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Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, November, 1880

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Title: Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, November, 1880

Author: Various


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE OF POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE, VOL. 26, NOVEMBER, 1880 ***

Transcriber's Notes:

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold
text by =equal signs=. Footnotes have been moved to the end of the
relevant chapters.

The original magazine is a two column magazine, but for the sake of
clarity and ease of transcribing, this eBook version has been produced
in a single column format.

Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
possible. Minor typos have been corrected.

Words containing oe-ligatures the ligature is shown as [oe].

A Table of Contents has been generated by the transcriber.




  LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
  OF
  _POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE._

  NOVEMBER, 1880.


 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by J. B.
 LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
 Washington.




CONTENTS

 THE RUINS OF THE COLORADO VALLEY.           Alfred Terry Bacon.     521
 THE ARTS OF INDIA.                          Jennie J. Young.        521
 ADAM AND EVE.                                                       547
       CHAPTER XXXIII.                                               547
       CHAPTER XXXIV.                                                552
       CHAPTER XXXV.                                                 556
 A PIVOTAL POINT                                                     559
 THE MISTAKES OF TWO PEOPLE.                 Margaret Bertha Wright. 567
 LIMOGES, AND ITS PORCELAIN.                 George L. Catlin.       576
 THREE ROSES.                                Julia C.R. Dorr.        585
 THE PRACTICAL HISTORY OF A PLAY.            William H. Rideing.     586
 HOW SHE KEPT HER VOW: A NARRATIVE OF FACTS. S.G.W. Benjamin.        594
 HEINRICH HEINE.                             A. Parker.              604
 DAWN.                                       John B. Tabb.           612
 MRS. MARCELLUS.                             Olive Logan.            613
 AUTOMATISM.                                 H.C. Wood, M.D.         627
 OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.                         C. B. T.                637
       PEOPLE'S HOUSES: A DIALOGUE.          L.W.                    640
       "TIME TURNS THE TABLES."                                      642
       SEEING IS BELIEVING.                  A. T.                   642
 LITERATURE OF THE DAY.                                              645
       BOOKS RECEIVED.                                               648




  THE RUINS OF THE COLORADO VALLEY.


[Illustration: HOUSE OF A MOQUI CHIEF.]

It was about seventy years before our English race gained a foothold
on the eastern coast of America that, far away in the West, the seeds
of another form of Eastern civilization began to fall upon ground
which now belongs to our national territory. In the wilderness near
the western border of New Mexico there stands a great crag, torn into
curious shapes by the wear of ages, bearing on its summit a ruined
fortress of a forgotten people and on its side hieroglyphic writing
which no one can decipher. The same smooth sandstone surface which
invited the picture-writing of the ancients has also tempted later
passers-by to perpetuate their names. A long series of inscriptions
in Spanish, begun before the first English had landed at Jamestown,
tells how explorers, conquerors, government emissaries and missionaries
of the Cross, passing that way, paused to leave their names on the
enduring rock. That imperishable monument bears record to all time that
this remotest region of our country, the last which the new life of the
nineteenth century penetrates, was the first point to be touched by
European civilization, if we except one old Florida fort. It is three
hundred and forty years since the Spaniards entered New Mexico. There,
almost at the centre of the continent, in the valleys of the Rio Grande
and Colorado, the old Spanish life has remained, as unprogressive as
a Chinese province, continuing to the middle of this century a kind
of modified feudal system. But this old declining civilization of the
South-west is new in comparison with that which the Spanish conquerors
found existing in the country when they entered it. A remnant of that
old half-civilized life lingers still, almost unchanged by contact with
white men, in the seven citadels of the Moquis perched on the high
_mesas_ of Arizona, while in the Pueblo villages of New Mexico we find
it more affected by the Spanish influence.

The attraction which drew the conquerors of Mexico forty-five days'
journey away into the North was the fame which had reached them of the
Seven Cities of Cibola (the buffalo), great in wealth and population,
lying in the valley of the Rio de Zuñi. To the grief of the invaders,
they found not cities, but rather villages of peaceful agricultural
people dwelling in great pueblos three and four stories high, and they
searched in vain for the rumored stores of gold. At that time the
pueblos held a large population skilled in many arts of civilization.
They cultivated large tracts of ground, wove fabrics of cotton and
produced ornate pottery. Their stone-masonry was admirable. But even
three hundred years ago it seems that the people were but a remnant of
what they had once been. Even then the conquerors wondered at the many
ruins which indicated a decline from former greatness. The people have
not now the same degree of skill in their native arts which the race
once had, and it is probable that when the Spaniards came and found
them declining in numbers the old handicrafts were already on the wane.

In a remote age the ancestors of these Pueblo tribes, or a race of
kindred habits, filled most of that vast region which is drained by the
Colorado River and its affluents, and spread beyond into the valley of
the Rio Grande. The explorers of a great extent of country in Utah,
Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado have found everywhere evidences of
the wide distribution and wonderful industry of that ancient people.
On the low land which they used to till lie the remains of their
villages--rectangular buildings of enormous dimensions and large
circular _estufas_, or halls for council and worship. On the sides of
the savage cliffs that wall in or overarch the cañons are scattered in
every crevice and wrinkle those strange and picturesque ruins which
give us the name "Cliff-dwellers" to distinguish this long-forgotten
people. And on commanding points, seen far away down the cañons or
across the mesas, stand the solitary watch-towers where sentinels might
signal to the villagers below on the approach of Northern barbarians.

It is only a few years since Mr. John Ruskin rejected a suggestion that
he should visit the United States, urging among other reasons that it
would be impossible for him to exist even for a short time in a country
where there are no old castles. We Americans were disposed to resent
this slap at our country, and not a few newspaper editors relieved
their minds by intimating that we could get along quite comfortably
without old castles and without Mr. Ruskin. But, after all, it is a
consolation for our national pride to know that the fault is not in
our country, but in Mr. Ruskin's ignorance of American archæology.
We have old castles without number in the Western Territories--ruined
fortifications and dwellings of an unknown antiquity, perhaps as old as
Warwick or Bangor, as impregnable as the highest cliff-built castle of
the Rhine, as grand in situation as the Drachenfels or Dover Castle.

Only the more eastern part of the great domain held by that ancient
people has yet been examined thoroughly with reference to its
antiquities. Within the last decade Mr. W H. Jackson of the United
States Geological Survey has brought to notice, by his admirable
photographs and descriptions, the remains in the cliffs and cañons
of South-western Colorado and the adjacent region. Thirty years ago
Lieutenant Simpson described the ruined pueblos of New Mexico. But
in regard to the ruins farther west, seen by Major Powell in his
headlong course down the Colorado River, and the innumerable remains
of cities, fortresses and canals mentioned by visitors to Arizona,
but little careful investigation has been made. I believe that few
richer fields for an antiquary can be found in the world than this
south-western region of our own country. I cannot doubt that a thorough
comparative examination of these remains would throw a new light upon
the relationship between the ancient and modern civilized tribes, and
upon their connection with their far more civilized Aztec neighbors of
the South. As yet, hardly an attempt at excavation has been made in the
Colorado Valley.

[Illustration: GUALPI.]

There is no other district which embraces in so small a compass so
great a number and variety of the Cliff-dwellers' ruined works as the
cañon of the Little Rio Mancos[1] in South-western Colorado. The stream
rises in a spur of the San Juan Mountains, near the remote mining-camp
called Parrott City. Flowing southward for a few miles through an open
valley, it is soon enclosed between the walls of a profound cañon
which cuts for nearly thirty miles through a tableland called the
Mesa Verde. The cañon is wide enough to permit the old inhabitants to
plant their crops along the stream, and the cliffs rising on either
side to a height of two thousand feet are so curiously broken and
grooved and shelving, from the decay of the soft horizontal strata
and the projection of the harder, as to offer remarkable facilities
for building fortified houses hard of approach and easy of defence.
Therefore the whole length of the cañon is filled with ruins, and
for fifteen miles beyond it to the borders of New Mexico, where the
river meets the Rio San Juan, the valley bears many traces of the
ancient occupation. The scenery of the cañon is wild and imposing in
the highest degree. In the dry Colorado air there are few lichens or
weather-stains to dull the brightness of the strata to the universal
hoariness of moister climates: the vertical cliffs, standing above
long slopes of débris, are colored with the brilliant tints of
freshly-quarried stone. A gay ribbon of green follows the course of the
rivulet winding down through the cañon till it is lost to sight in the
vista of crags. The utter silence and solitude of the wilderness reigns
through the valley. It is not occupied by any savage tribe, and only a
few white men within the last few years have passed through it and told
of its wonders; and yet its whole length is but one series of houses
and temples that were forsaken centuries ago. I can hardly imagine a
more exciting tour of exploration than that which Mr. Jackson's party
made on first entering this cañon in 1874.

Above the entrance of the cañon the evidences of pre-historic
life begin. On the bottom-land, concealed by shrubbery, are the
half-obliterated outlines of square and circular buildings. The houses
were of large size, and were plainly no temporary dwelling-places,
for an accumulation of decorated pottery fills the ground about them,
indicating long occupation. No doubt they were built of adobe--masses
of hard clay dried in the sun--which the wear of ages has reduced to
smoothly-rounded mounds. For some miles down the cañon remains of this
sort occur at short intervals, and at one point there stands a wall
built of squared sandstone blocks. Along the ledges of the cliffs on
the right bits of ruinous masonry are detected here and there, but for
a time there is nothing to excite close attention. At last a watchful
eye is arrested by a more interesting object perched at a tremendous
height on the western wall of the cañon. It is a house built upon a
shelf of rock between the precipices, but, standing seven hundred feet
above the stream and differing not at all in color from the crags about
it, only the sharpest eyesight can detect the unusual form of the
building and the windows marking the two stories. The climb up to the
house-platform is slow and fatiguing, but the trouble is repaid by a
sight of one of the most curious ruins on this continent. Before the
door of the house, part of the ledge has been reserved for a little
esplanade, and to make it broader three small abutments of stone, which
once supported a floor, are built on the sloping edge of the rock.
Beyond this the house is entered by a small aperture which served as a
door. It is the best specimen of a Cliff-dweller's house that remains
to our time. The walls are admirably built of squared stones laid in a
hard white mortar. The house is divided into two stories of three rooms
each. Behind it a semicircular cistern nearly as high as the house is
built against the side of it, and a ladder is arranged for descending
from an upper window to the water-level. The floor of the second story
was supported by substantial cedar timbers, but only fragments of
them remain. The roof, too, has entirely disappeared, but the canopy
of natural rock overhanging serves to keep out the weather. The front
rooms in both stories are the largest and are most carefully finished.
Perhaps they were the parlor and "best bedroom" of some pre-historic
housewife. They are plastered throughout with fine smooth mortar,
and even in that remote age the mania for household decoration had a
beginning: floor, walls and ceiling were colored a deep red, surrounded
by a broad border of white.

The same cliff on which this house stands has on its side many other
ruins--some half destroyed by gradual decay, some crushed by falling
rocks, none so perfect as the one described; but all are crowded into
the strangest unapproachable crevices of the cañon-wall, like the
crannies which swallows choose to hold their nests, far removed from
the possibility of depredation. Some are so utterly inaccessible that
the explorers, with all their enthusiasm and activity, have never been
able to reach them. How any beings not endowed with wings could live at
such points it is hard to conceive: it makes one suspicious that the
Cliff-dwellers had not quite outgrown the habits of monkey ancestors.

As the cañon widens with the descent of the stream, the ruins in the
western wall increase in number. One fearful cliff a thousand feet in
height is chinked all over its face with tiny houses of one room each,
but only a few of them can be detected with the naked eye. One, which
was reached by an explorer at the peril of his life, stands intact:
ceiling and floor are of the natural rock, and the wall is built in a
neat curve conforming to the shape of the ledge.

[Illustration: RUINS IN THE CAÑON OF THE MANCOS.]

A mile farther down the stream there is a most interesting group of
houses. Eight hundred feet above the valley there is a shelf in the
cliff sixty feet in length that is quite covered by a house. The
building contains four large rooms, a circular sacred apartment and
smaller rooms of irregular shape. It was called by its discoverers
"The House of the Sixteen Windows." Behind this house the cliff-side
rises smooth and perpendicular thirty feet, but it can be scaled by an
ancient stairway cut into it which ascends to a still higher ledge.
The stairs lead to the very door of another house filling a niche a
hundred and twenty feet long. A great canopy of solid rock overarches
the little fortress, reaching far forward beyond the front wall, while
from below it is absolutely unapproachable except by the one difficult
stairway of niches cut in the rock. In time of war it must have been
impregnable. These dwellings have given more ideas about their interior
furnishing than any of the others. Among the accumulated rubbish were
found corn and beans stored away. In the lower house were two large
water-jars of corrugated pottery standing on a floor covered with
neatly-woven rush matting. In a house not far above were found a bin
of charred corn, and a polished hatchet of stone made with remarkable
skill.

