and after this had
been done, he, with the assistance of several others, towed it some
distance up the stream. A daring young fellow by the name of 'Jim'
Dorrell then took his seat on the end of the log, and it was pushed
out into the current, with the expectation that it would be carried
downstream against the tree where Seamon and Carman were. The log was
well directed, and went straight to the tree; but Jim, in his
impatience to help his friends, fell a victim to his good intentions.
Making a frantic grab at a branch, he raised himself off the log, and
it was swept from under him by the raging water, and he soon joined
the other two victims upon their forlorn perch. The excitement on
shore increased, and almost the whole population of the village
gathered on the river bank. Lincoln had the log pulled up the stream,
and securing another piece of rope, called to the men in the tree to
catch it if they could when he should reach the tree. He then
straddled the log himself, and gave the word to push out into the
stream. When he dashed into the tree, he threw the rope over the stump
of a broken limb, and let it play until he broke the speed of the log,
and gradually drew it back to the tree, holding it there until the
three now nearly frozen men had climbed down and seated themselves
astride. He then gave orders to the people on the shore to hold fast
to the end of the rope which was tied to the log, and leaving his rope
in the tree he turned the log adrift, and the force of the current
acting against the taut rope swung the log around against the bank,
and all 'on board' were saved. The excited people, who had watched the
dangerous experiment with alternate hope and fear, now broke into
cheers for Abe Lincoln and praises for his brave act. This adventure
made quite a hero of him along the Sangamon, and the people never
tired of telling of the exploit."

[Footnote A: 1830-1831. "The winter of the deep snow" is the date
which is the starting point in all calculations of time for the early
settlers of Illinois, and the circumstance from which the old settlers
of Sangamon County receive the name by which they are generally known,
"Snowbirds."]

[Illustration: A MATRON OF NEW SALEM IN 1832.

This costume, worn by Mrs. Lucy M. Bennett of Petersburg, Illinois,
has been a familiar attraction at old settlers' gatherings in Menard
County, for years. The dress was made by Mrs. Hill, of New Salem, and
the reticule or workbag will be readily recognized by those who have
any recollection of the early days. The bonnet occupied a place in the
store of Samuel Hill at New Salem. It was taken from the store by Mrs.
Hill, worn for a time by her, and has been carefully preserved to this
day. It is an imported bonnet--a genuine Leghorn--and of a kind so
costly that Mr. Hill made only an occasional sale of one. Its price,
in fact, was $25.]

[Illustration: MAP OF NEW SALEM.

Map made by J. McCan Davis, aided by surviving inhabitants of New
Salem. Dr. John Allen was the leading physician of New Salem. He was a
Yankee, and was at first looked upon with suspicion, but he was soon
running a Sunday-school and temperance society, though strongly
opposed by the conservative church people. Dr. Allen attended Ann
Rutledge in her last illness. He was thrifty, and moving to Petersburg
in 1840, became wealthy. He died in 1860. Dr. Francis Regnier was a
rival physician and a respected citizen. Samuel Hill and John McNeill
(whose real name subsequently proved to be McNamar) operated a general
store next to Berry & Lincoln's grocery. Mr. Hill also owned the
carding-machine. He moved his store to Petersburg in 1839, and engaged
in business there, dying quite wealthy. Jack Kelso followed a variety
of callings, being occasionally a school-teacher, now and then a
grocery clerk, and always a fisher and hunter. He was a man of some
culture, and, when warmed by liquor, quoted Shakespeare and Burns
profusely, a habit which won for him the close friendship of Lincoln.
Joshua Miller was a blacksmith, and lived in the same house with
Kelso--a double house. He is said to be still living, somewhere in
Nebraska. Miller and Kelso were brothers-in law. Philemon Morris was a
tinner. Henry Onstott was a cooper by trade. He was an elder in the
Cumberland Presbyterian Church, and meetings were often held at his
house. Rev. John Berry, father of Lincoln's partner, frequently
preached there. Robert Johnson was a wheelwright, and his wife took in
weaving. Martin Waddell was a hatter. He was the best-natured man in
town, Lincoln possibly excepted. The Trent brothers, who succeeded
Berry & Lincoln as proprietors of the store, worked in his shop for a
time. William Clary, one of the first settlers of New Salem, was one
of a numerous family, most of whom lived in the vicinity of "Clary's
Grove." Isaac Burner was the father of Daniel Green Burner, Berry &
Lincoln's clerk. Alexander Ferguson worked at odd jobs. He had two
brothers, John and Elijah. Isaac Gollaher lived in a house belonging
to John Ferguson. "Row" Herndon, at whose house Lincoln boarded for a
year or more after going to New Salem, moved to the country after
selling his store to Berry & Lincoln. John Cameron, one of the
founders of the town, was a Presbyterian preacher and a highly
esteemed citizen.--_Note prepared by J. McCan Davis_.]


A SECOND ADVENTURE.

The flatboat built and loaded, the party started for New Orleans about
the middle of April. They had gone but a few miles when they met with
another adventure. At the village of New Salem there was a mill-dam.
On it the boat stuck, and here for nearly twenty-four hours it hung,
the bow in the air and the stern in the water, the cargo slowly
setting backward--shipwreck almost certain. The village of New Salem
turned out in a body to see what the strangers would do in their
predicament. They shouted, suggested, and advised for a time, but
finally discovered that one big fellow in the crew was ignoring them
and working out a plan of relief. Having unloaded the cargo into a
neighboring boat, Lincoln had succeeded in tilting his craft. By
boring a hole in the end extending over the dam the water was let out.
This done, the boat was easily shoved over and reloaded. The ingenuity
which he had exercised in saving his boat made a deep impression on
the crowd on the bank. It was talked over for many a day, and the
general verdict was that the "bow-hand" was a "strapper." The
proprietor of boat and cargo was even more enthusiastic than the
spectators, and vowed he would build a steamboat for the Sangamon and
make Lincoln the captain. Lincoln himself was interested in what he
had done, and nearly twenty years later he embodied his reflections on
this adventure in a curious invention for getting boats over shoals.

[Illustration: WILLIAM G. GREENE.

William G. Greene was one of the earliest friends of Lincoln at New
Salem. He stood on the bank of the Sangamon River on the 19th of
April, 1831, and watched Lincoln bore a hole in the bottom of the
flatboat, which had lodged on the mill-dam, so that the water might
run out. A few months later he and Lincoln were both employed by the
enterprising Denton Offutt, as clerks in the store and managers of the
mill which had been leased by Offutt. It was William G. Greene who,
returning home from college at Jacksonville on a vacation, brought
Richard Yates with him, and introduced him to Lincoln, the latter
being found stretched out on the cellar door of Bowling Green's cabin
reading a book. Mr. Greene was born in Tennessee in 1812, and went to
Illinois in 1822. After the disappearance of New Salem he removed to
Tallula, a few miles away, where in after years he engaged in the
banking business. He died in 1894, after amassing a fortune.]


NEW ORLEANS IN 1831.

The raft over the New Salem dam, the party went on to New Orleans
without trouble, reaching there in May, 1831, and remaining a month.
It must have been a month of intense intellectual activity for
Lincoln. New Orleans was entering then on her "flush times." Commerce
was increasing at a rate which dazzled merchants and speculators, and
drew them in shoals from all over the United States. From 1830 to 1840
no other American city increased in such a ratio; exports and imports,
which in 1831 amounted to $26,000,000, in 1835 had more than doubled.
The Creole population had held the sway so far in the city; but now it
came into competition and often into contest with a pushing,
ambitious, and frequently unscrupulous native American party. To these
two predominating elements were added Germans, French, Spanish,
negroes and Indians. Cosmopolitan in its make-up, the city was even
more cosmopolitan in its life. Everything was to be seen in New
Orleans in those days, from the idle luxury of the wealthy Creole to
the organization of filibustering juntas. The pirates still plied
their trade in the Gulf, and the Mississippi River brought down
hundreds of river boatmen--one of the wildest, wickedest sets of men
that ever existed in any city.

Lincoln and his companions probably tied their boat up beside
thousands of others. It was the custom then to tie up such craft along
the river front where St. Mary's Market now stands, and one could walk
a mile, it is said, over the tops of these boats without going ashore.
No doubt Lincoln went, too, to live in the boatmen's rendezvous,
called the "Swamp," a wild, rough quarter, where roulette, whiskey,
and the flint-lock pistol ruled.

All of the picturesque life, the violent contrasts of the city, he
would see as he wandered about; and he would carry away the sharp
impressions which are produced when mind and heart are alert, sincere,
and healthy.

In this month spent in New Orleans Lincoln must have seen much of
slavery. At that time the city was full of slaves, and the number was
constantly increasing; indeed, one-third of the New Orleans increase
in population between 1830 and 1840 was in negroes. One of the saddest
features of the institution was to be seen there in its most
aggravated form--the slave market. The great mass of slave-holders of
the South, who looked on the institution as patriarchal, and who
guarded their slaves with conscientious care, knew little, it should
be said, of this terrible traffic. Their transfer of slaves was
humane, but in the open markets of the city it was attended by
shocking cruelty and degradation. Lincoln witnessed in New Orleans for
the first time the revolting sight of men and women sold like animals
Mr. Herndon says that he often heard Mr. Lincoln refer to this
experience: "In New Orleans for the first time," he writes, "Lincoln
beheld the true horrors of human slavery. He saw 'negroes in
chains--whipped and scourged.' Against this inhumanity his sense of
right and justice rebelled, and his mind and conscience were awakened
to a realization of what he had often heard and read. No doubt, as one
of his companions has said, 'slavery ran the iron into him then and
there.' One morning in their rambles over the city the trio passed a
slave auction. A vigorous and comely mulatto girl was being sold. She
underwent a thorough examination at the hands of the bidders; they
pinched her flesh, and made her trot up and down the room like a
horse, to show how she moved, and in order, as the auctioneer said,
that 'bidders might satisfy themselves' whether the article they were
offering to buy was sound or not. The whole thing was so revolting
that Lincoln moved away from the scene with a deep feeling of
'unconquerable hate.' Bidding his companions follow him, he said,
'Boys, let's get away from this. If ever I get a chance to hit that
thing' (meaning slavery), 'I'll hit it hard.'"

Mr. Herndon gives John Hanks as his authority for this statement. But
this is plainly an error, for, according to Mr. Lincoln himself,
Hanks did not go on to New Orleans, but having a family and being
likely to be detained from home longer than at first expected, turned
back at St. Louis. Though there is reason for believing that Lincoln
was deeply impressed on this trip by something he saw in a New Orleans
slave market, and that he often referred to it, the story told above
probably grew to its present proportions by much telling.[A]

[Footnote A: "No doubt the young Kentuckian was disgusted [with what
he saw in the New Orleans slave auction]; but there is no proof that
this was his first object lesson in human slavery, or that, as so
often has been asserted, he turned to his companion and said, 'If I
ever get a chance to hit slavery, I will hit it hard.' Such an
expression from a flatboat-man would have been absurd."--_Personal
Reminiscences of 1840-1890, by L.E. Chittenden._]

[Illustration: MENTOR GRAHAM.

Mentor Graham was the New Salem school-master. He it was who assisted
Lincoln in mastering Kirkham's grammar, and later gave him valuable
assistance when Lincoln was learning the theory of surveying. He
taught in a little log school-house on a hill south of the village,
just across Green's Rocky Branch. Among his pupils was Ann Rutledge,
and the school was often visited by Lincoln. In 1845, Mentor Graham
was defendant in a lawsuit in which Lincoln and Herndon were attorneys
for the plaintiff, Nancy Green. It appears from the declaration,
written by Lincoln's own hand, that on October 28, 1844, Mentor Graham
gave his note to Nancy Green for one hundred dollars, with John Owens
and Andrew Beerup as sureties, payable twelve months after date. The
note not being paid when due, suit was brought. That Lincoln, even as
an attorney, should sue Mentor Graham may seem strange; but it is no
surprise when it is explained that the plaintiff was the widow of
Bowling Green--the woman who, with her husband, had comforted Lincoln
in an hour of grief. Justice, too, in this case, was clearly on her
side. The lawsuit seems never to have disturbed the friendly relations
between Lincoln and Mentor Graham. The latter's admiration for the
former was unbounded to the day of his death. Mentor Graham lived on
his farm near the ruins of New Salem until 1860, when he removed to
Petersburg. There he lived until 1885, when he removed to Greenview,
Illinois. Later he went to South Dakota, where he died about 1892, at
the ripe old age of ninety-odd years.]


LINCOLN SETTLES IN NEW SALEM.

The month in New Orleans passed swiftly, and in June, 1831, Lincoln
and his companions took passage up the river. He did not return,
however, in the usual way of the river boatman "out of a job."
According to his own way of putting it, "during this boat-enterprise
acquaintance with Offutt, who was previously an entire stranger, he
conceived a liking for Abraham, and believing he could turn him to
account, he contracted with him to act as a clerk for him on his
return from New Orleans, in charge of a store and mill at New
Salem."[A] The store and mill were, however, so far only in Offutt's
imagination, and Lincoln had to drift about until his employer was
ready for him. He made a short visit to his father and mother, now in
Coles County, near Charleston (fever and ague had driven the Lincolns
from their first home in Macon County), and then, in July, 1831, he
drifted over to New Salem, where, as he says, he "stopped indefinitely
and for the first time, as it were, by himself."

[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE HILL ABOVE SANGAMON RIVER, LOOKING TOWARD
THE SITE OF NEW SALEM.]

"The village of New Salem, the scene of Lincoln's mercantile career,"
writes one of our correspondents who has studied the history of the
town and visited the spot where it once stood, "was one of the many
little towns which, in the pioneer days, sprang up along the Sangamon
River, a stream then looked upon as navigable and as destined to be
counted among the highways of commerce. Twenty miles northwest of
Springfield, strung along the left bank of the Sangamon, parted by
hollows and ravines, is a row of high hills. On one of these--a long,
narrow ridge, beginning with a sharp and sloping point near the river,
running south, and parallel with the stream a little way, and then,
reaching its highest point, making a sudden turn to the west, and
gradually widening until lost in the prairie--stood this frontier
village. The crooked river for a short distance comes from the east,
and, seeming surprised at meeting the bluff, abruptly changes its
course, and flows to the north. Across the river the bottom stretches
out, reaching half a mile back to the highlands. New Salem, founded in
1829 by James Rutledge and John Cameron, and a dozen years later a
deserted village, is rescued from oblivion only by the fact that
Lincoln was once one of its inhabitants. His first sight of the town
had been in April, 1831, when the flatboat he had built and its little
crew were detained in getting their boat over the Rutledge and Cameron
mill-dam, on which it lodged. When Lincoln walked into New Salem,
three months later, he was not altogether a stranger, for the people
remembered him as the ingenious flatboat-man who, a little while
before, had freed his boat from water (and thus enabled it to get over
the dam) by resorting to the miraculous expedient of boring a hole in
the bottom."[B]

Offutt's goods had not arrived when Mr. Lincoln reached New Salem; and
he "loafed" about, so those who remember his arrival say,
good-naturedly taking a hand in whatever he could find to do, and in
his droll way making friends of everybody. By chance, a bit of work
fell to him almost at once, which introduced him generally and gave
him an opportunity to make a name in the neighborhood. It was election
day. The village school-master, Mentor Graham by name, was clerk, but
the assistant was ill. Looking about for some one to help him, Mr.
Graham saw a tall stranger loitering around the polling place, and
called to him, "Can you write?" "Yes," said the stranger, "I can make
a few rabbit tracks." Mr. Graham evidently was satisfied with the
answer, for he promptly initiated him; and he filled his place not
only to the satisfaction of his employer, but also to the delectation
of the loiterers about the polls, for whenever things dragged he
immediately began "to spin out a stock of Indiana yarns." So droll
were they that years afterward men who listened to Lincoln that day
repeated them to their friends. He had made a hit in New Salem, to
start with, and here, as in Sangamon town, it was by means of his
story-telling.

[Footnote A: "Abraham Lincoln. Complete Works." Edited by John G.
Nicolay and John, Hay. Volume I.]

[Footnote B: New Salem plays so prominent a part in the life of
Lincoln that the MAGAZINE engaged Mr. J. McCan Davis, of Springfield,
Illinois, who had already made a special study of this period of Mr.
Lincoln's life, to go in detail over the ground to secure a perfectly
accurate sequence of events, to collect new and unpublished pictures
and documents, and to interview all of the old acquaintances of Mr.
Lincoln who remain in the neighborhood. Mr. Davis has secured some new
facts about Mr. Lincoln's life in this period; he has unearthed in the
official files of the county several new documents, and he has secured
several unpublished portraits of interest. His matter will be
incorporated into our next two articles.]

[Illustration: LINCOLN'S FIRST VOTE.]

