The Scrap Book, Volume 1, No. 5
by Various · English · Gutenberg #32122 · 354,045 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Scrap Book, Volume 1, No. 5
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Scrap Book, Volume 1, No. 5
Author: Various
Release date: April 24, 2010 [eBook #32122]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32122
Credits: Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Christine D. and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SCRAP BOOK, VOLUME 1, NO. 5 ***
Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Christine D. and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net
THE SCRAP BOOK.
Vol. I. JULY, 1906. No. 5.
PATRIOTISM.
BY SIR WALTER SCOTT.
Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
"This is my own, my native land!"
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well!
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim--
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentered all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung
Unwept, unhonor'd, and unsung.
"Lay of the Last Minstrel," Canto VI.
The Latest Viewpoints of Men Worth While
An Old Business Man Testifies to the Progress the World Has
Made Since Seventy Years Ago--Lewis Carroll's Advice on
Mental Nutrition--Rudyard Kipling Defines What Literature
Is--Richard Mansfield Holds That All Men Are
Actors--Professor Thomas Advances Reasons for
Spelling-Reform--Helen Keller Pictures the Tragedy of
Blindness--With Other Expressions of Opinion From Men of
Light and Leading.
_Compiled and edited for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.
INSIDE FACTS ABOUT THE "GOOD OLD TIMES."
Stephen A. Knight, an Aged Cotton Manufacturer,
Tells of Work and Wages
Seventy Years Ago.
The more deeply one looks into the conditions of life in the "good old
times" the more likely is he to find reason for exclaiming, "Thank Heaven,
I live in the Now!" Life held out comparatively little for the American
working man three-quarters of a century ago. Wages were very small,
education was exceedingly hard to obtain, and the comforts of life were
few in comparison with the present time.
At the recent meeting of the National Association of Cotton Manufacturers,
in Boston, Stephen A. Knight, of Providence, a former president of the
association, gave his reminiscences of old-time mill work. Mr. Knight
began as a bobbin boy in a mill at Coventry, Rhode Island, in 1835. After
the lapse of seventy years he says:
My work was to put in the roving on a pair of mules
containing two hundred and fifty-six spindles. It required
three hands--a spinner, a fore side piecer, and a back
boy--to keep that pair of mules in operation. The spinner
who worked alongside of me died about two years ago at the
age of one hundred and three, an evidence that all do not
die young who spend their early life in a cotton-mill. I am
hoping to go one better.
The running time for that mill, on an average, was about
fourteen hours per day. In the summer months we went in as
early as we could see, worked about an hour and a half, and
then had a half-hour for breakfast. At twelve o'clock we had
another half-hour for dinner, and then we worked until the
stars were out.
From September 20 until March 20 we went to work at five
o'clock in the morning and came out at eight o'clock at
night, having the same hours for meals as in the
summer-time.
For my services I was allowed forty-two cents per week,
which, being analyzed, was seven cents per day, or one-half
cent per hour.
Old-Time Profit Makers.
The proprietor of that mill was accustomed to make a
contract with his help on the first day of April for the
coming year. That contract was supposed to be sacred, and it
was looked upon as a disgrace to ignore the contracts thus
made. On one of these anniversaries a mother with several
children suggested to the proprietor that the pay seemed
small.
The proprietor replied: "You get enough to eat, don't you?"
The mother said: "Just enough to keep the wolf from the
door."
He then remarked, "You get enough clothes to wear, don't
you?" to which she answered, "Barely enough to cover our
nakedness."
"Well," said the proprietor, "we want the rest." And that
proprietor, on the whole, was as kind and considerate to his
help as was any other manufacturer at that time.
The opportunities for an education among the factory help
were exceedingly limited, as you can well see, both from the
standpoint of time and from the standpoint of money.
But, gentlemen, we are living in better days. We work less
hours, get better pay, live in better homes, and have better
opportunities to obtain an education.
In place of eighty-four hours we now work fifty-eight hours
per week, a difference of twenty-six hours, and as an
employer of help I am glad of it. We are not allowed to
employ children at the tender age that was in vogue
seventy-one years ago; as an employer of help, I am glad of
that.
We get better pay for our services. There is at least an
advance of two hundred per cent, and in many cases more than
that.
More Opportunity To-Day.
We live in better homes; our houses are larger, better
finished, and kept in better repair. When I was a boy, if we
wanted a room re-papered or painted, or even whitewashed, we
had to do it at our own expense. It is quite different now.
Every village of any size employs painters and other help
enough to keep our houses in good, neat, and healthy
condition, while the sanitary condition receives especial
care. Many of our employees have homes of their own, built
with money earned in our manufactories--a thing almost
unknown seventy years ago.
I have many times been asked if, in my opinion, the young
man of to-day had as good a chance to make his mark in the
business world as did his elders? My answer is--never since
our Pilgrim Fathers landed on the shores of Plymouth were
the opportunities for the young man's success greater than
they are to-day. It is for him to determine whether he will
be a success or not. The gates and the avenues are open to
him, and it is for him to elect whether he will or will not
avail himself of the golden opportunities awaiting him.
Such a comparison as Mr. Knight draws from his actual experience does the
work of volumes of argument. That the span of one man's life could bridge
extremes so widely separated is evidence enough that our country has made
remarkable progress.
GIVING THE MIND ITS THREE SQUARE MEALS.
A Paper by the Late Lewis Carroll, in
Which the Desirability of Feeding the
Intellect Is Dwelt Upon.
The late Lewis Carroll was, first of all, professionally a mathematician,
though few readers of "the Alice books" knew it. And his name, of course,
was Charles L. Dodgson, and he wrote mathematical treatises. To the time
of his death--he was born in 1832 and died in 1898--his readers hoped for
more volumes like "Alice in Wonderland" or "The Hunting of the Snark," but
Mr. Dodgson's literary output was small. The May _Harper's_ reprints a
hitherto unpublished paper from his pen, on "Feeding the Mind," in which
he says:
Breakfast, dinner, tea; in extreme cases, breakfast,
luncheon, dinner, tea, supper, and a glass of something hot
at bedtime. What care we take about feeding the lucky body!
Which of us does as much for his mind? And what causes the
difference? Is the body so much the more important of the
two?
By no means; but life depends on the body being fed, whereas
we can continue to exist as animals (scarcely as men) though
the mind be utterly starved and neglected. Therefore, Nature
provides that in case of serious neglect of the body such
terrible consequences of discomfort and pain shall ensue as
will soon bring us back to a sense of our duty; and some of
the functions necessary to life she does for us altogether,
leaving us no choice in the matter.
It would fare but ill with many of us if we were left to
superintend our own digestion and circulation. "Bless me!"
one would cry, "I forgot to wind up my heart this morning!
To think that it has been standing still for the last three
hours!" "I can't walk with you this afternoon," a friend
would say, "as I have no less than eleven dinners to digest.
I had to let them stand over from last week, being so
busy--and my doctor says he will not answer for the
consequences if I wait any longer!"
Well it is, I say, for us that the consequences of
neglecting the body can be clearly seen and felt; and it
might be well for some if the mind were equally visible and
tangible--if we could take it, say, to the doctor and have
its pulse felt.
"Why, what have you been doing with this mind lately? How
have you fed it? It looks pale, and the pulse is very slow."
"Well, doctor, it has not had much regular food lately. I
gave it a lot of sugar-plums yesterday."
"Sugar-plums! What kind?"
"Well, they were a parcel of conundrums, sir."
"Ah! I thought so. Now just mind this: if you go on playing
tricks like that you'll spoil all its teeth and get laid up
with mental indigestion. You must have nothing but the
plainest reading for the next few days. Take care, now! No
novels on any account!"
KIPLING'S ANALYSIS OF TRUE LITERATURE.
The Masterless Man With the Magic of
the Necessary Words, and the
Record of the Tribe.
At the anniversary banquet of the Royal Academy, in London, May 5, Rudyard
Kipling responded to the toast of "Literature." In that lean English of
his, with all its evidence of fine condition, he made plain, as he
understands it, the meaning of literature and its relation to life. It is
the story of the tribe, told, not by the men of action, who are dumb, but
by the masterless men who possess the magic of the necessary words.
We quote the address from the London _Times_:
There is an ancient legend which tells us that when a man
first achieved a most notable deed he wished to explain to
his tribe what he had done. As soon as he began to speak,
however, he was smitten with dumbness, he lacked words, and
sat down.
Then there arose--according to the story--a masterless man,
one who had taken no part in the action of his fellow, who
had no special virtues, but afflicted--that is the
phrase--with the magic of the necessary words. He saw, he
told, he described the merits of the notable deed in such a
fashion, we are assured, that the words "became alive and
walked up and down in the hearts of all his hearers."
Thereupon the tribe, seeing that the words were certainly
alive, and fearing lest the man with the words would hand
down untrue tales about them to their children, took and
killed him. But later they saw that the magic was in the
words, not in the man.
We have progressed in many directions since the time of this
early and destructive criticism, but so far we do not seem
to have found a sufficient substitute for the necessary word
as the final record to which all achievement must look.
Even to-day, when all is done, those who have done it must
wait until all has been said by the masterless man with the
words. It is certain that the overwhelming bulk of those
words will perish in the future as they have perished in the
past; it is true that a minute fraction will continue to
exist, and by the light of these words, and by that light
only, will our children be able to judge of the phases of
our generation. Now, we desire beyond all things to stand
well with our children, but when our story comes to be told
we do not know who will have the telling of it.
Too Close to the Tellers.
We are too close to the tellers; there are many tellers, and
they are all talking together; and even if we knew them we
must not kill them. But the old and terrible instinct which
taught our ancestors to kill the original story-teller warns
us that we shall not be far wrong if we challenge any man
who shows signs of being afflicted with the magic of the
necessary words.
May not this be the reason why, without any special
legislation on its behalf, literature has always stood a
little outside the law as the one calling that is absolutely
free--free in the sense that it needs no protection?
For instance, if, as occasionally happens, a judge makes a
bad law, or a surgeon a bad operation, or a manufacturer
makes bad food, criticism upon their actions is by law and
custom confined to comparatively narrow limits. But if a
man, as occasionally happens, makes a book, there is no
limit to the criticism that may be directed against it, and
it is perfectly as it should be. The world recognizes that
little things, like bad law, bad surgery, and bad food, only
affect the cheapest commodity that we know about--human
life.
Therefore, in these circumstances, men can afford to be
swayed by pity for the offender, by interest in his family,
by fear, or loyalty, or respect for the organization he
represents, or even a desire to do him justice.
But when the question is of words--words that may become
alive and walk up and down in the hearts of the hearers--it
is then that this world of ours, which is disposed to take
an interest in the future, feels instinctively that it is
better that a thousand innocent people should be punished
than that one guilty word should be preserved, carrying that
which is an untrue tale of the tribe.
Remote Chances of a Tale's Survival.
The chances, of course, are almost astronomically remote
that any given tale will survive for so long as it takes an
oak to grow to timber size. But that guiding instinct warns
us not to trust to chance a matter of the supremest concern.
In this durable record, if anything short of indisputable
and undistilled truth be seen there, we all feel, How shall
our achievements profit us?
The record of the tribe is in its enduring literature. The
magic of literature lies in the words, and not in any man.
Witness, a thousand excellent, strenuous words can leave us
quite cold or put us to sleep, whereas a bare half-hundred
words breathed upon by some man in his agony, or in his
exaltation, or in his idleness, ten generations ago, can
still lead a whole nation into and out of captivity, can
open to us the doors of three worlds, or stir us so
intolerably that we can scarcely abide to look at our own
souls.
It is a miracle--one that happens very seldom. But secretly
each one of the masterless men with the words has hope, or
has had hope, that the miracle may be wrought again through
him.
And why not? If a tinker in Bedford jail, if a
pamphleteering shopkeeper pilloried in London, if a muzzy
Scotsman, if a despised German Jew, or a condemned French
thief, or an English admiralty official with a taste for
letters can be miraculously afflicted with the magic of the
necessary words, why not any man at any time?
Our world, which is only concerned in the perpetuation of
the record, sanctions that hope as kindly and just as
cruelly as nature sanctions love. All it suggests is that
the man with the words shall wait upon the man of
achievement, and step by step with him try to tell the story
to the tribe. All it demands is that the magic of every word
shall be tried out to the very uttermost by every means
fair and foul that the mind of man can suggest.
There is no room, and the world insists that there shall be
no room, for pity, for mercy, for respect, for fear, or even
for loyalty, between man and his fellow man, when the record
of the tribe comes to be written.
That record must satisfy, at all costs to the word and to
the man behind the word. It must satisfy alike the keenest
vanity and the deepest self-knowledge of the present; it
must satisfy also the most shameless curiosity of the
future. When it has done this it is literature of which will
be said in due time that it fitly represents its age.
"MEN AND WOMEN MERELY PLAYERS."
The Man as an Actor and the Actor as
a Man--an Interchangeable Definition
and a Defense of Simulation.
Richard Mansfield's paper in the May _Atlantic_, "Man and the Actor," is a
defense of the stage on the ground that all mankind are actors. He takes
as his text the lines of Shakespeare:
I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano,
A stage where every man must play a part.
Great men, says Mr. Mansfield, owe their preeminence largely to their
histrionic ability. In other words, theatrical behavior is, in man, not a
weakness, but a sign of strength--not something to be avoided, but
something to be cultivated.
The stage cannot be held in contempt by mankind; because all
mankind is acting, and every human being is playing a part.
The better a man plays his part, the better he succeeds. The
more a man knows of the art of acting, the greater the man;
for, from the king on his throne to the beggar in the
street, every man is acting. There is no greater comedian or
tragedian in the world than a great king.
The knowledge of the art of acting is indispensable to a
knowledge of mankind, and when you are able to pierce the
disguise in which every man arrays himself, or to read the
character which every man assumes, you achieve an intimate
knowledge of your fellow men, and you are able to cope with
the man, either as he is or as he pretends to be.
It was necessary for Shakespeare to be an actor in order to
know men. Without his knowledge of the stage Shakespeare
could never have been the reader of men that he was. And yet
we are asked, "Is the stage worth while?"
The Histrionic Napoleon.
Napoleon and Alexander were both great actors--Napoleon
perhaps the greatest actor the world has ever seen. Whether
on the bridge of Lodi or in his camp at Tilsit; whether
addressing his soldiers in the plains of Egypt; whether
throwing open his old gray coat and saying, "Children, will
you fire on your general?" whether bidding farewell to them
at Fontainebleau; whether standing on the deck of the
Bellerophon or on the rocks of St. Helena--he was always an
actor.
Napoleon had studied the art of acting, and he knew its
value. If the power of the eye, the power of the voice, the
power of that all-commanding gesture of the hand, failed him
when he faced the regiment of veterans on his return from
Elba, he was lost.
But he had proved and compelled his audience too often for
his art to fail him then. The leveled guns fell. The
audience was his. Another crown had fallen! By what? A trick
of the stage!
Was he willing to die then, to be shot by his old guard? Not
he! Did he doubt for one moment his ability as an actor? Not
he! If he had, he would have been lost. And that power to
control, that power to command, once it is possessed by a
man, means that that man can play his part anywhere, and
under all circumstances and conditions.
Unconsciously or consciously, every great man, every man who
has played a great part, has been an actor. Each man, every
man, who has made his mark has chosen his character, the
character best adapted to himself, and has played it, and
clung to it, and made his impress with it.
I have but to conjure up the figure of Daniel Webster, who
never lost an opportunity to act; or General Grant, who
chose for his model William of Orange, surnamed the Silent.
You will find every one of your most admired heroes choosing
early in life some admired hero of his own to copy. Who can
doubt that Napoleon had selected Julius Cæsar?
Mr. Mansfield goes on to say that inspiration is a kind of hypnotism: a
good actor, playing the part of _Hamlet_, is for the time being Hamlet.
An old argument is reopened by this assertion. But where some of the great
actors have lost themselves in their characters, others have studied their
rôles as apart from themselves, and have given, with complete control, the
results of their study. Doubtless the question which method is the better
art will never be settled to the entire satisfaction of every one.
ARE WE WORSHIPERS OF THE BIG DICTIONARY?
Professor Calvin Thomas Says We Revere
Usage Too Greatly--Old Dog Story
Bears Out the Facts of Charge.
The movement for simplified spelling has been attracting many men of mark
in literature and the professions. Notions of the strict sanctity of fixed
forms of spelling disappear in the light of the historical evidence which
the reformers are presenting.
Thus, it is pointed out that from the beginning our spelling has been
subject to changes so great that the young schoolboy of to-day cannot read
Chaucer without a vocabulary, even with the obsolete words eliminated.
Obsolete spellings are too much for him.
The Simplified Spelling Board has reprinted an address delivered before
the Modern Language Association by Professor Calvin Thomas, of Columbia
University. Describing the difficulty of teaching children our present
spelling, he says:
How heavy is the burden, as a matter of sober fact? To this
question it is difficult to give a strictly scientific
answer, because there is no perfectly satisfactory way of
attacking the problem. Literature teems with estimates and
computations of the time and money wasted in one way and
another because of our peculiar spelling; but from the
nature of the case they can only be roughly approximate.
Speaking broadly, it appears that children receive more or
less systematic instruction in spelling throughout the
primary grades--that is, for eight years. If now we suppose
that they pursue on the average five subjects
simultaneously, and that spelling receives equal attention
with the others, we get one year and three-fifths as the
amount of solid school time devoted to this acquirement.
This, however, does not tell the whole story; for many begin
the struggle before they enter school, many continue to need
instruction in the high school, and even in college, and not
a few walk through life with an orthographic lameness which
causes them to suffer in comfort and reputation. Probably
two years and a half would be nearer the mark as a gross
estimate of the average time consumed in learning to spell
more or less accurately.
We have now to ask: How much of this time is wasted? How
much must we deduct for the reasonable requirements of the
case? Zealous reformers often assume that it is practically
all wasted. They tell us that if we had a proper system of
spelling the acquisition of the art in childhood would take
care of itself after a little elementary instruction. This
may be so, but we have no means of proving positively that
it is so.
If any people in the world had an ideal system of spelling,
we might go to them and find out how long it takes their
children to learn spelling. But there is no such people; and
so we are forced back upon such rough and general
statements--perfectly true in themselves--as that German and
Italian children learn to spell much more easily and quickly
than do our own children.
Meanwhile, it is hardly fair to take as one term of
comparison an ideal condition which never existed and never
will exist. An alphabet must always be a rough instrument of
practical convenience. Very certainly our posterity will
never adopt any thoroughgoing system of phonetic spelling.
Nothing is going to be changed _per saltum_. The most we can
hope for is a gradual improvement, accelerated, perhaps, by
wisely directed effort. This means that spelling will always
have to be learned and taught, and that considerable time
will have to be devoted to it.
Language Has to Change.
As to the too common belief that spellings should never be changed,
Professor Thomas says:
What is needed is to prepare the way for a generation whose
feelings shall be somewhat different from ours--a generation
that shall have less reverence than we have for what is
called usage.
During the last hundred and fifty years we have become a
race of dictionary-worshipers, and we have gone so far in
our blind, unreasonable subserviency to an artificial
standard that the time has come for a reaction. We need to
reconquer and assert for ourselves something of that liberty
which Shakespeare and Milton enjoyed. We need to claim the
natural right of every living language to grow and change to
suit the convenience of those who use it. This right belongs
to the written language no less than to the spoken.
We have the same right to make usage that Steele and Addison
and Dr. Johnson had; and there is just as much merit in
making usage as in following it.
The Tale of a Dog.