From this point onward both the valley and the cliffs are filled with
the traces of a numerous population, every mile of travel bringing many
fresh ones into sight. Among the cliff-houses there is of necessity
a variety in form and size as great as the differences of the caves
and crevices that hold them; but among the buildings of the low
ground there is more uniformity, not only in this cañon, but in all
the valleys of the region. Most of them may be classed as aggregated
dwellings or pueblos with rectangular rooms, round watch-towers and
large circular buildings. To these must be added a few which seem to
have been built only for defence. The straight walls have generally
fallen, except the parts supported by an angle of a building; but, as
usual in old masonry, the circular walls have much better resisted
decay.

About midway down the cañon the curved wall of a large ruin rises
above the thicket. It is a building of very curious design. The outer
wall was an exact circle of heavy masonry a hundred and thirty feet in
circumference. Within, there is another circular wall, concentric with
the outer, enclosing one round room with a diameter of twenty feet.
The annular space between the two walls was divided by partitions into
ten small apartments. Other buildings of the same type occur in this
region, some of much larger size and with triple walls. Even in this
one, which is comparatively well preserved, the original height is
uncertain, though the ruin still stands about fifteen feet high. The
vast quantity of débris about some of them indicates that they were
of no insignificant height, and their perfect symmetry of form, the
careful finish of the masonry, the large dimensions and great solidity,
made them the most imposing architectural works of that ancient people.
I find no reason to doubt that they were their temples, and the
presumption is very strong that they were temples for sun-worship. The
occurrence of a circular room in connection with nearly every group of
buildings is of special interest, as seeming to link the Cliff-dwellers
to the modern Pueblo tribes in their religious customs.

Most striking and picturesque of all the ruins are the round
watch-towers. On commanding points in the valley, and on the highest
pinnacles of the cliffs overlooking the surface of the mesa, they occur
with a frequency which is almost pathetic as an indication of the
life of eternal vigilance which was led by that old race through the
years, perhaps centuries, of exterminating warfare which the savage red
men from the North waged upon them. To us the suffering of frontier
families at the hands of the same bloodthirsty savages is heartrending.
What was it to those who saw year by year their whole race's life
withering away, crushed by those wild tribes?

Near the lower end of the cañon stands one of the most perfect of these
towers, rising sixteen feet above the mound on which it is built. It
was once attached to an oblong stone building which seems to have
been a strongly-fortified house. The rectangular walls, as usual, are
prostrate, and have left the tower standing as solitary and picturesque
and as full of mystery as the round-towers of Ireland.

After the stream breaks from its long confinement out into the open
plain of the San Juan Valley the traces of old life are still abundant,
but they present no features very different from those above. At the
cañon's mouth an Indian trail strikes away toward the north-west. It
passes a remarkable group of ruins at a spot called Aztec Springs, and
continues to the McElmo, the next _arroya_, or dry stream-bed, west of
the Rio Mancos. Aztec Springs no longer deserve the name, for within
a short time the last trace of water has disappeared from the spot,
showing that the slow drying up of the great South-west country,
which has been going forward for ages, and which starved out the old
inhabitants, is still progressing. In the dry season there is no water
within many miles of this spot, though it is strewn with the remains
of stone buildings covering several acres and indicating a large
population of industrious people who must have lived by agriculture.
Until a long comparative study has been made of all the remains of this
race it is mere guesswork to estimate the age of the ruins; but when
the prostrate condition of these walls is compared with the state in
which the Chaco ruins of New Mexico are found, and when we consider
that the latter have no doubt been deserted for at least three hundred
and fifty years, it is reasonable to suppose an age of a thousand years
for these massive walls at Aztec Springs. Many other great structures
of this region, which seem to be coeval with these, are situated many
miles away from any perennial water, and the time which has elapsed
since those sites were suitable for large farming-towns must be counted
by centuries. In this group are two large quadrangular buildings with
walls still fifteen feet high, two of the circular estufas, besides a
multitude of half-distinguishable walls of dwellings. It is the largest
group of ruins in Colorado.

[Illustration: CIRCULAR RUIN IN THE CAÑON OF THE MANCOS.]

Not many miles beyond these so-called springs the trail leads into
the dry bed of the McElmo near its head, and another long succession
of antiquities is entered upon, but to enumerate them further would
be tedious, for the ruins of the Mancos are good representatives of
all those which are found along the courses of the Animas, La Plata,
McElmo, Montezuma, Chelley and other tributary valleys of the San Juan.
Nevertheless, there are a few buildings here and there of some unusual
interest which cannot be passed by without mention. On the verge of a
little side-cañon of the McElmo there is a curious instance of the keen
ingenuity of this people in taking every advantage of the fantastic,
castle-like shapes which Nature has formed out of the cañon-walls.
High on the edge of the mesa appears the ragged outline of a ruinous
watch-tower sharply drawn against the clear, unvarying blue of the sky.
It seems to be a tower of unusual height, but a closer view shows it
to be half of Nature's building. A tall fragment of rock, torn from
its bed, has rolled down the slope to the edge of the steep descent.
This rock the old builders have chosen to crown with a little round
tower where a sentinel, guarding the village behind him from stealthy
attacks, could command a wide sweep of country. The same thing on a
larger scale is found at another point where the dry McElmo meets with
the drier Hovenweep--a tributary without tribute. In this position
stands an enormous rock nearly cubical in shape. Its high sides make
it a natural fortress strong against an enemy without artillery, and
to its natural strength the Cliff-dwellers have added a battlement of
masonry. But among all the ruined strongholds of the region that which
is called the Legendary Rock has a pre-eminent interest on account of
the Moqui romance or tradition which clings to it. The rock is a grand
and solitary crag standing on a plateau of sandstone from which the
soil is washed away. It is far from water: a garrison must have been
dependent wholly on the very precarious rain-supply. About it runs an
outer rampart of stone, and on the rock itself is built a fortress. It
is several years since an aged member of the Moqui tribe first confided
to a white man versed in his language the legend of this rock. It has
been widely published, and considered of much significance. The Moqui
patriarch related how his people in the old time were many. Their tribe
dwelt in the North-east. One year they were visited by strangers from
the North, who came peaceably at first, but came again another year,
and year by year encroached and grew more warlike. At last the Northern
strangers gained the mastery and drove them from their homes. In a
long, slow struggle the Moqui forefathers gradually lost their ground,
till at last they made one final, desperate fight for their old homes
at the fortress of the Legendary Rock. They conquered their besiegers,
but with such fearful carnage that the rocks bear still the stains
of the blood-streams that flowed in that battle, and the remnant of
the besieged were glad to make an unmolested retreat to the mesas of
Arizona, where they dwell to this day.

The story is an interesting one, and has been honored by the explorers
with a place in their government report, for it shows a belief among
the Moquis that those old builders were their kinsmen. But, considering
the fact that the first Spanish discoverers found the Moqui tribe
in nearly the same condition as we see it now, and that this story
therefore must have been handed down for at least three hundred years
among an unlettered people, I am as much disposed to distrust the other
details of it as I am to doubt that the red iron-stains in the rock
were caused by the blood of their ancestors.

In the neighboring Montezuma Cañon, just beyond the State border, there
are some remains built after an unusual manner with stones of great
size. One building of many rooms, nearly covering a little solitary
mesa, is constructed of huge stone blocks not unlike the pre-historic
masonry of Southern Europe. In the same district there is a ruined line
of fortification from which the smaller stones have fallen away and
are crumbling to dust, leaving only certain enormous upright stones
standing. They rise to a height of seven feet above the soil, and the
lower part is buried to a considerable depth. Their resemblance to the
hoary Druidical stones of Carnac and Stonehenge is striking, and there
is nothing in their appearance to indicate that they belong to a much
later age than those primeval monuments of Europe.

All the certain knowledge that we have of the history and manners of
the Cliff-dwellers may be very briefly told, for there is no written
record of their existence except their own rude picture-writing
cut or painted on the cañon-walls, and it is not likely that those
hieroglyphics will ever be deciphered. But much may be inferred from
their evident kinship to the Moquis of our time; and the resemblance
of the ancient architecture and ceramics to the arts as they are
still practised in the degenerate pueblos of Arizona gives us many
intimations in regard to the habits of the Cliff-dwellers.

It was centuries ago--how long a time no one will ever know--when that
old race was strong and numerous, filling the great region from the Rio
Grande to the Colorado of the West, and from the San Juan Mountains
far down into Northern Mexico. They must have numbered many hundreds
of thousands, perhaps millions. It is not probable that they were
combined under one government or that they were even closely leagued
together, but that they were essentially one in blood and language is
strongly indicated by the similarity of their remains. That they were
sympathetic in a common hostility to the dangerous savage tribes about
them can hardly be doubted. They were of peaceful habits and lived by
agriculture, having under cultivation many thousands of acres in the
rich river-bottoms, which they knew well how to irrigate from streams
swollen in summer by the melting snows of the high mountain-ranges.
We read of their dry canals in Arizona, so deep that a mounted
horseman can hide in them. We know that they raised crops of corn
and beans, and in the south cotton, which they skilfully wove. That
they had commercial dealings across their whole country is shown by
the quantity of shell-ornaments brought from the Pacific coast which
are found in their Colorado dwellings. They did not understand the
working of metals, but their implements of stone are of most excellent
workmanship. Their weapons indicate the practice of hunting, and while
the race was still numerous their forts and their sharp obsidian arrows
made easy their resistance to the wandering savage hordes.

[Illustration: RUINS AT AZTEC SPRINGS.]

I believe that no instance can be cited of a people still in their
Stone Age who have surpassed that old race in the mason's art: indeed,
I doubt if any such people has even approached their skill in that
respect. The difficulty of constructing a great work of well-squared,
hammer-dressed stones is enormously increased if the masons must work
only with stone implements. Imagine the infinite, toilsome patience of
a people who in such a way could rear the ancient Pueblo Bonito of New
Mexico, five hundred and forty feet long, three hundred and fourteen
wide and four stories high! In one wall of a neighboring building of
stone less carefully dressed it is estimated that there were originally
no less than thirty million pieces, which were transported, fashioned
and laid by men without a beast of burden or a trowel, chisel or hammer
of metal.

Nothing marks more strikingly the vast advance which these people had
made from the condition of their savage neighbors than their evident
efforts not only for household comfort, but even for the beautifying
of their homes. I have referred to the rush-carpeted floor of the
"House of the Sixteen Windows" and the decorated walls of the two-story
house on the Mancos; but they, like other semicivilized peoples,
found the first expression for their love of the beautiful in the
ceramic art. The variety of graceful forms and decorations found in
their pottery is endless. In some regions the country for miles is
strewn with the fragments of their earthenware. The ware is usually
pale gray shading to white: the decoration is in black or red, often
in the angular designs commonly called "Greek patterns." The Moquis
of our time produce a handsome ware closely resembling that of the
ancient people. But the old cliff-painters and the modern potters often
sacrificed beauty to a passion for producing the most wildly-grotesque
forms. There is a certain general resemblance, which often strikes me
forcibly, but which is almost indefinable, between the ceramic and
sculptured forms of the Mississippi Mound-builders, the Pueblo tribes
and the ancient Mexicans. The resemblance seems to lie partly in a
certain capacity which those peoples possessed in common of producing
the most frightfully-grotesque forms ever evolved by the human
imagination--forms plainly intended to suggest living beings, yet not
at all transgressing the injunction against "anything that is in the
heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters
under the earth." The resemblance seems to me very significant.

At the time of the Spanish conquest the Pueblo tribes were worshippers
of the sun and fire, like all the races of this continent which were
above barbarism. To-day, even in those pueblos where a corrupted form
of the Roman faith is accepted, there are traces of the old sun-worship
mingled with it, and in all pueblos there are large circular rooms
called estufas reserved for councils and for worship. The invariable
appearance of estufas among the ruined towns, and even on the ledges
of the cliffs, shows what sacredness was attached to the circular room,
which perhaps was symbolic of the sun's orb: it indicates a unity of
religious faith between the ancients and moderns.

The priest who chronicled the events of the first expedition to New
Mexico was impressed with the great ruined towns which they saw
even before crossing the desert of Arizona. There is good reason to
believe that the cliff-dwellings, the last retreats of a persecuted
people, were abandoned before that time. But how could a people so
numerous, intelligent and civilized fall a prey to stupid, roving
savages? The wild tribes never could have won the fight against their
more quick-witted neighbors if the ancients had not begun their own
destruction.