Photographed from the original poll-book, now on file in the county
clerk's office, Springfield, Illinois. Lincoln's first vote was cast
at New Salem, "in the Clary's Grove precinct," August 1, 1831. At this
election he aided Mr. Graham, who was one of the clerks. In the early
days in Illinois, elections were conducted by the _viva voce_ method.
The people did try voting by ballot, but the experiment was unpopular.
It required too much "book larnin," and in 1829 the _viva voce_ method
of voting was restored. The judges and clerks sat at a table with the
poll-book before them. The voter walked up, and announced the
candidate of his choice, and it was recorded in his presence. There
was no ticket peddling, and ballot-box stuffing was impossible. To
this simple system we are indebted for the record of Lincoln's first
vote. As will be seen from the fac-simile, Lincoln voted for James
Turney for Congressman, Bowling Green and Edmund Greer for
Magistrates, and John Armstrong and Henry Sinco for Constables. Of
these five men three were elected. Turney was defeated for Congressman
by Joseph Duncan. Turney lived in Greene County. He was not then a
conspicuous figure in the politics of the State, but was a follower of
Henry Clay, and was well thought of in his own district. He and
Lincoln, in 1834, served their first terms together in the lower house
of the legislature, and later he was a State senator. Joseph Duncan,
the successful candidate, was already in Congress. He was a politician
of influence. In 1834 he was a strong "Jackson man;" but after his
election as Governor he created consternation among the followers of
"Old Hickory" by becoming a Whig. Sidney Breese, who received only two
votes in the Clary's Grove precinct, afterward became the most
conspicuous of the five candidates. Eleven years later he defeated
Stephen A. Douglas for the United States Senate, and for twenty-five
years he was on the bench of the Supreme Court of Illinois, serving
under each of the three constitutions. For the office of Magistrate
Bowling Green was elected, but Greer was beaten. Both of Lincoln's
candidates for Constable were elected. John Armstrong was the man with
whom, a short time afterward, Lincoln had the celebrated wrestling
match. Henry Sinco was the keeper of a store at New Salem. Lincoln's
first vote for President was not cast until the next year (November 5,
1832), when he voted for Henry Clay.--_Note furnished by J. McCan
Davis_.]

_(To be continued.)_




THE LOVE OF THE PRINCE OF GLOTTENBERG.


BY ANTHONY HOPE,

Author of "The Prisoner of Zenda," "The Dolly Dialogues," etc.


I.

It was in the spring of the year that Ludwig, Prince of Glottenberg,
came courting the Princess Osra; for his father had sought the most
beautiful lady of a royal house in Europe, and had found none to equal
Osra. Therefore the prince came to Strelsau with a great retinue, and
was lodged in the White Palace, which stood on the outskirts of the
city, where the public gardens now are (for the palace itself was
sacked and burnt by the people in the rising of 1848). Here Ludwig
stayed many days, coming every day to the king's palace to pay his
respects to the king and queen, and to make his court to the princess.
King Rudolf had received him with the utmost friendship, and was, for
reasons of state then of great moment, but now of vanished interest,
as eager for the match as was the King of Glottenberg himself; and he
grew very impatient with his sister when she hesitated to accept
Ludwig's hand, alleging that she felt for him no more than a kindly
esteem, and, what was as much to the purpose, that he felt no more for
her. For although the prince possessed most courteous and winning
manners, and was very accomplished both in learning and in exercises,
yet he was a grave and pensive young man, rather stately than jovial,
and seemed, in the princess's eyes (accustomed as they were to catch
and check ardent glances), to perform his wooing more as a duty of his
station than on the impulse of any passion. Finding in herself, also,
no such sweet ashamed emotions as had before now crossed her heart on
account of lesser men, she grew grave and troubled; and she said to
the king:

"Brother, is this love? For I had as lief he were away as here; and
when he is here he kisses my hand as though it were a statue's hand;
and--and I feel as though it were. They say you know what love is. Is
this love?"

"There are many forms of love," smiled the king. "This is such love as
a prince and a princess may most properly feel."

"I do not call it love at all," said Osra, with a pout.

When Prince Ludwig came next day to see her, and told her, with grave
courtesy, that his pleasure lay in doing her will, she broke out:

"I had rather it lay in watching my face;" and then, ashamed, she
turned away from him.

He seemed grieved and hurt at her words, and it was with a sigh that
he said: "My life shall be given to giving you joy."

She turned round on him with flushed cheek and trembling lips:

"Yes, but I had rather it were spent in getting joy from me."

He cast down his eyes a moment, and then, taking her hand, kissed it,
but she drew it away sharply; and so that afternoon they parted, he
back to his palace, she to her chamber, where she sat, asking again:
"Is this love?" and crying: "He does not know love;" and pausing, now
and again, before her mirror, to ask her pictured face why it would
not unlock the door of love.

On another day she would be merry, or feign merriment, rallying him on
his sombre air and formal compliments, professing that for her part
she soon grew weary of such wooing, and loved to be easy and merry;
for thus she hoped to sting him, so that he would either disclose more
warmth, or forsake altogether his pursuit. But he made many apologies,
blaming nature that had made him grave, but assuring her of his deep
affection and respect.

"Affection and respect!" murmured Osra, with a little toss of her
head. "Oh, that I had not been born a princess!" And yet, though she
did not love him, she thought him a very noble gentleman, and trusted
to his honor and sincerity in everything. Therefore, when he still
persisted, and Rudolf and the queen urged her, telling her (the king
mockingly, the queen with a touch of sadness) that she must not look
to find in the world such love as romantic girls dreamt of, at last
she yielded, and she told her brother that she would marry Prince
Ludwig, yet for a little while she would not have the news proclaimed.
So Rudolf went, alone and privately, to the White Palace, and said to
Ludwig:

"Cousin, you have won the fairest lady in the world. Behold, her
brother says it!"

Prince Ludwig bowed low, and, taking the king's hand, pressed it,
thanking him for his help and approval, and expressing himself as most
grateful for the boon of the princess's favor.

"And will you not come with me and find her?" cried the king, with a
merry look.

"I have urgent business now," answered Ludwig. "Beg the princess to
forgive me. This afternoon I will crave the honor of waiting on her
with my humble gratitude."

King Rudolf looked at him, a smile curling on his lips; and he said,
in one of his gusts of impatience:

"By heaven! is there another man in the world who would talk about
gratitude, and business, and the afternoon, when Osra of Strelsau sat
waiting for him?"

"I mean no discourtesy," protested Ludwig, taking the king's arm and
glancing at him with most friendly eyes. "Indeed, dear friend, I am
rejoiced and honored. But this business of mine will not wait."

So the king, frowning and grumbling and laughing, went back alone, and
told the princess that the happy wooer was most grateful, and would
come, after his business was transacted, that afternoon. But Osra,
having given her hand, would now admit no fault in the man she had
chosen, and thanked the king for the message, with great dignity. Then
the king came to her, and, sitting down by her, stroked her hair,
saying softly:

"You have had many lovers, sister Osra, and now comes a husband."

"Yes, now a husband," she murmured, catching swiftly at his hand; and
her voice was half caught in a sudden sob.

"So goes the world--our world," said the king, knitting his brows and
seeming to fall for a moment into a sad reverie.

"I am frightened," she whispered. "Should I be frightened if I loved
him?"

"I have been told so," said the king, smiling again. "But the fear has
a way of being mastered then." And he drew her to him, and gave her a
hearty brother's kiss, telling her to take heart. "You'll thaw the
fellow yet," said the king, "though I grant you he is icy enough." For
the king himself had been by no means what he called an icy man.

But Osra was not satisfied, and sought to assuage the pain of her
heart by adorning herself most carefully for the prince's coming,
hoping to fire him to love. For she thought that if he loved she
might, although since he did not she could not. And surely he did not,
or all the tales of love were false! Thus she came to receive him very
magnificently arrayed. There was a flush on her cheek, and an
uncertain, expectant, fearful look in her eyes; and thus she stood
before him, as he fell on his knee and kissed her hand. Then he rose,
and declared his thanks, and promised his devotion; but as he spoke
the flush faded, and the light died from her eyes; and when at last he
drew near to her, and offered to kiss her cheek, her eyes were dead,
and her face pale and cold as she suffered him to touch it. He was
content to touch it but once, and seemed not to know how cold it was;
and so, after more talk of his father's pleasure and his pride, he
took his leave, promising to come again the next day. She ran to the
window when the door was closed on him, and thence watched him mount
his horse and ride away slowly, with his head bent and his eyes
downcast; yet he was a noble gentleman, stately and handsome, kind and
true. The tears came suddenly into her eyes and blurred her sight as
she leant watching from behind the hanging curtains of the window.
Though she dashed them angrily away, they came again, and ran down her
pale, cold cheeks, mourning the golden vision that seemed gone without
fulfilment.

That evening there came a gentleman from the Prince of Glottenberg,
carrying most humble excuses from his master, who (so he said) was
prevented from waiting on the princess the next day by a certain very
urgent affair that took him from Strelsau, and would keep him absent
from the city all day long; and the gentleman delivered to Osra a
letter from the prince, full of graceful and profound apologies, and
pleading an engagement that his honor would not let him break; for
nothing short of that, said he, should have kept him from her side.
There followed some lover's phrases, scantily worded, and frigid in an
assumed passion. But Osra smiled graciously, and sent back a message,
readily accepting all that the prince urged in excuse. And she told
what had passed to the king, with her head high in the air, and a
careless haughtiness, so that even the king did not rally her, nor yet
venture to comfort her, but urged her to spend the next day in riding
with the queen and him; for they were setting out for Zenda, where the
king was to hunt in the forest, and she could ride some part of the
way with them, and return in the evening. And she, wishing that she
had sent first to the prince, to bid him not come, agreed to go with
her brother; it was better far to go than to wait at home for a lover
who would not come.

Thus, the next morning, they rode out, the king and queen with their
retinue, the princess attended by one of her guard, named Christian
Hantz, who was greatly attached to her, and most jealous in praise and
admiration of her. This fellow had taken on himself to be very angry
with Prince Ludwig's coldness, but dared say nothing of it. Yet,
impelled by his anger, he had set himself to watch the prince very
closely; and thus he had, as he conceived, discovered something that
brought a twinkle into his eye and a triumphant smile to his lips as
he rode behind the princess. Some fifteen miles she accompanied her
brother, and then, turning with Christian, took another road back to
the city. Alone she rode, her mind full of sad thoughts; while
Christian, behind, still wore his malicious smile. But, presently,
although she had not commanded him, he quickened his pace, and came up
to her side, relying on the favor which she always showed him, for
excuse.

"Well, Christian," said she, "have you something to say to me?"

For answer he pointed to a small house that stood among the trees,
some way from the road, and he said:

"If I were Ludwig and not Christian, yet I would be here where
Christian is, and not there where Ludwig is." And he pointed still at
the house.

She faced round on him in anger at his daring to speak to her of the
prince, but he was a bold fellow, and would not be silenced now that
he had begun to speak. He knew also that she would bear much from him;
so he leant over towards her, saying:

"By your bounty, madam, I have money, and he who has money can get
knowledge. So I know that the prince is there. For fifty pounds I
gained a servant of his, and he told me."

"I do not know why you should spy on the prince," said Osra, "and I do
not care to know where the prince is." And she touched her horse with
the spur, and cantered fast forward, leaving the little house behind.
But Christian persisted, partly in a foolish grudge against any man
who should win what was above his reach, partly in an honest anger
that she whom his worshipped should be treated lightly by another; and
he forced her to hear what he had learnt from the gossip of the
prince's groom, telling it to her in hints and half-spoken sentences,
yet so plainly that she could not miss the drift of it. She rode the
faster towards Strelsau, at first answering nothing; but at last she
turned upon him fiercely, saying that he told a lie, and that she knew
it was a lie, since she knew where the prince was and what business
had taken him away; and she commanded Christian to be silent, and to
speak neither to her nor to any one else of his false suspicions; and
she bade him, very harshly, to fall back and ride behind her again,
which he did, sullen, yet satisfied; for he knew that his arrow had
gone home. On she rode, with her cheeks aflame and her heart beating,
until she came to Strelsau, and having arrived at the palace, ran to
her own bedroom and flung herself on the bed.

Here for an hour she lay; then, it being about six o'clock, she sat
up, pushing her disordered hair back from her hot, aching brow. For an
agony of humiliation came upon her, and a fury of resentment against
the prince, whose coldness seemed now to need no more explanation. Yet
she could hardly believe what she had been told of him; for, though
she had not loved him, she had accorded to him her full trust. Rising,
she paced in pain about the room. She could not rest, and she cried
out in longing that her brother were there to aid her, and find out
the truth for her. But he was away, and she had none to whom she could
turn. So she strove to master her anger and endure her suspense till
the next day; but they were too strong for her, and she cried: "I will
go myself. I cannot sleep till I know. But I cannot go alone. Who will
go with me?" And she knew of none, for she would not take Christian
with her, and she shrank from speaking of the matter to any of the
gentlemen of the court. And yet she must know. But at last she sprang
up from the chair into which she had sunk despondently, exclaiming:

"He is a gentleman and my friend. He will go with me." And she sent
hastily for the Bishop of Modenstein, who was then in Strelsau,
bidding him come dressed for riding, and with a sword, and the best
horse in his stable. And the bishop came equipped as she bade him and
in very great wonder. But when she told him what she wanted, and what
Christian had made known to her, he grew grave, saying that they must
wait and consult the king when he returned.

"I will not wait an hour," she cried. "I cannot wait an hour."

"Then I will ride, and bring you word. You must not go," he urged.

"Nay; if I go alone, I will go," said she. "Yes, I will go, and myself
fling his falseness in his teeth."

Finding her thus resolved, the bishop knew that he could not turn her;
so, leaving her to prepare herself, he sought Christian Hantz, and
charged him to bring three horses to the most private gate of the
palace, that opened in a little by-street. Here Christian waited for
them with the horses, and they came presently, the bishop wearing a
great slouched hat, and swaggering like a roystering trooper, while
Osra was closely veiled. The bishop again imposed secrecy on
Christian, and then, they both being mounted, said to Osra: "If you
will, then, madam, come;" and thus they rode secretly out of the
city, about seven o'clock in the evening, the gate-wardens opening the
gates at sight of the royal arms on Osra's ring, which she gave to the
bishop in order that he might show it.

In silence they rode a long way, going at a great speed. Osra's face
was set and rigid, for she felt now no shame at herself for going, nor
any fear of what she might find. But the injury to her pride swallowed
every other feeling, and at last she said, in short, sharp words, to
the Bishop of Modenstein, having suddenly thrown the veil back from
her face:

"He shall not live, if it prove true."

The bishop shook his head. His profession was peace; yet his blood,
also, was hot against the man who had put a slight on Princess Osra.

"The king must know of it," he said.

"The king? The king is not here tonight," said Osra; and she pricked
her horse, and set him at a gallop. The moon, breaking suddenly in
brightness from behind a cloud, showed the bishop her face. Then she
put out her hand, and caught him by the arm, whispering: "Are you my
friend?"

"Yes, madam," said he. She knew well that he was her friend.

"Kill him for me, then! Kill him for me!"

"I cannot kill him," said the bishop. "I pray God it may prove
untrue."

"You are not my friend if you will not kill him," said Osra; and she
turned her face away, and rode yet more quickly.

[Illustration: "KILL HIM FOR ME, THEN! KILL HIM FOR ME!"]

At last they came in sight of the little house that stood back from
the road, and there was a light in one of the upper windows. The
bishop heard a short gasp break from Osra's lips, and she pointed with
her whip to the window. Now his own breath came quick and fast, and he
prayed to God that he might remember his sacred character and his
vows, and not be led into great and deadly sin at the bidding of that
proud, bitter face; and he clenched his left hand, and struck his brow
with it.

Thus, then, they came to the gate of the avenue of trees that led to
the house. Here, having dismounted, and tied their horses to the
gatepost, they stood an instant, and Osra again veiled her face.

"Let me go alone, madam," he implored.

"Give me your sword, and I will go alone," she answered.

"Here, then, is the path," said the bishop; and he led the way by the
moonlight that broke fitfully here and there through the trees.

"He swore that all his life should be mine," she whispered. "Yet I
knew that he did not love me."

The bishop made her no answer; she looked for none, and did not know
that she spoke the bitterness of her heart in words that he could
hear. He bowed his head, and prayed again for her and for himself; for
he had found his hand gripping the hilt of his sword. And thus, side
by side now, they came to the door of the house, and saw a gentleman
standing in front of the door, still but watchful. And Osra knew that
he was the prince's chamberlain.

When the chamberlain saw them he started violently, and clapped a hand
to his sword; but Osra flung her veil on the ground, and the bishop
gripped his arm as with a vise. The chamberlain looked at Osra and at
the bishop, and half drew his sword.

"This matter is too great for you, sir," said the bishop. "It is a
quarrel of princes. Stand aside!" And before the chamberlain could
make up his mind what to do, Osra had passed by him, and the bishop
had followed her.