To gain an idea of the extent to which usage has changed in three hundred
years, it is necessary only to read the following dog story, which was
first recorded in 1587, and was reprinted lately by the London
_Chronicle_:
Item--We present yt at the tyme of our sytting ther hath ben
complaynt made of another dogg, betwene a masty & a
mungerell, of Peter Quoyte's which hath stronng qualyties by
himselfe, which goyng lose abrode doth many times offend the
neyghbors & wyll fetch owt of ther howses whole peces of
meate, as loynes of mutton & veal & such lyke & a pasty of
venson or a whole pownde of candells at a tyme, & will not
spoyle yt by the way but cary yt whole to his masters howse,
which being a profytable dogg for his master, yet because he
is offensyffe to many yt is not sufferable, wherfor his
master hath forfeyt for every time 3s. 4d. And be yt
comaunded to kepe him tyed or to putt him away upon payn to
forfeyte for every tyme he shalbe found in the streets 3s.
4d.
This story takes on significance from the comment of the New York _Times_:
There, now, is a fine specimen of Shakespearian spelling,
for it is dated 1587. Even this, of course, is itself the
flower of numberless reformations and changes, all in the
direction of simplicity and phonetic--or intended to be. It
is at least as different from the so-called long-established
spelling as is that of the letters contributed to our
columns occasionally by correspondents who think they are
showing by horrible examples the dreadful orthography to
which the Carnegie iconoclasts would reduce us all.
But what a fine dog story it is, and how quaintly phrased!
And how magnanimous is the admission that the animal
"betwene a masty and a mungerell," though addicted to
larceny, "hath stronng qualyties of himselfe"!
The man who made the record was evidently a lover and a
judge of dogs, and the implication is that a "mungerell" was
then regarded as belonging to a breed of his own as much as
did a "masty." This indicates that our use of the word
"mongrel" is a misuse, though the accepted etymology
supports us.
WHAT HAS BECOME OF OLD-TIME GENTLEMEN?
"Chivalry Is a Fiction," Says a Southern
Woman, and Several Southern Journals
Support Her Statement.
A Southern woman said not long ago: "You know, one hears so much about
'Southern gentlemen and Southern chivalry,' when, as a matter of fact,
gentlemen are exceptions and chivalry is fiction. Of course, I allow a few
exceptions." Such a remark, coming from a Southern woman, has naturally
created discussion at the South. We will give the opinions of two
journals. Says the Columbia (South Carolina) _State_:
After studying the subject and hearing the complaints of
women who in honorable professional capacities travel
through the South, as recorded in the _State_ yesterday, one
is impelled to admit that the above opinion by a Southern
woman who has traveled in all parts of this country has too
much foundation.
That verdict is not pleasant to hear. It will not be
generally accepted; at least every one hearing it will
immediately vote himself one of the "exceptions."
Nevertheless, there have recently been public acts that
support it in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Texas, and
it is well that the degree of truth it contains be
recognized.
The Macon _Telegraph_ finds a reason for the conditions thus described.
The _Telegraph_ feels disposed to remark in this connection
that for three-quarters of a century there has been entirely
too much boasting about Southern "gentlemen" and Southern
"chivalry."
A gentleman does not call attention to his own virtues, and
neither should a section through its orators and newspapers
boast incessantly of its superiority to the rest of the
world in its treatment of women.
The result of it all has been that too many Southern youth
have imagined that they had nothing to learn, and too many
Southern men have regarded themselves as gentlemen and
supposed that they were brimming over with "chivalry" when
nothing of the sort was true.
And there is another side to this question which should be
mentioned in justice to all concerned. In our day
respectable women are by no means all of the class described
as the saintly angels of the home, who rouse all the
chivalrous instincts of a gentleman, whether he be a
resident of South Carolina, South Dakota, or Kamchatka.
In our day women are facing men as competitors in business
and in the professions. The modern woman of the advanced
type refuses to be longer regarded as a gentler and
saintlier type of humanity, who must be petted, reverenced,
and protected. She prefers to renounce her former
superiority of a certain kind for an equality which
essentially involves a different plane of communication.
That all this foreshadows a certain modification of the
old-time approved relations between the sexes is as obvious
as it is inevitable.
WHAT WE ARE DOING TO THE RED MAN.
Recent Abolishment of Tribal Rule in Indian
Territory Will Have Powerful
Effect for Good or Ill.
Are we all to be Indians? There are ethnologists who say that in
successive generations the features of Americans are gradually succumbing
to the persistent influence of their climatic environment; that a few
centuries will see us a race, high-cheek-boned, Roman-nosed.
Frederick R. Burton touches the question in the London _Sphere_. He says:
As I have studied the Indian in the field I have been
interested in speculating--in an unscientific way, for my
research was not concerned with physical characteristics--on
the possible chance of the Indian's features consequent upon
his advancing civilization. Indeed, I have often thought,
though imagined may be the better word, that in Indians of
education I have observed a distinct softening of the
traditional type and an approximation to the features of the
European.
The Indian is becoming civilized very rapidly. His
appearance has already undergone great change through his
general disregard of native dress, and after a few
generations of living indoors and under bowler hats, is it
not reasonable to suppose that he will look more like the
Yankee than he does now, and thus justify the
anthropologist's theory by a reversal of the process of
reasoning?
The Indian, indeed, is rapidly being absorbed. On the 4th of last March
tribal government was abolished in the Indian Territory. The so-called
Five Civilized Tribes, numbering, all told, one hundred and two thousand
souls, and claiming to have enjoyed continuous independent civil
government since long before Columbus discovered America, are now just
plain citizens of the United States. The tribal land has been divided
among them, to be owned by individuals in fee simple; the right to vote
has been extended to them; their separate, independent constitutions,
legislatures, and judiciaries have entirely disappeared.
The Rev. W.B. Humphrey, of New York, is president of the National Indian
Association. Speaking of the changed position of the Indians, he said
recently, as quoted by the New York _Tribune_:
The Indian has long been the "ward" of the government. Our
statesmen have found this to be a mistake, for it relieves
him of all responsibility of providing for himself or of
taking care of himself. This policy was found to pauperize
him and to unfit him for the competitions of civilized life.
In fact it left him as much of a heathen as when our
forefathers first discovered him, wandering in the woods or
over prairies, the monarch of all he surveyed.
We have taken his land from him and pushed him beyond our
frontier. But now that the country which was once his has
been so fully settled up, there are no more frontiers over
which we can push him. This being so, our statesmen have
wisely decided to make the Indian an integral part of our
Union. This they are doing by breaking up his tribal
relation, giving him land in severalty as fast as he can be
prevailed upon to accept it, and by giving him the ballot.
The Indian is thus having civilization thrust upon him all
at once, though quite unprepared for its responsibilities.
He is made the victim of the land grabber, the shyster
lawyer, and the saloon keeper--powerful forces which he is
unable to resist in his present condition.
Dr. Charles A. Eastman, a full-blooded Sioux, who has shown in his own
development what the Indian may become with education, is quoted by the
_Tribune_ as saying:
I do not believe in trying to delay the inevitable
absorption of my race into the dominant white race of this
country. The sooner that absorption is accomplished, the
sooner the "Indian question" comes to an end, the better it
will be for all of us--and this desired result will surely
be hastened by letting down the bars in Indian Territory. As
for the liquor question, every individual Indian must solve
that for himself, just as he must solve everything else, as
an independent citizen of this country, not as a "ward," a
condition that brought with it no responsibilities.
There are between two and three hundred thousand Indians in
the United States altogether, but of real Indian customs and
beliefs there is very little left. It is only the showman
class that does the dances and wears feathers and beads, and
all the rest of the masquerading that goes to make up some
Buffalo Bill entertainment. But there is no sincerity in
such manifestations now; the real reason underlying these
things is buried in the past, when the Indian stood alone,
the maker of his own laws and customs, and not a government
ward.
Now the problem for my race is, how best to adapt itself to
the conditions belonging to the white man's civilization, to
make these his own, and, hence, to emancipate itself from
its present degraded position. This will not be accomplished
by insisting on the racial isolation, the government
protection, that we have had heretofore.
It is a difficult problem, though, simply because the Indian
character and tradition are so different from the dominant
type of the white man, and thus so difficult of
assimilation. During all the centuries of our existence as a
people we have been accustomed to live under a system of
pure Socialism. Every Indian fought and accumulated property
for his tribe, not for himself. It was the tribal, not the
individual, welfare that engrossed him. But the white man's
world is different, and the Indian must undergo a
fundamental change in order to adapt himself to it.
You see, as a race, we are absolutely ignorant of commercial
matters, how to make money--and this is essentially an age
of commercialism. The Indian is rather of a philosophical
temperament, not practical, with very little artistic
development. Some of us make good minor mechanics,
carpenters, blacksmiths, etc. But the inherited tendency of
the race is still away from the keen, matter-of-fact rivalry
and hard-headed wisdom that is at the basis of the modern
world's activity--trade.
Dr. Eastman is at present engaged in a unique task. Under the auspices of
the government, he is renaming the Indians--going to the various Sioux
reservations and giving to each person a practical name. When the old
names are not too unwieldy he retains them; otherwise he at least tries to
perpetuate in the new name some trace of the old.
MEN NOW LIVING FOR THE SAKE OF AN IDEA.
Expressions of Devotion to the Revolutionary
Cause Compared With Czar's
Address to the Duma.
Gorky, Narodny, Maxime, and other Russian revolutionists who have lately
visited the United States to further their propaganda are men who are
living for an idea.
Read Narodny's rhapsody on Russian freedom, as written for the May
_American Magazine_ by Leroy Scott:
I am nothing. Personal success, happiness--they are nothing.
Burning of home, prison, the Czar's bullet, Siberia--they
are nothing. There is only one thing--only one thing--that
Russia shall be free!...
I have been in this America one week, and already do I not
speak the English language fluently! But I shall it learn!
Then to American peoples will I speak the sufferings of
Russian peoples. I will say, "Help us be free!" and they
will help; they are rich--their hearts are great.
Then--oh, my Russia!--freedom!
"I have come from below," Maxim Gorky has written, "from the very depths
of life." And again: "Slowly have I climbed from the bottom of life to its
surface, and on my way I have watched everything with the greedy eyes of a
scout going to the promised land." This is the man who said at a dinner in
New York:
I come to America expecting to find true and warm
sympathizers among the American people for my suffering
countrymen, who are fighting so hard and bearing so bravely
their martyrdom for freedom. Now is the time for the
revolution. Now is the time for the overthrow of Czardom.
Now! Now! Now! But we need the sinews of war; the blood we
will give ourselves. We need money, money, money. I come to
you as a beggar, that Russia may be free.
By ignoring social conventions Gorky has unwittingly injured his cause. It
may be said of him, however, that he is to-day one of the foremost
literary figures of the world, and is so regarded in Europe. He has
abandoned literary ambition and the easy life of a fêted idol to serve an
idea--the idea of full Russian freedom.
With these words of men whose passion is liberty for their country may be
compared the speech of the Czar at the opening of the new Russian Duma.
The occasion and the utterance are already historical.
The Supreme Providence which gave me the care of our
fatherland moved me to call to my assistance in legislative
work elected representatives of the people. In the
expectation of a brilliant future for Russia, I greet in
your persons the best men from the empire, whom I ordered my
beloved subjects to choose from among themselves.
A difficult work lies before you. I trust that love for your
fatherland and your earnest desire to serve it will inspire
and unite you. I shall keep inviolate the institutions which
I have granted, with the firm assurance that you will devote
all your strength to the service of your country, and
especially to the needs of the peasantry, which are so close
to my heart, and to the education of the people and their
economical welfare, remembering that to the dignity and
prosperity of the state not only freedom but order founded
upon justice is necessary.
I desire from my heart to see my people happy, and hand down
to my son an empire secure, well organized, and enlightened.
May God bless the work that lies before me in unity with the
Council of the Empire and the Imperial Duma. May this day be
the day of the moral revival of Russia and the day for the
renewal of its highest forces. Approach with solemnity the
labors for which I call you, and be worthy of the
responsibilities put upon you by the emperor and people. May
God assist us!
Students the world over are now recalling dubiously the fateful French
States-General of 1789.
FROM THOSE WHO LIVE IN DARKNESS.
A Pathetic Picture of the Sadness of
Being Blind, Drawn for Us by
One Who Has Never Seen.
Helen Keller, the marvelous deaf and blind girl, whose life would be
pathetic, were it not so great a triumph over the limitations of silence
and darkness, keeps close to her fellows through the sense of touch. One
would think that, knowing others to have so much which she can never have,
her outlook would be sorrowful. But she is no pessimist. We who can see
are more depressed by our apparent inability to solve the mysteries of a
future life, or to prevent injustice in this, than is she by the physical
helplessness of blindness.
That the lot of the blind is sad, she nevertheless admits. A meeting was
held in New York a few weeks ago in the interests of the blind. The
principal speakers were Joseph H. Choate and Mark Twain. From a sick bed
Miss Keller had written a letter, which Mark Twain read to the assembled
audience, prefacing it with the statement that it deserved a place among
the classics of literature. Her picture of the sadness of being blind was
as follows:
To know what the blind man needs, you who can see must
imagine what it would be not to see, and you can imagine it
more vividly if you remember that before your journey's end
you may have to go the dark way yourself. Try to realize
what blindness means to those whose joyous activity is
stricken to inaction.
It is to live long, long days--and life is made up of days.
It is to live immured, baffled, impotent, all God's world
shut out. It is to sit helpless, defrauded, while your
spirit strains and tugs at its fetters and your shoulders
ache for the burden they are denied, the rightful burden of
labor.
The seeing man goes about his business confident and
self-dependent. He does his share of the work of the world
in mine, in quarry, in factory, in counting-room, asking of
others no boon save the opportunity to do a man's part and
to receive the laborer's guerdon.
In an instant accident blinds him. The day is blotted out.
Night envelops all the visible world. The feet which once
bore him to his task with firm and confident stride stumble
and halt and fear the forward step. He is forced to a new
habit of idleness, which, like a canker, consumes the mind
and destroys its faculties.
Memory confronts him with his lighted past. Amid the
tangible ruins of his life as it promised to be he gropes
his pitiful way.
Richard Watson Gilder wrote for this occasion a poem, which was printed on
the programs.
"Pity the Blind!" Yes, pity those
Whom day and night enclose
In equal dark; to whom the sun's keen flame
And pitchy night-time are the same;
But pity most the blind
Who cannot see
That to be kind
Is life's felicity.
THE WEALTH OF ONE IS THE ASSET OF ALL.
The Man Who Taps the Common Treasury
for His Own Pocket Is a Judas,
Says Dr. Parkhurst.
Many expressions of socialistic or quasi-socialistic opinion have lately
been written and spoken by men and women whose opinions are worth reading
and hearing. From among these expressions the following letter by the Rev.
Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst may be selected as typical of American
socialistic idealism. It accepts a principle; it proposes no method. It
was written to Charles Sprague Smith, director of the People's Institute,
at Cooper Union, New York, to be read before the institute in lieu of an
address.
The one doctrine I would specialize (meaning one to be dwelt
on in the institute work) is that of the solidarity of the
race, or, to revert to your own more usual way of stating
it, the brotherhood of man.
You stand for a great truth every time you put it before
your people that we are not our own, but that we belong to
each other; that we are all children of one household; that
we belong to the family and the family belongs to us; that
the assets of the family are the joint property of all the
children; and that any man, rich or poor, who treats his
particular holdings, large or small, as though they were not
in the truest sense a part of the common holdings of the
entire household is a renegade and a traitor to the
household.
If it is charged upon me that this smacks of socialism, all
I can say is that I do not care what you call it; it is the
doctrine that I preach in the Madison Square Presbyterian
Church, and if it is good for Madison Square it is good for
Cooper Union; anyhow, it is biblical, and contains in it a
good deal of the genius of the teaching of Jesus Christ.
Brotherhood involves reciprocity of rights and duties, but
it means that we all need each other, are all debtors to
each other, and are all intended to be trustees of the
common assets, and that any man who cuts an underground
conduit between the common treasury and his own pocket is a
modern reproduction of the original Judas, who carried the
bag and drew from it to meet his personal expenses.
WHAT A CHINESE SAYS ABOUT CHINA'S FUTURE.
Waves of Progress Are Now Sweeping
Over the Long Somnolent Flowery
Kingdom, Says Kang Yu Wan.
That there is in China a growing reform movement directed by leaders of
the younger and more progressive generation is coming to be quite
generally known. Kang Yu Wan, the president of the reform association, has
been traveling through the United States on his way from Mexico to Europe.
In his flowered silk jacket and blue-and-pink cap he looks like a
veritable teacup politician. But it will not do to judge the Chinese by
their apparel. Mr. Kang is an active reformer, and he is leading an active
movement. In a New York interview he talked freely of the new spirit in
China, saying, in part:
China is no longer in the Dark Ages. She has already reached
the point where Japan was only twenty years ago.
We have now, for example, more than twenty thousand Chinese
students pursuing advanced modern courses of study. As to
common schools, some five thousand have been started in the
one province of Canton. There are now four million Chinese
who can speak English. Our courts are being remodeled after
the English system.
The number of books we have translated into
Chinese--text-books, technical works, and treatises,
mostly--indicate how extensively the progressive movement is
spreading. We have thus appropriated to our use over ten
thousand American, English, and European works.
China is no longer asleep. She is wide awake, and fully able
to care for her interests.
See what happened a few months ago. There were eight
thousand Chinese students in the schools of Japan, enjoying
equal terms with the Japanese. Japan imposed on these
students some humiliating and unfair conditions.
China Learning Her Resources.
The eight thousand students resigned immediately and left
Japan. Shortly afterward, the Japanese government, in fear
lest the general indignation in China should result in
measures of tariff reprisal, restored the old status, and
the Chinese students returned, having carried their point.
Just as deep a sentiment has been aroused among my
countrymen by your exclusion laws. We see the immigrants
pour into your land from all countries by thousands every
week; while not only is the law-abiding, industrious
Chinaman desirous of making a living unable to come in with
these others, but our most refined and intelligent men
cannot get the mere passports for travel that they can
readily get in any other country.
China now knows her resources and her rights. There will be
no more invasions of China, for she is ready to defend
herself with cannon and with sword, if necessary.
When Mr. Kang was asked about the dreaded outbreaks against foreigners he
replied with apparent conviction that there would be no more Boxer
rebellions. In his view, education is rapidly conquering the form of
ignorance in which anti-foreign movements have their root.
AN EXILE.
By ADAH ISAACS MENKEN.
Adah Isaacs Menken was one of those restless spirits who suffer from their
own unsatisfying versatility. Daughter of a Spanish Jew and a Frenchwoman,
she was born, Dolores Adios Fuertes, near New Orleans, June 15, 1835. At
the age of seven years she made a successful stage appearance as a dancer.
She became very popular, especially at Havana, where she was known as
"Queen of the Plaza." At twenty she was married to Alexander Isaacs
Menken, at Galveston, Texas, retired from the stage, and published a
volume of poems, "Memories." Divorced from her husband, she returned to
the stage in 1858, but soon abandoned it to study sculpture.
In 1859 she was married to John C. Heenan, the pugilist, from whom she was
divorced three years later. Twice again she was married before her death,
at Paris, August 10, 1868. In the tragedy of misdirected genius she filled
a pathetic rôle.
Where is the promise of my years
Once written on my brow--
Ere errors, agonies, and fears
Brought with them all that speak in tears,
Ere I had sunk beneath my peers--
Where sleeps that promise now?
Naught lingers to redeem those hours
Still, still to memory sweet;
The flowers that bloomed in sunny bowers
Are withered all, and Evil towers
Supreme above her sister powers
Of Sorrow and Deceit.
I look along the columned years.
And see Life's riven fane
Just where it fell--amid the jeers
Of scornful lips, whose moaning sneers
Forever hiss within my ears
To break the sleep of pain.