The story which they have left recorded on the face of the country
is of this sort. At some very remote time they began agriculture in
the valleys of the South-west. They found the rainfall of the region
too limited for farming without irrigation, but the whole country
was intersected by streams fed through summer by the snows of the
mountain-tops and the abundant springs of the wooded slopes and
uplands. Thus their crops were watered and yielded increase with a
regularity unknown to farmers who must look to the summer rainfall
for success. The people prospered, multiplied and spread over a wide
country. In every green valley rose their great common dwellings and
circular temples. By superior numbers and intelligence they were
strong against their enemies. But the spreading population required a
great wood-supply. The finest of the trees were felled for timbering
their houses, and whole forests were swept away to give them fuel and
perhaps to feed perpetual sacred fires. The country was all too little
watered at the best, and the mountain-sides, once stripped of their
covering, oftentimes dried up and no new growth of trees appeared. Old
men began to observe that the streams did not maintain their even flow
through the whole year as when they were young, and lamented the good
old times when there was no lack of water for irrigation. The streams
began to be swollen with disastrous floods in spring and winter, and
to dwindle away alarmingly in summer. So through centuries the gradual
destruction of the wood brought ever-increasing drought, and drought
led in its train famine, disease and wholesale death. The people were
decimated and discouraged, and on the northern frontier began to be at
the mercy of savage raiders. They fled from their pleasant valley-homes
to hide in caves and dens of the earth, and built the cliff-dwellings.
There a remnant lingered in unceasing fear of the foes who coveted the
fruits of their toil; but even from these refuges they were driven
ages ago. Where they used to build villages and cultivate fields
are now barren gulches where two or three times a year a resistless
flood rushes down from the mountains that can no longer retain their
moisture. Thus ended their national suicide.

[Illustration: RUINS IN MONTEZUMA CAÑON.]

It was a strange ignorance that led them to their own destruction, was
it not? Yet we as a nation from Maine to California are recklessly
working the same ruin. We are stripping our mountains a hundred times
more rapidly than they, but who cares whether the forests are restored?

As a child I played and bathed in a pretty tumbling brook among the
Litchfield hills, and wondered that so small a stream but fifty years
before had given power to all the mills now ruined on its banks. Twenty
years more have passed, and now in the heat of summer there is hardly
water for a child to bathe. The hills are stripped, the stream has
dwindled, but the spring floods tear through the valley like a deluge.
Even the larger streams that still turn the mill-wheels and make the
wealth of Connecticut are not the trusty servants that they once were.
In summer they grow weak and must be supplemented with steam, and at
times they rise in fury and carry destruction before them. It is the
beginning of woes, but our Atlantic slope with its heavy rainfall
cannot easily be changed to a desert. In the far West it is different.
Colorado, Nevada and California, with a less regular rainfall and
with greater floods and smaller streams, would soon find the desert
encroaching on the habitable land. But in these very States the waste
of timber is most extravagant. Mining-camps and cities devour the
woods about them, and in every dry summer many hundred square miles
are burned by the recklessness of Indians and white men. Where the
Californian mountains have been cleared, the browsing millions of sheep
keep down all new growth, and, bringing great wealth in our age, they
threaten to impoverish posterity.

The dreary experiment has been tried by the ancient races of both
continents. Why should we repeat it? The question should command the
earnest attention of State and national governments. In our own land
already one old race has wrought its own destruction in this same way.

 ALFRED TERRY BACON.

[Footnote 1: In studying the ruins of the Mancos and neighboring cañons
I have made constant use of the reports of explorations by Mr. W.
H. Jackson and Mr. W. H. Holmes in _Bulletins of U. S. Geolog. and
Geograph. Survey_, Second Series, No. 1, and _Annual Report_ of the
same survey for 1876.]




THE ARTS OF INDIA.


[Illustration: BUDDHIST RELIC-CASKET.]

The study of the industrial arts of India, if the warnings of learned
Orientalists are to be of any avail, is not a matter to be rashly
undertaken. All Indian art must be viewed in reference to Indian
religion. Forms, materials and colors have meanings that can only be
caught by familiar acquaintance with a symbolism both intricate and
obscure. Little decorative touches that to the untaught Western eye are
introduced merely to give an artistic finish to an involved design, or
to give room for bringing in the bit of color demanded by the sense of
harmony, have all a meaning not necessarily connected with art. While
in the West the problems of art are dealt with by men whose eyes are
bent on art alone, the Oriental artist solves these problems while
keeping his eyes fixed upon religion. The maturity of Indian religious
life was reached several centuries before our era began: it then took
a form which it still retains. There is no secular life from which it
can be distinguished. When a domestic utensil is examined, the first
question to be answered is, What religious meaning attaches to it?
This is an appalling fact, for it means that the arts of India cannot
be appreciated as the Hindus appreciate them until we have mastered an
accumulation of mythological and legendary lore such as possibly no
other country has amassed.

[Illustration: HINDU WOMAN REELING SILK.]

To appreciate the full extent of a task that already seems to hang
like a shadow over the whole of what yet remains of one's life, it
may be pointed out that the Vedas form only one of four groups of
sacred writings, that there are four Vedas, and that each one of the
four consists of four parts. Then there are Upa-Vedas, Ved-Angas and
Upangas; and under the last-named fall the epics of the _Ramayana_,
of ninety-six thousand lines, and the _Mahabharata_, of two hundred
and twenty thousand long lines, not to mention others. These are mere
glimpses into a vista long and dark, and it seems a little odd that
one should be called upon to go through so much in order to appreciate
a specimen of carving from Vizagapatam, an inlaid table-top from
Agra, a box of Cashmere lacquer or a panel of carved sandal-wood from
Canara. The fact is, that the matter may be looked at from another
point of view--that taken up by those who decline to see anything in
a painting but canvas and paint--who care for nothing in the shape
of sentiment or story, but have a single eye to art. In this way the
beauty and harmony of Oriental coloring, the delicacy and wonderful
finish in all manner of carvings, the skill displayed in inlaying and
chasing--in a word, all the points of industrial art in India--may be
both enjoyed and understood without a reference to the Puranas or the
Code of Manu, or without the observer's being able to enumerate the
avatars of Vishnu. The inquirer is thus borne up against the deterrent
influence of specialists, with the plaintive notes of whose voice he
has become in all probability elsewhere familiar. It is the same voice,
to all intents and purposes, that haunts the graves of Egypt, the
ruins of Rhag[oe], the tombs of Etruria and Magna Græcia, the workshops
of King-teh-chin and the mounds of Pachacamac. It is heard, in short,
all round the world, and its burden is ever the same: "Understand the
religion of a people before peering into their arts." The obvious
answer comes: Life is short and art is long: if to art religion be
prefixed, all knowledge of art is at an end. It would be pleasant, no
doubt, to tell at a glance what legend or myth is represented on a
Greek vase, but meantime we can admire the form. It would be equally
pleasant to be able to interpret the painting on a Chinese historical
vase, but meantime we can admire the colors. So with Egypt, Persia and
Peru: it will be well for the many to get at the industrial secrets of
these countries if they never obtain even a glimpse of the underlying
religious idea of the craftsman.

It is merely thrown out as a suggestion by the way, and without any
intention of belittling the importance of studying the superstitions
and philosophies of the world or of aiming at something more than a
strictly industrial view of industrial art, that so much attention may
be bestowed upon religions as the sources of ideas as to obscure the
form and manner of their expression in art. Possibly the formation of
an Indian museum at South Kensington may be productive of a longing
desire to become acquainted with Rama and the lovely Sita, the strong
Arjuna and the beauteous Draupadi; but it is hardly likely that
this was the object of its formation or that it will lead to the
acquisition of any more abstruse knowledge than such as comprises
the weaving of rich textures, the blending of gay colors, or the
industrial arts of damascening, carving and working in gold and silver
and precious stones. In what has here to be said, at all events, only
such references will be made to religion and legend as are absolutely
necessary to a general understanding of the conditions under which
Indian art has developed, and of the forms under which it is most
frequently seen.

The Indian Museum--or rather the collection forming the Indian section
of the South Kensington Museum--is of very recent formation. It may
be said to have grown without developing. Its nucleus was formed in
the days of the East India Company, and was stored in a little museum
in Leadenhall street. There it long remained, and one of its chief
attractions was Tippoo's tiger, now occupying a place of honor near
the musical instruments, to which it bears some kind of a relation.
The "tiger" is a wooden animal of ferocious aspect represented in the
act of tearing a prostrate European soldier dressed in the military
red coat and wearing a broad-brimmed felt hat of decidedly civil make.
It was taken at the fall of Seringapatam, and was probably made by
some European artificer for the delectation of the Tippoo Sultan. If
not symbolical it was undoubtedly suggestive of pleasant thoughts to
Tippoo, although as a musical instrument it could never have been
much of a success. To tickle the sultan's ear the tiger when wound up
emitted startling roars and groans, while its victim feebly moaned.
But on a certain festive occasion after the "tiger" was brought to
England the winding-up was unfortunately overdone, and long afterward
the soldier stoically declined to moan. The odd musical toy has been
brightened up to suit its new home, and its internal construction has
also received proper attention to such purpose that the roaring can
be reduced to something like method by merely passing the hand over a
keyboard, and the resuscitated struggling red-coat moans as lustily as
he did in the palmy days at Seringapatam.

Such is the instrument which played an important part in the Leadenhall
Street Museum. When the East India Company passed away and the British
government assumed the direct control of India, the tiger and all the
other curiosities were sent first to Fife House, and thence to the
India Office. The latter step was possibly taken on the advice of
some utilitarian who wished to bring within reach of the officials an
opportunity of acquiring some knowledge of India. Any such object was
frustrated.

[Illustration: GOLD EMBROIDERY ON VELVET: MURSHEDABAD.]

The director and curator were the only individuals known to visit
the collection. It was then sent to South Kensington and placed in a
temporary building, but still nobody looked in upon the tiger and the
jade, the carvings and Bidri-work. They were still under the control of
the India Office, and at length became a burden to it. Their failure
to interest the public naturally led to a desire to transfer the
responsibility of guardianship. This is not to be wondered at. The
collection had, as has already been pointed out, merely grown in bulk.
It was promiscuous in the worst sense. It consisted of a fortuitous
concourse of articles taken in war or bought upon no ostensible system
in peace. To these old Indian officers occasionally made testamentary
additions of things picked up in their travels or acquired by
inheritance or otherwise. International exhibitions have always been
good for museums. The unsalable is often valuable, and exhibitions have
been a source from which the Indian collection has reaped many solid
benefits. Thus the accumulation increased in bulk and intrinsic value,
but practically it still continued valueless. It was neither arranged
nor inventoried. It continued to illustrate little more than the manner
of its accumulation. Very naturally, the India Office in looking for
relief from a useless burden turned first to the Science and Art
Department under which South Kensington was flourishing. Its offer of a
transfer was at first declined, but the authorities at the India Office
would take no refusal. Their object was at once to get rid of the
collection and of the cost of maintaining it, and at the same time to
preserve its representative character and such individual identity as
it possessed. They ultimately succeeded in both respects, though their
success was not perfect. A part, including the collections of economic
botany of wild Indian silk and lac, went to Kew. The zoological
collection is in the hands of the trustees of the British Museum, and
will eventually take its place in the new Natural History Museum at
South Kensington. To the British Museum have gone the Indian Buddhist
sculptures, but casts of these may hereafter be placed in the Indian
Museum: certainly, in view of the influence of architectural decoration
upon industrial art, they seem necessary to its completeness. All else
was on the first of January last handed over to the Science and Art
Department, and came under the management and control of Sir Philip
Cunliffe-Owen, K. E. M. G., C. B. and director at South Kensington.
It was characteristic of Sir Philip that he should undertake to have
within six months a collection arranged and ready for public inspection
which had not for twenty years been seen in anything like order. It
had never before been catalogued, and had never before been so placed
that it could be seen intelligently or at one view. The first thing
to be done was the drawing up of an inventory. This work occupied six
weeks, and on its completion the discovery was made that the collection
was altogether inadequate to its purpose. It represented neither the
arts nor the industries of India, and gave a very disjointed view of
the resources of that country. The work, however, went on. Sir Philip
used all his influence, both personal and official, to supplement
defective departments. He made purchases and applied for loans. Her
Majesty, the prince of Wales and the duke of Edinburgh made selections
from their magnificent collections, and others were not slow to follow
their example. The result was that in his race against time Sir Philip
won by more than a month, making allowance for what has yet to be done
with the contributions still being made. Few other men could have won
a victory so complete with such apparent ease, because there are not
many who could have imbued contributors with similar confidence or so
thoroughly inspired an entire department with his own spirit of energy
and well-regulated activity. A word or two may be said of his career.