Finding themselves in a narrow passage, they made out, by the dim
light of a lamp, a flight of stairs that rose from the farthest end of
it. The bishop tried to pass the princess, but she motioned him back,
and walked swiftly to the stairs. In silent speed they mounted till
they had reached the top of the first stage; and facing them, eight or
ten steps farther up, was a door. By the door stood a groom. This was
the man who had treacherously told Christian of his master's doings;
but when he saw, suddenly, what had come of his disloyal chattering,
the fellow went white as a ghost, and came tottering in stealthy
silence down the stairs, his finger on his lips. Neither of them spoke
to him, nor he to them. They gave no thought to him; his only thought
was to escape as soon as he might; so he passed them, and, going on,
passed also the chamberlain, who stood dazed at the house door, and so
disappeared, intent on saving the life that he had justly forfeited.
Thus the rogue vanished, and what became of him no one knew nor cared.
He showed his face no more at Glottenberg or Strelsau.

"Hark! there are voices," whispered Osra to the bishop, raising her
hand above her head, as they two stood motionless.

The voices came from the door that faced them, the voice of a man and
the voice of a woman. Osra's glance at her companion told him that she
knew as well as he whose the man's voice was.

"It is true, then," she breathed from between her teeth. "My God, it
is true!"

The woman's voice spoke now, but the words were not audible. Then came
the prince's: "Forever, in life or death, apart or together, forever."
But the woman's answer came no more in words, but in deep, low,
passionate sobs, that struck their ears like the distant cry of some
brute creature in pain that it cannot understand. Yet Osra's face was
stern and cold, and her lips curled scornfully when she saw the
bishop's look of pity.

"Come, let us end it," said she; and with a firm step she began to
mount the stairs that lay between them and the door.

Yet once again they paused outside the door, for it seemed as though
the princess could not choose but listen to the passionate words of
love that pierced her ears like knives. Yet they were all sad,
speaking of renunciation, not happiness. But at last she heard her own
name; then, with a sudden start, she caught the bishop's hands, for
she could not listen longer. And she staggered and reeled as she
whispered to him: "The door, the door--open the door!"

The bishop, his right hand being across his body and resting on the
hilt of his sword, laid his left upon the handle of the door and
turned it. Then he flung the door wide open; and at that instant Osra
sprang past him, her eyes gleaming like flames from her dead-white
face. And she stood rigid on the threshold of the room, with the
bishop by her side.

[Illustration: "IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROOM STOOD THE PRINCE OF
GLOTTENBERG; AND ... CLINGING TO HIM ... WAS A GIRL OF SLIGHT AND SLENDER
FIGURE."]

In the middle of the room stood the Prince of Glottenberg; and
strained in a close embrace, clinging to him, supported by his arms,
with head buried in his breast, was a girl of slight and slender
figure, graceful, though not tall; and her body was still shaken by
continual, struggling sobs. The prince held her there as though
against the world, but raised his head, and looked at the intruders
with a grave, sad air. There was no shame on his face, and hardly
surprise. Presently he took one arm from about the lady, and, raising
it, motioned to them to be still. Osra took one step forward toward
where the pair stood; the bishop caught her sleeve, but she shook him
off. The lady looked up into the prince's face; with a sudden,
startled cry clutched him closer, and turned a terrified face over her
shoulder. Then she moaned in great fear, and, reeling, fell against
the prince, and would have sunk to the ground if he had not upheld
her; and her eyes closed and her lips dropped as she swooned away. But
the princess smiled, and, drawing herself to her full height, stood
watching while Ludwig bore the lady to a couch and laid her there.
Then, when he came back and faced her, she asked coldly and slowly:

"Who is this woman, sir? Or is she one of those that have no names?"

The prince sprang forward, a sudden anger in his eyes; he raised his
hand as if he would have pressed it across her scornful mouth, and
kept back her bitter words. But she did not flinch; and, pointing at
him with her finger, she cried to the bishop, in a ringing voice:

"Kill him, my lord, kill him!"

And the sword of the Bishop of Modenstein was half-way out of the
scabbard.


II.

"I would to God, my lord," said the prince in low, sad tones, "that
God would suffer you to kill me, and me to take death at your hands.
But neither for you nor for me is the blow lawful. Let me speak to the
princess."

The bishop still grasped his sword; for Osra's face and hand still
commanded him. But at the instant of his hesitation, while the
temptation was hot in him, there came from the couch where the lady
lay a low moan of great pain. She flung her arms out, and turned,
groaning, again on her back, and her head lay limply over the side of
the couch. The bishop's eyes met Ludwig's; and with a "God forgive
me!" he let the sword slip back, and, springing across the room, fell
on his knees beside the couch. He broke the gold chain round his neck,
and grasped the crucifix which he carried in one hand, while with the
other he raised the lady's head, praying her to open her eyes, before
whose closed lids he held the sacred image; and he, who had come so
near to great sin, now prayed softly, but fervently, for her life and
God's pity on her, for the frailty her slight form showed could not
withstand the shock of this trial.

"Who is she?" asked the princess.

But Ludwig's eyes had wandered back to the couch, and he answered
only:

"My God, it will kill her!"

"I care not," said Osra. But then came another low moan. "I care not,"
said the princess again. "Ah, she is in great suffering!" And her eyes
followed the prince's.

There was silence, save for the lady's low moans and the whispered
prayers of the Bishop of Modenstein. But the lady opened her eyes, and
in an instant, answering the summons, the prince was by her side,
kneeling, and holding her hand very tenderly, and he met a glance from
the bishop across her prostrate body. The prince bowed his head, and
one sob burst from him.

"Leave me alone with her for a little, sir," said the bishop; and the
prince, obeying, rose and withdrew into the bay of the window, while
Osra stood alone near the door by which she had entered.

A few minutes passed, then Osra saw the prince return to where the
lady was, and kneel again beside her; and she saw that the bishop was
preparing to perform his most sacred and sublime office. The lady's
eyes dwelt on him now in peace and restfulness, and held Prince
Ludwig's hand in her small hand. But Osra would not kneel; she stood
upright, still and cold, as though she neither saw nor heard anything
of what passed; she would not pity nor forgive the woman even if, as
they seemed to think, she lay dying. But she spoke once, asking in a
harsh voice:

"Is there no physician in the house or near?"

"None, madam," said the prince.

The bishop began the office, and Osra stood, dimly hearing the words
of comfort, peace, and hope; dimly seeing the smile on the lady's
face, for gradually her eyes clouded with tears. Now her ears seemed
to hear nothing save the sad and piteous sobs that had shaken the girl
as she hung about Ludwig's neck. But she strove to drive away her
softer thoughts, fanning her fury when it burnt low, and telling
herself again of the insult that she had suffered. Thus she rested
till the bishop had performed the office. But when he had finished it
he rose from his knees, and came to where Osra was.

"It was your duty," she said. "But it is none of mine."

"She will not live an hour," said he. "For she had an affection of the
heart, and this shock has killed her. Indeed, I think she was half
dead from grief before we came."

"Who is she?" broke again from Osra's lips.

"Come and hear," said he; and she followed him obediently, yet
unwillingly, to the couch, and looked down at the lady. The lady
looked at her with wondering eyes, and then she smiled faintly,
pressing the prince's hand and whispering:

"Yet she is so beautiful." And she seemed now wonderfully happy, so
that the three all watched her, and were envious, although they were
to live and she to die.

"Now God pardon her sin," said the Princess Osra suddenly, and she
fell on her knees beside the couch, crying: "Surely God has pardoned
her."

"Sin she had none, save what clings even to the purest in this world,"
said the bishop. "For what she has said to me I know to be true."

Osra answered nothing, but gazed in questioning at the prince, and he,
still holding the lady's hand, began to speak in a gentle voice.

"Do not ask her name, madam. But from the first hour that we knew the
meaning of love we have loved one another. And had the issue rested in
my hands I would have thrown to the winds all that kept me from her. I
remember when first I met her--ah, my sweet! do you remember? And from
that day to this, in soul she has been mine, and I hers in all my
life. But more could not be. Madam, you have asked what love is. Here
is love. Yet fate is stronger. Thus I came here to woo, and she, left
alone, resolved to give herself to God."

"How comes she here, then?" whispered Osra. And she laid one hand
timidly on the couch near the lady, yet not so as to touch even her
garments.

"She came here," he began--but suddenly, to their amazement, the lady,
who had seemed dead, with an effort raised herself on her elbow, and
spoke in a quick, eager whisper, as if she feared time and strength
would fail.

"He is a great prince," she said; "he must be a great king. God means
him for greatness. God forbid that I should be his ruin! Oh, what a
sweet dream he painted! But praise be to the blessed saints that kept
me strong. Yet, at the last I was weak. I could not live without
another sight of his face, and so--so I came. Next week I am--I was to
take the veil, and I came here to see him once again--God pardon me
for it--but I could not help it. Ah, madam, I know you, and I see now
your beauty. Have you known love?"

"No," said Osra; and she moved her hand near to the lady's hand.

"And when he found me here he prayed me again to do what he asked, and
I was half killed in denying it. But I prevailed, and we were even
then parting when you came. Why, why did I come?" And for a moment her
voice died away in a low, soft moan. But she made one more effort.
Clasping Osra's hand in her delicate fingers, she whispered: "I am
going. Be his wife."

"No, no, no!" whispered Osra, her face now close to the lady's. "You
must live you must live and be happy." And then she kissed the lady's
lips. The lady put out her arms, and clasped them round Osra's neck;
and again she whispered softly in Osra's ear. Neither Ludwig nor the
bishop heard what she said, but they heard only that Osra sobbed.
Presently the lady's arms relaxed a little in their hold, and Osra,
having kissed her again, rose, and signed to Ludwig to come nearer;
while she, turning, gave her hand to the bishop, and he led her from
the room, and finding another room near, took her in there, where she
sat silent and pale.

Thus half an hour passed; then the bishop stole softly out, and
presently returned, saying:

"God has spared her the long, painful path, and has taken her straight
to his rest."

Osra heard him, half in a trance, and as if she did not hear; she did
not know whither he went, nor what he did, nor anything that passed,
until, as it seemed, after a long while, she looked up, and saw Prince
Ludwig standing before her. He was composed and calm, but it seemed as
if half the life had gone out of his face. Osra rose slowly to her
feet, supporting herself on an arm of the chair on which she had sat,
and when she had seen his face she suddenly threw herself on the floor
at his feet, crying:

"Forgive me! Forgive me!"

"The guilt is mine," said he; "for I did not trust you, and did by
stealth what your nobility would have suffered openly. The guilt is
mine." And he offered to raise her, but she rose unaided, asking with
choking voice:

"Is she dead?"

"She is dead," said the prince; and Osra, hearing it, covered her face
with her hands, and blindly groped her way back to the chair, where
she sat, panting and exhausted.

"To her I have said farewell, and now, madam, to you. Yet do not think
that I am a man without eyes for your beauty, or a heart to know your
worth. I seemed to you a fool and a churl. I grieved most bitterly,
and I wronged you bitterly; my excuse for all is now known. For though
you are more beautiful than she, yet true love is no wanderer; it
gives a beauty that it does not find, and weaves a chain no other
charms can break. Madam, farewell."

[Illustration: "OSRA ... SUDDENLY THREW HERSELF ON THE FLOOR AT HIS
FEET, CRYING, 'FORGIVE ME! FORGIVE ME!'"]

She looked at him and saw the sad joy in his eyes, an exultation over
what had been that what was could not destroy; and she knew that the
vision was still with him, though his love was dead. Suddenly he
seemed to her a man she also might love, and for whom she also, if
need be, might gladly die. Yet not because she loved him, for she was
asking still in wonder: "What is this love?"

"Madam, farewell," said he again; and, kneeling before her, he kissed
her hand.

"I carry the body of my love," he went on, "back with me to my home,
there to mourn for her; and I shall come no more to Strelsau."

Osra bent her eyes on his face as he knelt, and presently she said to
him in a whisper that was low for awe, not shame:

"You heard what she bade me do?"

"Yes, madam, I know her wish."

"And you would do it?" she asked.

"Madam, my struggle was fought before she died. But now you know that
my love was not yours."

"That also I knew before, sir;" and a slight, bitter smile came on her
face. But she grew grave again, and sat there, seeming to be
pondering, and Prince Ludwig waited on his knees. Then she suddenly
leant forward and said:

"If I loved I would wait for you to love. Now what is the love that I
cannot feel?"

And then she sat again silent, but at last raised her eyes again to
his, saying in a voice that even in the stillness of the room he
hardly heard:

"Now I do dearly love you, for I have seen your love, and know that
you can love; and I think that love must breed love, so that she who
loves must in God's time be loved. Yet"--she paused here, and for a
moment hid her face with her hand--"yet I cannot," she went on. "Is it
our Lord Christ who bids us take the lower place? I cannot take it He
does not so reign in my heart. For to my proud heart--ah, my heart so
proud!--she would be ever between us. I could not bear it. Even though
she is dead, I could not bear it. Yet I believe now that with you I
might one day find happiness."

The prince, though in that hour he could not think of love, was yet
very much moved by her new tenderness, and felt that what had passed
rather drew them together than made any separation between them. And
it seemed to him that the dead lady's blessing was on his suit, so he
said:

"Madam, I would most faithfully serve you, and you would be the
nearest and dearest to me of all living women."

She waited a while, then she sighed heavily, and looked in his face
with an air of wistful longing, and she knit her brows as though she
were puzzled. But at last, shaking her head, she said:

"It is not enough."

And with this she rose and took him by the hand, and they two went
back together to where the Bishop of Modenstein still prayed beside
the body of the lady.

Osra stood on one side of the body, and stretched her hand out to the
prince, who stood on the other side.

"See," said she, "she must be between us." And having kissed the dead
face once, she left the prince there by the side of his love, and
herself went out, and turning her head, saw that the prince knelt
again by the corpse of his love.

"He does not think of me," she said to the bishop.

"His thoughts are still with her, madam," he answered.

It was late night now, and they rode swiftly and silently along the
road to Strelsau. And on all the way they spoke to one another only a
few words, being both sunk deep in thought. But once Osra spoke, as
they were already near to Strelsau. For she turned suddenly to the
bishop, saying:

"My lord, what is it? Do you know it?"

"Yes, madam, I have known it," answered the bishop.

"Yet you are a churchman!"

"True, madam," said he, and he smiled sadly.

She seemed to consider, fixing her eyes on his; but he turned his
aside.

"Could you not make me understand?" she asked.

"Your lover, when he comes, will do that, madam," said he, and still
he kept his eyes averted. And Osra wondered why he kept his eyes
turned away; yet presently a faint smile curved her lips, and she
said:

"It may be you might feel it, if you were not a churchman. But I do
not. Many men have said they loved me, and I have felt something in my
heart--but not this!"

"It will come," said the bishop.

"Does it come, then, to every one?"

"To most," he answered.

"Heigho, will it ever come to me?" she sighed.

And so they were at home. And Osra was for a long time very sorrowful
for the fate of the lady whom the Prince of Glottenberg had loved; but
since she saw Ludwig no more, and the joy of youth conquered her
sadness, she ceased to mourn; and as she walked along she would wonder
more and more what it might be, this great love that she did not feel.

"For none will tell me, not even the Bishop of Modenstein," said she.




[Illustration: P.A.J. DAGNAN-BOUVERET, A LIVING FRENCH PAINTER.]


MADONNA AND CHILD IN ART.


BY WILL H. LOW.


When shepherds watched their flocks by night, and the angel appeared,
bringing the tidings of good-will, a new vocation, until then unknown,
was given to men. Tradition has it that one of the earliest of the
followers of the Child born that night was a painter, and in the
pictures of the primitive Dutch and Italian schools a not uncommon
subject is St. Luke painting the Virgin and Child, while in more than
one church in Europe the original(?) picture may be seen. Perhaps the
most notable of these is the beautiful though quaint picture by Rogier
van der Weyden, now in the Old Pinakothek, in Munich. And the
tradition is a pleasant one, showing how early the services of the
painters were enlisted in spreading abroad the new gospel of peace on
earth.

When we consider that, even stripped of divinity, the birth of a
child, its first dawning intelligence, its flower-like tenderness of
aspect, are one and all motives which excite the best that is in man,
there is little wonder that the Christ-child should have been and
should still be the best subject that a painter could demand. In many
forms, in fact, do we of a later day and of less fervent faith
celebrate the beauty of mother and child. How much more ardently,
therefore, in the days when faith and the painter's craft were so
intimately linked, have the painters approached their task. Almost
transfigured to divinity is the woman with the child at her breast
that shines upon us in so many galleries; quite divine in the devout
painter's thought it was as he wrought.

  "Fair shines the gilded aureole
  In which our highest painters place
  Some living woman's simple face."

sings Rossetti; and the "highest painter," pious monk, as in the case
of Fra Angelico, and stately courtier, as was Peter Paul Rubens,
meet, extremes though they are, on the same ground when they approach
this sacred subject. The pictures reproduced here, it may safely be
said, are all celebrated, and yet they represent but a small part of
the pictures of the same subject which are known to be by men of
importance, and of which every museum in the world has a goodly
number. If we add to these the pictures in private collections, and
then take into account the tens of thousands of pictures of the same
subject which, everywhere throughout the world, especially in Europe,
are to be found in the churches, it is safe to say that no other
subject has so often given its inspiration to the painter.