I can but own my life is vain,
A desert void of peace;
I missed the goal I sought to gain--
I missed the measure of the strain
That lulls fame's fever in the brain,
And bids earth's tumult cease.
Myself? Alas for theme so poor!--
A theme but rich in fear;
I stand a wreck on Error's shore,
A specter not within the door,
A homeless shadow evermore,
An exile lingering here!
"KELLY AND BURKE AND SHEA."
At the last banquet of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, in New York,
President Roosevelt, the guest of the evening, asked Joseph I.C. Clarke,
the president of the "Friendly Sons," to recite "The Fighting Race."
Mr. Clarke wrote this poem at the time of the blowing-up of the Maine.
Looking over the list of dead and wounded, he remarked to his wife: "They
are all there, as usual--the Irish. Yes, here we've Kelly and Burke and
Shea----"
Within two hours he had finished the verses which are now recognized as a
lasting tribute to the fighting qualities of the Irishman. The poem makes
a point; it also expresses the conviction and the wistful pride of the old
veteran.
Mr. Clarke was born in Kingstown, Ireland, July 31, 1846, and came to the
United States in 1868. The greater part of his life has been spent in
newspaper offices--on the New York _Herald_, 1870-1883; magazine editor of
the New York _Journal_, 1883-1895; editor of the _Criterion_, 1898-1900;
Sunday editor New York _Herald_, 1903-1905. He is now engaged in writing
plays, work which has taken intervals of his time for a number of years.
THE FIGHTING RACE.
BY JOSEPH I.C. CLARKE.
"Read out the names!" and Burke sat back,
And Kelly dropped his head,
While Shea--they call him Scholar Jack--
Went down the list of dead.
Officers, seamen, gunners, marines,
The crews of the gig and yawl,
The bearded man and the lad in his 'teens,
Carpenters, coal-passers--all.
Then, knocking the ashes from out his pipe,
Said Burke in an offhand way:
"We're all in that dead man's list, by Cripe!
Kelly and Burke and Shea."
"Well, here's to the Maine, and I'm sorry for Spain,"
Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.
"Wherever there's Kellys there's trouble," said Burke.
"Wherever fighting's the game,
Or a spice of danger in grown man's work,"
Said Kelly, "you'll find my name."
"And do we fall short," said Burke, getting mad.
"When it's touch and go for life?"
Said Shea, "It's thirty-odd years, bedad,
Since I charged, to drum and fife,
Up Marye's Heights, and my old canteen
Stopped a rebel ball on its way.
There were blossoms of blood on our sprigs of green--
Kelly and Burke and Shea--
And the dead didn't brag." "Well, here's to the flag!"
Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.
"I wish 'twas in Ireland, for there's the place,"
Said Burke, "that we'd die by right,
In the cradle of our soldier race,
After one good stand-up fight.
My grandfather fell on Vinegar Hill,
And fighting was not his trade;
But his rusty pike's in the cabin still.
With Hessian blood on the blade."
"Aye, aye," said Kelly, "the pikes were great
When the word was 'Clear the way!'
We were thick on the roll in Ninety-eight--
Kelly and Burke and Shea."
"Well, here's to the pike and the sword and the like!"
Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.
And Shea, the scholar, with rising joy.
Said, "We were at Ramillies,
We left our bones at Fontenoy
And up in the Pyrenees.
Before Dunkirk, on Landen's plain,
Cremona, Lille, and Ghent,
We're all over Austria, France, and Spain,
Wherever they pitched a tent.
We've died for England, from Waterloo
To Egypt and Dargai;
And still there's enough for a corps or a crew,
Kelly and Burke and Shea."
"Well, here's to good honest fighting blood!"
Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.
"Oh, the fighting races don't die out.
If they seldom die in bed.
For love is first in their hearts, no doubt,"
Said Burke; then Kelly said,
"When Michael, the Irish Archangel, stands,
The angel with the sword,
And the battle-dead from a hundred lands
Are ranged in one big horde,
Our line, that for Gabriel's trumpet waits,
Will stretch three deep that day.
From Jehosaphat to the Golden Gates--
Kelly and Burke and Shea."
"Well, here's thank God for the race and the sod!"
Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.
MARVELS OF PRECOCITY.
The "Most Remarkable Child in the World," Which Belongs to Your Friend,
Has Had Many Distinguished Predecessors--Mozart Played the Piano at
Three, and Grotius Was a Poet at Eight.
There are few men and women in the United States who do not at least once
a year suddenly find themselves confronted by what fond fathers and doting
mothers describe as the most remarkable child in the world.
But there have been others.
Several years ago the newspapers of Europe were heralding the marvelous
achievements of a boy in Berlin, who, though only two years old, was said
to read in a most surprising manner.
* * * * *
The "learned child of Lübeck" was another of these precocious infants, but
he is credited with having such extraordinary talents that one can almost
be forgiven for doubting the veracity of the chronicler.
Tasso was another smart child, for he spoke plainly, it is said, when only
six months old. When seven years old he understood Latin and Greek, and
even composed verses, and before he was twelve, when studying law, he had
completed his course of rhetoric, poetry, logic, and ethics.
Lope de Vega was also fortunate when a boy. At five he could read Latin
and Spanish fluently, and at twelve he was master of the Latin tongue and
of rhetoric, while at fifteen he had written several pastorals and a
comedy. He is stated to have produced about eighteen hundred comedies
during his life, so perhaps it was necessary to begin when very young.
Grotius was another good poet at the age of eight; at fifteen,
accomplished in philosophy, mathematics, and jurisprudence, and at
twenty-four he was appointed advocate-general of Rotterdam.
Barrétier, at the age of nine, was master of five languages, while in his
eleventh year he made a translation from the Hebrew to the French and
added notes such as would be expected from a man of considerable
erudition.
Gustavus Vasa was another boy of excellent brain-power, for at the age of
twelve he was able to speak and write Latin, French, German, Italian,
Dutch, and Swedish, and he also understood Polish and Russian.
Pascal, at twelve, had completely mastered Euclid's Elements without any
assistance, and at sixteen he published a work on conic sections, which
Descartes was reluctant to believe had been produced by a boy.
The "Great Condé" was a boy with brains, and he made good use of them. At
eight he understood Latin, and at eleven he wrote a treatise on rhetoric.
Three years later he was thoroughly conversant with all military
exercises.
In the world of music, too, both in our own times and in the past, we find
many instances of boys giving an early indication of a remarkable career.
Handel and Mozart each showed a liking for music when young in years, and
soon made their mark.
Handel began composing a church service for voices and instruments when
only nine years old, and before he was fifteen he had composed three
operas.
Mozart began to play the piano when he was three years old, and at seven
he had taught himself the violin. At nine years of age he visited England,
and when departing gave a farewell concert at which all the symphonies
were composed by himself.
Several years ago attention was drawn to a little Polish boy who at eight
years of age could play from memory some of the most intricate
compositions of such composers as Mozart, Bach, Chopin, Rubinstein, and
others. This precocious youth, Ignace Jan Paderewski, is now the most
famous of all living pianists.
Some remarkable preachers have also started very early.
The Abbé de Rancé, founder of the monastic order of the Trappists, was a
splendid Greek scholar at twelve, and shortly afterward was appointed to
an important benefice.
Bossuet preached before a brilliant Parisian assembly at the age of
fifteen; and Fénelon, who afterward became an archbishop, also preached an
extraordinary sermon at the same age.
Patrick Henry's Call to Arms.
The Famous Speech Which, Delivered by the American Hampden in the
Virginia Convention, Kindled the Fire of Revolution in
the Thirteen Colonies in 1775.
In the thick of national crises the ability to persuade
others is the strongest power an individual can wield. Such
a power was Patrick Henry's.
From the earlier disagreements with the mother country his
influence was all for the assertion of colonial liberties.
He was born May 9, 1736. In 1765, a young man not yet
thirty, he became a member of the Virginia House of
Burgesses. The Stamp Act had excited the people. Young
Henry, with a presumption which angered many of his maturer
colleagues, offered resolutions setting forth the rights of
the colony. In the debate he suddenly uttered the words:
"Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and
George the Third----"
A clamor arose, and cries of "Treason! Treason!"
With perfect coolness the orator continued:
----"may profit by their example." Then, firmly: "If this be
treason, make the most of it!"
Thus began the public life of a man whose youth had been
most unpromising in its slovenliness and laziness, who had
failed at farming and at business, and who had succeeded at
law only after a dubious beginning which was turned into
triumph by a quite unlooked-for burst of eloquence. His
services to his country continued until his voluntary
retirement from public life in 1791, at the age of
fifty-five. Subsequently Washington and Adams offered him
high offices, but Henry declined successively to be United
States Senator, Secretary of State, Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court, or minister to France. In 1799, urged by
Washington, he consented to be elected to the Virginia
Legislature, but died June 6, before taking his seat. We
here print his great speech in the Virginia Conventon, 1775,
as recorded by his first biographer.
Mr. President: It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope.
We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the
song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of
wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty?
Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not,
and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their
temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I
am willing to know the worst, and to provide for it.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of
experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past.
And, judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the
conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those
hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the
House?
Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately
received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer
not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this
gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike
preparations which cover our waters and darken our land.
Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have
we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called
in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the
implements of war and subjugation--the last arguments to which kings
resort.
I ask, gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be
not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible
motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter of the world,
to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has
none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other.
They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the
British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to
them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last
ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We
have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has
been all in vain.
Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we
find, which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you,
sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done everything that could be
done, to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned, we
have remonstrated, we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves
before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the
tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament.
Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced
additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded;
and we have been spurned with contempt from the foot of the throne. In
vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and
reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope.
If we wish to be free; if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable
privileges for which we have been so long contending; if we mean not
basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long
engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the
glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we must fight!--I
repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms, and to the God of hosts,
is all that is left us.
They tell us, sir, that we are weak--unable to cope with so formidable an
adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the
next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British
guard shall be stationed in every house?
Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire
the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and
hugging the delusive fantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us
hand and foot?
Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God
of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the
holy cause of Liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are
invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us.
Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God,
who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends
to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone;
it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no
election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to
retire from the contest.
There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged.
Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is
inevitable--and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come! It is vain,
sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace! peace, but there
is no peace. The war has actually begun.
The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash
of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we
here idle? What is it that the gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is
life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains
and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may
take, but, as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
FROM THE LIPS OF ANANIAS.
Confidential Chats Which Show That if Nature Would Permit Things to
Happen in the Way Some Narrators Have Described Them, the World Would
Be a Much More Interesting Place in Which to Live.
CHANGED BY ARGUMENT.
Two commercial travelers, one from London and one from New York, were
discussing the weather in their respective countries.
The Englishman said that English weather had one great fault--its sudden
changes.
"A person may take a walk one day," he said, "attired in a light summer
suit, and still feel quite warm. Next day he needs an overcoat."
"That's nothing," said the American. "My two friends, Johnston and Jones,
were once having an argument. There were eight or nine inches of snow on
the ground.
"The argument got heated, and Johnston picked up a snowball and threw it
at Jones from a distance of not more than five yards. During the transit
of that snowball, believe me or not, as you like, the weather suddenly
changed and became hot and summerlike, and Jones, instead of being hit
with a snowball, was scalded with hot water!"--_Tit-Bits._
PERSUASION BETTER THAN FORCE.
"Talk of opening oysters," said old Hurricane, "why, nothing's easier, if
you only know how."
"And how's how?" inquired Starlight.
"Scotch snuff," answered old Hurricane very sententiously. "Scotch snuff.
Bring a little of it ever so near their noses and they'll sneeze their
lids off."
"I know a genius," observed Meister Karl, "who has a better plan. He
spreads the bivalves in a circle, seats himself in the center, and begins
spinning a yarn. Sometimes it's an adventure in Mexico--sometimes a legend
of his loves--sometimes a marvelous stock operation in Wall Street.
"As he proceeds, the 'natives' get interested--one by one they gape with
astonishment at the tremendous and direful whoppers which are poured
forth, and as they gape my friend whips them out, peppers 'em, and
swallows them."
"That'll do," said Starlight, with a long sigh. "I wish we had a bushel of
the bivalves here now, they'd open easy."--_Philadelphia Post._
EDUCATED RATS.
By Neal Dow.
In the _Congregationalist_ is a curious story about rats, which seems to
indicate that they will not remain where their company is not desired, if
politely invited to change their quarters, though everybody knows that
they are driven out with difficulty. Here is a perfectly true story which
corroborates that one.
My house is supposed to be rat-proof, and was so when quite new, but at
one time, more than twenty years ago, we had a large colony of the
rodents, greatly to our annoyance, and it was with us a matter of daily
wonder where they found a weak spot in our defenses among them. One
evening a young lady from a friend's family, living in a large, fine house
nearly a mile away, was with us, and the talk turned on rats, as we heard
ours scampering up and down the walls.
The young lady said that none had ever been in their house, and she did
not think there was any point at which they could enter. My eldest
daughter, a great wit, said: "I've heard that, if politely invited to do
so in writing, rats will leave any house and go to any other to which they
may be directed, and I will tell ours that at your house they will find
spacious quarters and an excellent commissariat."
At the moment, before us all, she wrote the most grandiloquent letter to
the large family of rats that had so favored us with their presence,
pointing out to them that at No. 65 Pearl Street was a large, fine house
which had never been favored with the residence of any of their family,
where they would find ample quarters and a fat larder. When finished, she
read the missive to the company, and we had a great laugh over it. As an
old superstition, she then put lard upon it, and carried it into the
attic, where it would probably be found by those to whom it was directed.
A few days later the young lady was at our house again, and burst into a
laugh, exclaiming: "Our house is overrun with rats!" That recalled to us
the fact that we had heard none in our walls. My daughter went to the
attic, and the letter was gone. While they were talking and laughing over
the curious affair, a friend came in, and, hearing the talk, said that two
evenings before, in the bright moonlight, he saw several rats running down
Congress Street, which was the straight road to Pearl Street. We have
never been troubled with them since, but I have not heard how it has been
with the house to which our beneficiaries were directed.
SAGACIOUS DOGS.
The following story is told by the Chinese minister at Washington:
"There was a Chinaman who had three dogs. When he came home one evening he
found them asleep on his couch of teakwood and marble. He whipped them and
drove them forth.
"The next night, when he came home, the dogs were lying on the floor. But
he placed his hand on the couch and found it warm from their bodies.
Therefore, he gave them another whipping.
"The third night, returning earlier than usual, he found the dogs sitting
before the couch, blowing on it to cool it."--_Philadelphia North
American._
RESIGNED TO THEIR FATE.
A man out West says he moved so often during one year that whenever
covered wagons stopped at the gate his chickens would fall on their backs
and hold up their feet in order to be tied and thrown in.--_Boston
Journal._
SCIENCE WAS FROST-BITTEN.
The cold weather of yesterday morning found its way into Alonzo Murphy's
kitchen, at Mount Freedom, New Jersey, and killed a specimen of the
vegetable kingdom that for months had been the pride of Mr. Murphy's
heart, and with which he expected to revolutionize dairying and strawberry
culture.
It has long been a cherished idea of Mr. Murphy's that by a judicious
crossing of the milkweed and strawberry it would be possible to produce
strawberries and cream from the same plant.
Last fall he grafted several strawberry plants on plants of the milkweed.
One grew sturdily, close by Mr. Murphy's kitchen range, and was in full
fruitage when it succumbed to the cold that entered the room when the fire
in the range by accident went out.
That the experiment was entirely successful is shown by the fact that each
strawberry when examined was found to contain a quantity of ice-cream
varying from a few drops to a teaspoonful, depending on the size of the
berry.
Mr. Murphy is not discouraged by his ill luck, and promises to repeat the
experiment next summer.--_New York Tribune._
ROASTING FLYING GEESE.
During the great famine in Rome and southern Italy in Nero's time, when
the country was filled with the victorious Roman legions who had returned
from foreign parts, the people observed countless numbers of wild geese
flying about at very high elevations, but they could not be caught until
one of the Roman generals, suspecting that the geese, like the people,
must be hungry, experimented by shooting arrows baited with worms up among
them.
The geese swallowed the bait, arrows and all, with great avidity, thus
showing that they would swallow anything; but how to catch them was the
question, until one of the wise men of the emperor's household,
remembering the stories told by Tacitus of geese being cooked by heat from
Mount Vesuvius, consulted Nero's head cook, the great _chef_ Claudius
Flavius, and he devised a practical means of having them drawn before
cooking by scattering a large quantity of teazels and chestnut burrs on
the sides of Vesuvius.
The geese in countless numbers at once gulped these down, and in the
course of twenty-four hours their whole internal economy, including crop
and gizzard, being absolutely clean, he then had an enormous quantity of
Roman chestnuts (same as the Italian nuts of the present time) scattered
around the crater of the volcano; and the birds feeding on them and then
flying about in the hot air were beautifully roasted while well stuffed
with the finest chestnut dressing, so that they could be fed to the
famine-stricken people.
And what is still more remarkable, it was found that the livers of the
geese were encysted in a sack of fat, producing substantially _pâté de
foie gras_, and when the Gauls who captured Rome in the sixth century
returned home they took some of this toothsome food along, and from that
day till this it has been prepared in Strassburg and vicinity in large
quantities.--_Rome Correspondence of New York Sun._
Doomed to Live.
BY HONORÉ DE BALZAC.
The great fame of Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) will of
course always rest upon the wonderful series of novels which
he linked together in the scores of volumes which make up
his "Human Comedy." In this, with a genius which rivals that
of Shakespeare, he attempted to give a complete picture of
human society on all its sides--"to do for human nature what
has been done for zoology"--to demonstrate that society is a
unity in its composition diversified by evolution in
different directions. He called himself "the secretary of
society," and sought to write a history of manners, in which
he should shrink from nothing, and should range from virtue
and religion to the most frightful forms of vice and
passion.
Balzac's "Human Comedy," which Zola compared to a palace
reared by giants, is so often praised as to make one
sometimes lose sight of Balzac's supreme art in the
composition of short stories. Some of these, however, are
classics in themselves, and show the power of a master
exercised in his idle moments. The example here republished
is an excellent illustration of his ability to produce
within a small compass those effects of breathless interest,
suspense, and horror which he exhibits on a gigantic scale
in his novels.
The story entitled "Doomed to Live" shows admirably the
interplay of love and hatred, of military ferocity, of
filial affection, and of that haughty Spanish pride which
sacrifices the individual to the claims of high descent. The
story is said to have been founded upon fact--on one of the
extraordinary episodes which occurred during the time when
Napoleon's troops overran and dominated, but failed to
conquer, Spain.
The clock of the little town of Menda had just struck midnight. At this
moment a young French officer was leaning on the parapet of a long terrace
which bounded the gardens of the castle. He seemed plunged in the deepest
thought--a circumstance unusual amid the thoughtlessness of military life;
but it must be owned that never were the hour, the night, and the place
more propitious for meditation.
The beautiful Spanish sky stretched out its azure dome above his head. The
glittering stars and the soft moonlight lit up a charming valley that
unfolded all its beauties at his feet. Leaning against a blossoming
orange-tree he could see, a hundred feet below him, the town of Menda,
which seemed to have been placed for shelter from the north winds at the
foot of the rock on which the castle was built.
As he turned his head he could see the sea, framing the landscape with a
broad silver sheet of glistening water. The castle was a blaze of light.
The mirth and movement of a ball, the music of the orchestra, the laughter
of the officers and their partners in the dance, were borne to him mingled
with the distant murmur of the waves. The freshness of the night imparted
a sort of energy to his limbs, weary with the heat of the day.
Above all, the gardens were planted with trees so aromatic, and flowers so
fragrant, that the young man stood plunged, as it were, in a bath of
perfumes.