His father was Charles Cunliffe-Owen, a captain in the royal navy, and
at the age of twelve Philip entered the same service. He served for
five years in the Mediterranean and the West Indies, and at seventeen
was obliged by ill health to retire, but taking with him the habits a
naval career was well calculated to engender or develop of promptitude
and decision. After a rest of a few years he was appointed to the
Science and Art Department, and gradually won the notice and confidence
of his superiors. He was quick of apprehension, prompt in action and
accurate in execution. Sir Henry Cole recognized these qualities in
him, and entrusted him with the post of one of the superintendents
of the Paris Exhibition of 1855. A few years took him upward through
the rank of deputy-general superintendent of South Kensington Museum
to that of assistant director in 1860. At subsequent international
exhibitions he filled various offices as follows: at London, in
1862, director of the foreign sections; at Paris, in 1867, assistant
executive commissioner; at Vienna, in 1873, secretary to the royal
British commission; at Philadelphia, in 1876, executive commissioner;
and at Paris, in 1878, secretary of the royal British commission.
Meanwhile, in 1873, he was created a Companion of the Bath, and was
advanced to the directorship of the South Kensington and Bethnal Green
Museums on its becoming vacant by the retirement of Sir Henry Cole. In
1878 he received the honor of knighthood.

A good linguist and possessing rare tact and wonderful executive
ability, Sir Philip has succeeded where many of his countrymen
fail--namely, in making a favorable impression upon foreigners.
Prepossessing in appearance and manner, he can dash through business
at a speed calculated to astonish men of less energy and of a lower
vitality, and he does it, moreover, without the faintest taint of the
_brusquerie_ which almost as a rule bristles all over the less capable
official. Red tape he abhors, and is as easy of access as a republican.
He transacts his business as it arises, knows nothing of arrears, keeps
nobody waiting, rises early, works incessantly, drinks nothing stronger
than tea, has no office-hours and no rules--making both subservient to
the business in hand, instead of following the example of the greater
part of the world in fitting business to rule and time--and is only a
little forgetful of social engagements. Such is the man to whom more
than any other the credit is due of India's being first fairly if not
fully represented in Europe by a museum containing specimens of all its
native arts and industries.

[Illustration: R. REID. DEL.
SANDAL-WOOD CARVING AT TRAVANCORE.]

Certain general impressions will be received from a walk through the
galleries and from a hurried view of the sculptures, textile fabrics,
arms, pottery, jewelry, furniture, lacquer and metal-work. Forms,
combinations and decorative styles will catch the eye which seem not
new, but merely changed from something seen elsewhere, as the ear will
catch a well-known melody running through a profusion of intricate
variations. The alternative questions occur: Is India the home of all
the arts? or, Has it no original art? In one place stands a small
table of Cashmere lacquer in which a great part of the decoration is
surely Chinese: a small gold cup has a sculpturesque decoration as
surely Greek. Here is a coffee-pot of Mongolian type, and a parcel-gilt
vase of Greek: there are gold dishes after the Saracenic, inlaid-work
decidedly Persian, and mosaic-work most certainly Florentine.

It is long since the connoisseur of Indian art awakened from the dream
that India has been an isolated country. The fact is, that it lies in
the way of all commerce between the far East and the West, and that
it can be, and has been, approached as easily from land as from the
sea. It has a long legendary history, but a comparatively short real
history. The immigration of the Aryan race is said to have taken place
about B.C. 3101, but from that period until the rise of Buddhism,
in the sixth century B.C., there is nothing to guide us but legend.
Putting aside what may have been learned of India by the Greeks from
the troops from the Panjab and Afghanistan which swelled the gigantic
army of Xerxes, Alexander's invasion of India (B.C. 327) may be
said to have really opened the way to the acquisition by the Greeks
of something like an exact though partial knowledge of the country
pronounced by Herodotus the wealthiest and most populous in the world.
In truth, the writings of Greeks who accompanied Alexander, and of
Chinese pilgrims, and some temple-inscriptions, constitute the basis of
Indian history. The commerce of India at a very early period extended
far and wide. Arrian, an Alexandrian merchant of the second century,
mentions the muslins of the Ganges, cloths of all sorts, colored shawls
and sashes, purple goods, gold embroidery, lac, steel, jewels, perfumes
and spices. How long this trade had been going on we cannot say. It
was, however, encouraged by the Ptolemies, who established a port on
the Red Sea and organized a system of conveyance by means of caravans
to the Nile, and so to Alexandria. In this way Indian manufactures
reached Europe, while the Persians were at the same time carrying on an
extensive trade in the same materials. The Indians further contributed
to the advance of commerce by becoming road-builders, and thus bringing
the manufacturing places along the valley of the Ganges into connection
with the Panjab in the north-west and with ports and trading-stations
in the west and south. Thus, Egypt and Assyria were brought into
commercial intercourse with the eastern tract of the valley of the
Ganges--that lying between the modern Allahabad and Calcutta. That
commerce spread in other directions there can be no doubt. Within three
centuries of the foundation of Buddhism it had penetrated to Ceylon,
and reached Tibet and China in the first century of our era. Let us
look at one stupendous fact as indicative of international intercourse
with India--namely, that Buddhism, which has all but disappeared from
the land of its birth, is at the present moment the religion of about
five hundred millions of human beings occupying the continent of Asia
from the Caspian to the Pacific, from Tartary to China and Japan.

Leaving both religion and commerce aside--the latter of which might
have been brought down to the opening of maritime intercourse between
Europe and the far East by way of the Cape--there have yet to be taken
into consideration the several invasions of India, which afford yet
another possible explanation of the manner in which its arts may have
been affected by contact with foreigners.

[Illustration: SHIELD DAMASCENED IN GOLD: PANJAB.]

There were many schisms among the Buddhists between the sixth and third
centuries before our era, but in power their community grew year by
year. Asoka brought all Northern India under his power, and, becoming
a good Buddhist, sent missionaries all over India from Cashmere
to Ceylon. After his death India was for some centuries under the
Indo-Scythians, until the fourth century of our era. From that time
Buddhism declined rapidly. The Brahmans were ever its enemies, and
toward the eighth century began to push northward from the retreats
they had sought when Brahmanism, a thousand years before, had given
way to Buddhism. About the same time began the Arab invasions which
ultimately led to the establishment of Mohammedan rule. This was the
beginning of about twelve hundred years of war. The Arabs came first
in A.D. 664, and again in 711. The Turkomans entered the Panjab in
976, and the Afghan dynasties of Mahmud of Gazni and Mohammed of Ghor
followed in the tenth and twelfth centuries. The third Afghan dynasty
established its rule at Delhi in the thirteenth century. With this
century we approach the conquests of Chingis Khan in Central Asia and
of Hulaku Khan, and then in rapid succession came the Mohammedan
incursions into the Dekkan and the Mongolian subjugation of India,
which was begun in 1298, carried on by Tamerlane in 1398, and completed
in 1526 by Sultan Baber. The Mogul period ended with the British
conquests of 1803 and 1817.

If the rise and fall of these various tides of commerce and war are
followed, it will be seen that not only has India not been an isolated
country, but, on the contrary, through a hundred channels it has held
communication with the world beyond the Himalayas. Its art has no doubt
been affected by such intercourse. The effect of architectural forms
upon the decorations made use of in industrial art has already been
referred to; and when we find that the Buddhists acquired a knowledge
of the use of stone in building from the Greeks and Persians, we at
once see why Doctor Leitner's collection of fragments of sculpture from
Peshawur in the north of the Panjab, and now in the museum, should be
called Græco-Buddhistic. Indian architecture is based upon Greek, and
the influence of the latter lasted so long that Mr. Fergusson, who has
made a special study of Hindu temples, says that he could not find
anywhere in Cashmere the slightest trace of the bracketed capital of
the Hindus, but that the Doric or quasi-Doric column is found all along
the valley in temples dating from the eighth to the twelfth century.
Doctor Birdwood, again, has succeeded in tracing the inlaid woodwork or
marquetry of India from Shiraz in Persia to Sindh, Bombay and Surat.
Further, the mosaic-work of Agra is of Florentine extraction, having
been introduced by Austin de Bordeaux in the seventeenth century, and
recently revived.

[Illustration: NATIVE GOLD JEWELRY OF POONA, BOMBAY.]

Let these examples suffice to show that India did not originate all the
arts it now practises. Unfortunately, all that has been borrowed by it
has not been to its advantage--such as the Dutch black-wood carving
at Bombay--and it is scarcely possible that Anglo-Indian art will add
anything to the laurels won by the workmen of the same presidency. It
is moreover to be feared that the machine-made dry goods of England,
the French patterns of Cashmere, the introduction of machinery, the
absorption of hand-weavers by factories, and, above all other things,
the establishment of art-schools, may ultimately break down the
barriers which for two thousand years and more have, in spite of war,
commerce and the introduction of new arts, preserved in the work of the
art-craftsmen of India an element essentially indigenous.

Many conservative agencies were no doubt at work in preserving to
Indian art a distinctively national character. Amongst these the
religious epics and the Code of Manu come first. Of the former, those
already referred to, the _Ramayana_ and the _Mahabharata_, show what
the art and life of the Hindus were between the fifth and the third
centuries before Christ. The Code gave them a form which they preserve
to-day in at least all essential respects. The arts have been handed
down from father to son for countless generations, and traditional
skill has reached its high perfection chiefly by the village-system
of the Code. The centre of the political interest of the Hindu is his
own village. In our sense of the word he has no country, but he has a
village home, and his loyalty is absorbed by the administrators of that
home's affairs. He is unmoved either by conquest or commerce. His life
has crystallized into a certain form. It is the life his forefathers
led, and it is the life his children will lead. His village is to all
intents and purposes an independent community. This is the account of
a traveller: "Outside the entrance, on an exposed rise of ground, the
hereditary potter sits by his wheel moulding the swift-revolving clay
by the natural curves of his hands. At the back of the houses which
form the low irregular street there are two or three looms at work in
blue and scarlet and gold, the frames hanging between the acacia trees,
the yellow flowers of which drop fast on the webs as they are being
woven. In the streets the brass- and copper-smiths are hammering away
at their pots and pans; and farther down, in the veranda of the rich
man's house, is the jeweller working rupees and gold mohrs into fair
jewelry--gold and silver ear-rings and round tires like the moon,
bracelets and nose-rings and tablets, and tinkling ornaments for the
feet--taking his designs from the fruits and flowers around him or from
the traditional forms represented in the paintings and carvings of the
great temple which rises above the groves of mangoes and palms at the
end of the street above the lotus-covered village-tank." By and by the
work-day closes with feasting and music and the songs chosen from the
religious epics. In the morning the same routine begins again: the same
sounds are heard, the same sights seen, the same pleasures indulged in.
It is the life of the Code and of the great epics--a happy, contented,
frugal and, in a sense, cultured life, based upon a religion which
gave it expression and form long before our era began, and fenced it
in from the influences of external change. All its conquerors have
succumbed to the social and religious life of India. They came and
found themselves within a magic circle. All that they brought of art
was Indianized. A new art meant nothing more than a new illustration of
Hindu religion. We have seen the craftsmen at work, and the fountain
of their inspiration is not far to seek when we are told that the
stories of the _Ramayana_ and the _Mahabharata_ are told nightly all
over India to listening millions. Let us suppose the village-festival
is approaching its close. Then "a reverend Brahman steps upon the scene
with the familiar bundle of inscribed palm-leaves in his hands, and,
sitting down and opening them one by one upon his lap, slow and lowly
begins his antique chant, and late into the starry night holds his
hearers, young and old, spellbound by the story of the pure loves of
Rama and Sita, or of Draupadi who too dearly loved the bright Arjuna,
and the doom of the froward sons of Dhritarashtra."

[Illustration: COPPER-GILT SACRIFICIAL VASE: MADURA.]

Can we wonder, then, that from these legends of the heroic age are
taken figures for the sculptor, scenes for the carver and the graver,
and subjects for the jeweller and the worker in ivory? Religion is thus
the greater conservator of Indian art as it appeared in its earlier
forms, and reduces into conformity with it all that comes from abroad.

Further agencies toward the same end are the caste-system, in the large
cities trade-guilds--or, as we would call them, trades unions--and,
finally, hereditary offices in both village and city. Under the
village-system artisans may be said to have undergone successive
generations of training, and the result is that in a country where
_manufacture_ means, literally, "making by hand," any object of
industrial art represents the development of hereditary skill. His
craftsmanship is the father's richest legacy to his son.