[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. TITIAN (ITALIAN: BORN 1477; DIED
1576).]

Nor in any other case has a subject given such variety of inspiration.
The elements are few and simple, and though occasionally there are
accessory figures, the concentration of interest, the reason for the
existence of the picture, is centred on the Mother and Child. A survey
of these pages will suffice to show that of these two principal
elements a great variety of pictorial effect, of expression, of
sentiment, of composition of line, and of light and shade, is
possible. We can go back to the splendid Byzantine churches, with
their wealth of mosaic, their subdued splendor of dulled gold covering
arch and pillar as a background for the glow of color with which the
artists of Constantine worked,--in a rigid convention as to form which
gives their figures an impressive air, but which is ill-suited to the
representation of the divine Mother and Child. Hence, in this, the
earliest manifestation of Christian art, it is the remembrance of the
majesty of a prophet, of the benign dignity of the mature Christ, that
I we carry away with us. Giotto, however, had no sooner freed himself
from the hampering conditions under which his predecessors worked,
than we begin to feel the human element enter into art. Down through
the centuries until to-day, the long procession of artists comes to
us: those of Italy first of all, birthplace of modern art, land where
time has touched everything with so reverent a hand that all has been
rendered beautiful.

[Illustration: MADONNA AND CHILD. MURILLO (SPANISH: BORN 1618?; DIED
1682).

This legion of valiant painters enlisted in the service of "that most
noble Lady and her Son, our Lord and Seigneur," have names which sound
sweet to the ear, as their work is goodly to the sight. Giotto, Era
Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Gentile da Fabriano, Ghirlandajo, names like
the beads of a rosary, commence the list, to which Botticelli,
Perugino, Raffaello Santi, Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto,
Correggio, Tiziano, Veronese, and, last of all, with a name like the
blast of a trumpet, the mighty Michael the Archangel, add their
syllabic charm. Then the painters of more northern lands bring the
tribute of their name and work; names less pleasing to the ear, as
their work has less beauty to the sight, but rich, both in name and
work, with honest intent and simple devotion.

[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD, MURILLO (SPANISH: BORN 1618?; DIED
1682).]

First come the men whose names are those of their works or of their
birthplace: Master William of Cologne, Master of the Death of Mary,
Master of the Holy Companionship. Then the Van Eycks, Hubert and Jan,
Rogier van der Weyden, Hugo van der Goes, Hans Memling, Quentin
Massys, Lucas van Leyden, the two Hans Holbein, elder and younger,
Burgkmair, Wolgemut, and then, master of them all, Albrecht Dürer.
Something of their honesty of purpose must have been mixed with their
pigments, for the works of these fortunate painters of the early Dutch
and German schools shine on us to-day from the gallery walls with
undiminished splendor; and brave with vivid reds, with blues as rich
and deep as an organ chord, and yellows rich as the gold with which
they embroidered their Virgin's robes, their pictures show, with
touching lapses in some of the details, a large technical mastery,
coupled with an intensity of sentiment which has remained
unapproachable.

[Illustration: HOLY FAMILY. NICOLAS POUSSIN (FRENCH: BORN 1594; DIED
1665).]

[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. LANDELLE. A LIVING FRENCH PAINTER.]

[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. UNKNOWN EARLY FLEMISH PAINTER.]

[Illustration: THE MADONNA WITH THE DIADEM. RAPHAEL (ITALIAN: BORN
1483; DIED 1520).]

[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. RUBENS (FLEMISH: BORN 1577; DIED
1640).]

[Illustration: VIRGIN, INFANT JESUS, AND ST. JOHN. BOTTICELLI
(ITALIAN: BORN 1447; DIED 1515).]

[Illustration: THE REPOSE OF THE HOLY FAMILY. CANTARINI (ITALIAN: BORN
1612; DIED 1648).]

The next of these northern painters who can claim the first rank is he
who is in some respects the greatest of all from a painter's
standpoint, Rembrandt van Ryn. There is little of the primitive
Italian here, little of the painter who worships his Madonna through
the medium of his craft as some great lady, "empress of heaven and of
earth." Rembrandt's picture, lacking this mysticism, gains, however,
in humanity; and however far even from our modern point of view it may
be as a creation embodying the divine Motherhood, it throbs with
tenderness. The homely interior, the good mother, the almost pathetic
_abandon_ of the sleeping child--surely no painter ever wrought
better, nor, we may be sure, more devoutly!

[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. P.A.J. DAGNAN-BOUVERET, A LIVING
FRENCH PAINTER.]

Then the giant Peter Paul Rubens, with his facile brush, his acres of
canvas, covered with the virile arabesque by which he has transmitted
to us the record of a temperament so full of life that it needs no
great effort of imagination, before one of his crowded canvases, to
imagine the doughty Fleming back in our midst, and taking his place as
Jupiter upon his painted Olympus, reawakened to life. Yet, when he in
turn approaches this natal subject, his pagan brush touches the
canvas lightly, and all its deftness is given to the praise of Our
Lady and Our Lord. With him, as with the painters of all and differing
nationalities, both Mother and Child bear the strong impress of the
painter's surroundings. It is as though the miraculous birth had, by
some mysterious dispensation, taken place in each of the countries of
the world, the better to insure the comprehension of the message of
divine love to all peoples.

[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. N. BARABINO, A LIVING ITALIAN
PAINTER.]

[Illustration: HOLY FAMILY. SIR ANTHONY VAN DYCK (FLEMISH: BORN 1599;
DIED 1641).]

[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. CARLO DOLCI (ITALIAN: BORN 1616; DIED
1686).]

[Illustration: HOLY FAMILY. BONIFAZIO (ITALIAN: BORN 1494; DIED
1563).]

With Van Dyck, a little later, the Child is a young patrician; the
quality of the painter's imagination, influenced by his frequentation
of the princes of the earth, making him conceive the young Christ as a
magnificent man-child, fit to be called later to the high places of
the world, a serene and noble leader.

Somewhat differently did the Italians of the great epoch of painting,
Raphael, Titian, Veronese, even Bellini, who was earlier, conceive
their subject. While both Mother and Child with them were merely what
painters call a "bit" of painting, directly founded on close study of
a living woman and child, there was always present a religious
feeling, different, but almost as intense as that of the primitive
Italian painters. Throughout the many Madonnas on which the fame of
Raphael is founded we feel that, through a certain variety of type,
the research was always the same--a desire to realize the maid-mother,
and to presage, in the lineaments of the child, his future character.
This sentiment, everywhere present, is approached reverently, and the
too short-lived painter in his work at least utters a constant prayer.
With Bellini, with Titian, and with Veronese the effort is not
dissimilar, though something of the sumptuosity of Venetian life has
crept in, and it is to a queen of earth as much as of heaven, and to a
prince of the church temporal, that their service is rendered.

[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. N. BARABINO, A LIVING ITALIAN
PAINTER.]

In the Spanish pictures, particularly those of earlier date than any
Spanish picture reproduced here, we feel the strong impress of the
Church. In the picture by Alonso Cano there looks out from the eyes of
the Mother the sentiment of the cloistered nun; and though, with the
Murillos, we catch a glimpse of Spain outside of the Church, even with
him there is a sense of subjection from which the memories of the
Inquisition are not altogether absent.

[Illustration: LA VIERGE AU COUSSIN VERT--MADONNA OF THE GREEN
CUSHION. ANDREA DA SOLARIO (ITALIAN: BORN 1458; DIED 1530).]

[Illustration: LA VIERGE AUX CERISES--MADONNA OF THE CHERRIES.
ANNIBALE CARRACCI (ITALIAN: BORN 1560; DIED 1609).]

[Illustration: JESUS ASLEEP. L. DESCHAMPS, A LIVING FRENCH PAINTER.]

[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. S.H. LYBAERT, A LIVING GERMAN
PAINTER.]

Our modern art has become so complex, the demands on the modern
painter are so different from those which the older masters met, that
our latter-day painting offers fewer examples of the Mother and Child.
Dagnan-Bouveret, in France, however, has treated the subject in such a
way as to show that there yet remains new presentations of the
world-old theme. To-day the painter has to retain the sentiment of his
subject through a network of technical difficulties, and the gracious
virginal figure which Monsieur Dagnan-Bouveret has painted does this
measurably well; while he has triumphed technically in painting a
figure in white, lit by reflected light filtered through a network of
green leaves. Another picture of the Virgin and Child, where the
outline of the Child is seen through the cloak by which his mother
shelters him, was exhibited not long ago in New York, and is
reproduced here.

[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. E. VAN HOVE, A LIVING FRENCH
PAINTER.]

[Illustration: THE HOLY NIGHT. F. ROEBER, A LIVING GERMAN PAINTER.]

[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD. ITALIAN SCHOOL OF THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY; ARTIST UNKNOWN.]

[Illustration: THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI. SPAGNOLETTO (SPANISH: BORN
1588; DIED 1656).]

[Illustration: THE MADONNA OF THE TEMPI FAMILY. RAPHAEL (ITALIAN: BORN
1483; DIED 1520).]

[Illustration: HOLY FAMILY. REMBRANDT (DUTCH: BORN 1607; DIED 1669).]

In Italy, sadly fallen from her former greatness in art, many painters
render their service to the Church and to their ancient faith, and
there are numerous pictures of the divine Mother and Child. The best
of these, however, are characterized by novel arrangement of the
figures rather than by any sentiment in keeping with theme--a
criticism applicable also to most the modern French examples. Modern
Germany gains in sentiment while losing decidedly in pictorial value,
and it is a question whether it is possible, in these times, to avoid
a mere repetition of what has already been so well done, and produce
more than a picture which, with pictorial and technical qualities, is
laboring in the messages of "peace on earth, good-will to men."

[Illustration: MADONNA, INFANT JESUS, AND ST. JOHN. VOUET (FRENCH:
BORN 1590; DIED 1649).]

[Illustration: LA VIERGE À LA GRAPPE--MADONNA OF THE GRAPES. PIERRE
MIGNARD (FRENCH: BORN 1610; DIED 1695).]

[Illustration: LA VIERGE AU LAPIN--MADONNA OF THE RABBIT. TITIAN
(ITALIAN: BORN 1477; DIED 1576).]

[Illustration: THE FOND MOTHER. GABRIEL GUAY, A LIVING FRENCH
PAINTER.]

[Illustration: ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.

From a photograph by Mr. Benjamin Kimball, Boston.]




CHAPTERS FROM A LIFE.

I.

BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS,

Author of "The Gates Ajar," "The Madonna of the Tubs," etc.


Has it not been said that once in a lifetime most of us succumb to the
particular situation against which we have cultivated the strongest
principles? If there be one such, among the possibilities to which a
truly civilized career is liable, more than another objectionable to
the writer of these words, the creation of autobiography has long been
that one.

Yet, for that offence, once criminal to my taste, I find myself hereby
about to become indictable; and do set my hand and seal, on this day
of the recall of my dearest literary oath, in this year of eminent
autobiographical examples, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-five.

"There is ----, who has written a charming series of personal
reminiscences, and ---- ----, and ----.

"You might meet your natural shrinking by allowing yourself to treat
especially of your literary life; including, of course, whatever went
to form and sustain it."

"I suppose I _might_," I sigh. The answer is faint; but the deed is
decreed. Shall I be sorry for it?

It is a gray day, on gray Cape Ann, as I write these words. The fog is
breathing over the downs. The outside steamers shriek from off the
Point, as they feel their way at live of noon, groping as though it
were dead of night, and stars and coast-lights all were smitten dark,
and every pilot were a stranger to his chart.

A stranger to my chart, I, doubtful, put about, and make the untried
coast.

At such a moment, one thinks wistfully of that fair, misty world which
is all one's own, yet on the outside of which one stands so humbly,
and so gently. One thinks of the unseen faces, of the unknown friends
who have read one's tales of other people's lives, and cared to read,
and told one so, and made one believe in their kindness, and affection
and fidelity for thirty years. And the hesitating heart calls out to
them: Will _you_ let me be sorry? Thirty years! It is a good while
that you and I have kept step together. Shall we miss it now? If _you_
will care to hear such chapters as may select themselves from the
story of the story-teller,--you have the oldest right to choose, and
I, the happy will to please you if I can.

       *       *       *       *       *

The lives of the makers of books are very much like other people's in
most respects, but especially in this: that they are either rebels to,
or subjects of, their ancestry. The lives of some literary persons
begin a good while after they are born. Others begin a good while
before.

Of this latter kind is mine.

It has sometimes occurred to me to find myself the possessor of a sort
of unholy envy of writers concerning whom our stout American phrase
says that they have "made themselves." What delight to be aware that
one has not only created one's work, but the worker! What elation in
the remembrance of the battle against a commercial, or a scientific,
or a worldly and superficial heredity; in the recollection of the tug
with habit and education, and the overthrow of impulses setting in
other directions than the chosen movement of one's own soul!

What pleasure in the proud knowledge that all one's success is one's
own doing, and the sum of it cast up to one's credit upon the long
ledger of life! To this exhilarating self-content I can lay no claim.
For whatever measure of what is called success has fallen to my lot, I
can ask no credit. I find myself in the chastened position of one
whose literary abilities all belong to one's ancestors.

It is humbling--I do not deny that it may be morally invigorating--to
feel that whatever is "worth mentioning" in my life is no affair of
mine, but falls under the beautiful and terrible law by which the dead
men and women whose blood bounds in our being control our destinies.

Yet, with the notable exception of my father, I have less than the
usual store of personal acquaintance with the "people who most
influenced me." Of my grandfather, Moses Stuart, I have but two
recollections; and these, taken together, may not be quite devoid of
interest, as showing how the law of selection works in the mind of an
imaginative child.

I remember seeing the Professor of Sacred Literature come into his
dining-room one morning in his old house on Andover Hill which was
built for him, and marked the creation of his department in the early
days of the seminary history. He looked very tall and imposing. He had
a mug in his hand, and his face smiled like the silver of which it was
made.

The mug was full of milk, and he handed it ceremoniously to the
year-old baby, his namesake and grandson, my first brother, whose
high-chair stood at the table.

Then, I remember--it must have been a little more than a year after
that--seeing the professor in his coffin in the front hall; that he
looked taller than he did before, but still imposing; that he had his
best coat on--the one, I think, in which he preached; and that he was
the first dead person I had ever seen.

Whenever the gray-headed men who knew him used to sit about, relating
anecdotes of him--as, how many commentaries he published, or how he
introduced the first German lexicon into this country (as if a girl in
short dresses would be absorbingly interested in her grandfather's
dictionaries!)--I saw the silver mug and the coffin.

Gradually the German lexicon in a hazy condition got melted in between
them. Sometimes the baby's mug sat upon the dictionary. Sometimes the
dictionary lay upon the coffin. Sometimes the baby spilled the milk
out of the mug upon the dictionary. But for my personal uses, the
Andover grandfather's memoirs began and ended with the mug and the
coffin.

The other grandfather was not distinguished as a scholar; he was but
an orthodox minister of ability and originality, and with a vivacious
personal history. Of him I knew something. From his own lips came
thrilling stories of his connection with the underground railway of
slavery days; how he sent the sharpest carving-knife in the house,
concealed in a basket of food, to a hidden fugitive slave who had
vowed never to be taken alive, and whose master had come North in
search of him. It was a fine thing, that throbbing humanity, which
could in those days burst the reformer out of the evangelical husk,
and I learned my lesson from it. ("Where _did_ she get it?"
conservative friends used to wail, whenever I was seen to have tumbled
into the last new and unfashionable reform.)

From his own lips, too, I heard the accounts of that extraordinary
case of house-possession of which (like Wesley) this innocent and
unimaginative country minister, who had no more faith in "spooks" than
he had in Universalists, was made the astonished victim.

Night upon night I have crept gasping to bed, and shivered for hours
with my head under the clothes, after an evening spent in listening to
this authentic and fantastic family tale. How the candlesticks walked
out into the air from the mantelpiece, and back again; how the chairs
of skeptical visitors collected from all parts of the country to study
what one had hardly then begun to call the "phenomena" at the
parsonage at Stratford, Connecticut, hopped after the guests when they
crossed the room; how the dishes at the table leaped, and the silver
forks were bent by unseen hands, and cold turnips dropped from the
solid ceiling; and ghastly images were found, composed of
underclothing proved to have been locked at the time in drawers of
which the only key lay all the while in Dr. Phelps's pocket; and how
the mysterious agencies, purporting by alphabetical raps upon bed-head
or on table to be in torments of the nether world, being asked what
their host could do to relieve them, demanded a piece of squash pie.

From the old man's own calm hands, within a year or two of his death,
I received the legacy of the written journal of these phenomena, as
recorded by the victim from day to day, during the seven months that
this mysterious misfortune dwelt within his house.

It may be prudent to say, just here, that it will be quite useless to
make any further inquiries of me upon the subject, or to ask of me--a
request which has been repeated till I am fain to put an end to
it--for either loan or copy of these records for the benefit of either
personal or scientific curiosity. Both loaning and copying are now
impossible, and have been made so by family wishes which will be
sacredly respected. The phenomena themselves have long been too widely
known to be ignored, and I have no hesitation in making reference to
them.