The castle of Menda belonged to a Spanish grandee, then living there with
his family. During the whole of the evening his eldest daughter had looked
at the officer with an interest so tinged with sadness that the sentiment
of compassion thus expressed by the Spaniard might well call up a reverie
in the Frenchman's mind.
Clara was beautiful, and although she had three brothers and a sister,
the wealth of the Marquis de Leganes seemed great enough for Victor
Marchand to believe that the young lady would have a rich dowry. But how
dare he hope that the most bigoted old hidalgo in all Spain would ever
give his daughter to the son of a Parisian grocer?
Besides, the French were hated. The Marquis was suspected by General
Gautier, who governed the province, of planning a revolt in favor of
Ferdinand VII. For this reason the battalion commanded by Victor Marchand
had been cantonned in the little town of Menda, to hold the neighboring
hamlets, which were dependent on the Marquis, in check.
Recent despatches from Marshal Ney had given ground for fear that the
English would shortly land on the coast, and had indicated the Marquis as
a man who carried on communication with the cabinet of London.
In spite, therefore, of the welcome which the Spaniard had given him and
his soldiers, the young officer, Victor Marchand, remained constantly on
his guard. As he was directing his steps toward the terrace, whither he
had come to examine the state of the town and the country districts
entrusted to his care, he debated how he ought to interpret the
friendliness which the Marquis had unceasingly shown him, and how the
tranquillity of the country could be reconciled with his general's
uneasiness. But in one moment these thoughts were driven from his mind by
a feeling of caution and well-grounded curiosity.
He had just perceived a considerable number of lights in the town. In
spite of the day being the Feast of St. James, he had given orders, that
very morning, that all lights should be extinguished at the hour
prescribed by his regulations; the castle alone being excepted from this
order.
He could plainly see, here and there, the gleam of his soldiers' bayonets
at their accustomed posts; but there was a solemnity in the silence, and
nothing to suggest that the Spaniards were a prey to the excitement of a
festival.
After having sought to explain the offense of which the inhabitants were
guilty, the mystery appeared all the more unaccountable to him, because he
had left officers in charge of the night police and the rounds. With all
the impetuosity of youth, he was just about to leap through a breach and
descend the rocks in haste, and thus arrive more quickly than by the
ordinary road at a small outpost placed at the entrance of the town
nearest to the castle, when a faint sound stopped him.
He thought he heard the light footfall of a woman upon the gravel walk. He
turned his head and saw nothing; but his gaze was arrested by the
extraordinary brightness of the sea. All of a sudden he beheld a sight so
portentous that he stood dumfounded; he thought that his senses deceived
him. In the far distance he could distinguish sails gleaming white in the
moonlight.
He trembled and tried to convince himself that this vision was an optical
illusion, merely the fantastic effect of the moon on the waves.
At this moment a hoarse voice pronounced his name.
He looked toward the breach, and saw slowly rising above it the head of
the soldier whom he had ordered to accompany him to the castle.
"Is that you, commandant?"
"Yes; what do you want?" replied the young man in a low voice. A sort of
presentiment warned him to be cautious.
"Those rascals down there are stirring like worms. I have hurried, with
your leave, to tell you of my own little observations."
"Go on," said Victor Marchand.
"I have just followed a man from the castle who came in this direction
with a lantern in his hand. A lantern's a frightfully suspicious thing. I
don't fancy it was tapers my fine Catholic was going to light at this time
of night. 'They want to eat us body and bones!' says I to myself; so I
went on his track to reconnoiter. There, on a ledge of rock, not three
paces from here, I discovered a great heap of fagots."
Suddenly a terrible shriek rang through the town and cut the soldier
short. At the same instant a gleam of light flashed before the commandant.
The poor grenadier received a ball in the head and fell. A fire of straw
and dry wood burst into flame like a house on fire, not ten paces from the
young man.
The sound of the instruments and the laughter ceased in the ballroom. The
silence of death, broken only by groans, had suddenly succeeded to the
noises and music of the feast. The fire of a cannon roared over the
surface of the sea.
Cold sweat trickled down the young officer's forehead; he had no sword. He
understood that his men had been slaughtered, and the English were about
to disembark.
If he lived he saw himself dishonored, summoned before a council of war.
Then he measured with his eyes the depth of the valley. He sprang forward,
when just at that moment his hand was seized by the hand of Clara.
"Fly!" said she; "my brothers are following to kill you. Down yonder at
the foot of the rock you will find Juanito's horse. Quick!"
The young man looked at her for a moment, stupefied. She pushed him on;
then, obeying the instinct of self-preservation, which never forsakes even
the bravest man, he rushed down the park in the direction she had
indicated. He leapt from rock to rock, where only the goats had ever trod
before; he heard Clara crying out to her brothers to pursue him; he heard
the footsteps of the assassins; he heard the balls of several discharges
whistle about his ears; but he reached the valley, he found the horse,
mounted, and disappeared swift as lightning.
In a few hours he arrived at the quarters occupied by General Gautier. He
found him at dinner with his staff.
"I bring you my life in my hand!" cried the commandant, his face pale and
haggard.
He sat down and related the horrible disaster. A dreadful silence greeted
his story.
"You appear to me to be more unfortunate than criminal," said the terrible
general at last. "You are not accountable for the crime of the Spaniards,
and unless the marshal decides otherwise, I acquit you."
These words could give the unfortunate officer but slight consolation.
"But when the Emperor hears of it!" he exclaimed.
"He will want to have you shot," said the general. "However----But we will
talk no more about it," he added severely, "except how we are to take
such a revenge as will strike wholesome fear upon this country, where they
carry on war like savages."
One hour afterward, a whole regiment, a detachment of cavalry, and a
convoy of artillery were on the road. The general and Victor marched at
the head of the column. The soldiers, informed of the massacre of their
comrades, were filled with extraordinary fury.
The distance which separated the town of Menda from the general quarters
was passed with marvelous rapidity. On the road the general found whole
villages under arms. Each of these wretched townships was surrounded and
their inhabitants decimated.
By some inexplicable fatality, the English ships stood off instead of
advancing. It was known afterward that these vessels had outstripped the
rest of the transports and only carried artillery. Thus the town of Menda,
deprived of the defenders she was expecting, and which the sight of the
English vessels had seemed to assure, was surrounded by the French troops
almost without striking a blow. The inhabitants, seized with terror,
offered to surrender at discretion.
Then followed one of those instances of devotion not rare in the
Peninsula. The assassins of the French, foreseeing, from the cruelty of
the general, that Menda would probably be given over to the flames and the
whole population put to the sword, offered to denounce themselves. The
general accepted this offer, inserting as a condition that the inhabitants
of the castle, from the lowest valet to the Marquis himself, should be
placed in his hands.
This capitulation agreed upon, the general promised to pardon the rest of
the population and to prevent his soldiers from pillaging or setting fire
to the town. An enormous contribution was exacted, and the richest
inhabitants gave themselves up as hostages to guarantee the payment, which
was to be accomplished within twenty-four hours.
The general took all precautions necessary for the safety of his troops,
provided for the defense of the country, and refused to lodge his men in
the houses. After having formed a camp, he went up and took military
possession of the castle. The members of the family of Leganes and the
servants were gagged, and shut up in the great hall where the ball had
taken place, and closely watched.
The windows of the apartment afforded a full view of the terrace which
commanded the town. The staff was established in a neighboring gallery,
and the general proceeded at once to hold a council of war on the measures
to be taken for opposing the debarkation.
After having despatched an aide-de-camp to Marshal Ney, with orders to
plant batteries along the coast, the general and his staff turned their
attention to the prisoners. Two hundred Spaniards, whom the inhabitants
had surrendered, were shot down upon the terrace.
After this military execution, the general ordered as many gallows to be
erected on the terrace as there were prisoners in the hall of the castle,
and the town executioner to be brought. Victor Marchand made use of the
time from then until dinner to go and visit the prisoners. He soon
returned to the general.
"I have come," said he, in a voice broken with emotion, "to ask you a
favor."
"You?" said the general, in a tone of bitter irony.
"Alas!" replied Victor, "it is but a melancholy errand that I am come on.
The Marquis has seen the gallows being erected, and expresses a hope that
you will change the mode of execution for his family; he entreats you to
have the nobles beheaded."
"So be it!" said the general.
"They further ask you to allow them the last consolations of religion, and
to take off their bonds; they promise not to attempt to escape."
"I consent," said the general; "but you must be answerable for them."
"The old man also offers you the whole of his fortune if you will pardon
his young son."
"Really!" said the general. "His goods already belong to King Joseph; he
is under arrest." His brow contracted scornfully, then he added: "I will
go beyond what they ask. I understand now the importance of the last
request. Well, let him buy the eternity of his name, but Spain shall
remember forever his treachery and its punishment. I give up the fortune
and his life to whichever of his sons will fulfil the office of
executioner. Go, and do not speak to me of it again."
Dinner was ready, and the officers sat down to table to satisfy appetites
sharpened by fatigue.
One of them only, Victor Marchand, was not present at the banquet. He
hesitated for a long time before he entered the room. The haughty family
of Leganes were in their agony.
He glanced sadly at the scene before him; in this very room, only the
night before, he had watched the fair heads of those two young girls and
those three youths as they circled in the excitement of the dance. He
shuddered when he thought how soon they must fall, struck off by the sword
of the headsman. Fastened to their gilded chairs, the father and mother,
their three sons and their two young daughters, sat absolutely motionless.
Eight serving-men stood upright before them, their hands bound behind
their backs. These fifteen persons looked at one another gravely, their
eyes scarcely betraying the thoughts that surged within them. Only
profound resignation and regret for the failure of their enterprise left
any mark upon the features of some of them.
The soldiers stood likewise motionless, looking at them, and respecting
the affliction of their cruel enemies. An expression of curiosity lit up
their faces when Victor appeared. He gave the order to unbind the
condemned, and went himself to loose the cords which fastened Clara to her
chair. She smiled sadly. He could not refrain from touching her arm, and
looking with admiring eyes at her black locks and graceful figure. She was
a true Spaniard; she had the Spanish complexion and the Spanish eyes, with
their long curled lashes and pupils blacker than the raven's wing.
"Have you been successful?" she said, smiling upon him mournfully.
Victor could not suppress a groan. He looked, one after the other, at
Clara and her three brothers. One, the eldest, was aged thirty; he was
small, even somewhat ill made, with a proud, disdainful look, but there
was a certain nobleness in his bearing; he seemed no stranger to that
delicacy of feeling which elsewhere has rendered the chivalry of Spain so
famous. His name was Juanito. The second, Felipe, aged about twenty; he
was like Clara. The youngest was eight, Manuel; a painter would have found
in his features a trace of that Roman steadfastness which David has given
to children's faces in his episodes of the republic. The old Marquis, his
head still covered with white locks, seemed to have come forth from a
picture of Murillo.
The young officer shook his head. When he looked at them, he was hopeless
that he would ever see the bargain proposed by the general accepted by any
of the four; nevertheless, he ventured to impart it to Clara.
At first she shuddered, Spaniard though she was; then, immediately
recovering her calm demeanor, she went and knelt down before her father.
"Father," she said, "make Juanito swear to obey faithfully any orders that
you give him, and we shall be content."
The Marquise trembled with hope; but when she leant toward her husband,
and heard--she who was a mother--the horrible confidence whispered by
Clara, she swooned away. Juanito understood all; he leapt up like a lion
in its cage. After obtaining an assurance of perfect submission from the
Marquis, Victor took upon himself to send away the soldiers. The servants
were led out, handed over to the executioner, and hanged. When the family
had no guard but Victor to watch them, the old father rose, and said,
"Juanito."
Juanito made no answer except by a movement of the head, equivalent to a
refusal; then he fell back in his seat, and stared at his parents with
eyes dry and terrible to look upon. Clara went and sat on his knee, put
her arm round his neck, and kissed his eyelids.
"My dear Juanito," she said gaily, "if thou didst only know how sweet
death would be to me if it were given by thee, I should not have to endure
the odious touch of the headsman's hands. Thou wilt cure me of the woes
that were in store for me--and, dear Juanito, thou couldst not bear to
see me belong to another, well----" Her soft eyes cast one look of fire at
Victor, as if to awaken in Juanito's heart his horror of the French.
"Have courage," said his brother Felipe, "or our race, that has almost
given kings to Spain, will be extinct."
Suddenly Clara rose, the group which had formed round Juanito separated,
and this son, dutiful in his disobedience, saw his aged father standing
before him, and heard him cry, in a solemn voice, "Juanito, I command
thee."
The young count remained motionless. His father fell on his knees before
him; Clara, Manuel, and Felipe did the same instinctively. They all
stretched out their hands to him as to one who was to save their family
from oblivion; they seemed to repeat their father's words--"My son, hast
thou lost the energy, the true chivalry of Spain? How long wilt thou leave
thy father on his knees? What right hast thou to think of thine own life
and its suffering? Madame, is this a son of mine?" continued the old man,
turning to his wife.
"He consents," cried she in despair. She saw a movement in Juanito's
eyelids, and she alone understood its meaning.
Mariquita, the second daughter, still knelt on her knees, and clasped her
mother in her fragile arms; her little brother Manuel, seeing her weeping
hot tears, began to chide her. At this moment the almoner of the castle
came in; he was immediately surrounded by the rest of the family and
brought to Juanito.
Victor could bear this scene no longer; he made a sign to Clara, and
hastened away to make one last effort with the general. He found him in
high good humor in the middle of the banquet drinking with his officers;
they were beginning to make merry.
An hour later a hundred of the principal inhabitants of Menda came up to
the terrace, in obedience to the general's orders, to witness the
execution of the family of Leganes. A detachment of soldiers was drawn up
to keep back these Spanish burghers who were ranged under the gallows on
which the servants of the Marquis still hung. The feet of these martyrs
almost touched their heads. Thirty yards from them a block had been set
up, and by it gleamed a scimitar. The headsman also was present, in case
of Juanito's refusal.
Presently, in the midst of the profoundest silence, the Spaniards heard
the footsteps of several persons approaching, the measured tread of a
company of soldiers, and the faint clinking of their muskets. These
diverse sounds were mingled with the merriment of the officers' banquet;
just as before it was the music of the dance which had concealed
preparations for a treacherous massacre.
All eyes were turned toward the castle; the noble family was seen
advancing with incredible dignity. Every face was calm and serene; one man
only leant, pale and haggard, on the arm of the priest. Upon this man he
lavished all the consolations of religion--upon the only one of them
doomed to live. The executioner understood, as did all the rest, that for
that day Juanito had undertaken the office himself.
The aged Marquis and his wife, Clara, Mariquita, and their two brothers,
came and knelt down a few steps from the fatal spot. Juanito was led
thither by the priest. As he approached the block the executioner touched
him by the sleeve and drew him aside, probably to give him certain
instructions.
The confessor placed the victims in such a position that they could not
see the executioner; but like true Spaniards, they knelt erect with no
sign of emotion.
Clara was the first to spring forward to her brother. "Juanito," she said,
"have pity on my faint-heartedness; begin with me."
At that moment they heard the footsteps of a man running at full speed,
and Victor arrived on the tragic scene. Clara was already on her knees,
already her white neck seemed to invite the edge of the scimitar. A deadly
pallor fell upon the officer, but he still found strength to run on.
"The general grants thee thy life if thou wilt marry me," he said to her
in a low voice.
The Spaniard cast a look of proud disdain on the officer.
"Strike, Juanito," she said, in a voice of profound meaning.
Her head rolled at Victor's feet. When the Marquise heard the sound, a
convulsive start escaped her; this was the only sign of her affliction.
"Ah, thou weepest, Mariquita!" said Juanito to his sister.
"Yes," answered the girl; "I was thinking of thee, my poor Juanito; thou
wilt be so unhappy without us."
At length the noble figure of the Marquis appeared. He looked at the blood
of his children; then he turned to the spectators, who stood mute and
motionless before him. He stretched out his hands to Juanito and said, in
a firm voice:
"Spaniards, I give my son a father's blessing. Now, Marquis, strike
without fear, as thou art without fault."
But when Juanito saw his mother approach, supported by the confessor, he
groaned aloud, "She fed me at her own breast." His cry seemed to tear a
shout of horror from the lips of the crowd. At this terrible sound the
noise of the banquet and the laughter and the merrymaking of the officers
died away.
The Marquise comprehended that Juanito's courage was exhausted. With one
leap she had thrown herself over the balustrade, and her head was dashed
to pieces against the rocks below. A shout of admiration burst forth.
Juanito fell to the ground in a swoon.
"Marchand has been telling me about this execution," said a half-drunken
officer. "I'll warrant, gentlemen, it wasn't by our orders that----"
"Have you forgotten, Messieurs," cried General Gautier, "that during the
next month there will be five hundred French families in tears--that we
are in Spain? Do you wish to leave your bones here?"
After this speech there was not a man, not even a sub-lieutenant, who
dared to empty his glass.
In spite of the respect with which he is surrounded--in spite of the title
of El Verdugo (the executioner), bestowed upon him as a title of nobility
by the King of Spain--the Marquis de Leganes is a prey to melancholy. He
lives in solitude, and is rarely seen.
Overwhelmed with the load of his glorious crime, he seems only to await
the birth of a second son, impatient to seek again the company of those
Shades who are about his path continually.
The World's Richest Legacy.
Immured in an Asylum, a True Son of Nature Who Had Won Distinction
at the Bar Wrote a Will, Which Only the Divine Surrogate Can Set
Aside, Bequeathing Priceless Possessions to Mankind.
How few men know their riches! What is ours is ours only in
so far as we are conscious of it, and so that which we
accept without thought, which has no especial meaning to us,
is not a real possession. You may have three or four hundred
leaves of paper, covered with rows of printed characters and
bound together between boards of leather, and yet you may
not own a book.
Do you look upon the mountain and the stream and exclaim:
"These are mine!" If not, then you have ignored Nature's
dower to you. Do you realize that your individual possession
in art is as broad as art itself? If not, you are refusing
man's free gift to man. It is easy for almost any man or
woman to be rich; the only thing that is hard is to learn to
know real gold when you see it.
The most sensible will ever written was made by an insane
man. He was Charles Lounsberry, once a prominent member of
the Chicago bar, who in his later years lost his mind and
was committed to the Cook County Asylum, at Dunning, where
he died penniless. If he had lost his mind, he had kept his
heart, or at least in his last moments he was endowed with a
lucidity that was higher than logic. For this strange man,
penniless though he was, knew that he was yet rich, and he
made a will which, as the Chicago _Record-Herald_ said, was
"framed with such perfection of form and detail that no flaw
could be found in its legal phraseology or matters."
Inasmuch as poor, mad Charles Lounsberry knew gold from
dross, we here reprint his curious and interesting will.
I, =Charles Lounsberry=, being of sound and disposing mind and memory, do
hereby make and publish this, my last will and testament, in order, as
justly as may be, to distribute my interest in the world among succeeding
men.
That part of my interest, which is known in law and recognized in the
sheep-bound volumes as my property, being inconsiderable and of none
account, I make no disposition of in this, my will. My right to live,
being but a life estate, is not at my disposal, but these things excepted,
all else in the world I now proceed to devise and bequeath.
=Item=: I give to good fathers and mothers in trust for their children,
all good little words of praise and encouragement, and all quaint pet
names and endearments, and I charge said parents to use them justly, but
generously, as the needs of their children shall require.
=Item=: I leave to children inclusively, but only for the term of their
childhood, all and every, the flowers of the fields, and the blossoms of
the woods, with the right to play among them freely according to the
customs of children, warning them at the same time against thistles and
thorns. And I devise to children the banks of the brooks and the golden
sands beneath the waters thereof, and the odors of the willows that dip
therein and the white clouds that float high over the giant trees. And I
leave to children the long, long days to be merry in, in a thousand ways,
and the night, and the moon, and the train of the Milky Way to wonder at,
but subject, nevertheless, to the rights hereinafter given to lovers.