One point more deserves consideration. In America and Europe nearly
everything is done by machinery: in India nearly everything is made by
hand. Whatever is done, therefore, is the expression of a thought; and
that art in the East is not trammelled by tradition may be inferred
not less from the variety of its productions than from the Indianizing
process to which foreign arts are subjected. The hand leaves almost
unconsciously the impress of the workman's individuality. There is room
there for patronage to lead to superexcellence. The saving of time
and rapidity of output are not important objects when a prince lends
his encouragement to art and his influence to its elevation. In the
East--in China, in Persia and in India--artisans have worked directly
under the imperial power. All that was asked of them was good work. In
India offices of this kind were, in the imperial workshop as in the
villages, hereditary; and without trouble about subsistence, without
a thought of time, without limit in expense--without, in short, one
disturbing element--the art-workers labored only for their art and for
the approval of their king or chief. In the museum is a rug of silk
woven by deft fingers which have for possibly three centuries been
still. Four hundred knots occupy every square inch, and the size of the
rug leads to the total of three and a half millions of knots, between
every two of which the pattern demanded a change in the treadles of
the loom. We turn from this to a bowl of jade beautifully engraved
upon which were expended the labors of three generations of workers in
the employ of the emperors of Delhi. It is in this way the best work
of all kinds is produced to-day. Spinning, weaving and embroidering
are, moreover, practised all over the country in the homes of the rich
and in the dwellings of the poor. "Every house in India," says Doctor
Birdwood, "is a nursery of the beautiful." The words are suggestive.
They imply that correct taste is best formed by practice. We who
have lectures on decorative art and technological schools live in
too fast an age ever to rival the industrial art of India, and shall
in our hurry do well if we arrive at something like an understanding
appreciation of the works of the villagers of Hindostan.

[Illustration: PIERCED AND REPOUSSÉE SILVER SHRINE-SCREEN: MADURA,
MADRAS.]

The general attributes of Indian art as displayed in the museum
are richness of decoration, great manipulative skill, good taste,
brilliancy, harmony of color, intricacy of decorative forms, and the
due subserviency of both color and design to decorative effect. Nearly
all these qualities are illustrated by the textile fabrics, the dresses
and turbans, the horse and elephant caparisons, the carpets and the
rich canopies of the howdahs. These are the tissues that spread the
fame of India on every side. It is not known how long it has possessed
the art of weaving. Possibly it originated in the Valley of Roses or by
the banks of the sacred Ganges. The weaving of silk India appears to
have borrowed from China, but when or how it first wove silk we cannot
tell, any more than we can tell when first it wove its marvellous gold
brocades or gauzy muslins. It was weaving cotton in times beyond the
realm of history, and continues weaving it to-day all over the Panjab,
Sindh, Rajputana, Oudh, Bengal, the Central Provinces, in Assam, Bombay
and Madras. The prince of Wales obtained a few pieces of the famous
muslin of Dacca, requiring about six yards to weigh an ounce. Of this
kind one was called _shabnam_, or "dew of the evening," because if laid
upon the grass it became undistinguishable from the dew; another was
called _bafthowa_, or "woven air;" a third was called _abrawan_, or
"running water," because when placed in water it became invisible. Even
the prince's pieces weigh nearly twice as much as the older tissues.
Indian lace in gold or silver, cotton or silk, is in texture and design
the highest representative of that most beautiful fabric. The brocades
are glories of color and rich with glittering flowers of gold, and the
embroidery on velvet, silk, wool or cotton is both pleasing and rich.
The museum contains several examples of the gorgeous embroideries
of the Dekkan, and we find in one or two of the costumes and some of
the fans a beautiful embroidery of shining green beetle-wings and
gold. As to the carpets, they are as a rule satisfying to the eye and
possess a general simplicity of design blended with richness of color.
In all the more brilliant textile fabrics of India warmth is secured
without violence of contrast; and one fact it will be well for Western
manufacturers to study--namely, that floral or animal decoration is
invariably flat.

[Illustration: SARAI DAMASCENED IN SILVER: HYDERABAD, IN THE DEKKAN.]

In furniture the Hindus do not follow the prevailing American rule:
with them, the less furniture the better. There are, however, specimens
from Bombay of their works upon forms supplied by Europe--as, for
example, two sofas and a high-backed chair, the backs of which are so
perforated that they seem as cool and light as cane. A sideboard from
Bombay has its top and panels so perforated that one wonders how long
a time it took to weave the endless flower-stems of the design and to
carve the fruits and flowers and the griffin-like monsters that support
the upper shelf. Some of the heavy, deep-cut flower-stands are less
pleasing. On the other hand, a dark wood stand from Ahmedabad is carved
in a fine, close and perforated pattern which is altogether appropriate
and admirable. It seems to have been made in parts. The bottom or
stand is solid and deeply cut in twining snakes and leaves: to this is
fastened the lowest section, hollow and perforated in a floral design;
above this is another of a different design; a third section supports
the vase and cover, which are also perforated. The work throughout is
elaborate and exquisite. A good deal of the furniture and many of the
tables, trays and boxes or coffers are variously lacquered and colored,
but when color is used lavishly it is never inharmonious. Ivory is
frequently employed in conjunction with ebony, and the effect is often
striking. The carving of ivory is practised in many parts of India, and
the Berhampore stately state-barges with their rowers all in position,
and the elephants with howdahs on their finely-modelled backs, are all
that need be mentioned, though there are numberless objects that come
from Bombay carved in low relief or perforated. Even after the small
ivories and the larger chess-tables, cots and palanquins in which ivory
is employed, the sandal-wood carving is amongst the most attractive in
the museum. There is a model of a doorway from Ahmedabad cut after a
microscopic pattern, and all around are designs, some mythological and
others purely naturalistic. The low-relief foliated ornamentation of
Bombay seems more attractive than the mythological designs of Canara
and Mysore, or than the mixed foliated and mythological designs of
Ahmedabad, possibly because the Western mind finds less to sympathize
with in the figures of the Hindu Pantheon than in the exuberant wealth
of India's gorgeous flowers and shady groves.

There are many carvings in horn and tortoise-shell from Vizagapatam and
Belgaum; pots, vases, bowls and bottles in marble of various colors,
solid, mottled and variegated; in soapstone, flowers, and notably a
model of a tomb, in which the most minute details are reproduced;
and specimens of the original Florentine inlaid marble-work of Agra.
In the latter we find white marble inlaid after various designs
with agate, chalcedony, topaz, jasper, garnet, lapis-lazuli, coral,
crystal, carnelian, and even with pearls, turquoises, amethysts and
sapphires. It demands judgment in the selection of the stones, skill
in their handling and taste in their arrangement in order to be what
may worthily be called artistic. It is ever too easy to perpetrate the
grossest crimes against good taste in the richest materials, and it is
the crowning glory of the industrial art of India that mere richness
of effect is never sought at the expense of taste.

[Illustration: ENAMELLED HUKU-STAND OF MOGUL PERIOD.]

Lac is used in an endless variety of ways--from making lacquered
walking-sticks, boxes, toys and bangles to bracelets and beads. The
best work is found in house-decoration and furniture. In the case of
some of the Sindh boxes the decorative design is worked out by covering
the box with successive layers of variously-colored lacquer and then
cutting away the pattern to the depth required by the color-treatment.
Sometimes metal rings appear to be let into incisions, and again the
decoration consists exclusively of surface-painting in bright colors.
The latter is found upon the _papier-mâché_ of Cashmere, which ranks
with the best lac-work of India.

We pass the pottery, merely noting the beauty of the colors, and
especially of the turquoise-blue, and the graceful simplicity of some
of the early forms, the trappings and caparisons, and glance round the
magnificent collection of arms, from the rough robbers' clubs bound
with serrated iron to the finest chain-mail and rifles inlaid with
gold. From Sindh comes a flintlock gun having the barrel inlaid and
plated with gold at the muzzle and breech, and bearing an inscription
inlaid in gold. Round the muzzle are set nine uncut rubies, and an
emerald forms the "sight." The stock is rosewood, curved and expanding
at the butt, enriched with mounts of chased gold, and attached to the
barrel by three perforated and chased gold bands. In some cases the
woodwork is almost obscured by the gold ornaments. On all sides are
weapons richly chased and damascened in gold. Weapons are there of
the steel that Persia, and even Damascus, never equalled, and they
come, as to a masquerade of the dread weapons of war, with handles
of crystal, of jade set with rubies and emeralds, of gold and green
enamel set all over with table diamonds, and sheathed in green velvet
scabbards gleaming with diamonds and fitted with cap, band and chape of
green-enamelled gold.

If this people carried such arms, what must their jewelry be? An
answer is found in the museum. We again find jade set with emeralds
and rubies. From Trichinopoly are gold chains of the snake pattern so
finely wrought that the scales are almost invisible, and the chain
doubles like thread, or chains and bracelets of rose open-work, most
minute and beautiful. From Madras and Delhi comes granulated gold
made into ear-drops or set as bosses in open-work. About everything
there is a lightness as far removed as possible from Western ideas of
handsome solidity and valuable weight. In the museum a model stands for
the purpose of showing how the woman of India wears jewelry. She has
not only "rings on her fingers and bells on her toes," but in nose and
ears, on her hand, dropping over her bosom, round her arms and waist,
and loading her ankles, are stringed gems and hoops of gold.

Akin to the jewelry is the gold and silver plate. The cup, or Buddhist
relic-casket, already mentioned, is interesting as being one of the
oldest examples found in India, and its age, about two thousand years,
only tells how much India art-work in the precious metals has been
destroyed or lost. There are many excellent examples of the parcel-gilt
work of Cashmere, and one shrine-screen of silver, pierced and
repoussée, is exceptionally fine in design and treatment. There are
tinned brass vessels with incised decorations, sculptured vessels of
brass, brass incrusted with copper and copper incrusted with silver,
but which can be called the baser and which the richer metals when
all assume shapes of such wondrous beauty as the _lotas_ and _sarais_,
and are decorated with designs so pleasing and with a skill so perfect
with damascened work, incrustations or enamel? The metal excipient is
forgotten in the art. The enamelled huku-stand in the illustration
belongs to the best Mogul period of transparent enamelling, and is
painted in green and blue enamels. At Jaipur red, blue and green
enamels are laid upon pure gold, and the richness and brilliancy of the
result have raised the enamels of that place to the first rank among
those of all the East.

Here our round of inspection may close, and as the doors shut behind us
a remarkable fact presents itself: that in no branch of industrial art,
either in metal-work, weaving or carving, can the science of Europe
cope with the plodding industry of the East.

  JENNIE J. YOUNG.




ADAM AND EVE.

CHAPTER XXXIII.


While the small party of soldiers were employed in attracting the
attention of the inhabitants to the meaningless parade of taking down
the offer of reward and replacing it by the announcement of discovery,
the larger portion of their company had already entered Uncle Zebedee's
house and seized upon Jerrem, their object being to avoid any defence
on the part of the neighbors, which Adam, with a view of preventing
further search being made in the house, had assured them was certain to
take place unless they could find a means of very speedily effecting
their purpose. Although little disposed to be influenced by any of
his suggestions, the force of this one was greatly strengthened by
the necessity of dividing themselves into two parties, one of which
must take Adam on, while the other returned to Polperro to seize the
prisoner. And this they managed with such promptitude that in less than
ten minutes they had entered the house and had dragged out Jerrem, who,
half stupefied, was pinioned and marched off before he was sufficiently
aroused to thoroughly comprehend or realize his situation.

The tattoo of the drums announced to the men on the quay that the
capture was effected, and the party, hurrying off by the Warren, had
joined their comrades, already half up Talland lane, before those who
had been spectators of one calamity could exchange their evil tidings
with those who had witnessed the other.

Yes, Jerrem was gone--led off to disgrace, maybe to death, through the
treachery of his shipmate, his comrade, his--all but in blood--brother.
What would come next? Ghastly fears crowded in upon all present.
Vengeance grew rank, hatred spread out on all sides: the earth thirsted
for his blood, and the air was thick with curses showered on his name.
Even Joan turned relentless and flung pity from her heart; while
old Zebedee, stung to the quick by the odium brought upon his name,
disowned Adam for his son and took God to witness that so long as life
remained every farthing he possessed should be spent in saving Jerrem.

At early dawn of the next day, Joan, at the instance of her uncle and
in company with several trusty friends, set off first for Liskeard, and
then, if need be, to get on to Plymouth or to Bodmin, at one of which
places Jerrem, they said, was certain to be tried. Bodmin jail and
Plymouth clink had both been familiar in days gone by to many who still
lived to tell their tales and give their experience, and schemes were
already abroad to put the larger boats on wheels, so that, if Bodmin
were selected, conveyances might be supplied by which the mass of the
people could be transported there and see fair play dealt out to their
comrade.

But days went by without Joan coming back, and Eve, who was left behind
to look after Uncle Zebedee, had to sit and listen to the terrible
outpourings of wrath against his son to which the old man gave vent in
the presence of his neighbors, and see the more heartrending desolation
of spirit which bowed him to the ground when no strange eye was near to
witness his weight of woe.

So entirely had the chain of circumstances overpowered Eve that this
climax of disaster seemed to have sealed up the flow of her emotions,
and listening to and looking at the tears, exclamations, sighs and
groans with which the excitable, sympathetic Cornish folk expressed
their anguish and their indignation, she asked herself, "Had all
feeling left her? Did she no longer care what happened to herself
or anybody around her? Was it nothing to her that her life was, as
it were, at an end, her future blighted, her hopes dead, her lover
disgraced, reviled, disowned and denounced by his own father and his
own family?" Any way, she could find no tears to bewail her sad fate
in, no sighs to relieve her burdened heart, no groans to ease her
desolate spirit: all was chaos, over which two dark shadows moved--the
spectral forms of herself and Adam.