[Illustration: ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS, HER MOTHER, AND HER INFANT
BROTHER. AFTERWARDS PROFESSOR M. STUART PHELPS.]

Perhaps it is partly on account of the traditions respecting this bit
of family history that I am so often asked if I am a spiritualist. I
am sometimes tempted to reply in grammar comprehensible to the writers
of certain letters which I receive upon the subject:

"No; nor none of our folks!"

How the Connecticut parson on whom this mysterious infliction fell
ever came out of it _not_ a spiritualist, who can tell? That the
phenomena were facts, and facts explicable by no known natural law, he
was forced, like others in similar positions, to believe and admit.
That he should study the subject of spiritualism carefully from then
until the end of his life, was inevitable.

But, as nearly as I can make it out, on the whole, he liked his Bible
better.

Things like these did not happen on Andover Hill; and my talks with
this very interesting grandfather gave me my first vivid sensation of
the possibilities of life.

With what thrills of hope and fear I listened for thumps on the head
of my bed, or watched anxiously to see my candlestick walk out into
the air!

But not a thump! Not a rap! Never a snap of the weakest proportions
(not explicable by natural laws) has, from that day to this, visited
my personal career. Not a candlestick ever walked an inch for me. I
have never been able to induce a chair to hop after me. No turnip has
consented to drop from the ceiling for me. Planchette, in her day,
wrote hundreds of lines for me, but never one that was of the
slightest possible significance to me, or to the universe at large.
Never did a medium tell me anything that ever came to pass; though one
of them once made a whole winter miserable by prophesying a death
which did not occur.

Being destitute of objections to belief in the usefulness of
spiritualistic mystery,--in fact, by temperament, perhaps inclining to
hope that such phenomena may be tamed and yoked, and made to work for
human happiness,--yet there seems to be something about me which these
agencies do not find congenial. Though I have gone longing for a sign,
no sign has been given me. Though I have been always ready to believe
all other people's mysteries, no inexplicable facts have honored my
experience.

The only personal prophecy ever strictly fulfilled in my life was--I
am not certain whether I ought to feel embarrassed in alluding to
it--made by a gipsy fortune-teller. She was young and pretty, the
seventh child of a seventh child, and she lived in a Massachusetts
shoe-town by the name of Lynn. And what was it? Oh, but you must
excuse me.

The grandfather to whom these marvels happened was not, as I say, a
literary man; yet even he did write a little book--a religious tale,
or tract, after the manner of his day and profession; and it took to
itself a circulation of two hundred thousand copies. I remember how
Mr. James T. Fields laughed when he heard of it--that merry laugh
peculiar to himself.

"You can't help it," the publisher said; "you come of a family of
large circulations."

One day I was at school with my brother,--a little, private school,
down by what were called the English dormitories in Andover.

I was eight years old. Some one came in and whispered to the teacher.
Her face turned very grave, and she came up to us quietly, and called
us out into the entry, and gently put on our things.

"You are to go home," she said; "your mother is dead." I took my
little brother's hand without a word, and we trudged off. I do not
think we spoke--I am sure we did not cry--on the way home. I remember
perfectly that we were very gayly dressed. Our mother liked bright,
almost barbaric colors on children. The little boy's coat was of red
broadcloth, and my cape of a canary yellow, dyed at home in white-oak
dye. The two colors flared before my eyes as we shuffled along and
crushed the crisp, dead leaves that were tossing in the autumn wind
all over Andover Hill.

When we got home they told us it was a mistake; she was not dead; and
we were sent back to school. But, in a few weeks after that, one day
we were told we need not go to school at all; the red and yellow coats
came off, and little black ones took their places. The new baby, in
his haggard father's arms, was baptized at his mother's funeral; and
we looked on, and wondered what it all meant, and what became of
children whose mother was obliged to go to heaven when she seemed so
necessary in Andover.

At eight years of age a child cannot be expected to know her mother
intimately, and it is hard for me always to distinguish between the
effect produced upon me by her literary success as I have since
understood it, and that left by her own truly extraordinary
personality upon the annals of the nursery.

[Illustration: PROFESSOR PHELPS'S HOUSE AT ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS, THE
HOUSE IN WHICH ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WAS REARED.]

My mother, whose name I am proud to wear, was the eldest daughter of
Professor Stuart, and inherited his intellectuality. At the time of
her death she was at the first blossom of her very positive and
widely-promising success as a writer of the simple home stories which
took such a hold upon the popular heart. Her "Sunnyside" had already
reached a circulation of one hundred thousand copies, and she was
following it fast--too fast--by other books for which the critics and
the publishers clamored. Her last book and her last baby came
together, and killed her. She lived one of those rich and piteous
lives such as only gifted women know; torn by the civil war of the
dual nature which can be given to women only. It was as natural for
her daughter to write as to breathe; but it was impossible for her
daughter to forget that a woman of intellectual power could be the
most successful of mothers.

[Illustration: PROFESSOR AUSTIN PHELPS, FATHER OF ELIZABETH STUART
PHELPS.

From an early photograph.]

"Everybody's mother is a remarkable woman," my father used to say when
he read overdrawn memoirs indited by devout children; and yet I have
sometimes felt as if even the generation that knows her not would feel
a certain degree of interest in the tact and power by which this
unusual woman achieved the difficult reconciliation between genius and
domestic life.

In our times and to our women such a problem is practical, indeed. One
need not possess genius to understand it now. A career is enough.

The author of "Sunnyside," "The Angel on the Right Shoulder," and
"Peep at Number Five," lived before women had careers and public
sympathy in them. Her nature was drawn against the grain of her times
and of her circumstances; and where our feet find easy walking, hers
were hedged. A child's memories go for something by way of tribute to
the achievement of one of those rare women of the elder time whose
gifts forced her out, but whose heart held her in.

I can remember no time when I did not understand that my mother must
write books because people would have and read them; but I cannot
remember one hour in which her children needed her and did not find
her.

My first distinct vision of this kind of a mother gives her by the
nursery lamp, reading to us her own stories, written for ourselves,
never meant to go beyond that little public of two, and illustrated in
colored crayons by her own pencil. For her gift in this direction was
of an original quality, and had she not been a writer she must have
achieved something as an artist.

Perhaps it was to keep the standards up, and a little girl's filial
adoration down, that these readings ended with some classic--Wordsworth,
I remember most often--"We are Seven," or "Lucy Gray."

[Illustration: ELM ARCH, ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS.]

It is certain that I very early had the conviction that a mother was a
being of power and importance to the world; but that the world had no
business with her when we wanted her. In a word, she was a strong and
lovely symmetry--a woman whose heart had not enfeebled her head, but
whose head could never freeze her heart.

I hardly know which of those charming ways in which I learned to spell
the word motherhood impressed me most. All seemed to go on together
side by side and step by step. Now she sits correcting proof-sheets,
and now she is painting apostles for the baby's first Bible lesson.
Now she is writing her new book, and now she is dyeing things
canary-yellow in the white-oak dye--for the professor's salary is
small, and a crushing economy was in those days one of the conditions
of faculty life on Andover Hill. Now--for her practical ingenuity was
unlimited--she is whittling little wooden feet to stretch the
children's stockings on, to save them from shrinking; and now she is
reading to us from the old, red copy of Hazlitt's "British Poets," by
the register, upon a winter night. Now she is a popular writer,
incredulous of her first success, with her future flashing before her;
and now she is a tired, tender mother, crooning to a sick child, while
the MS. lies unprinted on the table, and the publishers are wishing
their professor's wife were a free woman, childless and solitary, able
to send copy as fast as it is wanted. The struggle killed her, but she
fought till she fell.

In these different days, when,

  "Pealing, the clock of time
  Has struck the Woman's Hour,"

[Illustration: THE REV. DR. E. PHELPS, GRANDFATHER OF ELIZABETH
STUART PHELPS.]

I have sometimes been glad, as my time came to face the long question
which life puts to-day to all women who think and feel, and who care
for other women and are loyal to them, that I had those early visions
of my own to look upon.

When I was learning why the sun rose and the moon set, how the flowers
grew and the rain fell, that God and heaven and art and letters
existed, that it was intelligent to say one's prayers, and that
well-bred children never told a lie, I learned that a mother can be
strong and still be sweet, and sweet although she is strong; and that
she whom the world and her children both have need of, is of more
value to each, for this very reason.

I said it was impossible to be her daughter and not to write. Rather,
I should say, impossible to be _their_ daughter and not to have
something to say, and a pen to say it.

The comparatively recent close of my father's life has not left him
yet forgotten, and it can hardly be necessary for me to do more than
to refer to the name of Austin Phelps to recall to that part of our
public which knew and loved him the quality of his work.

"The Still Hour" is yet read, and there are enough who remember how
widely this book has been known and loved, and how marked was the
literary gift in all the professor's work.

It has fallen to me otherwise to say so much of my peculiar
indebtedness to my father, that I shall forbid myself, and spare my
reader, too much repetition of a loving credit which it would not be
possible altogether to omit from this chapter.

He who becomes father and mother in one to motherless children, bears
a burden which men shirk or stagger under; and there was not a
shirking cell in his brain or heart.

As I have elsewhere said: "There was hardly a chapter in my life of
which he was not in some sense, whether revealed or concealed, the
hero."

"If I am asked to sum in a few words the vivid points of his
influence, I find it as hard to give definite form to my indebtedness
to the Christian scholar whose daughter it is my honor to be, as to
specify the particulars in which one responds to sunshine or oxygen.
He was my climate. As soon as I began to think, I began to reverence
thought and study and the hard work of a man devoted to the high ends
of a scholar's life. His department was that of rhetoric, and his
appreciation of the uses and graces of language very early descended
like a mantle upon me. I learned to read and to love reading, not
because I was made to, but because I could not help it. It was the
atmosphere I breathed."

"Day after day the watchful girl observed the life of a student--its
scholarly tastes, its high ideals, its scorn of worldliness and paltry
aims or petty indulgences, and forever its magnificent habits of
_work_."

"At sixteen, I remember, there came to me a distinct arousing or
awakening to the intellectual life. As I look back, I see it in a
flash-light. Most of the important phases or crises of our lives can
be traced to some one influence or event, and this one I connect
directly with the reading to me by my father of the writings of De
Quincey and the poems of Wordsworth. Every one who has ever heard him
preach or lecture remembers the rare quality of Professor Phelps's
voice. As a pulpit orator he was one of the few, and to hear him read
in his own study was an absorbing experience. To this day I cannot put
myself outside of certain pages of the laureate or the essayist. I do
not read; I listen. The great lines beginning:

  "'Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
  Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears;'

the great passage which opens: 'Then like a chorus the passion
deepened,' and which rises to the aching cry: 'Everlasting
farewells!... Everlasting farewells!' ring in my ears as they left his
lips."

For my first effort to sail the sea of letters, it occurs to me that I
ought to say that my father's literary reputation cannot be held
responsible.

I had reached (to take a step backwards in the story) the mature age
of thirteen. I was a little girl in low-necked gingham dresses, I
know, because I remember I had on one (of a purple shade, and
incredibly unbecoming to a half-grown, brunette girl) one evening when
my first gentleman caller came to see me.

I felt that the fact that he was my Sunday-school teacher detracted
from the importance of the occasion, but did not extinguish it.

It was perhaps half-past eight, and, obediently to law and gospel, I
had gone upstairs.

The actual troubles of life have never dulled my sense of
mortification at overhearing from my little room at the head of the
stairs, where I was struggling to get into that gingham gown and
present a tardy appearance, a voice distinctly excusing me on the
ground that it was past her usual bedtime, and she had gone to bed.

Whether the anguish of that occasion so far aged me that it had
anything to do with my first literary undertaking, I cannot say; but I
am sure about the low-necked gingham dress, and that it was during
this particular year that I determined to become an individual and
contribute to the "Youth's Companion."

I did so. My contribution was accepted and paid for by the appearance
in my father's post-office box of the paper for a year; and my
impression is that I wore high-necked dresses pretty soon thereafter,
and was allowed to sit up till nine o'clock. At any rate, these
memorable events are distinctly intertwined in my mind.

This was in the days when even the "Companion," that oldest and most
delightful of children's journals, printed things like these:

   "_Why Julia B. loved the Country_.

   "Julia B. loved the country because whenever she walked out she
   could see God in the face of Nature."

I really think that the semi-column which I sent to that distinguished
paper was a tone or two above this. But I can remember nothing about
it, except that there was a sister who neglected her little brothers,
and hence defeated the first object of existence in a woman-child. It
was very proper, and very pious, and very much like what
well-brought-up little girls were taught to do, to be, to suffer, or
to write in those days. I have often intended to ask Mr. Ford if the
staff discovered any signs of literary promise in that funny little
performance.

At all events, my literary ambitions, with this solitary exercise,
came to a sudden suspension. I have no recollection of having written
or of having wanted to write anything more for a long time.

I was not in the least a precocious young person, and very much of a
tomboy into the bargain. I think I was far more likely to have been
found on the top of an apple-tree or walking the length of the
seminary fence than writing rhymes or reading "solid reading." I know
that I was once told by a queer old man in the street that little
girls should not walk fences, and that I stood still and looked at
him, transfixed with contempt. I do not think I vouchsafed him any
answer at all. But this must have been while I was still in the little
gingham gowns.

Perhaps this is the place, if anywhere, to mention the next experiment
at helping along the literature of my native land of which I have any
recollection. There was another little contribution--a pious little
contribution, like the first. Where it was written, or what it was
about, or where it was printed, it is impossible to remember; but I
know that it appeared in some extremely orthodox young people's
periodical--I think, one with a missionary predilection. The point of
interest I find to have been that I was paid for it.

With the exception of some private capital amassed by abstaining from
butter (a method of creating a fortune of whose wisdom, I must say, I
had the same doubts then that I have now), this was the first money I
had ever earned. The sum was two dollars and a half. It became my
immediate purpose not to squander this wealth. I had no spending money
in particular that I recall. Three cents a week was, I believe, for
years the limit of my personal income, and I am compelled to own that
this sum was not expended at book-stalls, or for the benefit of the
heathen who appealed to the generosity of professors' daughters
through the treasurer of the chapel Sunday-school; but went solidly
for cream cakes and apple turnovers alternately, one each week.

[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE WESTERN WINDOW OF THE STUDY IN PROFESSOR
AUSTIN PHELPS'S HOUSE, ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS.]

Two dollars and a half represented to me a standard of munificent
possession which it would be difficult to make most girls in their
first teens, and socially situated today as I was then, understand. To
waste this fortune in riotous living was impossible. From the hour
that I received that check for "two-fifty," cream cakes began to wear
a juvenile air, and turnovers seemed unworthy of my position in life.
I remember begging to be allowed to invest the sum "in pictures," and
that my father, gently diverting my selection from a frowsy and
popular "Hope" at whose memory I shudder even yet, induced me to find
that I preferred some excellent photographs of Thorwaldsen's "Night"
and "Morning," which he framed for me, and which hang in our rooms
to-day.

It is impossible to forget the sense of dignity which marks the hour
when one becomes a wage-earner. The humorous side of it is the least
of it--or was in my case. I felt that I had suddenly acquired
value--to myself, to my family, and to the world.

Probably all people who write "for a living" would agree with me in
recalling the first check as the largest and most luxurious of life.




THE UNDERSTUDY.


BY ROBERT BARR,

Author of "In the Midst of Alarms," "A Typewritten Letter," etc.


The monarch in the Arabian story had an ointment which, put upon his
right eye, enabled him to see through the walls of houses. If the
Arabian despot had passed along a narrow street leading into a main
thoroughfare of London one night, just before the clock struck twelve,
he would have beheld, in a dingy back room of a large building, a very
strange sight. He would have seen King Charles the First seated in
friendly converse with none other than Oliver Cromwell.

The room in which these two noted people sat had no carpet and but few
chairs. A shelf extended along one side of the apartment, and it was
covered with mugs containing paint and grease. Brushes were littered
about, and a wig lay in a corner. Two mirrors stood at each end of the
shelf, and beside them flared two gas jets protected by wire baskets.
Hanging from nails driven in the walls were coats, waistcoats, and
trousers of more modern cut than the costumes worn by the two men.

King Charles, with his pointed beard and his ruffles of lace, leaned
picturesquely back in his chair, which rested against the wall. He was
smoking a very black briar-root pipe, and perhaps his Majesty enjoyed
the weed all the more that there was just above his head, tacked to
the wall, a large placard containing the words, "No smoking allowed in
this room, or in any other part of the theatre."

Cromwell, in more sober garments, had an even jauntier attitude than
the king; for he sat astride the chair, with his chin resting on the
back of it, smoking a cigarette in a meerschaum holder.

"I'm too old, my boy," said the king, "and too fond of my comfort.
Besides, I have no longer any ambition. When an actor once realizes
that he will never be a Charles Kean or a Macready, then comes peace
and the enjoyment of life. Now, with you it is different; you are, if
I may say so in deep affection, young and foolish. Your project is a
most hair-brained scheme. You are throwing away all you have already
won."