=Item=: I devise to boys jointly, all the useful, idle fields and commons
where ball may be played; all pleasant waters where one may swim; all
snow-clad hills where one may coast; and all streams and ponds where one
may fish, or where, when grim winter comes, one may skate, to have and to
hold these same for the period of their boyhood. And all meadows, with the
clover blossoms and butterflies thereof; the woods with their
appurtenances, the squirrels and the birds and echoes and strange noises,
and all distant places which may be visited, together with the adventures
there found. And I give to said boys each his own place at the fireside at
night, with all the pictures that may be seen in the burning wood, to
enjoy without let or hindrance, and without any encumbrance of care.
=Item=: To lovers, I devise their imaginary world with whatever they may
need, as the stars of the sky, the red roses by the wall, the bloom of the
hawthorn, the sweet strains of music, and aught else they may desire to
figure to each other the lastingness and beauty of their love.
=Item=: To young men, jointly, I devise and bequeath all boisterous,
inspiring sports of rivalry, and I give to them the disdain of weakness
and undaunted confidence in their own strength. Though they are rude, I
leave to them the power to make lasting friendships, and of possessing
companions, and to them exclusively, I give all merry songs and brave
choruses to sing with lusty voices.
=Item=: And to those who are no longer children, or youths, or lovers, I
leave memory, and I bequeath to them the volumes of the poems of Burns and
Shakespeare and of other poems, if there be others, to the end that they
may live the old days over again, freely and fully without title or
diminution.
=Item=: To our loved ones with snowy crowns, I bequeath the happiness of
old age, the love and gratitude of their children until they fall asleep.
THE LAUGHTER OF CHILDHOOD.
The laugh of a child will make the holiest day more sacred
still. Strike with hand of fire, O weird musician, thy harp
strung with Apollo's golden hair, fill the vast cathedral
aisles with symphonies sweet and dim, deft toucher of the
organ keys; blow, bugler, blow, until thy silver notes do
touch and kiss the moonlit waves, and charm the lovers
wandering 'mid vine-clad hills. But know your sweetest
strains are discords all, compared with childhood's happy
laugh--the laugh that fills the eyes with light and every
heart with joy.
O rippling river of laughter! Thou art the blessed boundary
line between the beasts and men, and every wayward wave of
thine doth drown some fretful fiend of care.
O Laughter, rose-lipped daughter of Joy! there are dimples
enough in thy cheeks to catch and hold and glorify all the
tears of grief.
_Robert G. Ingersoll._
Blind People Who Won Fame.
Sightless but Courageous Men and Women Who Became Distinguished
Professors, Authors, Inventors, Soldiers and Athletes--One
Served as Postmaster-General of Great Britain.
JOHN MILTON ON HIS BLINDNESS.
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide;
"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or His own gifts. Who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."
Miss Helen Keller's attainments, her emergence from a life in which there
was neither light nor sound to a communicative relationship with others,
are a marvel of the present day. The best things have all become hers
through the single medium of touch. The compound obstacles which she has
had to overcome make her case, perhaps, the most remarkable on record.
There have been, however, many famous blind persons in history. Stengel
mentions a young cabinet-maker of Ingolstadt, who, having lost his sight,
amused himself by carving wooden pepper-mills, using a common knife. His
want of sight seemed to be no impediment to his manual dexterity.
Sir Kenelm Digby has given particulars about a gifted blind tutor. He
surpassed the ablest players at chess; at long distances he shot arrows
with such precision as almost never to miss his mark; he constantly went
abroad without a guide; he regularly took his place at table, and ate with
such dexterity that it was impossible to perceive that he was blind; when
any one spoke to him for the first time he was able to tell with certainty
his stature and the form of his body; and when his pupils recited in his
presence he knew in what situation and attitude they were.
Uldaric Schomberg, born in Germany toward the beginning of the seventeenth
century, lost his sight at the age of three years; but as he grew up he
applied himself to the study of _belles-lettres_, which he afterward
professed with credit at Altorf, at Leipsic, and at Hamburg.
Bourcheau de Valbonais, born at Grenoble in 1651, became blind when very
young--soon after the naval combat at Solbaye, where he had been present.
But this accident did not prevent him from publishing the "History of
Dauphiny," in two volumes, folio. He had made profound researches into the
history of his province.
Mastered Chemistry and Mathematics.
Dr. Nicholas Sanderson, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in the
University of Cambridge, was one of the most remarkable men of his time.
Born in 1682, at a small town in the County of York, he died at Cambridge
in 1739, at the age of fifty-six years. He invented a table for teaching
arithmetic palpably to the blind.
Dr. Henry Moyes professed the Newtonian philosophy, which he taught with
considerable success as an itinerant lecturer. He was also a good chemist,
a respectable mathematician, and a tolerable musician.
Herr Phefel, of Colmar, who lost his sight when very young, composed a
great deal of poetry, consisting chiefly of fables, some of which were
translated into French. Among the pupils of this learned blind man were
Prince Schwartzenberg and Prince Eisemberg. He died at Colmar, 1809.
Weissemburgh, of Mannheim, became blind at the age of seven years. He
wrote perfectly, and read with characters which he had imagined for his
own use. He was an excellent geographer, and composed maps and globes,
which he employed both in studying and teaching this science. He was the
inventor of an arithmetical table differing but little from that of
Sanderson.
An Extraordinary Questioner.
The blind man of Puiseaux must be known to all who read Diderot's
celebrated "Lettres sur les Aveugles." He was the son of a professor of
philosophy in the University of Paris, and had attended with advantage
courses of chemistry and botany at the Jardin du Roi. After having
dissipated a part of his fortune, he retired to Puiseaux, where he
established a distillery, the products of which he came regularly once a
year to dispose of.
There was an originality in everything that he did. His custom was to
sleep during the day, and to rise in the evening; he worked all night,
"because," as he himself said, "he was not then disturbed by anybody." His
wife, when she arose in the morning, used to find everything perfectly
arranged.
To Diderot, who visited him at Puiseaux, he put some very singular
questions as to the transparency of glass, and as to colors, and other
facts and conditions which could be recognized only through sight. He
asked if naturalists were the only persons who saw with the microscope,
and if astronomers were the only persons who saw with the telescope; if
the machine that magnified objects was greater than that which diminished
them; if that which brought them near were shorter than that which removed
them to a distance. He believed that astronomers had eyes of different
conformation from those of other men, and that a man could not devote
himself to the study of a particular science without having eyes specially
adapted for that purpose.
"The eye," said he, "is an organ upon which the air ought to produce the
same effect as my cane does upon my hand." He possessed the memory of
sounds to a surprising degree, and recognized by the voice those whom he
had only heard speak once.
He could tell if he was in a thoroughfare or in a _cul-de-sac_, in a large
or in a small place. He estimated the proximity of fire by the degree of
heat; the comparative fulness of vessels by the sound of the liquor in
falling; and the neighborhood of bodies by the action of the air on his
face. He employed characters in relief, in order to teach his son to read,
and the latter never had any other master than his father.
M. Huber, of Geneva, an excellent naturalist, and author of a treatise on
bees and ants, was blind from infancy. In executing his great work he had
no other assistance than what he derived from his domestic, who mentioned
to him the color of the insects, and then he ascertained their size and
form by touch, with the same facility he would have recognized them by
their humming in the air. This laborious writer also published a valuable
work on education.
Beggar Becomes a Student.
Francis Lesueur, born of very poor parents at Lyons, in 1766, lost his
sight when six weeks old. He went to Paris in 1778, and was begging at the
gate of a church when M. Hauy, discovering in the young mendicant some
inclination to study, received him, and undertook the task of instructing
him, at the same time promising him a sum equal to that which he had
collected in alms.
Lesueur began to study in October, 1784. Six months later he was able to
read, to compose with characters in relief, to print, and in less than two
years he had learned the French language, geography, and music, which he
understood very well. It is painful to add that he proved ungrateful to
his benefactor to whom he owed everything.
Avisse, born in Paris, embarked when very young on board a vessel fitted
out for the slave trade, in the capacity of secretary or clerk to the
captain; but on the coast of Africa he lost his sight from a violent
inflammation. On his return his parents procured his admission into the
institution for the blind, where, in a few years, he became professor of
grammar and logic.
He produced a comedy in verse, in one act, entitled "La Ruse d'Aveugle,"
which was performed; and several other pieces, which were all printed in
one volume, in 1803. He died before he had completed his thirty-first
year, at the very time when the high hopes entertained of him were being
realized.
Some Distinguished Churchmen.
Although blind from birth Robert Wauchope became not only a priest but the
Archbishop of Armagh. It was he who, in 1541, introduced Jesuits into
Ireland. In 1543 he was appointed Archbishop by Paul III; he attended the
Council of Trent in 1547.
Richard Lucas, D.D., called the blind prebendary of Westminster, was
another prominent blind churchman. He was the author of several well-known
books on religious subjects. He lived from 1648 to 1715.
A more recent case was that of the Rev. William Henry Milburn, who died in
1903 after many years' service as chaplain of the United States Senate.
John Ziska, the famous Hussite general, was born near Budweis, Bohemia, in
1360. From childhood he was blind in one eye, and later he lost the other
in battle, but that did not interfere with his aggressive and determined
spirit, for after gaining several victories over the Emperor Sigismund,
that monarch early in 1424 proposed a meeting at which Ziska was granted
full religious liberty for his followers, and was appointed governor of
Bohemia and its dependencies. Unfortunately, the old warrior did not live
long enough to enjoy his well-earned peace, for he died of the plague
October 11, 1424.
Sightless Poets.
There were several blind poets, of whom Milton is, of course, the most
famous; he became totally blind in May, 1652, being then forty-one years
of age. A large number of his works, "Paradise Lost" among others, were
written after his misfortune. He lived in darkness for twenty-two years,
dying November 8, 1674.
Homer was known as "the blind bard of Chio's rocky isle," but he did not
become blind until late in life--if indeed he was a real person at all.
Another blind poet of note was Luigi Grotto, an Italian, known as "Il
Cieco d'Adria." He lived from 1541 to 1585.
Giovanni Gonelli (1610-1664) was a noted Tuscan sculptor, and much of his
work may be seen to-day. Though totally blind, he made admirable
likenesses, and his portrait bust of Pope Urban VIII is very celebrated.
In more modern times we have the late Henry Fawcett, of Salisbury,
England. Born in 1833, he was graduated from Cambridge in 1856. In 1858 he
became totally blind, through an accident while hunting. This terrible
misfortune at the outset of a promising career would have been enough to
daunt most men, but in spite of it Fawcett soon became an authority on
economic and political subjects, and in 1863 he was made a professor of
political economy at the University of Cambridge. He was elected to the
British House of Commons, and in 1880 he entered the cabinet as
postmaster-general of England, in which position he proved himself an
active and efficient minister. He died in 1884.
Another notable modern example is the great yacht designer, John B.
Herreshoff. Although he became blind at fifteen, he has built up and
managed the successful business that bears his name--the Herreshoff
Manufacturing Company, builders of several defenders of the America Cup.
In spite of his blindness, he is perfectly at home in his shops or on
board ship.
THE OWNERS OF THE SOIL.
BY EDWARD EVERETT.
The man who stands upon his own soil, who feels that, by the law of the
land in which he lives, he is the rightful and exclusive owner of the land
which he tills, feels more strongly than another the character of a man as
the lord of an inanimate world. Of this great and wonderful sphere, which,
fashioned by the hand of God, and upheld by His power, is rolling through
the heavens, a part is _his_--his from the center to the sky! It is the
space on which the generation before moved in its round of duties, and he
feels himself connected by a visible link with those who follow him, and
to whom he is to transmit a home.
Perhaps his farm has come down to him from his fathers. They have gone to
their last home; but he can trace their footsteps over the scenes of his
daily labors. The roof which shelters him was reared by those to whom he
owes his being. Some interesting domestic tradition is connected with
every enclosure. The favorite fruit-tree was planted by his father's hand.
He sported in boyhood beside the brook which still winds through the
meadow. Through the field lies the path to the village school of earlier
days. He still hears from the window the voice of the Sabbath-bell, which
called his fathers to the house of God; and near at hand is the spot where
his parents lay down to rest, and where, when _his_ time has come, he
shall be laid by his children.
These are the feelings of the owners of the soil. Words cannot paint
them--gold cannot buy them; they flow out of the deepest fountains of the
heart; they are the very life-springs of a fresh, healthy, and generous
national character.
* * * * *
Edward Everett was an American of culture, of elegance, of scholarship, at
a time when culture and elegance and scholarship were not commonly met
with in America. He was clergyman, professor, public lecturer, diplomat,
statesman; he held positions as eminent yet as separated as president of
Harvard College and Secretary of State, and at other times between his
birth, in 1794, and his death, in 1865, he was editor of the _North
American Review_, member of Congress and of the Senate, Governor of
Massachusetts, minister to Great Britain. This is the man who pronounced
so moving a panegyric on the life of the farmer.
How They Got On In The World.
Brief Biographies of Successful Men Who Have Passed Through
the Crucible of Small Beginnings and Won Out.
_Compiled and edited for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.
"THE MORGAN OF JAPAN."
Farmer's Son Organized the First Japanese
National Bank and Aided in Establishing
His Country's Industries.
"Baron Shibuzawa," says Jihei Hashiguchi, "is called the J.P. Morgan of
Japan. But he is more important to Japan's industry than Mr. Morgan is to
that of the United States, for the industry of the United States can in a
sense get along without J.P. Morgan. The industry of Japan cannot do
without Baron Shibuzawa."
The man who has been the industrial and financial savior of Japan was born
near Tokyo in 1840. His father was a farmer of slender resources, and
supplemented the small earnings of the farm by the cultivation of
silkworms and the manufacture of indigo. The boy was lazy--the laziest boy
in the empire, he was called--and he spent most of his time in reading
fiction, studying the history of his country and China, and familiarizing
himself with the Japanese and Chinese classics. Fencing also was one of
his diversions, and when he was fourteen years old he swore allegiance to
one of the feudal lords at Kioto, the ancient capital of Japan.
In 1853 Commodore Matthew C. Perry visited Japan, and his visit paved the
way for the opening up of the country to foreigners as well as for a
revolution in the social and industrial conditions of the island empire.
Three years after Perry's visit, the Shogun, hereditary commander-in-chief
of the Japanese armies and head of the powerful clan of Minamoto, assumed
the title of Tycoon. At one time the Shogun rivaled and even surpassed
the Mikado in power. But his influence was rapidly declining. Shibuzawa
knew this, yet he entered the service of the Tycoon, and in 1867 he
accompanied the brother of the latter on a political mission to France.
Up to that time Shibuzawa had been nothing more than an ordinary member of
the Samurai. The contrast between conditions in Europe and in Japan
affected him deeply.
Assumed European Dress.
The first thing he did was to have his topknot cut off, discard the
Japanese dress and two swords, clothe himself in ordinary European costume
and have his picture taken. He sent copies of the photographs home, and
his family, friends, and official superiors were shocked at his apostasy.
He knew that would be the effect, and to prepare himself for the storm
that would greet him on returning he put in all his time studying European
institutions, and in acquiring the rudiments of French and English.
When he arrived home in 1868 the revolution that ended forever the power
of the Shogun, abolished the Samurai, and vastly curtailed the privileges
of the nobility had begun. He remained true to the Shogun, but after the
utter defeat of the latter before the walls of Kioto he entered the
service of the Mikado, and his knowledge was of vast importance in the
reorganization and rebuilding that came after the revolution had done its
work.
In 1870 he was appointed assistant vice-minister of finance, and in that
position he undertook to place the currency of the country on a firm
basis. Japan was flooded with depreciated paper money, with a face value
of so much rice. This was steadily called in and more stable money issued.
Helped Build First Railroad.
This same year the first railroad in Japan--the Tokyo-Yokohama, twenty
miles long--was constructed, and Shibuzawa aided in the work to the full
extent of his power. Higher political offices were open to him, but he
decided he could be of more use to his country as a business man than as
an official, so in 1873 he resigned office.
"I realized," he said, "that the real force of progress lay in actual
business, not in politics, and that the business element was really the
most influential for the advancement of the country. I soon came to the
conclusion that the capital of an individual was not enough to accomplish
very much, and I then became the means of introducing the company system
into Japan. The idea was successful, and the government approved it. Since
then, I may say, every industry in the country has increased--some twenty
times, some ten times, and none less than five times."
His first act was to establish a national bank, modeled on the national
banks of the United States, and two years later he organized the Tokyo
Chamber of Commerce, modeled also on American chambers of commerce, and of
this became president. The extension of railroads, the establishment of
gas companies, pulp-mills, cotton-mills, iron-foundries, shipyards, and
steamship lines next occupied his attention, and he was successful in all
of them. The amount of money he made personally was not great, but he
placed Japan on a sound, modern commercial basis.
The results of his work were seen first in the Chinese-Japanese War of
1894 and 1895, and later in the war between Japan and Russia. Japan was
ready, financially, for these conflicts. It was possible for the Japanese
mills and factories to furnish much of the equipment for the Japanese
armies.
The advice of Shibuzawa constantly had been:
"Get in line with progress. Be as modern in all things as the rest of the
world."
He had to go against ancient prejudices, shatter ancient customs, and
shock conservative people, as he did when he cut off his topknot and
replaced his Japanese garb with modern European clothing. But his advice
was good, and, it having been heeded, Japan profited not a little.
CRANE, MAN OF BUSINESS.
Massachusetts Senator, Though Neither
an Orator Nor an Author, Is a
Highly Successful Statesman.
Winthrop Murray Crane, who succeeded George Frisbie Hoar as United States
Senator from Massachusetts, is not an author, orator, or scholar, but
Massachusetts is as proud of him as of the other distinguished Senators
she has furnished. Senator Crane was born in Dalton, Massachusetts, in
1853. His grandfather had started a small paper-mill in a valley among the
Berkshire hills, more than fifty years before that date, and Crane's
father, in turn, had taken up the business and continued it. Still, while
it gave a fair living, it did little more, and was of no greater
consequence than hundreds of other little industries in the State.
Young Crane was educated at Williston Academy, Easthampton. He showed no
fondness for books and study, and made no attempt to get a college
education. At seventeen he left school, put on overalls and started in to
learn the paper-making business in his father's mill. Methods were still
crude and the production of the mill was small.
When Crane had learned all the mill could teach him he began to look
beyond it for improved methods, for a greater outlet for the product, and
for increased capacity. He speedily found ways to reach all three, and the
little mill began to take on importance.
In 1879 he learned of a new method of running silk threads through paper,
and he was convinced that this was an important advantage in the making of
paper for currency, as it would render counterfeiting more difficult. He
made up some samples of the new paper and took them to Washington. Those
whom he saw were not at first impressed, and he was referred from one
official to another, back and around the whole line, spending several
weeks in fruitless endeavor.
The case of the red-threaded paper seemed hopeless, but he stuck
persistently to the task, and brought the paper so often to the notice of
the authorities that at last they consented to look at it. Then its
advantages were evident, and the Crane Brothers' paper-mills got a
contract to furnish a lot of bond-paper for the printing of government
notes. They have held the contract ever since, and all the paper on which
United States money is printed comes from the paper-mills in Dalton.
Crane First Enters Politics.
Crane made his first appearance in politics in 1892 as a delegate to the
Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, when Harrison was
renominated, and later, in 1896, he was a delegate to the St. Louis
convention where McKinley was nominated. It was in 1896, too, that he ran
for office for the first time and was elected Lieutenant-Governor of his
State. He made no speeches and issued no political documents during this
time, nor did he when he ran on two subsequent occasions for
Lieutenant-Governor, nor in 1899 when he ran for Governor.