"Uncle, what do you think's become of him? where can he have gone
to?" Eve asked one night as, no longer afraid of his neighbors seeing
him, the old man tore off the armor under which in their presence he
concealed every softer feeling.

"To bottom o' sae, clane gone out o' the warld, I hope, where I wishes
I was too," groaned Zebedee. "Awh! to think e'er a boy o' mine should
ha' sarved us so!--that he us counted 'bove all other flesh and blood
should ha' bin the whiles carryin' 'bout the heart of a fausse Judas in
his body!"

"Perhaps he was mad," said Eve, dropping her voice in terror of the
suggestion.

"Lord send I could see un ravin'!" cried Zebedee. "Why," he added, his
voice breaking under the pictured joy, "I'd thraw mysel' 'pon un and
hug un to me close, though he tored out my heart 'pon the spot for 't.
Naw, lass, naw," he sighed, "he ain't mad: 'tis the devil has seazed
hold on un somehow: that's what's brought un to this."

"Didn't he say nothing that seems now as if he'd told you that night
what he meant to do?" urged Eve.

"Naw, nothin'."

"And you didn't say anything to him, did you?"

"Iss, there 'tis: that's what sticks by me and shaws me plain the
vengeance that was in un, 'cos I tawld un that us was tryin' to dale
double, so as to manage for Jerrem to stale away."

"You didn't tell him about the soldier?" faltered Eve. "No, you
couldn't, because you didn't know anything about it yourself, did you?"

"Iss, I did. Jerrem tawld--he allays tawld me everything Jerrem
did--and I ups and tells Adam."

An icy grip seized Eve by the heart. "Oh, uncle!" she groaned, "could
it be because of that--that he thought about me?"

"What damon's in the maid now?" cried the old man, starting to his feet
and standing before her with clenched hands and quivering limbs. "Do
'ee give heed to what 'tis you'm sayin' of? Doan't 'ee knaw that if I
thought that 'twas you was the cause of it I'd scat out yer brains on
the planchin' where you'm standing to?"

Eve shrank back in terror, while Zebedee, after a minute's pause,
his outburst ended, sank down into his former despondent attitude,
muttering, "There! there! let be! let be! Awh, I wander what 'tis a
keepin' o' Joan so? Things is all bottom side upmost when her's out o'
hailin'-distance."

But two days more passed before Joan returned, bringing with her the
startling intelligence that, instead of Bodmin or Plymouth, Jerrem was
to be tried in London, to which place report said Adam had already
been removed. But, though every one thirsted for news, beyond the bare
facts Joan had little with which to satisfy them: she had failed in her
endeavor to see Jerrem, of whose present whereabouts even no one could
speak with certainty; she could learn no positive tidings of Adam,
neither had she been able to ascertain any trustworthy account of the
betrayal, only that it was in every one's mouth that Adam had done it,
and had meant to do it from the first moment he found that the shot
fired against his will would bring them all to trouble. Mr. Macey, the
lawyer at Fowey, who had always managed Uncle Zebedee's money-business,
had said 'twas a terrible job of it, and though he couldn't take it
himself he'd see 'twas carried through by somebody sharper at such work
than he was; and he'd sent Uncle Zebedee word that not a stone should
be left unturned or a guinea unspent while hope was left that Jerrem's
life might be saved; but he also sent a solemn warning to him and to
all the Lottery's crew to keep quiet and out of sight until 'twas
seen whether they meant to carry their vengeance further, or whether
Jerrem's life alone would serve to content them.

"Wa-al," sighed Zebedee, who had listened eagerly to the whole of
Joan's details and patiently to old Mr. Macey's friendly warning,
"they'm fair words and kindly spoken, and, so far as they goes, I'll
bide by 'em. But hark 'ee here, Joan: if the warst comes to warst, mind
this--though they strings me up with un and we swings together, I'll
stand yet wance more face to face with Jerrem afore he dies."

"And that you shall," said Joan; "and so will I too, for while in life
us cherished un, so while life lasts us 'll never desert un."

"And as for t' other wan," said the stricken old man, his wrinkled face
growing pinched and sharp, "may the wound that he's planted in my heart
rankle and fester in his own! May he live to know the want o' they he's
cast hisself off from, and die a stranger in a furrin land, and be
buried where none who knawed un here can point to the grave that holds
un!"

"Uncle!" cried Eve, thrusting her fingers into her ears to keep out
these terrible words from falling on them--"uncle!" But Joan's upraised
hand warned her to keep silent, and turning she saw that a sudden
change had fallen upon Zebedee: his features had relaxed, his stretched
eyelids were half closed over his glazed eyes, his head drooped low and
was sunk down upon his breast.

For some minutes the two girls stood anxiously gazing at him, until
Joan, terrified by the ashen pallor which had blanched his usually
ruddy cheeks, ventured to speak, and at length succeeded in so far
rousing him that he allowed himself to be persuaded to go to bed, and
the two girls were left alone.

"You're wanting to run up to your mother's, Joan, ain't you?" said Eve.
"I'll sit and watch Uncle Zebedee while you're gone."

"No, never mind for to-night," said Joan wearily.

"Then let me go," said Eve: "'twon't take me any time, and I want a
breath of fresh air;" and she rose from her seat as she spoke.

But Joan intercepted. "No, now sit down," she said hurriedly: "there
ain't no call for neither to go; 'sides which, 'tis too late. I don't
wan't 'ee to go wanderin' 'bout in the dark: you'm too much given to
goin' out by yourself. It won't do now: 'tain't safe, you knaw."

Eve stared: "Not safe, Joan? Why not?"

"Well, now, I'd rather you didn't. Sit down now, like a dear."

Eve sat down, but, her curiosity awakened by Joan's agitated, nervous
manner, she said, "Joan, what is it? I'm sure you've heard something.
Tell me, what makes you say we oughtn't to go out by ourselves, eh?"

Joan hesitated. "I wonder," she said, "whether I'd best tell 'ee or
not? It may be nothin' but a passel o' mazed talk, only I wouldn't have
a finger o' harm laid 'pon 'ee for warlds."

"Why, what is it, Joan?"

"Well, my dear, you see, I've see'd Jonathan. Through Adam's tellin'
he was tooked off too and lodged in Plymouth clink; but findin' they
couldn't make un spake a word o' sense, when they carr'd Adam away they
left Jonathan bide; and there he is, and there I hopes he'll stay."

"You do? What for?" asked Eve, amazed.

"Why, 'cos o' you, Eve. Iss," she said, answering her look of surprise,
"he's for all the world like anybody ravin' mad agen you."

"Against me? But why against me?"

"He will have that you'm the cause of it all," said Joan; "and 't
seems now he let out to Adam 'bout the letter that Jerrem writ and he
broffed, and then he drove un further mad by a passel o' lies he's
somehow got tagged on t' it--that you'd ha' told the sergeant, and
through that he dropped a bit o' paper, tellin' of it all, into the
rendevoos winder; for, seemin', that was how they got scent o' the
Lottery's landin'."

"And Adam believed him?" gasped Eve.

"He must have," sobbed Joan; "and then I reckon somethin' he see'd or
heerd that night finished un."

"Oh, Joan!" cried Eve, flinging herself down and burying her head on
Joan's lap.

"Iss: don't it seem as if us all must have some hand in tightenin' the
rope that's round that poor sawl's neck?"

"And Adam could believe that I would betray them--would betray him?"
and, clasping her hands, Eve looked up as if making an appeal to some
unseen presence--"him," she said, "for whom I would have given my
life--for whom," she cried, breaking down, "oh, Joan, I would give my
life now!"

"Iss, I know you would," said Joan, hugging her close to her. "Why,
haven't I called un everything bad before 'ee, o' purpose 'cos I should
see 'ee flare up agen me for doin' it? and haven't I blessed 'ee in my
heart for stickin' to un through thick and thin? Awh, Eve, my dear,
don't 'ee judge me hard for keeping all to Jerrem's side. 'Tain't only
love for Jerrem makes me do it, but that Adam sha'n't never be fouled
by havin' the stain o' blood restin' 'pon un. If 'twas only for that
I'd spend my last breath to save Jerrem from hangin'."

"They think they'll try to hang him?" said Eve in a faltering voice.

"Iss, for certain they'll try; and, though I didn't say so to uncle,
all Mr. Macey fears is that wan life won't content 'em, neither."

"Could Adam have known that?" whispered Eve.

"He knawed 'twas death to whoever was took, and a free pardon to
whoever told on 'em, or else why didn't he take and knock him on the
head hisself? Jonathan says," she added after a minute's pause, "that
when he'd told un 'bout you he sprung on un like a tiger and shook un
like a rat; and after, when it comed to 'bout the letter, he roared out
like a bull belvin', and then fell flat down 'pon his face like one
struck for death."

"Oh, why, why did Jerrem send that letter?" moaned Eve, wringing her
hands in desperation.

"Iss, why indeed?" said Joan. "Though that could have had nothin' to
do with the findin's out, that I can see; for, if 'twas the last word
I spoked, I could take an oath to never havin' quitted a word 'bout it
to a single livin' sawl; and as to you meetin' the sergeant, why, you
never stirred from this, did 'ee?--Let's see: what did us do that day?"
she added, trying to recall the past events; while Eve, sensible of
having concealed her meeting with Reuben May, averted her face so that
Joan might not perceive its terrible pallor.

Over and over again had Eve endeavored to screw up her courage to
tell Joan of this meeting, since which one misfortune after another
had crowded so thickly upon them as to make each endeavor seem
inopportune. For days after the interview she had every now and again
been seized with terror lest Reuben should make his appearance, and
great was her relief when, as time went on, she began to be released
from this anxiety. But no suspicion that he could in any way have
been connected with the betrayal had ever entered her mind until now,
when, as Joan spoke of her being the supposed betrayer, a sudden dart
of terror seemed to strike her. Was it possible? Could she have said
anything that Reuben had laid hold of against them? For an instant Eve
wrestled with the doubt and tried to crush it, but so vividly did it
rise up before her that at any cost she felt it must be set at rest,
and seizing Joan's hand she blurted out, "Joan, there's one thing
I've never told you of--that the day we expected them all back, after
Jerrem's letter had come, I went out for a bit by Talland way, and
there, just down before you come to the Warren stile, I met--"

"Not he! No, doan't 'ee tell me you see'd the sergeant!" cried Joan,
forcing her hands up to Eve's mouth as if to keep back the words.

"The sergeant? no!" said Eve indignantly; "but the young man I told you
of from London--Reuben May."

"Reuben May, Eve? Why, however did he come down 'long this ways? What
broffed un here, eh?"

"He was coming to see me," said Eve. "He had come in Capen Triggs's
vessel because of something he'd heard about us, and the minute he
saw me he began about uncle and Adam, calling them both thieves and
robbers, and I can't tell what."

"But that wouldn't make 'ee tell un nothin' 'bout their landin'?" said
Joan.

"No: I feel sure I never mentioned that. I told him they were expected
home, because I feared he'd want to come that night and see you all;
but then we fell to quarrelling again, and parted in such anger that I
said I hoped never to see his face again."

"But whatever made 'ee keep it to yourself and never spake of it till
now?" said Joan, turning her eyes upon Eve with a look of anxious
scrutiny.

"I never meant to keep it from you, Joan," said Eve earnestly; "and
only that your mother and Mrs. Climo and the rest were here, I should
have told you the minute I got back: then, when they were gone, I
said, 'I'll tell her as soon as we come down from the cliff;' but what
happened there put everything else out of my head for that night,
and since then, though I've had it on my lips to say twenty times,
something has always come up to hinder me from speaking."

"I'd a made sure you'd never cast eyes on any man outside the place,"
said Joan, perplexed by this new opening-out of difficulties.

"I wish now, more than ever, that it had never happened," sighed Eve.
"Still, Joan, the more I think of it the more certain I feel that
Reuben May had no hand in it, unless it could be that anybody might
have watched us together. That's not impossible, although I never met a
single soul, coming or going."

Joan made no comment: for a minute she seemed to struggle and debate
with her thoughts; then, suddenly looking up, she said, "Eve, you'll
have to go back home to wance: it 'ull never do to have 'ee stayin'
here now."

"But why, Joan? Has what I have told you made you think ill of me?
Don't you believe that I am speaking the truth when I say that what
kept me silent were the bitter words that Reuben May spoke? I meant to
tell you of it, because I had spoken of him to you before, but I could
never have told Adam that one I had counted as my greatest friend had
called him a thief over whose head the gallows was dangling;" and at
the remembrance of how near those words seemed now to the truth Eve
burst into a passion of tears.