"Good gracious!" cried Cromwell, impatiently, "what have I won?"

"You have certainly won something," resumed the elder, calmly, "when a
person of your excitable nature can play so well the sombre, taciturn
character of Cromwell. You have mounted several rounds, and the whole
ladder lifts itself up before you. You have mastered several
languages, while I know but one, and that imperfectly. You have
studied the foreign drama, while I have not even read all the plays of
Shakespeare. I can do a hundred parts conventionally well. You will,
some day, do a great part as no other man on earth will do it, and
then fame will come to you. Now you propose recklessly to throw all
this away and go into the wilds of Africa."

"The particular ladder you offer to me," said Cromwell, "I have no
desire to climb; I am sick of the smell of the footlights and the
whole atmosphere of the theatre. I am tired of the unreality of the
life we lead. Why not be a hero, instead of mimicking one?"

"But, my dear boy," said the king, filling his pipe again, "look at
the practical side of things. It costs a fortune to fit out an African
expedition. Where are you to get the money?"

This question sounded more natural from the lips of the king than did
the answer from the lips of Cromwell.

"There has been too much force and too much expenditure about African
travel. I do not intend to cross the continent with arms and the
munitions of war. As you remarked a while ago, I know several European
languages, and if you will forgive what sounds like boasting, I may
say that I have a gift for picking up tongues. I have money enough to
fit myself out with some necessary scientific instruments, and to pay
my passage to the coast. Once there, I will win my way across the
continent through love and not through fear."

[Illustration: IT WAS A YEAR AFTER THE DISAPPEARANCE THAT A WAN LIVING
SKELETON STAGGERED OUT OF THE WILDERNESS IN AFRICA.]

"You will lose your head," said King Charles; "they don't understand
that sort of thing out there, and, besides, the idea is not original.
Didn't Livingstone try that tack?"

"Yes, but people have forgotten Livingstone and his methods. It is now
the explosive bullet and the elephant gun. I intend to learn the
language of the different native tribes I meet, and if a chief opposes
me, and will not allow me to pass through his territory, and if I find
I cannot win him over to my side by persuasive talk, then I will go
around."

"And what is to be the outcome of it all?" cried Charles. "What is
your object?"

"Fame, my boy, fame," cried Cromwell enthusiastically, flinging the
chair from under him and pacing the narrow room.

"If I can get from coast to coast without taking the life of a single
native, won't that be something greater to have done than all the
play-acting from now till doomsday?"

"I suppose it will," said the king gloomily; "but you must remember
you are the only friend I have, and I have reached an age when a man
does not pick up friends readily."

Cromwell stopped in his walk, and grasped the king by the arm. "And
are not you the only friend I have?" he said. "And why can you not
abandon this ghastly sham and come with me, as I asked you to at
first? How can you hesitate when you think of the glorious freedom of
the African forest, and compare it with this cribbed, and cabined, and
confined business we are now at?"

The king shook his head slowly, and knocked the ashes from his pipe.
He seemed to have some trouble in keeping it alight, probably because
of the prohibition on the wall.

"As I said before," replied the king, "I am too old. There are no
'pubs' in the African forest where a man can get a glass of beer when
he wants it. No, Ormond, African travel is not for me. If you are
resolved to go--go, and God bless you; I will stay at home and
carefully nurse your fame. I will from time to time drop appetizing
little paragraphs into the papers about your wanderings, and when you
are ready to come back to England, all England will be ready to listen
to you. You know how interest is worked up in the theatrical business
by judicious puffing in the papers, and I imagine African exploration
requires much the same treatment. If it were not for the press, my
boy, you could explore Africa till you were blind and nobody would
hear a word about it; so I will be your advance agent, and make ready
for your home coming."

At this point in the conversation between these two historical
characters, the janitor of the theatre put his head into the room and
reminded the celebrities that it was very late; whereupon both king
and commoner rose with some reluctance and washed themselves--the king
becoming, when he put on the ordinary dress of an Englishman, Mr.
James Spence, while Cromwell, after a similar transformation, became
Mr. Sidney Ormond; and thus, with nothing of royalty or dictatorship
about them, the two strolled up the narrow street into the main
thoroughfare, and entered their favorite midnight restaurant, where,
over a belated meal, they continued the discussion of the African
project, which Spence persisted in looking upon as one of the maddest
expeditions that had ever come to his knowledge. But the talk was
futile--as most talk is--and within a month from that time Ormond was
on the ocean, headed for Africa.

Another man took Ormond's place at the theatre, and Spence continued
to play his part, as the papers said, in his usual acceptable manner.
He heard from his friend, in due course, when he landed. Then at
intervals came one or two letters showing how he had surmounted the
unusual difficulties he had to contend with. After a long interval
came a letter from the interior of Africa, sent to the coast by
messenger. Although at the beginning of this letter Ormond said he had
but faint hope of reaching his destination, he nevertheless gave a
very complete account of his wanderings and his dealings with the
natives; and up to that point his journey seemed to be most
satisfactory. He enclosed several photographs, mostly very bad ones,
which he had managed to develop and print in the wilderness. One,
however, of himself was easily recognizable, and Spence had it copied
and enlarged, hanging the framed enlargement in whatever dressing-room
fate assigned to him, for Spence never had a long engagement at any
one theatre. He was a useful man who could take any part, but had no
specialty, and London was full of such.

For a long time he heard nothing from his friend; and the newspaper
men to whom Spence indefatigably furnished interesting items about the
lone explorer began to look upon Ormond as an African Mrs. Harris, and
the paragraphs, to Spence's deep regret, failed to appear. The
journalists, who were a flippant lot, used to accost Spence with,
"Well, Jimmy, how's your African friend?" and the more he tried to
convince them the less they believed in the peace-loving traveller.

At last there came a final letter from Africa, a letter that filled
the tender middle-aged heart of Spence with the deepest grief he had
ever known. It was written in a shaky hand, and the writer began by
saying that he knew neither the date nor his locality. He had been ill
and delirious with fever, and was now at last in his right mind, but
felt the grip of death upon him. The natives had told him that no one
ever recovered from the malady he had caught in the swamp, and his own
feelings led him to believe that his case was hopeless. The natives
had been very kind to him throughout, and his followers had promised
to bring his boxes to the coast. The boxes contained the collections
he had made and also his complete journal, which he had written up to
the day he became ill.

Ormond begged his friend to hand over his belongings to the
Geographical Society, and to arrange for the publication of his
journal, if possible. It might secure for him the fame he had died to
achieve, or it might not; but, he added, he left the whole conduct of
the affair unreservedly to his friend, on whom he bestowed that love
and confidence which a man gives to another man but once in his life,
and then when he is young. The tears were in Jimmy's eyes long before
he had finished the letter.

He turned to another letter he had received by the same mail as
Ormond's and which also bore the South African stamp upon it. Hoping
to find some news of his friend, he broke the seal, but it was merely
an intimation from the steamship company that half a dozen boxes
remained at the southern terminus of the line addressed to him; but,
they said, until they were assured the freight upon them to
Southampton would be paid, they would not be forwarded.

A day or two after, the London papers announced in large type,
"Mysterious Disappearance of an Actor." The well-known actor, Mr.
James Spence, had left the theatre in which he had been playing the
part of Joseph to a great actor's Richelieu, and had not since been
heard of. The janitor remembered him leaving that night, for he had
not returned his salutation, which was most unusual. His friends had
noticed that for a few days previous to his disappearance he had been
apparently in deep dejection, and fears were entertained. One
journalist said jestingly that probably Jimmy had gone to see what had
become of his African friend; but the joke, such as it was, was not
favorably received, for when a man is called Jimmy until late in life
it shows that people have an affection for him, and every one who knew
Spence was sorry that he had disappeared, and hoped that no evil had
overtaken him.

It was a year after the disappearance that a wan living skeleton
staggered out of the wilderness in Africa, and blindly groped his way
to the coast, as a man might who had lived long in darkness, and found
the light too strong for his eyes. He managed to reach a port, and
there took steamer homeward-bound for Southampton. The sea-breezes
revived him somewhat, but it was evident to all the passengers that he
had passed through a desperate illness. It was just a toss-up whether
he could live until he saw England again. It was impossible to guess
at his age, so heavy a hand had disease laid upon him; and he did not
seem to care to make acquaintances, but kept much to himself, sitting
wrapped up in his chair, gazing with a tired-out look at the green
ocean.

A young girl often sat in the chair beside him, ostensibly reading,
but more often glancing sympathetically at the wan figure beside her.
Frequently she seemed about to speak to him, but apparently hesitated
about doing so, for the man took no notice of his fellow-passengers.
At length, however, she mustered up courage to address him, and said:
"There is a good story in this magazine--perhaps you would like to
read it."

He turned his eyes from the sea, and rested them vacantly upon her
face for a moment. His dark mustache added to the pallor of his face,
but did not conceal the faint smile that came to his lips; he had
heard her but had not understood.

"What did you say?" he asked gently.

"I said there was a good story here entitled 'Author, Author!' and I
thought you might like to read it;" and the girl blushed very prettily
as she said this, for the man looked younger than he had before he
smiled.

"I am not sure," said the man slowly, "that I have not forgotten how
to read. It is a long time since I have seen a book or a magazine.
Won't you tell me the story? I would much rather hear it from you than
make the attempt to read it myself in the magazine."

"Oh," she cried breathlessly, "I'm not sure that I could tell it--at
any rate, not as well as the author tells it; but I will read it to
you if you like."

The story was about a man who had written a play, and who thought, as
every playwright thinks, that it was a great addition to the drama,
and would bring him fame and fortune. He took this play to a London
manager, but heard nothing from it for a long time, and at last it was
returned to him. Then, on going to a first night at the theatre to see
a new tragedy which this manager called his own, he was amazed to see
his rejected play, with certain changes, produced upon the stage; and
when the cry arose for "Author, Author!" he rose in his place; but
illness and privation had done their work, and he died proclaiming
himself the author of the play.

"Ah," said the man when the reading was finished, "I cannot tell you
how much the story has interested me. I once was an actor myself, and
anything pertaining to the stage interests me, although it is years
since I saw a theatre. It must be hard luck to work for fame and then
be cheated out of it, as was the man in the tale; but I suppose it
sometimes happens--although, for the honesty of human nature, I hope
not very often."

"Did you act under your own name, or did you follow the fashion so
many of the profession adopt?" asked the girl, evidently interested
when he spoke of the theatre.

The young man laughed, for perhaps the first time on the voyage. "Oh,"
he answered, "I was not at all noted. I acted only in minor parts and
always under my own name, which, doubtless, you have never heard; it
is Sidney Ormond."

"What!" cried the girl in amazement, "not Sidney Ormond, the African
traveller?"

The young man turned his wan face and large, melancholy eyes upon his
questioner.

"I am certainly Sidney Ormond, an African traveller, but I don't think
I deserve the '_the_,' you know. I don't imagine any one has heard of
me through my travelling any more than through my acting."

"The Sidney Ormond I mean," she said, "went through Africa without
firing a shot; his book, 'A Mission of Peace,' has been such a success
both in England and America. But of course you cannot be he, for I
remember that Sidney Ormond is now lecturing in England to tremendous
audiences all over the country. The Royal Geographical Society has
given him medals or degrees, or something of that sort--but I believe
it was Oxford that gave the degree. I am sorry I haven't his book with
me; it would be sure to interest you. But some one on board is almost
certain to have it, and I will try to get it for you. I gave mine to a
friend in Cape Town. What a funny thing it is that the two names
should be exactly the same!"

"It is very strange," said Ormond gloomily; and his eyes again sought
the horizon, and he seemed to relapse into his usual melancholy.

The girl left her seat, saying she would try to find the book, and
left him there meditating. When she came back after the lapse of half
an hour or so she found him sitting just as she had left him, with his
sad eyes on the sad sea. The girl had a volume in her hand. "There,"
she said, "I knew there would be a copy on board, but I am more
bewildered than ever; the frontispiece is an exact portrait of you,
only you are dressed differently and do not look"--the girl
hesitated--"so ill as when you came on board."

Ormond looked up at the girl with a smile, and said:

"You might say with truth, so ill as I look now."

"Oh, the voyage has done you good. You look ever so much better than
when you came on board."

"Yes, I think that is so," said Ormond, reaching for the volume she
held in her hand. He opened it at the frontispiece, and gazed long at
the picture.

The girl sat down beside him, and watched his face, glancing from it
to the book.

"It seems to me," she said at last, "that the coincidence is becoming
more and more striking. Have you ever seen that portrait before?"

"Yes," said Ormond, slowly, "I recognize it as a portrait I took of
myself in the interior of Africa, which I sent to a very dear friend
of mine--in fact, the only friend I had in England. I think I wrote
him about getting together a book out of the materials I sent him, but
I am not sure. I was very ill at the time I wrote him my last letter.
I thought I was going to die, and told him so. I feel somewhat
bewildered, and don't quite understand it all."

"I understand it!" cried the girl, her face blazing with indignation.
"Your friend is a traitor. He is reaping the reward that should have
been yours, and so poses as the African traveller, the real Ormond.
You must put a stop to it when you reach England, and expose his
treachery to the whole country."

Ormond shook his head slowly and said:

"I cannot imagine Jimmy Spence a traitor. If it were only the book,
that could be, I think, easily explained, for I sent him all my notes
of travel and materials; but I cannot understand his taking of the
medals or degrees."

The girl made a quick gesture of impatience.

"Such things," she said, "cannot be explained. You must confront him,
and expose him."

"No," said Ormond, "I shall not confront him. I must think over the
matter deeply for a time. I am not quick at thinking, at least just
now, in the face of this difficulty. Every thing seemed plain and
simple before; but if Jimmy Spence has stepped into my shoes, he is
welcome to them. Ever since I came out of Africa, I seem to have lost
all ambition. Nothing appears to be worth while now."

"Oh!" cried the girl, "that is because you are in ill health. You will
be yourself again when you reach England. Don't let this worry you
now; there is plenty of time to think it all out before we arrive. I
am sorry I spoke about it, but you see I was taken by surprise when
you mentioned your name."

"I am very glad you spoke to me," said Ormond, in a more cheerful
voice. "The mere fact that you have spoken to me has encouraged me
wonderfully. I cannot tell how much this conversation has been to me.
I am a lone man, with only one friend in the world; I am afraid I must
add now, without even one friend in the world. I am grateful for your
interest in me, even though it was only compassion for a wreck, for a
derelict, floating about on the sea of life."

There were tears in the girl's eyes, and she did not speak for a
moment. Then she laid her hand softly on Ormond's arm, and said: "You
are not a wreck--far from it. You sit alone too much, and I am afraid
that what I have thoughtlessly said has added to your troubles." The
girl paused in her talk, but after a moment added: "Don't you think
you could walk the deck for a little?"

"I don't know about walking," said Ormond, with a little laugh; "but
I'll come with you if you don't mind an incumbrance."

He rose somewhat unsteadily, and she took his arm.

"You must look upon me as your physician," she said, cheerfully, "and
I shall insist that my orders are obeyed."

"I shall be delighted to be under your charge," said Ormond, "but may
I not know my physician's name?"

The girl blushed deeply as she realized that she had had such a long
conversation with one to whom she had never been introduced. She had
regarded him as an invalid who needed a few words of cheerful
encouragement; but as he stood up she saw that he was much younger
than his face and appearance had led her to suppose.

"My name is Mary Radford," she said.

"_Miss_ Mary Radford?" inquired Ormond.

"Miss Mary Radford."

That walk on the deck was the first of many, and it soon became
evident to Ormond that he was rapidly becoming his old self again. If
he had lost a friend in England he had certainly found another on
shipboard, to whom he was getting more and more attached as time went
on. The only point of disagreement between them was in regard to the
confronting of Jimmy Spence. Ormond was determined in his resolve not
to interfere with Jimmy and his ill-gotten fame.

As the voyage was nearing its end Ormond and Miss Radford stood
together, leaning over the rail, conversing quietly. They had become
very great friends indeed.

"But if you do not intend to expose this man," said Miss Radford,
"what then do you propose to do when you land? Are you going back to
the stage again?"

"I don't think so," replied Ormond. "I will try to get something to
do, and live quietly for awhile."

"Oh," answered the girl, "I have no patience with you."

"I am sorry for that, Mary," said Ormond, "for if I could have made a
living I intended to have asked you to be my wife."

"Oh!" cried the girl breathlessly, turning her head away.

"Do you think I would have any chance?" asked Ormond.

"Of making a living?" inquired the girl, after a moment's silence.

"No. I am sure of making a living, for I have always done so.
Therefore, answer my question: Mary, do you think I would have any
chance?" And he placed his hand softly over hers, which lay on the
ship's rail.

The girl did not answer, but she did not withdraw her hand; she gazed
down at the bright green water with its tinge of foam.