The earliest document to bear his signature was his first message as
Governor of Massachusetts. It was the shortest ever submitted at the
opening of the Great and General Court, but its terse, straightforward,
businesslike statements, utterly devoid of rhetoric, fully acquainted the
members with the views of the Governor and outlined the work necessary to
be done.
The messages he subsequently sent were of the same nature, and, besides
being simple, they were short and to the point. They were unique also in
the fact that each recommendation they contained was afterward enacted
into law. The great work of his administration was the freeing of the
State from the expense and inefficiency of a multitude of boards and
committees. Such action was businesslike and pleased the people, but it
made the politicians shudder.
Besides the paper-making business, Crane is interested in various other
big enterprises. Crane Brothers hold the largest block of stock in the
American Bell Telephone Company, for they were among the first to
recognize the importance of the new invention, and they went in at a time
when the company was struggling for life.
Senator Hoar died in 1904, and former Governor Crane was the only man
suggested as his successor. Governor Bates made the appointment and Mr.
Crane reluctantly left business again and took up his duties at the
national capital. There is little probability of his making any speeches,
or of writing any literature while he is a member, but his work will be
felt in legislation as forcefully as it was while he was Governor of
Massachusetts.
A LABOR LEADER'S RISE.
Son of a Washerwoman Determinedly
Trod Thorny Paths Until He Became
a British Cabinet Minister.
John Burns, president of the Local Government Board in the Liberal Cabinet
of Premier Campbell-Bannerman, has been for many years the principal
representative of labor unionism in the British House of Commons. In that
capacity he received no compensation from the government. His salary now
amounts to ten thousand dollars a year, and the administration expenses of
the department of which he is the head amounts to one million two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars a year.
Many years ago, one bitterly cold winter night, or morning, for it was
then nearly one o'clock, a puny boy of eight was helping his mother carry
a big basket full of washing. At the bottom of the basket there was a lot
of broken food that had been given to her by persons who knew the cruel
struggle she had to support not only the little boy with her, but his
several brothers.
The thought of the food and the feast he would have strengthened him to
the heavy task for a while, but at last it proved too much for him and he
staggered so that the basket had to be put down on the sidewalk, and he
sat on it to rest. They were then near the houses of Parliament, and the
boy choked back a sob as he shivered, looking up at the building.
"Mother," he said at last, "if ever I have the health and strength, no
mother will have to work as you do; and no child shall do what I have to
do."
The boy was John Burns.
Mother Died Too Soon.
Between the time he helped carry home the washing and his elevation to the
cabinet there intervened years of the hardest kind of work, and his mother
did not live to see his triumph in the end. Almost as soon as he could
walk young Burns began to help with such work as could be done at home. At
the age of ten he went to work in a candle-factory and received
seventy-five cents a week for his labor. That was followed by a short term
as pot-boy in an inn and as a "boy in buttons."
Such work did not suit him, and he went as rivet-boy in the Vauxhall
Ironworks, and when he was fourteen he became apprentice to an engineer.
He had had little schooling, and before he began his apprenticeship he had
begun to educate himself.
While he was an apprentice he taught himself French, and laid the
foundation of a good reading knowledge of German. He also began public
speaking at out-of-door meetings, and it was at these meetings, with their
constantly shifting crowds, with innumerable interruptions, and almost
continual opposition, that he developed readiness in debate and coolness
while under a hot fire of questions.
At nineteen his apprenticeship was finished and he went to South Africa as
foreman-engineer on some work being done at the delta of the Niger. Burns,
alone of all the white men there, passed through the year the work lasted
without a day of serious sickness.
"That's because I don't smoke and don't drink," he said. "I found I
couldn't do such things and continue work."
It was while employed in South Africa that Burns unearthed a copy of Adam
Smith's "Wealth of Nations," from beneath a pile of sand and rubbish
where it had been thrown by some predecessor on the work. This was the
only book he had for several weeks of his stay, and he read it and studied
it until he practically committed it to memory.
Noted for Physical Courage.
The battered old copy of "The Wealth of Nations" found there in South
Africa forms one of the treasures of Burns's library, and there are in
England few private libraries that can equal his in the department of
economics and sociology.
The courage Burns subsequently displayed in political fights was shown in
a physical way during his South African period. On one occasion a sick man
fell into a river swarming with water-snakes and crocodiles. Burns,
without an instant's hesitation, jumped in and rescued him.
On another occasion the propeller blades of the steam-launch which the men
were using worked loose and sunk to the muddy bottom of the river. The
water was thick and filthy with rank, decaying vegetable matter, and there
was an added source of danger in the venomous creatures that might be
lurking there.
The skipper of the launch was preparing to dive for the blades when Burns
stopped him:
"Don't try it," he said. "You're married and I'm not, so there won't be so
much at stake if I do it."
He dived in the reeking water for an hour and in the end fished up the
blades.
Becomes Labor Leader.
He returned to Europe with a few pounds, and he used all of this in taking
a six months' tour of the Continent, devoting his whole attention to the
study of social conditions. Burns's real work as an agitator began on his
return to England. He had settled down to work as an engineer, but he gave
all his spare time to organizing the working people, both into
trade-unions and into a new political party. The result was that he lost
his job, and for seven weeks he tramped through the country looking for
another one.
Shortly after this he was arrested for the part he took in the unemployed
agitation, but he conducted his case with such skill that he went free.
The following year, 1887, he was arrested again because of his work during
the demonstration of the unemployed, and was sentenced, together with
Cunninghame Graham, to six weeks' imprisonment for rioting in Trafalgar
Square.
In 1889 the great dock strike occurred, and the part Burns took in it made
him known on both sides of the Atlantic. During January of that year he
was elected to the London County Council, and two years later he entered
Parliament.
Burns's whole work in Parliament was devoted to those subjects with which
he was thoroughly acquainted, and his readiness in debate and his
willingness to force the issue jarred the dignity of some of the older
members.
"The honorable member is not in the London County Council now," suggested
a well-known horse-owner and racing enthusiast who had been worsted in
argument. "Nor is the right honorable gentleman on Newmarket Heath,"
replied Burns.
After that the right honorable race-track patron let him alone.
Burns Enters the Cabinet.
At the last election the Liberal and Labor parties swept everything before
them, and Burns was selected from among the Laborites for a place in the
cabinet. He had said on one occasion, while a member of the London County
Council:
"No man is worth more than five hundred pounds a year." His salary as
president of the Local Government Board is two thousand pounds.
"What about that 'ere salary of two thousand pounds?" one of his Battersea
constituents asked.
"That is the recognized trade-union rate for the job," Burns answered. "If
I took less I would be a blackleg."
"What are you going to do with the fifteen hundred too much?" persisted
the questioner.
"Well," answered Burns, "for details about that you'll have to ask the
missus."
The coming of Burns into office shook things up considerably. The Local
Government Board has to deal with the Poor Law administration, public
health, and the general control of the authorities established by the
Local Government Act. There were several purely ornamental posts, at good
salaries, on the board, and there were plenty of inefficients holding
office. The first day of Burns's tenure he called his private secretary, a
man holding office from the previous administration, and started to
dictate letters.
"You're going much too fast," the man protested, "I really can't keep up
with you."
"How many words do you write a minute?" Burns asked.
"Words a minute?" echoed the man in a puzzled voice. "Really, I never
counted."
"You don't mean to say you're not a stenographer!"
The man was shocked to think that he should be looked upon as a
stenographer. He was private secretary to the president of the Local
Government Board, and nothing else.
"See here," said Burns, "this office has work to do, and you won't be of
much use to me unless you know shorthand. I'll give you every afternoon
off to learn it. I expect that it will take you three months. Till then I
suppose I'll have to put up with slower methods."
BELL AND THE TELEPHONE.
Scottish-American Inventor Had Hard
Work to Convince Them the Telephone
Was Anything More than a Toy.
Alexander Graham Bell, whose discoveries contributed largely to the
commercial success of the telephone, had been known only as a teacher of
deaf-mutes previous to the time he took out his telephone patents. He had
been a teacher in Scotland, his native country, and when he emigrated to
America it was with the intention of continuing to teach here. The system
he used was one of his own, and from the first he got good results from
the most difficult cases.
Important as this work was, he could earn nothing more than a scanty
living. Soon even this income was threatened, for he began to devote more
and more time to the study of sound-transmission, and in order to make a
living at all by teaching it was necessary to devote his entire time to
it.
At the Centennial Exhibition, in Philadelphia, he showed a crude model of
a telephone, but it attracted only passing notice from capitalists, though
eminent scientists predicted a future for it. The results were not what
Bell looked for, but he took up the work again, made some improvements,
and took out patents covering the principal features of the telephone as
it is to-day.
Three hours after he filed his application Elisha Gray filed a caveat for
his telephone.
On February 1, 1877, Bell went to Salem, Massachusetts, and gave his first
public exhibition and lecture. It aroused some curiosity, but drew no
financial backing. On May 10 he lectured before the Boston Academy, and
there, apparently, the results were little more encouraging than they had
been at Salem.
Thought Telephone a Toy.
The general opinion expressed was that the telephone was a remarkably
clever toy, but that it was nothing more. Investors took this view of it,
and Bell, who had been reduced to poverty by the expenses of his
experiments, went from one financier to another offering stock in the
company he had formed, but everywhere he met with rebuffs. Financiers did
not care to have anything to do with a machine designed to accomplish the
impossible feat of making audible the voice of a person many miles away.
The reception he met with did not in the least shake Bell's faith in his
work, but he was sorely in need of money. He resolved on a desperate move,
and he went to Chauncey M. Depew and offered him a one-sixth interest in
the company if he would loan ten thousand dollars to put the company on
its feet. Depew took a week to consider the proposition. At the end of the
week he wrote back that the incident might be considered closed. The
telephone was a clever idea, but it was utterly lacking in commercial
possibilities, and ten thousand dollars was far too big a sum to risk in
marketing an instrument that at best could never be more than a
plaything.
Thus Depew let slip an opportunity to acquire for ten thousand dollars an
interest that to-day could not be bought for less than twenty-five
millions.
Bell was being hard pushed, and he determined to make a last offer. Don
Cameron, of Pennsylvania, was then one of the leading figures in the
United States Senate, and his influence throughout the country was very
great. Bell went to him and offered him, for nothing, one-half interest in
the invention if he would endeavor to have it introduced to the public.
Cameron would not even consider the proposition, and gave orders "that
Bell and his fool talking-machine be thrown out" if he again attempted to
get an interview.
While Bell was ineffectually struggling in this direction, a few men in
Boston, who had been interested by the exhibition before the Boston
Academy, determined to give the telephone a thorough test. A line three
miles long was built from Boston to Somerville, and this proved so
unequivocally the utility of the telephone that there could no longer be
any question of its success.
The pioneer line, three miles long, cost a few hundred dollars. In less
than thirty years the number of miles of wire has increased to nearly four
million, and thirty thousand persons are regularly employed by the
telephone companies.
Soon after the Somerville demonstration, the tide turned in Bell's favor.
Capital, which had previously fought shy of the talking-machine, rushed
boldly in, and the inventor who had been turned away from office-doors and
denied access to the presence of politicians was offered fabulous prices
for part interest in his company.
Small investors clamored to get their money down, and big capitalists
fought for control of the invention that promised such great things.
Within a few weeks Bell, who couldn't give a half interest in his
invention to Don Cameron, and who couldn't raise a ten-thousand-dollar
loan from Depew, was in a position to turn millions of money away, and
there was no more begging for a few dollars to give the telephone a
try-out.
GRAVE, GAY, AND EPIGRAMMATIC.
THE VILLAGE SMITHY.
=By Horace Seymour Keller.=
No more the roan and chestnut, the pie-bald and the gray
Pound their iron hoofs upon the smithy's floor;
No more the gig and buggy, the buckboard and coupé
Stand broken down and helpless at the door.
He'll pump you full of ether with an auto sorter laugh,
He's fixtures ready-made to mend the fake.
If your tire has collapsed he'll swell it for a half,
With perhaps another dollar for a break.
No more he talks of "hoss" as he stands upon the green
And waits the auto trav'ler on his way.
He's an artist now in wind, and he's happy and serene,
For he's pumping, pumping dollars all the day.
NOT A LENDER.
"Your honor," said a lawyer to the judge, "every man who knows me, knows
that I am incapable of lending my aid to a mean cause."
"That's so," said his opponent, "the gentleman never lends himself to a
mean cause; he always gets cash down."
FISHIN'?
Settin' on a log
An' fishin'
An' watchin' the cork,
An' wishin'.
Jus' settin' round home
An' sighin',
Jus' settin' round home--
An' lyin'.
_New Orleans Times-Democrat._
ABOUT BELLS AND MONEY.
A thousand men can go to work at seven o'clock in the morning without the
ringing of a bell, and why is it that three hundred people cannot assemble
in a church without a previous ding-donging lasting half an
hour?--_Detroit Free Press._
Why, man, it's because they go out at seven o'clock to get money. Put a
twenty-dollar gold piece in each pew every Sunday and you may sell your
bell for old metal.--_Louisville Courier-Journal._
WHEN PAW WAS A BOY.
I wisht 'at I'd of been here when
My paw he was a boy;
They must of been excitement then--
When my paw was a boy;
In school he always took the prize,
He used to lick boys twice his size--
I bet folks all had bulgin' eyes
When my paw was a boy.
They was a lot of wonders done
When my paw was a boy;
How granpa must have loved his son,
When my paw was a boy;
He'd git the coal and chop the wood,
And think up every way he could
To always jist be sweet and good--
When my paw was a boy.
Then everything was in its place,
When my paw was a boy;
How he could rassle, jump, and race,
When my paw was a boy!
He never, never disobeyed;
He beat in every game he played--
Gee! What a record they was made
When my paw was a boy!
I wisht 'at I'd been here when
My paw he was a boy;
They'll never be his like agen--
Paw was the model boy,
But still last night I heard my maw
Raise up her voice and call my paw
The worst fool that she ever saw--
He ought of stayed a boy!
_Chicago Times-Herald._
TOO MANY LEGS.
Senator Elsberg of New York was talking in Albany about a notoriously
untruthful man.
"Like all great liars," said Senator Elsberg, "he is careless. He fails to
keep accurate note of all the lies he tells. Hence innumerable
contradictions, innumerable stories that won't hold together."
Senator Elsberg smiled.
"The average chronic liar," he said, "has the luck of a boy I know who
enlisted and went to the Philippines. This boy, whenever he wanted money,
would write home from Manila something like this:
"'Dear Father--I have lost another leg in a stiff engagement, and am in
hospital without means. Kindly send two hundred dollars at once.'
"To the last letter of this sort that the boy wrote home, he received the
following answer:
"'Dear Son--As, according to your letters, this is the fourth leg you have
lost, you ought to be accustomed to it by this time. Try and hobble along
on any others you may have left.'"--_Boston Herald._
THE GLORY OF FAILURE.
All honor to him who wins the prize,
The world has cried for a hundred years;
But to him who tries and fails and dies,
I give great glory and honor and tears.
_Joaquin Miller._
HER GUESS.
Mrs. Ascum--I hear the men talking about a "temporary business slump." I
wonder what that means.
Mrs. Wise--I think it simply means that they're cooking up an excuse to
give their wives less money.--_Philadelphia Press._
SCOTT ON WOMAN.
O woman! In our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light quivering aspen made--
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!
OVERDID IT A BIT.
A famous statesman prided himself on his success in campaigning, when
called upon to reach a man's vote through his family pride.
On one of his tours he passed through a country town when he came suddenly
upon a charming group--a comely woman with a bevy of little ones about
her--in a garden. He stopped short, then advanced and leaned over the
front gate.
"Madam," he said in his most ingratiating way, "may I kiss these beautiful
children?"
"Certainly, sir," the lady answered demurely.
"They are lovely darlings," said the campaigner after he had finished the
eleventh. "I have seldom seen more beautiful babies. Are they all yours,
marm?"
The lady blushed deeply.
"Of course they are--the sweetest little treasures," he went on. "From
whom else, marm, could they have inherited these limpid eyes, these rosy
cheeks, these profuse curls, these comely figures and these musical
voices?"
The lady continued blushing.
"By the way, marm," said the statesman, "may I bother you to tell your
estimable husband that ----, Republican candidate for Governor, called
upon him this evening?"
"I beg your pardon," said the lady, "I have no husband."
"But these children, madam--you surely are not a widow?"
"I fear you were mistaken, sir, when you first came up. These are not my
children. This is an orphan asylum!"
_Exchange._
WORDSWORTH ON WOMAN.
A maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love;
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye;
Fair as a star when only one
Is shining in the sky.
_Poems of the Affections._
DIVIDED.
"Johnny," said his mother severely, "some one has taken a big piece of
ginger-cake out of the pantry."
Johnny blushed guiltily.
"Oh, Johnny!" she exclaimed. "I didn't think it was in you."
"It ain't, all," replied Johnny. "Part of it's in Elsie."--_Philadelphia
Press._
WHAT HE GOT OUT OF IT.
He never took a day of rest,
He couldn't afford it;
He never had his trousers pressed,
He couldn't afford it;
He never went away, care-free,
To visit distant lands, to see
How fair a place this world might be--
He couldn't afford it.
He never went to see a play,
He couldn't afford it;
His love for art he put away,
He couldn't afford it;
He died and left his heirs a lot,
But no tall shaft proclaims the spot
In which he lies--his children thought
They couldn't afford it.
_Chicago Record-Herald._
The Vision of Charles XI.
BY PROSPER MÉRIMÉE.
Translated from the French for "The Scrap Book" by S. Ten Eyck Bourke.
Prosper Mérimée, whose virile pen enriched the world's
literature by the creation of "Carmen," was born in 1803, in
France. At the outset of his career he studied law, and
until his death, in 1870, was associated with politics,
occupying several posts of importance.
He was an intimate friend of the Countess de Montijo, later
the Empress Eugénie, and always was _persona grata_ at the
Tuileries during the imperial régime. This fact, however,
did not influence his success as a man of letters; for that
he owed directly to the elegance and purity of his style,
the truthfulness of his local coloring, and his forceful and
versatile brain.
Mérimée traveled widely, corresponding with the Paris
papers. It is to one of these journeys that the fragment,
"The Vision of Charles XI," is attributable. Apart from its
literary excellence, it is of interest as relating an actual
occurrence during the reign of that Swedish monarch.
Visions and supernatural apparitions commonly inspire ridicule; some there
are, however, so fully attested that to refuse them credence one must, to
be consistent, reject the entire fabric of accumulated historical data.
An affidavit, drawn in due legal form, subscribed to by, and endorsed with
the signatures of four witnesses worthy of belief--that is my guaranty for
the authenticity of the occurrence which I purpose to narrate. I desire to
add that the prophecy set forth in the affidavit was therein incorporated
and cited before those events which, happening in our times, would seem
subsequently to have wrought its fulfilment.
Charles XI, father of the famous Charles XII, was one of the most
despotic, yet, withal, one of the wisest, monarchs who have reigned in
Sweden.
He restricted the monstrous privileges of the nobility, abolished the
power of the senate, and enacted laws in virtue of his own sole authority;
in a word, he altered the constitution of the country, which before him
had been oligarchic, and compelled the governing bodies--composed of the
nobility, the clergy, the middle classes, and the peasants--known as the
Estates, to invest him with the supreme power. He was, moreover, an
enlightened man, brave, strongly attached to the Lutheran faith,
inflexible in character, cold, assertive, and wholly devoid of
imagination.