"Now, don't 'ee go for to cry like that," exclaimed Joan, dashing
away the drops which were blinding her own eyes. "Whatever 'tis, I
loves 'ee too well to think harm of 'ee for it; and whether 'twas he
or some other man, t' mischief's done now and can't be set straight
agen. But, Eve, us mustn't let more harm come to us if we can hinder
it; and I tawld 'ee that I didn't like the angry words and the manin'
looks o' Jonathan, and he gived two or three twists o' hisself while he
was spakin' that made me turn as cold as death, and 't seemed as if I
couldn't draw my eyes away from the glarin' roll he was lookin' about
un with."

"Oh, I'm not afraid of Jonathan," said Eve, trying to brave down
the tremor of nervous fear which was creeping through her--"a poor
half-witted creature, who says one thing this minute and forgets all
about it the next."

"Awh, my dear, don't 'ee sneer at Jonathan," said Joan reprovingly:
"he's a bitter foe, I'll warn 'ee. And when," she added, dropping her
voice to a whisper, "he talks of maidens who loves to stand gazin' 'pon
the sea growin' dizzy and fallin' in, and o' folks bein' 'ticed fro'
their homes and never comin' back 'longs agen, 'tis time to steer clear
of un, Eve, for there's devilry in his words and mischief broodin' in
his mind."

"Why, Joan," gasped Eve, "surely he wouldn't--you don't think he'd
murder me?" and as the words came trembling out her very lips turned
white with horror.

"I wouldn't like to lave 'ee in his way," faltered Joan.

"But he'd be afraid, wouldn't he?"

"Wa-al, if so be he could get free to tell his story there's no knawin'
what might come of it. I had to dale double with un as it was, and
manage so that neither wan but me got in to see un; and 'fore he gets
set free altogether, Eve, you must put miles atween you and they who,
when they'd listened to his story, would awnly be too quick to shut
their eyes to what they wasn't axed to take part in."

"Of course, in that case," said Eve, "'tis best I should go back by
myself again to London."

And as the words came slowly dragging forth, the narrow street, the
obscured sky, the stifling air weighed down upon her, and crushed her
with a sense of gloom unknown before when her thirst for freedom was
but a want unsatisfied. Her whole being revolted against the cruel
exchange: her nature cried out in protest, but in vain.

The more they discussed the point the more convinced they both became
that there was no other possible alternative; and the money for her
journey being supplied by Uncle Zebedee, under pretence of accompanying
Jochabed Giles in one of her stolen visits to Plymouth Eve set off late
one afternoon, intending to rest by the way, and get on the next day to
Plymouth, whence she would take coach to London.

There was to be no leavetaking, for no one must know that she was going
away. So, with only a nod of good-bye to Uncle Zebedee and a moment's
desperate clinging to Joan, Eve left the house, and in silent sadness
followed Jochabed down the street, past the Warren, and away along
by the cliff-path until they came to the jutting point which, once
past, shuts out all view of Polperro from beyond. Here Eve paused, and
motioning Jochabed to go on she turned and bade her eyes gaze round
upon the scene and look their last farewell.

The sun, which all day long had shone hot and fierce, had run its
course and sunk to rest, leaving its trail of glory to tip the hills
above and be reflected down in crimson glow upon the sea below. The
mist of heat which all day long had hung over the land, though rolled
away from there, still floated in filmy clouds before the harbor's
mouth, veiling the little haven and casting broad shadows on the rugged
cliffs, up whose steep sides the white-faced houses clung, higher and
higher still, till they were lost amid the tangle of the ridge which
crowns the valley's sides.

Like an echo awakened by some tuneful strain which jars on the ear and
smites the heart because the voice which gave it melody is still and
hushed for ever, the sunset calm of that peaceful scene jarred on the
misery of her who stood stricken and desolate. Involuntarily she shut
her eyes, that through them at least her heart should be no longer
pierced; and when she opened them again a mist of gathering tears
obscured her view and blotted out the prospect from her sight. Then,
slowly turning, Eve went her way, knowing that while this life should
last the face of that fair portion of earth would never meet her eyes
again.




CHAPTER XXXIV.


Reuben May had been but a short time back in London when one evening,
as he was closing the shutters of his small shop, a boy presented
himself, saying he was the landlady's nephew at Knight's Passage, and
had been sent by her to ask Mr. May for some of the things he was
taking care of for Eve Pascal.

"Why, what does she want them for?" asked Reuben curtly.

"She wants them for Eve Pascal herself," said the boy. "Eve Pascal has
come back again: she came back this morning, only she hadn't got any
one to send till now."

"All right," said Reuben, returning to his shutter-closing and then
proceeding to fasten the door: "I'll go round and speak to her myself."

"Then you won't want me?" said the boy, not sorry to be released by his
stern-looking companion.

"No: you can go your own way," replied Reuben, already several paces in
advance, and walking with such rapid strides that a few minutes brought
him to the house which had been the scene of all the romance his life
had ever known.

"Oh, Mr. May!" but, paying no heed to the landlady's voice and without
a pause, Reuben ran up the different flights of stairs, knocked at the
door, opened it, and found himself at once in the presence of Eve:
"Eve!"

"Reuben!"

And then silence, each looking at the other, wondering what could
have wrought such a change; for the bodily fatigue and mental anxiety
undergone by Reuben had told as heavily on his appearance as the sorrow
Eve had endured had told on hers, although the absence of original
comeliness made the alteration in him less generally noticeable.

"Have you been ill, Eve?" and as he put the question a wild thought
sprang up that perhaps her suffering had been on his account, and,
stirred by this prompting, Reuben took her hand in his and looked with
tender anxiety into her face.

"No," she said, quietly withdrawing her hand, "I have not been ill.
Have you? You look very ill."

"Oh, that's on account of my having walked most of the way back here
from Plymouth: it's a stiffish tramp, you know, and took the little
flesh I had off my bones."

Eve paused for an instant, as if trying to repress the over-haste of
her question: then she said, while her face was half turned away, "Did
you go straight on to Plymouth after I saw you?"

"I got to Plymouth before daylight the next morning. I was forced to
rest a bit here and there on the way, as I'd come the same ground
once before that day; but the night was fine; so, as I didn't care
about stopping anywheres, I stumped on without waiting to see Triggs
even--made a message do for him--and started off on my journey."

"Then you never went near Looe at all?" Eve exclaimed with eagerness.

"Ah!" replied Reuben, evading a direct reply by a little laugh, under
which he heralded his answer, "you may be sure I didn't stop to inquire
the names of all the places I passed through: I was in too hot haste to
turn my back on them for anything of that sort."

"Oh, thank God!" said Eve; and at the words her whole mind and body
seemed to relax from the strain imposed on them by the suspicion that
in some indistinct way on her had rested the blame of the betrayal.

"'Thank God'?" repeated Reuben sharply. "Thank God for what?"

"For not making me the betrayer of those who put their trust in me."

Reuben's face turned crimson, but so engrossed was Eve by her own
satisfaction that his sudden confusion was lost upon her, and she
continued: "I may as well tell you, Reuben, that a terrible trouble
has fallen upon me and mine since I parted with you. That very night
some one played us false and betrayed the Lottery into the hands of the
revenue."

"I can't see what else was to be expected," said Reuben stolidly: "when
men run their necks into a noose they may be pretty sure of some day
finding the knot drawn tight."

"I was so afraid that you might have laid hold on anything I said to
you, and had been led in any way to tell it against them," sighed Eve,
paying no heed to the taunt with which Reuben had hoped to sting her.

"And supposing I had," he said, "oughtn't you to thank me for doing it?
Don't tell me, Eve"--and he threw into his tone a mixture of contempt
and bitterness--"that you've come to take it as a trial that those you
talk of belonging to are forced into taking to honest ways."

"Those I belong to have been hunted down like dogs," she cried. "A
price has been set upon their lives, and one of them has been dragged
away up here that they may try and hang him if they can."

"What?" exclaimed Reuben, starting to his feet--"hang him? Who are they
going to hang? What can they hang him for? Is it your cousin, Adam
Pascal, you're talking of?"

"No: I wish it was," said Eve, her face quivering with the emotion the
relation of these details stirred within her; "but, though 'twas in
fair fight, 'twas Jerrem shot the man."

"Shot what man?" gasped Reuben.

"The revenue-man. The Lottery was lying still, waiting for the tide to
come up, when the boats crept up behind them in the dark; and if it
hadn't been for Adam not one among their crew would have lived to tell
the tale, but by his word he kept his own men quiet--all but Jerrem,
who fired his gun, and down the revenue-man fell, dead."

Reuben stifled the exclamation which rose to his lips, and Eve, to
whose days of pent-up misery the repetition of these woes seemed to
bring relief, continued: "At first all blamed Adam and praised Jerrem,
but almost at once the soldiers came, and they'd only barely time to
hide away from them. Adam went to the mill, and was there a week and
more; and then some one told him that 'twas I was the cause of their
being betrayed; and it drove him so mad with jealousy and rage that he
told of the place where Jerrem was hid; and the next day the soldiers
came again, dragged Jerrem out and carried him away. And now, though
uncle spends every guinea he has got, 'tis almost sure that through
Adam's word Jerrem will be hanged; for they say they've brought them
both to London, and that they're lodged in Newgate jail."

Up to this time Reuben's eyes seemed riveted upon Eve's face, but as
she paused he bent his head and sunk it down upon the table near--a
movement that at any former time would naturally have awakened some
surprise, but now Eve had grown so familiar with the aspect of sorrow
that she regarded all visible emotion as an outburst of the certain
sympathy to be expected from her hearers. "Now you know why it is,
Reuben," she continued, "that I feel so glad that you had no hand in
anything of this; for you must overlook the anger that I showed at
that time. I've been sorry for it often since, and feared you'd count
me over-bold for talking as I did. Not that I'm changed, Reuben, nor
think one bit the less of Adam for what's happened. No; and though all
the world should turn their backs on him, I'd stand by his side; and
to prove it I must find him out and tell him that, in spite of all
they've told him, in heart and tongue I've never been untrue to him."
And, filled with the desire of seeing the man she loved, Eve clasped
her hands and sat trying to revolve her plans, while Reuben commenced
pacing the little room with a troubled air.

Suddenly bringing himself to a stand before Eve, he said, "Eve, be
sure your sin will find you out."

"No, Reuben--no;" and she put up her hand as if to avert the
continuance of any homily: "'tis of no good talking like that. Sorrow
has sealed up my heart against taking condemnation or comfort from
anything of that sort."

"It isn't of you I'm thinking," he exclaimed. "Oh," he cried, giving
vent to his pent-up feelings, "down into what a pitfall a minute's evil
passion may fling a man! To think that I, while I was crying vengeance
against others, was drawing down the wrath of God upon my own head,
stamping myself with the brand of Cain, and doing the devil's work by
sending men to death with all their sins still heavy on their souls!"

"Reuben, what is it you mean?" and seizing hold of him with both her
hands, Eve gazed into his face.

"That the thought you had was true," he said, "and that 'twas me who
dropped the paper in that told them where the Lottery would be found;"
and a tremor ran through Reuben's frame: his pulses for a moment
quickened, and then grew faint and seemed to die away; while Eve
uttered neither word nor sound: her eyes drooped, her hold relaxed,
and tottering she sank back into the seat behind her, and there sat
motionless and still as one carved out of stone.

The abandonment of hope, the unutterable despair of face and form,
so unlike anything which Reuben had ever seen in Eve, touched him as
no reproaches could have done. That depth of misery which words can
neither describe nor express pierced his inmost soul and added to the
stings with which conscience was already smiting him. Not for the act
of betrayal, for had there been no Eve to prompt him Reuben would have
looked upon it as an act of justice that he should aid the law against
men who set order and government at defiance, and though each man on
board had met his death Reuben would have held his conscience free of
any tittle of reproach; but, equitable and unyielding to himself as
well as to others, he full well knew that when he wrote the words which
sealed the Lottery's fate justice was clean gone out of his mind. He
neither knew nor cared what might become of the men whose safety he
betrayed: the whole rancor of his hate was turned against his rival;
and the paper he flung into the rendezvous window was as much a blow
aimed at Adam as if he had dealt him a thrust and had stabbed him in
the dark.