"I suppose you know," she said at length, "that you have every chance,
and that you are merely pretending ignorance to make it easier for me,
because I have simply flung myself at your head ever since we began
the voyage."

"I am not pretending, Mary," he said. "What I feared was that your
interest was only that of a nurse in a somewhat backward patient. I
was afraid that I had your sympathy, but not your love. Perhaps that
was the case at first."

"Perhaps that was the case--at first--but it is far from being the
truth now--Sidney."

The young man made a motion to approach nearer to her, but the girl
drew away, whispering:

"There are other people besides ourselves on deck, remember."

"I don't believe it," said Ormond, gazing fondly at her. "I can see no
one but you. I believe we are floating alone on the ocean together and
that there is no one else in the wide world but our two selves. I
thought I went to Africa for fame, but I see I really went to find
you. What I sought seems poor compared to what I have found."

"Perhaps," said the girl, looking shyly at him, "fame is waiting as
anxiously for you to woo her as--as another person waited. Fame is a
shameless huzzy, you know."

The young man shook his head.

"No. Fame has jilted me once. I won't give her another chance."

So those who were twain sailed gently into Southampton docks resolved
to be one when the gods were willing.

Miss Mary Radford's people were there to meet her, and Ormond went up
to London alone, beginning his short railway journey with a return of
the melancholy that had oppressed him during the first part of his
long voyage. He felt once more alone in the world, now that the bright
presence of his sweetheart was missing, and he was saddened by the
thought that the telegram he had hoped to send to Jimmy Spence,
exultingly announcing his arrival, would never be sent. In a newspaper
he bought at the station he saw that the African traveller Sidney
Ormond was to be received by the mayor and corporation of a midland
town and presented with the freedom of the city. The traveller was to
lecture on his exploits in the town so honoring him, that day week.
Ormond put down the paper with a sigh, and turned his thoughts to the
girl from whom he had so lately parted. A true sweetheart is a
pleasanter subject for meditation than a false friend.

Mary also saw the announcement in the paper, and anger tightened her
lips and brought additional color to her cheeks. Seeing how adverse
her lover was to taking any action against his former friend, she had
ceased to urge him, but she had quietly made up her own mind to be
herself the goddess of the machine.

On the night the bogus African traveller was to lecture in the midland
town, Mary Radford was a unit in the very large audience that greeted
him. When he came on the platform she was so amazed at his personal
appearance that she cried out, but fortunately her exclamation was
lost in the applause that greeted the lecturer. The man was the exact
duplicate of her betrothed. She listened to the lecture in a daze; it
seemed to her that even the tones of the lecturer's voice were those
of her lover. She paid little heed to the matter of his discourse, but
allowed her mind to dwell more on the coming interview, wondering what
excuses the fraudulent traveller would make for his perfidy. When the
lecture was over, and the usual vote of thanks had been tendered and
accepted, Mary Radford still sat there while the rest of the audience
slowly filtered out of the large hall. She rose at last, nerving
herself for the coming meeting, and went to the side door, where she
told the man on duty that she wished to see the lecturer. The man said
that it was impossible for Mr. Ormond to see any one at that moment;
there was to be a big dinner, and he was to meet the mayor and
corporation; an address was to be presented, and so the lecturer had
said that he could see no one.

"Will you take a note to him if I write it?" asked the girl.

"I will send it in to him, but it's no use--he won't see you. He
refused to see even the reporters," said the doorkeeper, as if that
were final, and a man who would deny himself to the reporters would
not admit royalty itself.

Mary wrote on a slip of paper the words, "The affianced wife of the
real Sidney Ormond would like to see you for a few moments," and this
brief note was taken in to the lecturer.

The doorkeeper's faith in the consistency of public men was rudely
shaken a few minutes later, when the messenger returned with orders
that the lady was to be admitted at once.

When Mary entered the green-room of the lecture-hall she saw the
double of her lover standing near the fire, her note in his hand and a
look of incredulity on his face.

The girl barely entered the room, and, closing the door, stood with
her back against it. He was the first to speak.

"I thought Sidney had told me everything. I never knew he was
acquainted with a young lady, much less engaged to her."

"You admit, then, that you are not the true Sidney Ormond?"

"I admit it to you, of course, if you were to have been his wife."

"I am to be his wife, I hope."

"But Sidney, poor fellow, is dead--dead in the wilds of Africa."

"You will be shocked to learn that such is not the case, and that your
imposture must come to an end. Perhaps you counted on his friendship
for you, and thought that, even if he did return, he would not expose
you. In that you were quite right, but you did not count on me. Sidney
Ormond is at this moment in London, Mr. Spence."

Jimmy Spence, paying no attention to the accusations of the girl, gave
the war-whoop which had formerly been so effective in the second act
of "Pocahontas"--in which Jimmy had enacted the noble savage--and then
he danced a jig that had done service in "Colleen Bawn." While the
amazed girl watched these antics, Jimmy suddenly swooped down upon
her, caught her round the waist, and whirled her wildly around the
room. Setting her down in a corner, Jimmy became himself again, and
dabbing his heated brow with his handkerchief carefully, so as not to
disturb the make-up--

"Sidney in England again? That's too good news to be true. Say it
again, my girl; I can hardly believe it. Why didn't he come with you?
Is he ill?"

"He has been very ill."

"Ah, that's it, poor fellow! I knew nothing else would have kept him.
And then when he telegraphed to me at the old address on landing, of
course there was no reply, because, you see, I had disappeared. But
Sid wouldn't know anything about that, and so he must be wondering
what has become of me. I'll have a great story to tell him when we
meet, almost as good as his own African experiences. We'll go right up
to London to-night as soon as this confounded dinner is over. And what
is your name, my girl?"

"Mary Radford."

"And you're engaged to old Sid, eh? Well! well! well! well! This is
great news. You mustn't mind my capers, Mary, my dear; you see, I'm
the only friend Sid has, and I'm old enough to be your father. I look
young now, but you wait till the paint comes off. Have you any money?
I mean to live on when you're married, because I know Sidney never had
much."

"I haven't very much either," said Mary, with a sigh.

Jimmy jumped up and paced the room in great glee, laughing and
slapping his thigh.

"That's first rate," he cried. "Why, Mary, I've got over twenty
thousand pounds in the bank saved up for you two. The book and the
lectures, you know. I don't believe Sid himself could have done as
well, for he always was careless with money; he's often lent me the
last penny he had, and never kept any account of it. And I never
thought of paying it back either until he was gone, and then it
worried me."

The messenger put his head into the room, and said the mayor and the
corporation were waiting.

"Oh, hang the mayor and the corporation," cried Jimmy; then, suddenly
recollecting himself, he added hastily: "No, don't do that. Just give
them Jimmy--I mean Sidney Ormond's compliments, and tell his Worship
that I have just had some very important news from Africa, but will be
with them directly."

When the messenger was gone Jimmy continued, in high feather: "What a
time we will have in London! We'll all three go to the old familiar
theatre. Yes, and, by Jove, we'll pay for our seats; _that_ will be a
novelty. Then we will have supper where Sid and I used to eat. Sidney
will talk, and you and I will listen; then I'll talk, and you and Sid
will listen. You see, my dear, I've been to Africa too. When I got
Sidney's letter saying he was dying, I just moped about and was of no
use to anybody. Then I made up my mind what to do. Sid had died for
fame, and it wasn't just he shouldn't get what he paid so dearly for.
I gathered together what money I could, and went to Africa steerage. I
found I couldn't do anything there about searching for Sid, so I
resolved to be his understudy and bring fame to him, if it was
possible. I sank my own identity, and made up as Sidney Ormond, took
his boxes, and sailed for Southampton. I have been his understudy ever
since; for, after all, I always had a hope he would come back some
day, and then everything would be ready for him to take the principal
role, and let the old understudy go back to the boards again, and
resume competing with the reputation of Macready. If Sid hadn't come
back in another year, I was going to take a lecturing trip in America;
and when that was done, I intended to set out in great state for
Africa, disappear into the forest as Sidney Ormond, wash the paint
off, and come out as Jimmy Spence. Then Sidney Ormond's fame would
have been secure, for they would be always sending out relief
expeditions after him, and not finding him, while I would be growing
old on the boards, and bragging what a great man my friend Sidney
Ormond was."

There were tears in the girl's eyes as she rose and took Jimmy's hand.

"No man has ever been so true a friend to his friend as you have
been," she said.

"Oh, bless you, yes," cried Jimmy jauntily; "Sid would have done the
same for me. But he is luckier in having you than in having his
friend, although I don't deny I've been a good friend to him. Yes, my
dear, he is lucky in having a plucky girl like you. I missed that
somehow when I was young, having my head full of Macready nonsense,
and I missed being a Macready too. I've always been a sort of
understudy; so you see the part comes easy to me. Now I must be off to
that confounded mayor and corporation. I had almost forgotten them,
but I must keep up the character for Sidney's sake. But this is the
last act, my dear. To-morrow I'll turn over the part of explorer to
the real actor,--to the star."




THE HEROINE OF A FAMOUS SONG.

THE TRUE STORY OF "ANNIE LAURIE."


BY FRANK POPE HUMPHREY.


Most people suppose "Annie Laurie" to be a creation of the
songwriter's fancy, or perhaps some Scotch peasant girl, like Highland
Mary and most of the heroines of Robert Burns. In either case they are
mistaken.

Annie Laurie was "born in the purple," so to speak, at Maxwelton
House, in the beautiful glen of the Cairn--Glencairn. Her home was in
the heart of the most pastorally lovely of Scottish shires--that of
Dumfries. Her birth is thus set down by her father, in what is called
the "Barjorg MS.":

"At the pleasure of the Almighty God, my daughter Anna Laurie was
borne upon the 16th day of December 1682 years, about six o'clock in
the morning, and was baptized by Mr. George--minister of Glencairn,"

Her father was Sir Robert Laurie, first baronet, and her mother was
Jean Riddell.

[Illustration: MAXWELTON HOUSE, ANNIE LAURIE'S BIRTHPLACE.]

Maxwelton House was originally the castle of the earls of Glencairn.
It was bought in 1611 by Stephen Laurie, the founder of the Laurie
family. Stephen was a Dumfries merchant. The castle was a turreted
building. In it Annie Laurie was born.

[Illustration: ANNIE LAURIE.

From a painting now preserved at Maxwelton House.]

This castle was partially burned in the last century, but not all of
it. The great tower is incorporated in the new house, and also a
considerable portion of the old walls was built in. The foundations
are those of the castle. The picture shows the double windows of the
tower. In places its walls are twelve feet thick. The lower room is
the "gun-room," and the little room above, that in the next story, is
always spoken of in the family as "Annie Laurie's room," or "boudoir."
This room of Annie's has been opened into the drawing-room by taking
down the wall, and it forms a charming alcove. Its stone ceiling shows
its great age.

In the dining-room, a fine, large apartment, we come again upon the
old walls, six feet thick, which gives very deep window recesses. In
this room hang the portraits of Annie Laurie and her husband,
Alexander Ferguson. They are half-lengths, life-size.

Annie's hair is dark brown, and she has full dark eyes--it is
difficult to say whether brown or deep hazel. I incline to the latter.
Whoever doctored the second verse of the original song--I heard it
credited to "Mrs. Grundy" by a grandnephew of Burns--whoever it was,
he had apparently no knowledge of this portrait, for you all know he
has given Annie a "dark _blue_ e'e."

[Illustration: Alexander Ferguson, Annie Laurie's husband. From a
painting now preserved at Maxwelton House.]

The nose is long and straight; the under lip full, as though "some bee
had stung it newly," like that of Suckling's bride. A true Scotch
face, of a type to be met any day in Edinburgh, or any other Scotch
town. She is in evening dress of white satin, and she wears no jewels
but the pearls in her hair.

Alexander Ferguson, the husband of Annie Laurie, has a handsome,
youthful face, with dark eyes and curling hair. His coat is brown, and
his waistcoat blue, embroidered with gold, and he wears abundant lace
in the charming old fashion.

It was at Maxwelton House, Annie's birthplace, that I came across the
missing link in the chain of evidence that fixes the authorship of the
song upon Douglas of Fingland. Fingland is in the parish of Dalry, in
the adjacent shire of Kirkcudbright, and Douglas was a somewhat near
neighbor of Annie.

The present proprietor of Maxwelton House is Sir Emilius Laurie,
formerly rector of St. John's, Paddington, when he was known as Sir
Emilius Bayley. He took the name of Laurie when he succeeded to the
family estates. Sir Emilius is a descendant of Sir Walter, third
baronet and brother of Annie.

Sir Emilius placed in my hands a letter of which he said I might make
what use I liked, and this letter contained the missing link. While
the song has been generally credited to Douglas of Fingland, it has
always been a matter of tradition rather than of ascertained fact.

But to the important letter.

It was written in 1889, by a friend, to Sir Emilius, and relates an
incident which took place in 1854. At that time the writer, whom we
will call Mr. B., was on a visit with his wife to some friends in
Yorkshire. Mrs. B. was a somewhat famous singer of ballads. A few
friends were invited to meet them one evening, and, after the ladies
had retired to the drawing-room, their hostess asked Mrs. B. to sing;
and she sang "Annie Laurie," in the modern revision, just as we all
sing it.

Among the guests was a lady in her ninety-seventh year. She gave close
attention to the singing of the ballad, and when Mrs. B. had finished,
she spoke up: "Thank you, thank you very much! But _they're na the
words my grandfather wrote_." Then she repeated the first stanza as
she knew it.

The next day Mr. and Mrs. B. called upon her, and in the meantime she
had had the original first stanza written out, dictating it to a
grandniece. She had signed it with her own shaky hand. Not being
satisfied with the signature, she had signed it a second time.

She explained that her grandfather, Douglas of Fingland, was
desperately in love with Annie Laurie when he wrote the song. "But,"
she added, "he did na get her after a'."

She was not quite sure as to Annie's fate, she said. Some folks had
said she died unmarried, while some had said she married Ferguson of
Craigdarrock, and she rather thought _that_ was the truth.

Questioned as to the authenticity of the lines she had given, she
said:

"Oh, _I_ mind them fine. I have remembered them a' my life. My father
often repeated them to me." And here is the stanza signed with her
name:

  "'Maxwelton's banks are bonnie,
     They're a' clad owre wi' dew,
  Where I an' Annie Laurie
     Made up the bargain true.
  Made up the bargain true,
     Which ne'er forgot s'all be,
  An' for bonnie Annie Laurie
    I'd lay me down an' dee.'

  "I mind na mair.

  [Signed] "Clark Douglas.

  "August 30, 1854."

In the common version this stanza reads:

  "Maxwelton's braes are bonnie
    Where early fa's the dew,
  And it's there that Annie Laurie
    Gie'd me her promise true;
  Gie'd me her promise true,
    Which ne'er forgot will be,
  An' for bonnie Annie Laurie
    I'd lay me down an' dee."

In the original song there were but two stanzas, and this is the
second:

  "She's backit like the peacock,
    She's breistit like the swan,
  She's jimp around the middle,
    Her waist ye weel micht span--
  Her waist ye weel micht span--
    An' she has a rolling e'e,
  An' for bonnie Annie Laurie
    I'd lay me down an' dee."

As I have said, the "rolling e'e" has been changed, and wrongly, into
one of "dark blue."

Who added the third stanza is not known; but no lover of the song
would willingly dispense with it:

  "Like dew on the gowan lying
    Is the fa' o' her fairy feet;
  Like summer breezes sighing,
    Her voice is low an' sweet--
  Her voice is low an' sweet--
    An' she's a' the world to me,
  An' for bonnie Annie Laurie
    I'd lay me down an' dee."

The music of the song is modern, and was composed by Lady John Scott,
aunt by marriage of the present Duke of Buccleuch. The composer was
only guessed at for many years, but somewhat recently she has
acknowledged the authorship.

Maxwelton House sits high upon its "braes." It is "harled" without and
painted white, and is built around three sides of a sunny court. Ivy
clambers thriftily about it. Over the entrance door of the tower, and
above a window in the opposite wing, are inserted two marriage stones;
the former that of Annie's father and mother, the latter of her
grandfather and grandmother. These marriage stones are about two feet
square. The initials of the bride and bridegroom, and the date of the
marriage, are cut upon them, together with the family coat of arms,
which bears, among other heraldic devices, two laurel leaves and the
motto, _Virtus semper viridis_. Below the grandfather's marriage stone
is cut in the lintel the following:

_Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it_.

Looking up the glen from Maxwelton, the chimneys of Craigdarrock House
are seen.

It is distant about five miles, and Annie had not far to remove from
her father's house to that of her husband. She was twenty-eight at the
time of her marriage.

The Fergusons are a much older family, as families are reckoned, than
the Lauries. Fergusons of Craigdarrock were attached to the courts of
William the Lion and Alexander the II. (1214-1249).