He had but recently lost his wife, Eleanor Ulrica. Although it was rumored
that his severity toward her had hastened her end, her death had seemingly
moved him more deeply than might have been expected of one so hard of
heart. His humor grew more somber and taciturn than ever, and he devoted
himself to his labors in behalf of his subjects with an assiduity which
bespoke an imperative need of dispelling painful thoughts.
He was seated, late one autumn evening, in dressing-gown and slippers,
before a huge fire, burning upon the hearth in his study. With him were
his chamberlain, Count Brahe, whom he honored with his good will, and his
doctor, Baumgarten, who, be it said in passing, was a man of advanced
views, something of being a free-thinker and inclined to compel the world
at large to doubt everything save the science of medicine. The king had
summoned Baumgarten that evening to consult with him upon some
indisposition of I know not what nature.
The hour waxed late, yet the king, contrary to custom, gave them no hint,
by bidding them good night, that they might withdraw. With bowed head and
eyes bent upon the embers, he remained buried in a profound silence, weary
of his guests, yet dreading, he knew not why, to be alone.
Count Brahe, keenly aware that his presence was not sovereignly welcome,
had several times expressed the fear that his majesty might stand in need
of repose. A gesture from the king held him to his place.
The physician, in turn, discoursed upon the evils wrought by late hours on
the constitution. Charles answered him between his teeth:
"Stay. I am not ready to sleep yet."
They strove to converse of divers matters, but each topic was exhausted
with the second sentence, or, at most, the third. His majesty, it was
apparent, was in one of his blackest moods, and in like circumstance a
courtier's position is of the most delicate.
Count Brahe, surmising that the king's grief emanated from the regrets to
which his consort's loss had given rise in his mind, gazed for a time at a
portrait of the queen which hung upon the study walls, finally exclaiming,
with a huge sigh:
"What a resemblance! The portrait has her very expression, so majestic,
and, withal, so sweet----"
"Bah!" bruskly interrupted the king, who saw a reproach in every mention
made of the queen in his presence, "the portrait flattered her. The queen
was ugly."
Then, secretly ashamed of his own harshness, he rose and wandered about
the room to conceal an emotion for which he blushed. He paused before a
window looking upon the court. The night was dark, and the moon in her
first quarter.
The palace where the Swedish sovereigns reside to-day was not then
completed, and Charles XI, who began it, dwelt at the time in the old
palace, situated at the head of the Ritterholm, which overlooks Lake
Moeler. It is a huge structure in the shape of a horseshoe. The king's
study was located in one extremity of the horseshoe, while almost opposite
was the great hall in which the Estates were convoked to receive the
communications of the Crown.
The windows of this room now appeared to be brilliantly lighted.
This seemed strange to the king. He at first attributed it to a reflection
from some lackey's torch. But what could he be doing at this hour in an
apartment which had not been opened for a long time past?
Moreover, the glow was too vivid to proceed from a single torch. It might
well be occasioned by a conflagration, but the king could see no smoke,
the window-panes were intact, and not a sound disturbed the stillness of
the night; every indication pointed rather to an illumination.
Charles watched the windows for a time in silence. Count Brahe reached for
the bell-rope, purposing to summon a page to investigate this
unaccountable brilliancy, but the king checked him.
"I will go myself to the state hall," he said.
As he finished speaking these words his companions noted the sudden pallor
and the expression of religious awe which overspread his features. But his
step was none the less firm as he strode from the study, the chamberlain
and the doctor following, each provided with a lighted taper.
The custodian of the keys, who likewise fulfilled the duties of caretaker,
had already retired. Baumgarten roused him, bidding him, in the king's
name, make ready to open the state apartments.
Amazed at the unexpected summons, the man dressed hastily, and taking his
keys, joined his royal master. He first unlocked the door of the long
corridor leading to the main apartment, which served as an antechamber or
withdrawal room. The king entered, and marveled to find the walls draped
with black.
"By whose order has this been done?" Charles demanded angrily.
"Sire, no such order has come to my notice," replied the custodian, much
troubled. "The last time I swept the corridor the walls were paneled with
oak as usual. Those hangings certainly do not belong to your majesty's
equipment."
The king, with his rapid stride, had already traversed more than
two-thirds of the corridor. The count and the custodian followed closely
in his wake, the doctor lagging somewhat in the rear, divided between his
fear of being left alone and his dread of the unknown dangers he might
incur in pursuing an adventure which began so inauspiciously.
"Go no farther, sire," implored the custodian. "On my soul, there is
witchcraft within. At this hour, since the death of your gracious consort,
the queen, it is said she haunts this corridor. God grant us protection!"
"Pause, sire," exclaimed the count, in turn. "Hear the disturbances in the
state hall! Who knows to what peril your majesty may be exposing
yourself?"
"Sire," urged Baumgarten, whose taper had been extinguished by a puff of
wind, "permit me at least to summon twenty of your guards."
"We enter now," responded the king with determination. And stopping before
the lofty portal he said to the custodian: "Open this door without delay."
As he spoke he kicked the paneled oak, and the sound, reverberating among
the echoes of the vaulted ceiling, thundered down the corridor like the
noise of a cannon-shot.
The key rattled against the lock as the custodian, who was trembling
violently, sought vainly to insert it in its groove.
"An old soldier trembling!" scoffed Charles. "Come, count, let us see you
open the door."
"Sire," answered the count, falling back a step, "let your majesty command
me to face the cannon of the Germans or the Danes, and I will obey
unflinchingly. But here you are asking me to defy all hell!"
The king wrenched the key from the custodian's shaking hand.
"I see clearly," he observed contemptuously, "that this concerns myself
alone."
And before any of his attendants could prevent him he flung the heavy
oaken door wide, and crossed the threshold, repeating the customary "With
God's help!"
His three attendants, impelled by a curiosity stronger than their fear,
and ashamed, perhaps, to abandon their sovereign, followed him.
The great hall blazed with the light of myriad torches. Heavy draperies
replaced the ancient tapestries on the walls with their woven figures.
Ranged along both sides of the apartment in the same order as of yore hung
the flags of Denmark, Germany, and the country of the Muscovite--trophies
taken in war by the soldiers of Gustavus Adolphus. But the Swedish flags
intermingled with the long array were swathed in funereal crape.
An immense concourse swarmed upon the serried rows of benches opposite the
throne. The members of the four Estates, garbed in black, were there, each
in his allotted place. And this multitude of gleaming visages against the
somber background so dazzled the eye that not one of the four beholders
could distinguish a familiar face among the throng. So is it with the
actor who fails to single out, in the confused mass of the crowded
audience, one person he knows.
On the raised dais of the throne, from which the king was wont to harangue
the assembly, they saw a bleeding corpse invested with the royal insignia.
At the right of this gruesome specter, crown on head, scepter in hand,
stood a child. At the left, an aged man, or fantom shade, leaned for
support against the throne. From his shoulders trailed the ceremonial
mantle worn by the ancient administrators of Sweden before Wasa made of
the government a monarchy.
Grave-visaged, austere men in flowing robes of black, evidently holding
the office of judges, were gathered near the throne around a table
littered with folios and parchments. Between the dais and the assembled
Estates the four spectators beheld an executioner's block, funereally
draped, and by its side the ax.
Of all that vast concourse of specters no single shade gave sign that the
presence of Charles and the three persons who accompanied him had been
observed. A confused murmur, in which the ear failed to detect any
articulate sound, greeted their entrance.
Presently the oldest of the black-gowned judges--he who seemed to fulfil
the functions of president of the tribunal--rose and struck thrice with
his palm upon the open folio that lay before him.
A profound hush fell instantly upon the hall. Then, through the doorway
facing that which Charles had just opened, came a band of young men of
prepossessing appearance, with their arms bound behind their backs. They
bore themselves well, their heads raised high, their mien unabashed.
Behind them stalked a robust figure, clad in a brown leather jerkin,
holding the ends of the ropes which confined their hands.
The foremost of the youths, who seemed to be their leader, halted before
the funereal block, and surveyed it with superb disdain. A convulsive
shudder swept over the crowned cadaver at sight of the youth, and from the
gaping wound the crimson blood welled afresh.
The prisoner knelt beside the block, and bent his head above it; the ax
flashed aloft, and descended with a resounding crash. A sanguine river
gushed from the headless trunk, losing itself in that other bloody stream;
the head bounded forward, rolling across the reddened floor to the living
monarch's feet, and drenched them with its uncontrolled flow.
Up to that moment surprise had held Charles mute, but this horrible
spectacle restored his power of speech. Striding forward to the dais, he
boldly addressed the aged administrator, repeating the prescribed formula:
"If thou art of God, speak; if thou be of that Other, leave us in peace."
In solemn tones, slowly, the fantom spoke:
"Charles! King! Not in thy reign shall his blood flow [here the voice grew
less distinct] but in the reign of thy fifth successor. Wo, wo, wo to the
blood of Wasa!"
As he ceased speaking the spectral forms who had participated in this
astounding vision faded. In a moment they were less than painted shadows;
soon they were gone; the fantastic flaming torches flickered and died, and
only the light from the tapers which his attendants carried remained to
illuminate the ancient mural tapestries, still faintly agitated by some
ghostly breeze.
For a space there lingered in the air a murmur, melodious withal, which
one of the four witnesses has compared to the rustling of the wind among
the leaves, and another to the breaking of harp-strings when the harp is
being tuned. But all were agreed as to the duration of the vision.
The black draperies, the severed head, the blood-stains on the flooring,
all vanished as had the specters; only upon the king's slipper a crimson
stain endured, which must have served him as a reminder of the night's
strange happenings, had they not been too indelibly impressed upon his
memory ever to be effaced.
Regaining his study, the king ordered the foregoing narrative set forth in
a written statement, which he signed, as did also the three attendants who
had witnessed the apparition with him.
Every precaution was taken to prevent the contents of the document from
becoming public, but the marvel was none the less divulged in some unknown
manner, and that during the lifetime of Charles XI. The document is still
in existence, and its authenticity has remained undisputed. Its closing
sentences are remarkable.
"And if that which I have narrated," says the king, "be not the exact
truth, I renounce all hope of that better life which I have perchance
merited by some good deeds, and above all by my zeal for the welfare of my
people and the defense of the religion of my ancestors."
* * * * *
If one recalls the circumstances attendant upon the death of Gustavus III,
and the manner of judgment passed upon his assassin, Ankerstroem, one
cannot fail to note the analogy between these and the occurrences detailed
in the singular prophecy.
Ankerstroem figures as the youth beheaded in the presence of the assembled
Estates, the crowned and bleeding cadaver represents his victim Gustavus
III, the child, his son and successor Gustavus Adolphus IV. And finally,
in the aged administrator, one recognizes the Duke of Sudermania, the
uncle of Gustavus Adolphus IV, who was first appointed regent, and
ultimately attained to the kingship, after the dethronement of his
nephew.
OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM.
The Story of How Its Author Received His Inspiration, Where
He Wrote the Famous Poem, and How Various
Editors Have Altered Its Phraseology.
Francis Scott Key wrote only one poem that entitled him to a lasting
reputation, but so firmly has that one poem gripped the patriotic
consciousness of the American people that its fame is assured as long as
the nation continues.
Key was born in Maryland, August 9, 1780. He practised law at Frederick,
Maryland, in 1801, but he subsequently removed to Washington, where he
became district attorney for the District of Columbia.
When the British ascended Chesapeake Bay, in 1814, and captured
Washington, General Ross and Admiral Cockburn set up headquarters in Upper
Marlboro, Maryland, at the home of Dr. William Beanes, one of Key's
friends. Later, Dr. Beanes was made prisoner by the British. Interesting
himself in securing the release of his friend, Key planned to exchange for
him a British prisoner in the hands of the Americans. President Madison
approved the exchange, and directed John S. Skinner, agent for the
exchange of prisoners, to accompany Key to the British commander.
General Ross consented to the exchange. He ordered, however, that Key and
Skinner be detained until after the approaching attack on Baltimore. They
had gone from Baltimore out to the British fleet in a vessel provided for
them by order of President Madison. Now they were transferred to the
British frigate Surprise, commanded by Admiral Cockburn's son, but soon
afterward they were permitted to return, under guard, to their own vessel,
whence they witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry.
By the glare of guns they could see the flag flying over the fort during
the night, but before morning the firing ceased, and the two men passed a
period of suspense, waiting for dawn, to see whether or not the attack had
failed.
When Key discovered that the flag was still there his feelings found vent
in verse. On the back of a letter he jotted down in the rough "The
Star-Spangled Banner."
On his return to Baltimore, Key revised the poem and gave it to Captain
Benjamin Eades, of the Twenty-Seventh Baltimore Regiment, who had it
printed. Taking a copy from the press, Eades went to the tavern next to
the Holiday Street Theater--a gathering-place for actors and their
congenial acquaintances. Mr. Key had directed that the words be sung to
the air, "Anacreon in Heaven," composed in England by John Stafford Smith,
between 1770 and 1775. The verses were first read aloud to the assembled
crowd, and then Ferdinand Durang stepped upon a chair and sang them.
Key died in Baltimore, January 11, 1843. James Lick bequeathed sixty
thousand dollars for a monument to his memory. This noble memorial, the
work of W.W. Story, stands in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. It is
fifty-one feet high. Under a double arch is a seated figure of Key in
bronze, while above all is a bronze figure of America, with an unfolded
flag.
As Key wrote it, the poem varies in several lines from the versions that
are sung to-day. We reprint verbatim a copy written out by Key himself for
James Maher, gardener of the White House. It may be worth while to preface
it with certain explanations of his phraseology:
He was describing an actual situation, and he appears to have addressed
the lines directly to his companion, Mr. Skinner. The smoke of battle
explains "the clouds of the fight." The line, "This blood has washed out
his foul footstep's pollution," modified by later editors, was his answer
to the boasts of a British officer, who declared before the bombardment
that the fort would quickly be reduced.
The change of "on" to "o'er" in the common versions of the phrase "now
shines on the stream" is the result of bungling editing. Key was picturing
the reflection of the flag on the water.
In the author's version, here given, the words that have been changed by
compilers are italicized. The references by numerals indicate the
variations of other editions.
THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.
BY FRANCIS SCOTT KEY.
Oh! say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming.
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the _clouds of the
fight_,[1]
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare--the bombs bursting in air--
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
Oh, say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On that shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, _half_[2] conceals, _half_[2] discloses;
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines _on_[3] the stream.
'Tis the Star-Spangled Banner--oh, long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
And where is the _foe that_[4] so vauntingly swore
_That_[5] the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country _should_[6] leave us no more?
_This_[7] blood has washed out _his_[8] foul footstep's pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.
And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Oh, thus be it ever! when _freemen_[9] shall stand
Between _their_[10] loved homes and the war's desolation.
Blest with victory and peace, may the Heav'n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto, "In God is our trust."
And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
For Mr. Jas. Maher, of Washington City, from F.S. Key. Washington, June 7,
1842.
[Footnote 1: "Perilous fight."--Griswold--Dana. Common version.]
[Footnote 2: "Now."--Dana.]
[Footnote 3: "O'er."--Several versions.]
[Footnote 4: "Band who."--Griswold--Dana.]
[Footnote 5: "Mid."--Griswold--Dana.]
[Footnote 6: "They'd."--Griswold.]
[Footnote 7: "Their."--Griswold--Dana. Common version.]
[Footnote 8: "Their."--Griswold--Dana. Common version.]
[Footnote 9: "Freeman."--Griswold.]
[Footnote 10: "Our."--Griswold--Dana. Common version.]
FROM THE COUNTRY PRESS.
Samples of the Journalistic Fodder Which Is Handed Out for Daily
Consumption Among the Children of Nature Who Inhabit Some of the
Quiet Places in the Tall Timbers.
'LIGE GOUDY'S CORN.
'Lige Goudy, a well-known and popular passenger engineer, who lives at
Seymour, is raising some corn this year. A few days ago a gentleman called
at Mr. Goudy's house to see him, and was informed that he had gone out to
look at his corn.
The gentleman went down to the field, which he found grown over with weeds
of a gigantic growth, with a sickly looking stalk of corn peeping forth
here and there. The gentleman looked across the field, but could not see
the proprietor thereof.
Finally the man climbed upon the fence and shouted:
"Oh, 'Lige!"
To his surprise, a reply came from among the weeds near by, in the
familiar voice of Mr. Goudy.
The gentleman took a second look, but could not quite locate 'Lige, and
after a moment's hesitation said:
"Shake a weed, so I can tell where you are!"--_Exchange._
WITH COMPLIMENTS TO FAY.
The _Bulletin_ is in receipt of a copy of the Fay _Observer_.
Notwithstanding the fact that it has the appearance of being printed on a
cider-mill with three-penny nails for type, it is a credit to the
town.--_Geary (Oklahoma) Bulletin._
HABITS OF THE CODFISH.
A correspondent of the _Evening Post_ says that the codfish frequents "the
table-lands of the sea." The codfish no doubt does this to secure as
nearly as possible a dry, bracing atmosphere. This pure air of the
submarine table-lands gives to the codfish that breadth of chest and depth
of lungs which we have always noticed. The glad, free smile so
characteristic of the codfish is largely attributed to the exhilaration of
this oceanic altitoodleum.
The correspondent further says that "the cod subsists largely on the sea
cherry." Those who have not had the pleasure of seeing the codfish climb
the sea cherry tree in search of food, or clubbing the fruit from the
heavily laden branches with chunks of coral, have missed a very fine
sight.
The codfish, when at home rambling through the submarine forests, does not
wear his vest unbuttoned, as he does while loafing around the grocery
stores of the United States.--_Laramie (Wyoming) Boomerang._
THE PLACIDITY OF BOSWELL.
G.B. Boswell, while trying to ride his young mule after plowing him all
day, was thrown to the ground. In the accident Mr. Boswell caught his leg
over the hamestick and tore his new overalls, which he paid forty-two
cents for. We are glad to know that Mr. Boswell was not hurt except that
he struck the funny bone of his elbow and his mule got away, which worried
him, and had it not been for his Christian disposition he would probably
have been a sinner in the sight of God.--_Wilson (North Carolina) Times._
IBSEN IN NEVADA.
Ibsen's Norwegian play of "Ghosts," with one setting of scenery, no music,
and three knocks with a club on the floor to raise the curtain, was
presented last evening.
The play is certainly a moral hair-raiser, and the stuffing is knocked out
of the decalogue at every turn.
_Mrs. Alving_, the leading lady, who keeps her chin high in the air, has
married a moral monstrosity in the shape of a spavined rake, and hides it
from the world. She wears a pleasant smile and gives society the glad
hand, and finally lets go all holds when her husband gets gay with the
hired girl, and gives an old tar three hundred plunks to marry her and
stand the responsibility for the expected population.
_Oswald_, the mother's only boy, is sent to Paris to paint views for
marines, and takes kindly to the gay life of the capital, where the joy
of living is the rage and families are reared in a section where a printer
running a job office solely on marriage certificates would hit the
poor-house with a dull thud.
_Regena_, the result of _Mr. Alving's_ attentions to the hired girl, also
works in the family, and falls in love with the painter-boy on his return
from Paris. They vote country life too slow, and plan to go to Paris and
start a family. The doting mother gives her consent, and _Pastor Menders_,
who is throwing fits all through the play, has a spasm.
The boy, on being informed that the girl of his choice is his half-sister,
throws another, his mama having also thrown a few in the other act.
_Engstrand_, who runs a sort of sailors' and soldiers' canteen, sets fire
to an orphanage, and the boy, who has inherited a sort of
mayonnaise-dressing brain from his awful dad, tears about the stage a
spell, breaks some furniture, and upsets the wine. He finally takes
rough-on-rats, and dies a gibbering idiot, with his mother slobbering over
him and trying to figure out in her own mind that he was merely drunk and
disorderly.