Craigdarrock House stands near the foot of one of the three glens
whose waters unite to form the Cairn. The hills draw together here,
and give an air of seclusion to the house and grounds. The house,
large and substantial, lacks the picturesqueness of Maxwelton. It is
pale pink in tone with window-casings and copings of French gray. The
delicate cotoneaster vine clings to the stones of it. There are pretty
reaches of lawns and abundant shrubberies, and in one place
Craigdarrock Water has been diverted to form a lake, spanned in one
part by a high bridge. Sheep feed upon the hills topped with green
pastures, at the south, and shaggy Highland cattle in the meadows
below. A heavy wood overhangs to the north. There is plenty of fine
timber on the grounds, beeches, and great silver firs and, especially
to be named, ancient larches with knees and elbows like old oaks,
given to the proprietor by George II., when the larch was first
introduced into Scotland.

The present proprietor of Craigdarrock is Captain Robert Ferguson, of
the fourth generation in direct descent from Annie Laurie.

Religion has always been a burning question in Scotland, and about
Annie's time the flames raged with peculiar ferocity. Her father, Sir
Robert Laurie, was a bitter enemy of the Covenantry, and his name
finds a somewhat unenviable fame in mortuary verses of this sort cut
upon gravestones:

  "Douglas of Stenhouse, _Laurie of Maxwelton_,
  Caused Count Baillie give me martyrdom."

But the Fergusons were staunch Covenanters, and Annie, if we may judge
from her marriage with one of that party, must have favored
"compromise." Without doubt she must have worshipped with her husband
in the old parish kirk, which was burned about fifty years since. The
two end gables, ivy-shrouded, are still standing.

Against the east gable is the burial-ground of the Lauries, and
against the west that of the Fergusons. A ponderous monument marks the
grave of Annie's grandfather, cut with those hideous emblems which
former generations seemed to delight in. But the burial-place of the
Fergusons is singularly lacking in early monuments, and no stone marks
the place of Annie's rest. It is a sweet, secluded spot, and
Cock-Robin--it was September--was chanting his cheerful noonday song
over the sleepers when I was there.

At Craigdarrock House is kept Annie's will, a copy of which I give. As
a will, simply, it is of no special value. As Annie Laurie's, it will
be read with interest.

   "I, Anna Laurie, spouse to Alexr. Fergusone of Craigdarrock.
   Forasmuch as I considering it a devotie upon everie persone whyle
   they are in health and sound judgement so to settle yr. worldly
   affairs that yrby all animosities betwixt friend and relatives
   may obviat and also for the singular love and respect I have for
   the said Alex. Fergusone, in case he survive me I do heirby make
   my letter will as follows:

   "First, I recommend my soule to God, hopeing by the meritorious
   righteousness of Jesus Christ to be saved; secondly, I recommend
   my body to be decently and orderly interred; and in the third
   plaice nominate and appoynt the sd. Alexr. Fergusone to be my
   sole and only executor, Legator and universall intromettor with
   my hail goods, gear, debts, and soams off money that shall
   pertain and belong to me the tyme of my decease, or shall be dew
   to me by bill, bond, or oyrway; with power to him to obtain
   himself confirmed and decreed exr. to me and to do everie thing
   for fixing and establishing the right off my spouse in his person
   as law reqaires; in witness whereof their putts (written by John
   Wilsone off Chapell in Dumfries) are subd. by me at Craigdarrock
   the twenty eight day of Apryle Jajvij and eleven (1711) years,
   before the witnesses the sd. John Wilsone and John Nicholsone his
   servitor.

   "ANN. LAURIE,
   "JO. WILSON, Witness.
   "JOHN HOAT, Witness."

If our dates are correct, this will was written the year after her
marriage. And it is pleasant to see that she had such entire trust in
Alexander Ferguson. Evidently she cherished no lingering regrets for
Douglas of Fingland.

In following up the "fairy" footsteps of Annie Laurie I came upon
others wholly different, but of equal interest--those of Robert Burns.

At Craigdarrock House is kept "the whistle" of his poem of that name.
Burns tells the story of it in a note. It was brought into Scotland by
a doughty Dane in the train of Anne, queen of James VI. He had won it
in a drinking bout. It was a "challenge whistle," to use a modern
term. The man who gave the last whistle upon it, before tumbling under
the table dead drunk, won it.

After various vicissitudes, the whistle came into possession of Laurie
of Maxwelton, and then passed into the hands of a Riddell of the same
connection. Finally came the last drinking skirmish in which it was to
appear, and which is chronicled by Burns. This final drinking bout
took place October 16, 1790. The three champions were Sir Robert
Laurie of Maxwelton, Alexander Ferguson of Craigdarrock--an eminent
lawyer, and who must, I think, have been a grandson of Annie
Laurie--and Captain Riddell of Friar's Carse, antiquary and friend of
Burns. The contest took place at Friar's Carse, and Alexander Ferguson
gave the last faint whistle before going under the table, and won the
prize, which ever since has been kept at Craigdarrock.

The whistle is large, of dark brown wood, and is set in a silver cup
upon which is engraved the fact that it is "Burns's whistle," together
with the date of the contest. A silver chain is attached to it; but it
reposes on velvet, under glass. It is too precious to use.




A POINT OF KNUCKLIN' DOWN.


BY ELLA HIGGINSON,

Author of "The Takin' in of Old Mis' Lane" and other stories.


It was the day before Christmas--an Oregon Christmas. It had rained
mistily at dawn; but at ten o'clock the clouds had parted and moved
away reluctantly. There was a blue and dazzling sky overhead. The
rain-drops still sparkled on the windows and on the green grass, and
the last roses and chrysanthemums hung their beautiful heads heavily
beneath them; but there was to be no more rain. Oregon City's mighty
barometer--the Falls of the Willamette--was declaring to her people by
her softened roar that the morrow was to be fair.

Mrs. Orville Palmer was in the large kitchen making preparations for
the Christmas dinner. She was a picture of dainty loveliness in a
lavender gingham dress, made with a full skirt and a shirred waist and
big leg-o'-mutton sleeves. A white apron was tied neatly around her
waist.

Her husband came in, and paused to put his arm around her and kiss
her. She was stirring something on the stove, holding her dress aside
with one hand.

"It's goin' to be a fine Christmas, Emarine," he said, and sighed
unconsciously. There was a wistful and careworn look on his face.

"Beautiful!" said Emarine vivaciously. "Goin' down-town, Orville?"

"Yes." Want anything?"

"Why, the cranberries ain't come yet. I'm so uneasy about 'em. They'd
ought to 'a' b'en stooed long ago. I like 'em cooked down an' strained
to a jell. I don't see what ails them groc'rymen! Sh'u'd think they
c'u'd get around some time before doomsday! Then I want--here, you'd
best set it down." She took a pencil and a slip of paper from a shelf
over the table and gave them to him. "Now, let me see." She commenced
stirring again, with two little wrinkles between her brows. "A ha'f a
pound o' citron; a ha'f a pound o' candied peel; two pounds o'
cur'nts; two pounds o' raisins--git 'em stunned, Orville; a pound o'
sooet--make 'em give you some that ain't all strings! A box o'
Norther' Spy apples; a ha'f a dozen lemons; four-bits' worth o'
walnuts or a'monds, whichever's freshest; a pint o' Puget Sound
oysters fer the dressin', an' a bunch o' cel'ry. You stop by an' see
about the turkey, Orville; an' I wish you'd run in 's you go by
mother's, an' tell her to come up as soon as she can. She'd ought to
be here now."

Her husband smiled as he finished the list. "You're a wonderful
housekeeper, Emarine," he said.

Then his face grew grave. "Got a present for your mother yet,
Emarine?"

"Oh, yes, long ago. I got 'er a black shawl down t' Charman's. She's
b'en wantin' one."

He shuffled his feet about a little. "Unh-hunh. Yuh--that is--I reckon
yuh ain't picked out any present fer--fer my mother, have yuh,
Emarine?"

"No," she replied, with cold distinctness. "I ain't."

There was a silence. Emarine stirred briskly. The lines grew deeper
between her brows. Two red spots came into her cheeks. "I hope the
rain ain't spoilt the chrysyanthums," she said then, with an air of
ridding herself of a disagreeable subject.

Orville made no answer. He moved his feet again uneasily. Presently he
said: "I expect my mother needs a black shawl, too. Seemed to me her'n
looked kind o' rusty at church Sunday. Notice it, Emarine?"

"No," said Emarine.

"Seemed to me she was gittin' to look offul old. Emarine"--his voice
broke; he came a step nearer--"it'll be the first Christmas dinner I
ever eat without my mother."

She drew back and looked at him. He knew the look that flashed into
her eyes, and shrank from it.

"You don't have to eat this 'n' without 'er, Orville Parmer! You go
an' eat your dinner with your mother 'f you want! I can get along
alone. Are you goin' to order them things? If you ain't, just say so,
an' I'll go an' do 't myself!"

He put on his hat and went without a word.

Mrs. Palmer took the saucepan from the stove and set it on the hearth.
Then she sat down and leaned her cheek in the palm of her hand, and
looked steadily out the window. Her eyelids trembled closer together.
Her eyes held a far-sighted look. She saw a picture; but it was not
the picture of the blue reaches of sky, and the green valley cleft by
its silver-blue river. She saw a kitchen, shabby compared to her own,
scantily furnished, and in it an old, white-haired woman sitting down
to eat her Christmas dinner alone.

After a while she arose with an impatient sigh. "Well, I can't help
it!" she exclaimed. "If I knuckled down to her this time, I'd have to
do 't ag'in. She might just as well get ust to 't first as last. I
wish she hadn't got to lookin' so old an' pitiful, though, a-settin'
there in front o' us in church Sunday after Sunday. The cords stand
out in her neck like well-rope, an' her chin keeps a-quiv'rin' so! I
can see Orville a-watchin' her--"

The door opened suddenly and her mother entered. She was bristling
with curiosity. "Say, Emarine!" She lowered her voice, although there
was no one to hear. "Where d' you s'pose the undertaker's a-goin' up
by here? Have you hear of anybody--"

"No," said Emarine. "Did Orville stop by an' tell you to hurry up?"

"Yes. What's the matter of him? Is he sick?"

"Not as I know of. Why?"

"He looks so. Oh, I wonder if it's one o' the Peterson children where
the undertaker's a-goin'! They've all got the quinsy sore throat."

"How does he look? I don't see 's he looks so turrable."

"Why, Emarine Parmer! Ev'rybody in town says he looks _so_! I only
hope they don't know what ails him!"

"What _does_ ail him?" cried out Emarine, fiercely. "What are you
hintin' at?"

"Well, if you don't know what ails him, you'd ort to; so I'll tell
you. He's dyin' by inches ever sence you turned his mother out o'
doors."

Emarine turned white. Sheet lightning played in her eyes.

"Oh, you'd ought to talk about my turnin' her put!" she burst out,
furiously. "After you a-settin' here a-quar'l'n' with her in this very
kitchen, an' eggin' me on! Wa'n't she goin' to turn you out o' your
own daughter's home? Wa'n't that what I turned her out fer? I didn't
turn her out, anyhow! I only told Orville this house wa'n't big enough
fer his mother an' me, an' that neither o' us 'u'd knuckle down, so
he'd best take his choice. You'd ought to talk!"

"Well, if I egged you on, I'm sorry fer 't," said Mrs. Endey,
solemnly. "Ever sence that fit o' sickness I had a month ago, I've
feel kind o' old an' no account myself, as if I'd like to let all
holts go, an' jest rest. I don't spunk up like I ust to. No, he didn't
go to Peterson's--he's gawn right on. My land! I wonder 'f it ain't
old gran'ma Eliot: she had a bad spell--no, he didn't turn that
corner. I can't think where he's goin' to!"

She sat down with a sigh of defeat.

A smile glimmered palely across Emarine's face and was gone. "Maybe if
you'd go up in the antic you could see better," she suggested, dryly.

"Oh, Emarine, here comes old gran'ma Eliot herself! Run an' open the
door fer 'er. She's limpin' worse 'n usual."

Emarine flew to the door. Grandma Eliot was one of the few people she
loved. She was large and motherly. She wore a black dress and shawl
and a funny bonnet, with a frill of white lace around her brow.

Emarine's face softened when she kissed her. "I'm so glad to see you,"
she said, and her voice was tender.

Even Mrs. Endey's face underwent a change. Usually it wore a look of
doubt, if not of positive suspicion, but now it fairly beamed. She
shook hands cordially with the guest and led her to a comfortable
chair.

"I know your rheumatiz is worse," she said, cheerfully, "because
you're limpin' so. Oh, did you see the undertaker go up by here? We
can't think where he's goin' to. D' you happen to know?"

"No, I don't; an' I don't want to neither." Mrs. Eliot laughed
comfortably. "Mis' Endey, you don't ketch me foolin' with undertakers
till I have to." She sat down and removed her black cotton gloves.
"I'm gettin' to that age when I don't care much where undertakers go
to so long 's they let _me_ alone. Fixin' fer Christmas dinner,
Emarine dear?"

"Yes, ma'am," said Emarine in her very gentlest tone. Her mother had
never said "dear" to her, and the sound of it on this old lady's lips
was sweet. "Won't you come an' take dinner with us?"

The old lady laughed merrily. "Oh, dearie me, dearie me! You don't
guess my son's folks could spare me now, do you? I spend ev'ry
Christmas there. They most carry me on two chips. My son's wife,
Sidonie, she nearly runs her feet off waitin' on me. She can't do
enough fer me. My, Mrs. Endey, you don't know what a comfort a
daughter-in-law is when you get old an' feeble!"

Emarine's face turned red. She went to the table and stood with her
back to the older women; but her mother's sharp eyes observed that her
ears grew scarlet.

"An' I never will," said Mrs. Endey, grimly.

"You've got a son-in-law, though, who's worth a whole townful of most
son-in-laws. He was such a good son, too; jest worshipped his mother;
couldn't bear her out o' his sight. He humored her high an' low.
That's jest the way Sidonie does with me. I'm gettin' cranky 's I get
older, an' sometimes I'm reel cross an' sassy to her; but she jest
laffs at me, an' then comes an' kisses me, an' I'm all right ag'in.
It's a blessin' right from God to have a daughter-in-law like that."

The knife in Emarine's hand slipped, and she uttered a little cry.

"Hurt you?" demanded her mother, sternly.

Emarine was silent, and did not turn.

"Cut you, Emarine? Why don't you answer me? Aigh?"

"A little," said Emarine. She went into the pantry, and presently
returned with a narrow strip of muslin which she wound around her
finger.

"Well, I never see! You never will learn any gumption! Why don't you
look what you're about? Now, go around Christmas with your finger all
tied up!"

"Oh, that'll be all right by to-morrow," said Mrs. Eliot, cheerfully.
"Won't it, Emarine? Never cry over spilt milk, Mrs. Endey; it makes a
body get wrinkles too fast. O' course Orville's mother's comin' to
take dinner with you, Emarine."

"Dear me!" exclaimed Emarine, in a sudden flutter. "I don't see why
them cranberries don't come! I told Orville to hurry 'em up. I'd best
make the floatin' island while I wait."

"I stopped at Orville's mother's as I come along, Emarine."

"How?" Emarine turned in a startled way from the table.

"I say I stopped at Orville's mother's as I come along."

"Oh!"

"She well?" asked Mrs. Endey.

"No, she ain't; shakin' like she had the Saint Vitus dance. She's
failed harrable lately. She'd b'en cryin'; her eyes was all swelled
up."

There was quite a silence. Then Mrs. Endey said, "What she b'en cryin'
about?"

"Why, when I asked her she jest laffed kind o' pitiful, an' said: 'Oh,
only my tom-foolishness, o' course.' Said she always got to thinkin'
about other Christmases. But I cheered her up. I told her what a good
time I always had at my son's, an' how Sidonie jest couldn't do enough
fer me. An' I told her to think what a nice time she'd have here 't
Emarine's to-morrow."

Mrs. Endey smiled. "What she say to that?"

"She didn't say much. I could see she was thankful, though, she had a
son's to go to. She said she pitied all poor wretches that had to set
out their Christmas alone. Poor old lady! she ain't got much spunk
left. She's all broke down. But I cheered her up some. Sech a
_wishful_ look took holt o' her when I pictchered her dinner over here
at Emarine's. I can't seem to forget it. Goodness! I must go. I'm on
my way to Sidonie's, an' she'll be comin' after me if I ain't on
time."

When Mrs. Eliot had gone limping down the path, Mrs. Endey said: "You
got your front room red up, Emarine?"

"No; I ain't had time to red up anything."

"Well, I'll do it. Where's your duster at?"

"Behind the org'n. You can get out the wax cross again. Mis' Dillon
was here with all her childern, an' I had to hide up ev'rything. I
never see childern like her'n. She lets 'em handle things so!"

Mrs. Endey went into the "front room" and began to dust the organ. She
was something of a diplomat, and she wished to be alone for a few
minutes. "You have to manage Emarine by contrairies," she reflected.
It did not occur to her that this was a family trait. "I'm offul sorry
I ever egged her on to turnin' Orville's mother out o' doors, but
who'd 'a' thought it 'u'd break her down so? She ain't told a soul
either. I reckoned she'd talk somethin' offul about us, but she ain't
told a soul. She's kep' a s

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