As a sermon on the law of heredity the play is great, but after seeing it
we are glad to announce that Haverly's Minstrels will relieve the Ibsen
gloom on November 6--next Monday night.--_Carson (Nevada) Appeal._
PROFESSIONAL OBITUARY.
When an editor dies in Kansas, this is the way they write the obituary:
"The pen is silent; the scissors have been laid away to rust; the
stillness of death pervades the very atmosphere where once the hoarse
voice of the devil yelling 'copy' or 'what the hell's this word?' was wont
to resound. The paste-pot has soured on the what-not; the cockroach is
eating the composition off the roller, and the bluebottle fly is dying in
the rich folds of the printer's towel."--_Exchange._
THE WIDOW'S GRATITUDE.
A newly made widow of Geary County sent this card of thanks to the
_Republic_ for publication:
"I desire to thank my friends and neighbors most heartily in this manner
for the united aid and cooperation during the illness and death of my late
husband, who escaped from me by the hand of death on Friday last while
eating breakfast. To the friends and all who contributed so willingly
toward making the last moments and funeral of my husband a success I
desire to remember most kindly, hoping these few lines will find them
enjoying the same blessing. I have a good milch cow and roan gelding
horse, five years old, which I will sell cheap. 'God moves in a mysterious
way His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps on the sea, and rides
upon the storm'; also a black-and-white shote, very low."--_Junction City
(Kansas) Republic._
ALL OFF.
A Card from Miss Sallie McCants.--To Whom it May Concern: The engagement
which existed between Miss Sallie McCants and R.N. Jordan, of
Cottageville, has been mutually dissolved, it being their aim to
disappoint those who reported the news of their marriage. This will allow
anxious mothers with marriageable daughters the chance of opening their
doors again to this esteemed young man. Respectfully, S.
McCants.--_Walterboro (South Carolina) Press and Standard._
AN AGGRIEVED SUBSCRIBER.
The following letter was received recently:
"DEAR SIR: I hereby offer my resignashun as a subscribber to your papier,
it being a pamphlet of such small konsequenc as not to benefit my family
by takin it. What you need in your shete is branes & some one to russel up
news and rite edytorials on live topics. No menshun has bin made in your
shete of me butcherin a polen china pig weighin 369 pounds or the gapes in
the chickens out this way. You ignor the fact that i bot a bran new bob
sled and that I traded my blind mule and say nothin about Hi Simpkins
jersey calf breaking his two front legs fallin in a well. 2 important
chiverees have bin utterly ignored by your shete & a 3 column obitchury
notice writ by me on the death of grandpa Henery was left out of your
shete to say nothin of the alfabetical poem beginning 'A is for And and
also for Ark,' writ by me darter. This is the reason why your paper is so
unpopular here. If you don't want edytorials from this place and ain't
goin to put up no news in your shete we don't want said shete.
"P.S.--If you print obitchury in your next i may sine again fur yure
shete."--_Holdenville (Indian Territory) Tribune._
THE PROFESSION OF THE FOOL.
The Term Which Is Now Used to Describe Persons Who Are Lacking in Mental
Capacity Once Was the Acknowledged Title of Men of Extraordinary
Wit and Understanding.
Every man "in his time plays many parts," and it often has happened that
the wise man's fate has required him to play the fool. In our day, the
word "fool" is used to describe a person who is wanting in judgment or
general mental capacity, and when we see a representation of an old-time
fool, wearing his fool's cap and bells, we are likely to regard the
original as having had the characteristics of a modern circus clown.
The fact, however, is that the professional fool of two centuries ago was
an altogether different sort of person. He held his position by reason of
his ready wit, which, in truth, was often wisdom in disguise. Until the
end of the seventeenth century, jesters, or fools, as they were usually
called, were in the retinue of every king and princeling.
That the private fool existed even as late as the eighteenth century is
proved by Swift's epitaph on Dicky Pearce, but the last licensed fool of
England was Armstrong, court jester to James I and Charles I, who died in
1672. He lost his office and was banished from court for a too free play
of wit against Archbishop Laud.
L'Angèly, his contemporary, and the last titled fool in France, was court
fool to Louis XIII, and died in 1679. He was a man of gentle birth, but
very poor. His biting, caustic wit, however, was so dreaded by the
courtiers that he grew rich from the sums which they paid him to purchase
immunity from his satire.
Ancient Greece had a class of professed fools similar to those of the
Middle Ages. The Romans went a step farther and made human monstrosities
of their slaves--hideous things to amuse by grotesque forms and antics
their cruel masters.
The fool's business, primarily, was to amuse, but owing to the fact that
he dared to tell the truth, much of an instructive nature was gathered
from him by his master.
His dress varied considerably in different periods; and on his shaven head
was a covering that resembled a monk's cowl, and crested with a cock's
comb or with asses' ears. He wore motley, and little bells hung from
various parts of his attire. He carried always a bauble, or short staff,
bearing a grotesque head, sometimes the counterpart of his own.
In England, the names and sallies of many of the court jesters have been
recorded, while literature makes frequent reference to them.
Prominent in the list is Will Sommers, who was court jester to Henry VIII.
His effigy is at Hampton Court, and a tavern in Old Fish Street, London,
once bore his name. He died in 1560.
John Heywood, who was jester to Queen Mary, was the author of numerous
dramatic works and poems, and was a highly educated man.
Tarleton, famous as a clown, cannot well be omitted from the list,
although he was not a licensed jester. He lived during Elizabeth's reign,
but was not attached to the court nor to any nobleman. A book of his jests
was published in 1611, twenty-three years after his death.
The identity of "Will," referred to as "my lord of Leicester's jesting
player," never has been satisfactorily explained. Some authorities are
inclined to believe that he was Will Shakespeare himself.
In France, the fantastic figure in motley lights up many dark and tragic
pages of history. Triboulet, who was jester to Louis XII and Francis I,
was the hero of Hugo's "Le Roi S'amuse," of Verdi's opera "Rigoletto," and
appears in Rabelais' romance. His portrait was painted by Licinio, the
rival of Titian.
Chicot, who was the friend as well as the jester of Henri III, has been
clearly delineated by Dumas, père, in his "Dame de Monsoreau."
Finally, there is Yorick. "Alas! poor Yorick"--who was jester at the Court
of Denmark, and immortalized by Shakespeare as "a fellow of infinite jest,
of most excellent fancy."
The word "fool" ceases to be a term of reproach when this array of cheery
fun-makers is considered, all of them bearing the title proudly and as an
honor.
The Red Man Eloquent.
Remarkable Speech Delivered in 1842 by Colonel Cobb, Head Mingo of the
Choctaws East of the Mississippi, When the Federal Government
Was Forcing the Tribe Westward.
The American Indian was a natural orator. His inspiration
came straight from the life of the forest and plain.
Figurative language adorned his every-day speech, which was
full of allusions to sun, moon, stars, the thunder, the
waterfall. Exaggeration, of course, was to be expected of
him, and most of the specimens of Indian eloquence that have
been translated and preserved are marred by hyperbole. There
remains, however, at least one bit of native American
eloquence deserving of recognition as equal to the best of
its kind in all nations, and that is the speech delivered in
1842 by Colonel Cobb, Head Mingo of the Choctaws east of the
Mississippi, in reply to the agent of the United States.
The Choctaws formerly inhabited the lands included in what
is now central and southern Mississippi and western Alabama.
They were an active nation, subsisting mainly by
agriculture. Because they flattened the foreheads of their
children, the French called them Flatheads. They
acknowledged the sovereignty of the United States in 1786,
and in the War of 1812 and the Creek War they served the
government. In 1830 they ceded the last of their lands to
the government, and were moved during the next fifteen years
to the Indian Territory, where they developed a form of
constitutional self-rule which has been completely done away
with only during the present year.
The removal of the Choctaws from their original home was
accomplished gradually, but, as Colonel Cobb's speech
indicates, not without friction. J.J. McRae, to whom Colonel
Cobb addressed himself, had been authorized to enroll the
Choctaws remaining east of the Mississippi and transport
them to their new home. Standing by Mr. McRae's side was
William Tyler, of Virginia, member of the Choctaw
commission, and brother of John Tyler, the then President of
the United States. Colonel Cobb, in his closing sentence,
referred to William Tyler.
One thousand Choctaws were assembled at Hopahka. Mr. McRae
explained to them that their "council fires could be no more
kindled here," that "their warriors could have no field for
their glory, and their spirits would decay within them."
But, he said, if they would "take the hand of their great
father, the President, which was now offered to them to lead
them to their Western home, then would their hopes be
higher, their destinies brighter." Colonel Cobb's reply
would be hard to excel in beauty of diction, comprehensive
brevity, and elevation of sentiment.
Brother--We have heard you talk as from the lips of our father, the great
white chief at Washington, and my people have called upon me to speak to
you. The red man has no books, and when he wishes to make known his views,
like his fathers before him, he speaks from his mouth. He is afraid of
writing. When he speaks he knows what he says; the Great Spirit hears
him. Writing is the invention of the pale faces; it gives birth to error
and to feuds. The Great Spirit talks--we hear him in the thunder--in the
rushing winds and the mighty waters--but he never writes.
Brother--When you were young we were strong; we fought by your side; but
our arms are now broken. You have grown large. My people have become
small.
Brother--My voice is weak, you can scarcely hear me; it is not the shout
of a warrior, but the wail of an infant. I have lost it in mourning over
the misfortunes of my people. These are their graves, and in those aged
pines you hear the ghosts of the departed. Their ashes are here, and we
have been left to protect them. Our warriors are nearly all gone to the
far country West; but here are the resting-places of our dead. Shall we
go, too, and give their bones to the wolves?
Brother--Two sleeps have passed since we heard you talk. We have thought
upon it. You ask us to leave our country, and tell us it is our father's
wish. We would not desire to displease our father. We respect him, and you
his child. But the Choctaw always thinks. We want time to answer.
Brother--Our hearts are full. Twelve winters ago our chiefs sold our
country. Every warrior that you see here was opposed to the treaty. If the
dead could have been counted, it could never have been made; but alas,
though they stood around, they could not be seen or heard. Their tears
came in the rain-drops and their voices in the wailing wind, but the pale
faces knew it not, and our land was taken away.
Brother--We do not now complain. The Choctaw suffers, but he never weeps.
You have the strong arm and we cannot resist. But the pale face worships
the Great Spirit. So does the red man. The Great Spirit loves truth. When
you took our country, you promised us land. There is your promise in the
book. Twelve times have the trees dropped their leaves, and yet we have
received no land. Our houses have been taken from us. The white man's plow
turns up the bones of our fathers. We dare not kindle our fires; and yet
you said we might remain, and you would give us land.
Brother--Is this _truth_? But we believe now our great father knows our
condition; he will listen to us. We are as mourning orphans in our
country; but our father will take us by the hand. When he fulfils his
promise, we will answer his talk. He means well. We know it. But we cannot
think now. Grief has made children of us. When our business is settled we
shall be men again, and talk to our great father about what he has
proposed.
Brother--You stand in the moccasins of the great chief, you speak the
words of a mighty nation, and your talk is long. My people are small;
their shadow scarcely reaches to your knee; they are scattered and gone;
when I shout I hear my voice in the depths of the woods, but no answering
shout comes back. My words, therefore, are few. I have nothing more to
say, but I ask you to tell what I have said to the tall chief of the pale
faces, whose brother stands by your side.
OTHER WAYS OF SAYING "HOWDY DO?"
Various Nations Have Different Methods of Propounding This Time-Honored
Query, But All Mean Pretty Much the Same Thing.
"How do you do?" That's English and American.
"How do you carry yourself?" That's French.
"How do you stand?" That's Italian.
"How goes it with you?" That's German.
"How do you fare?" That's Dutch.
"How can you?" That's Swedish.
"How do you perspire?" That's the Egyptian version.
"How is your stomach? Have you eaten your rice?" That's the rather medical
way in which the Chinese people express their morning salutation.
"How do you have yourself?" That's Polish.
"How do you live on?" That's Russian.
"May thy shadow never be less." That's Persian.
And all mean much the same thing--the natural expression of sympathy and
friendly curiosity when one human being meets another.
Little Glimpses of the 19th Century.
The Great Events in the History of the Last One Hundred Years, Assembled
so as to Present a Nutshell Record.
[_Continued from page 340._]
FIFTH DECADE.
1841
William Henry Harrison died April 4, one month after his inauguration as
President of the United States, and John Tyler, the Vice-President,
succeeded him. Harrison's Cabinet, excepting Daniel Webster, resigned soon
after Tyler assumed office, owing to his veto of measures by which the
Whigs tried to revive the National Bank. Seminole War, the most protracted
and costly of all Indian wars, ended after an expenditure of ten million
dollars. University of Michigan founded. Brook Farm communistic experiment
begun.
The "opium war" between Great Britain and China continued during intervals
separated by periods of negotiation. The British took Hong-Kong, silenced
the Bogue forts, destroyed a Chinese flotilla at Canton, took that city,
exacted six million dollars' indemnity from local authorities, and forced
the reopening of trade there. British fleet, convoying troops and moving
northward, captured successively Amoy, Chusan, Chinhai, and Wingpo. In
Afghanistan (November 2), British residents and followers at Kabul were
massacred, and British troops outside the city were driven off and forced
to retreat toward Jelalabad.
Richard Cobden came into prominence in the British Parliament as a free
trader, and the struggle over the Corn Laws began. Lord Melbourne's
ministry resigned after an unsuccessful appeal to the country, and Sir
Robert Peel formed a new cabinet. _Punch_, the humorous weekly, founded.
Sir David Wilkie, English artist; Sir Astley Cooper, English surgeon; and
Theodore Hook, English humorist, died.
=POPULATION--Washington, D.C., 23,364; New York (including boroughs now
forming Greater New York), 391,114; New York (Manhattan), 312,710; London
(Metropolitan District, census 1841), 1,873,676; London (old city),
125,009; United States, 17,017,723; Great Britain and Ireland (census
1841), 27,019,558.=
=RULERS--The same as in the previous year, except that William Henry
Harrison became President of the United States, and was succeeded in April
by John Tyler.=
1842
Maine boundary question settled by a treaty negotiated by Daniel Webster
for the United States and Lord Ashburton for Great Britain. Congress
resisted a threatened invasion by the French of the Hawaiian Islands.
Dorr's "rebellion" in Rhode Island, by which T.W. Dorr, "free suffragist,"
tried to get governorship, to which S.W. King had been elected under the
old charter.
War between Great Britain and China ended, Great Britain winning at all
points, and reopening the opium trade. In the retreat from Kabul,
Afghanistan, a British detachment and its followers were slaughtered in
Khyber Pass, Dr. Brydon alone of fifteen thousand who started reaching
Jelalabad, though a few who were captured were later freed. British envoys
to Bokhara beheaded. Jelalabad, besieged by the Afghans, was relieved by
the British, Kabul was recaptured, and Akbar Khan, leader of the
insurgents, fled.
In Great Britain, Parliament rejected a Chartist petition for universal
suffrage, etc., containing over three million signatures. A general strike
was conducted by the Chartists; Feargus O'Connor, the leader, convicted of
inciting to riot, but escaped sentence. Two attempts to assassinate Queen
Victoria. Law passed by Parliament restricting the employment of women and
children in coal mines. The bore of the Thames Tunnel was finished. In
Algeria, the war went on, with several serious reverses for the French.
The _Illustrated London News_, first publication of its kind, started.
Luigi Cherubini, Italian musician; Marie Henri Beyle (better known as
"Stendhal"), French novelist; Thomas Arnold, the famous head master of
Rugby; and Allan Cunningham, Scottish poet, died.
=RULERS--The same as in the previous year.=
1843
Extradition treaty negotiated between the United States and Great Britain.
Bunker Hill monument was dedicated. Annexation of Texas by United States
was mooted, and Mexico, foreseeing war, proclaimed new constitution, and
Santa Anna made himself virtually dictator. Charles Thurber, Worcester,
Massachusetts, built the first practical typewriter; too slow to be
generally adopted.
Scinde, Northwest India, annexed by Great Britain after a brilliant
campaign by Sir Charles Napier, with victories at Meanee and Hyderabad. A
revival of Mahratta resistance was crushed in December by Sir Hugh Gough
in the battle of Maharajpore. Natal proclaimed a British settlement, after
war with the Boers, who had set up a republic there. Some Boers submitted;
others migrated beyond the Drakensberg mountains. Daniel O'Connell, Irish
patriot, continuing his agitation for the repeal of the Act of Union, held
mammoth meetings, and was arrested on a charge of seditious conspiracy.
Free-trade movement grew in Great Britain, with Cobden and Bright leading.
"Rebecca" riots in Wales against toll-gates. Active demands in Hungary for
electoral and other changes favoring national interests of the Magyars.
Carlist struggle in Spain, after years of sporadic outbreaks, ended with
the assumption of power, by the young Queen Isabella, who swore to observe
constitutional rule.
Robert Southey, English poet; Dr. Hahnemann, founder of homeopathy;
Washington Allston, American artist; Francis Scott Key, author of "The
Star-Spangled Banner"; and Noah Webster, American lexicographer, died.
=RULERS--The same as in the previous year.=
1844
In the United States, the annexation of Texas was the chief political
topic. Tyler was a strong annexationist, but he failed during the year to
get a treaty through the Senate. The slavery question and questions of
keeping good faith with other countries were involved in the problem.
Henry Clay's political aspirations went to wreck because of his
vacillation concerning Texas. Anti-Mormon riots at Nauvoo, Illinois,
resulted in the death of Prophet Joseph Smith; Brigham Young became
leader. Samuel F.B. Morse, assisted by a Congressional grant of thirty
thousand dollars, constructed a successful telegraph line from Baltimore
to Washington. Copper and iron deposits discovered in Lake Superior
country. Dr. Horace Wells, of Hartford, Connecticut, discovered "laughing
gas." James Knox Polk elected President.
In Great Britain, Daniel O'Connell was sentenced to a heavy fine and to
imprisonment, but the judgment was reversed by the House of Lords. The
Repeal movement, which he had led, languished thereafter. The tractarian
agitation raised at Oxford. Gold discovered in South Australia. The
Y.M.C.A. founded by George Williams, in London.
Premature insurrection in Calabria, Italy, suppressed, and twenty leaders
executed. As a result of the Algerian campaigns, France became involved in
war with Moroccan rebels. France, which had been annexing islands in the
South Seas, made amends for indignities visited on British residents in
Tahiti by her naval representatives. China revoked edicts against
Christianity.
Among persons of prominence who died were Albert Thorwaldsen, Danish
sculptor; Bernadotte, in his later life King Charles XIV of Sweden; Joseph
Bonaparte, brother of the great Napoleon; John Dalton, English chemist;
and Etienne St. Hilaire, French zoologist.
=RULERS--The same as in the previous year, except that Oscar I became King
of Sweden and Norway, at the death of Charles XIV.=
1845
Congress passed a resolution for the annexation of Texas to the United
States (January 25), and March 1 President Tyler signed it. Slavery was to
be permitted in Texas. Preparations begun for war with Mexico. The Mormons
decided to migrate westward from Illinois. Florida and Texas admitted to
Statehood. United States Naval Academy founded at Annapolis.
In Ireland, the potato crop failed, and a terrible famine set in. Sir John
Franklin set out on his ill-fated Arctic expedition, never to return. Sikh
War in the Punjab begun. Peel's cabinet resigned, but as Lord John Russell
failed to form a new one, Peel was recalled. Jesuits expelled from France.
Indignation against France because French soldiers smothered five hundred
Kabyles in the caves of Dahra, Algeria. The city of Quebe
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/32122