"Eve," he said, "words are but poor things at a time like this, and if
I spoke from now till never I couldn't make you see by them the misery
I feel; but if you'll trust me this far, I swear by Him who sees us
both and knows our hearts that no stone shall be unturned, no thing
undone. I'll walk London over, and neither rest day nor night till I
find out Adam Pascal and his comrade and tell them the whole truth.
And when I say this," he added, his face working with emotion, "don't
fancy 'tis because of love of you, Eve: I know that, come what may, we
never can be nothing more than friends now; but oh--" and he held out
his hands toward her--"let's at least be that, Eve: let me help you to
set yourself clear with the man who, be he what he may, it seems you've
given all your heart to; and you--you help me to rid myself of the
thought that I've led into sin and hurried on to death fellow-creatures
whose godless lives I'd now give my own to save. Together, if we set
our minds to work, there's no knowing what we mayn't do yet. Warrants
have been quashed and pardons given when men have reached the very
gallows' foot; and as for getting in, why Mr. Osborne knows Newgate
prison, every inch, from going there with old Silas Told when he was
living, and he'll do anything for me; so there'll be no fear about
that. And you know _me_, Eve: you know how when I'm set upon a thing I
strain my utmost nerve to get it done;" and, pausing, he stood watching
with mingled hope and fear the effect of his words--first, the flush
of spreading color, then the quivering mouth and eyes, and finally the
rush of tears which lifted up and cleared away that stone-like gloom.

A ray of hope seemed once more near, and catching at the feeblest
chance of being brought again face to face with Adam, Eve, unable to
speak, stretched out her hand, which Reuben took, grasped it almost
to pain, then let it go, and with it every hope of love that lingered
still for Eve.

The rest of the time was spent in explanations of the various incidents
relating to the all-engrossing event, the details which bore upon it,
the circumstances which surrounded it, until, from following out all
these into their different channels, Reuben began to have a clearer
conception of the men, their characters, their individual virtues and
collective failings, growing interested in them almost against his
will. The hour was late before he recollected that until he reached his
home he could hardly settle his plans so as to secure an entrance into
the prison on the following day. Bidding Eve good-night, he left the
house and walked away, only stopping at the turn of the street to step
into the road and cast his wistful gaze up to the window of the room
which to him now was as the tomb of his dead love.

An ordinary workingman standing in an obscure street is not a figure
to arouse much interest, and Reuben's stolid face gave little index to
the varied emotions which surged within his troubled heart. He was able
to return the gruff "Good-night!" the watchman gave, and the old man,
passing on, went wondering as to the cause of such anxious survey on
Reuben's part. For as he stood his thoughts ran here and there, and by
the magic of their power showed to his view the long-gone joys of other
days. He watched the struggling birth of love, scorched himself in its
flame, and felt by turns the tortures and delights its presence gives
to those who live on hope alone: then sadly saw it fade from out his
sight, sicken and faint almost to death, and yet it did not die until
by that one action he had robbed it of life and killed it evermore.
Yes, love was dead, and love was Eve; and for Reuben May the Eve he had
loved so fondly lived no longer.




CHAPTER XXXV.


During the time which had elapsed since the night on which Eve Pascal
and Reuben May renewed their bond of friendship many an anxious
incident had occurred to test its value and cement its strength.

Jerrem and Adam were familiar names to Reuben now, and the men who
bore them were often before his eyes and constantly in his thoughts.
Prepared as Reuben had been for undergoing much awkwardness in
delivering himself of the tale he had to tell, he found he had greatly
underrated the pain and humiliation he actually felt when, through the
interest of his friend, he found himself within the walls of Newgate
and in the presence of Adam. Reuben was no coward, yet it needed all
the strength of his strictly-disciplined mind to open up and lay bare
before a rival's eyes those wounds which love had made and time had
had no space to heal. He shrank from placing in front of Adam the
picture of himself and Eve as they had stood in the days when, Adam all
unknown, the balance of a happy future seemed trembling still within
the hand of Fate; and he paused from time to time as he spoke, hoping
some word or sign would make his task more easy; but Adam never spoke
or turned aside his eyes, and under that fixed gaze Reuben was forced
to tell his tale out to the end, constraining his pride to give out
word for word what Eve had said in Adam's praise, and searing the green
memory of his love by making his lips repeat those vows which she had
told him bound her to another.

At length the task was ended, the jealous rage, the mad revenge, was
all confessed; and satisfied that, whatever guilt it might please Adam
to lay to his charge, he had at least shown that Eve was free from any
shadow of stain, Reuben paused, and the two so strangely linked stood
looking at each other with envy, jealousy, distrust clouding their
minds, while a chord of sympathy drew them together as they recognized
a similitude in their actions which made each self-abasement uttered
find an echo in its listener's breast. Proud, stern, unyielding to
emotion as both these men had lived, it was not in them to take comfort
in the shifts and excuses weaker natures find: the hearts that had
refused pity for their neighbors would not entreat it because they
themselves now stood in need. As they had judged their fellows so they
arraigned themselves, and thus unwittingly rendered the first atonement
man is called upon to make.

The sight of Adam's strong, powerful form shaken and bowed down by
the remorse he strove in vain to control moved Reuben strangely. The
haggard pallor of his striking face, the sunken eyes, the untasted
food, the unslept-in bed,--each told its tale of misery and woe, and
opened out to Reuben a depth of despair his own experience hitherto had
furnished him with no gauge to measure. What if with no further warning
he fetched up Eve to Adam's aid? The thought would bear no hesitation:
a thousand jealous "Noes" battled with the suggestion, but Reuben's
better self resolved to have its way, and, seizing the opportunity of
Adam's head being bent down in his arms, Reuben went swiftly out and
along down to the keeper's room, where Eve had been left impatiently
awaiting his return.

Although the grating of the hinge roused Adam, he neither stirred nor
moved until, satisfied by the unbroken silence that Reuben had left him
to himself, he ventured to raise his head. Where could he go? where
hide himself from human gaze? And as the thought of all his shame came
crowding to his mind he started up and wildly stared around, and then
around again, seeing each time the walls, which looked so near, draw
nearer still. No hope! no hope! Here he must live until the hour when
those who brought him here would drag him forth to swear away his
comrade's life. O God! how helpless he felt! and as he let himself drop
down each limb gave way and nerveless fell, as if Dejection claimed him
for her own. The time had been when Adam's mind was racked by thoughts
of what lay in the hearts of those he had left behind: their pictured
hatred and contempt stung him to madness; the words they would say,
the curses they were uttering, seemed ever ringing in his ears. But
Reuben's tale had for the time swept this away and filled its place
with dark remorse for what he had done to Jerrem. True, Reuben had
shown that Jerrem's hand had wrought his own and their destruction,
but what of that? Adam through him had wreaked his vengeance on them
all--had, Judas-like, delivered them to death: henceforth, branded and
disgraced, he must be an outcast or a wanderer. As this fallen spectre
of himself rose up and flitted in his sight a cry of wild despair burst
forth, wrenched from the depths of his proud heart--a cry which some
one near sent echoing back; and as it came his hands were caught, and
Pity seemed to stretch her arms and fold him to her breast.

Was it a nightmare he was waking from--some hideous dream in which our
bodies slumber while our fancies live a lifetime? Would this vision
of Eve (for Eve it was who knelt close by his side, her arms around
his neck) melt away and fade as many a one of her had done before? She
calls him love--her love, the husband of her heart. What! he, this
guilty outcast--can he be this to any one, and most of all to Eve?

A finger's touch seemed laid upon the veil which hitherto had shut out
hope from Adam's view, and as it shrivelled up and rolled away the
light revealed that Mercy still sat throned on high, and bowing down
his head on Eve's neck he let his stricken soul take comfort in the
thought.

       *       *       *       *       *

But while Adam was thus cast down under suffering, sorrow had taken but
a slight hold on Jerrem, who, after the first shock produced by the
horrors of a place then branded as "the darkest seat of woe this side
of hell," gradually regained his old elasticity, and was soon ready to
treat, laugh and drink with all who came near him. His merry jokes, his
quaint sea-songs, the free handling he gave to his plentiful supply of
money,--all served to ensure his popularity, so that, instead of the
man sunk under misery and despair whom Reuben, after leaving Adam, had
girded himself up to encounter, he came upon Jerrem rollicking and
gay, a prime favorite with all the authorities, and a choice spirit
amid the crew of tried and untried prisoners who in those days crowded
together in the foul wards of Newgate.

Fresh from the sight of Adam's dark remorse, filled with compunction
at the thought of all the ills their joint passions had hurled on
Jerrem's head, Reuben had invested Jerrem with a sense of wrong, to
make reparation for which he had come prepared to offer whatever
sacrifice he should demand. To find the man for whom all this feeling
had been conjured up reckless and unconcerned, casting oaths against
his ill-luck one moment and cutting jokes at his possible fate the
next, jarred upon Reuben terribly, and made him at once decide that it
would be worse than useless to urge upon him any necessity for taking
thought for his soul when he was so utterly reckless as to what would
become of his body. The story Reuben had to tell of himself and Eve,
the betrayal, and the suspicions it had aroused against Eve in Adam,
merely affected Jerrem as a matter for surprise and curiosity. He
seemed pleased to hear that Eve was close at hand, but still expressed
no wish to see her. He talked about Adam, and with a painful absence of
all malice told Reuben to say to him that he'd best lay it thick on his
back, so that the judge and jury would let the other chaps go free. The
circumstance of being brought to London to be tried seemed to afford
him immense satisfaction--a thing, he said, that hadn't happened for
sixty years and more, since old ---- swung for it; and then he fell
to wondering how soon that might be his fate, and if so how many from
Polperro would make the stretch to come so far. He'd promise them it
shouldn't be for nothing: he'd show the Cornishmen that he could cut
his capers game. Only one subject seemed able to sober or subdue his
reckless spirit, and this was any mention of Joan or Uncle Zebedee: to
them the poor soul seemed to cling with all the love his nature could
command. And when Reuben, instructed by Eve, told him how stricken
down the old man lay, and farther on promised to write for him all
the messages he wished to send to Joan, a heart of wax seemed given
to his keeping, in which it now must be his care to mould the little
good there yet was time to teach. And so it happened that in all his
future visits--and every hour that Reuben had to spare was given up
to Jerrem--Joan was the theme that threaded all their discourse, and
by her power Jerrem's soft heart and softer nature became to Reuben
as an open page, wherein he read of actions in which good and bad
were so mixed up and jumbled that in the very midst of his reproof
and condemnation Reuben was often forced to stand abashed before some
act of generous pity which found no echo in his former life. And out
of this humility, which grew in strength, there sprang forth greater
merits than from all the weary efforts he made at working out his own
atonement; for Reuben, like Adam, had been over-satisfied about his
own rectitude, and took pride in the knowledge that if ever he had
committed a wrong he had acknowledged it freely and expiated it to
the uttermost farthing; while Jerrem, for the first time in his life
brought to see guilt in what he had counted pleasure, scarce dared to
listen to a hope of mercy for himself, but rather craved Reuben to beg
it for the many who had been thoughtless sharers in his folly. His
ruling desire was to see Joan once more, and no sooner was he told that
the admiralty session had begun and that his day of trial, although not
fixed, was near at hand, than he begged Reuben to write and ask Joan to
delay her promised visit no longer; and this Reuben did, adding on his
own account that, from what the lawyer said, it would be best she came
at once by the coach which would reach London on the following Thursday
week, on which day Reuben would be waiting to receive her.

Now, at the onset of this disaster had such a letter reached Polperro
not a man in the place but, short of knowing it would cost his life,
would have risked all else to go to London, and if Jerrem was to die
give him courage by mustering round their comrade at the last. But
the downpour of disaster had cowed these daring spirits, and the men
who had not known what fear meant so long as success was secure now
trembled and gave way under the superstitious certainty that Ill-luck
was following them and Misfortune had marked them for her own. Their
energies paralyzed, they succumbed to what they looked upon as Fate,
and in most cases were seized without a struggle and led off to the
nearest prisons without an effort on their own part toward resistance.

The money over which, from the small scope for spending it, they had
seemed so lavish and reckless, when needed for lawyers and counsel and
bribes went but a small way; and though they made a common purse of all
their hoards, not a day passed without some house being stripped of the
substance which adorned it, so that money might be got for the husband,
the son, the brothers who had brought these treasures home. The women,
on their knees, pressed on the farmers' wives their chintzes, their
lace, their gaudy stock of jewelry, and when this market failed toiled
along to Liskeard, Plymouth and Launceston, carrying their china,
silver plate and bowls in the hope of finding somebody to buy them.

With a revenue cutter--often two--always in sight, landing parties
of king's men, who, recalling ugly thoughts of the hated press-gang,
roamed hither and thither, ready to seize any one who happened to
show his face; with half the husbands, sons and brothers in Plymouth
clink or Bodmin jail, and the rest skulking in farm-houses or lying
hidden in the secret places; with plenty vanishing and poverty drawing
nigh,--the past circumstances which had led to this desolation were
swallowed up in the present misery it had entailed upon them; and
though every one now knew the whole story as it stood--how that through
Jerrem writing to Eve she had had it in her power to tell Reuben May,
her former lover, who, led on by jealousy, had betrayed them to the
revenue-men--so familiar had Reuben's good services to Jerrem become
known that it was taken as only one more of his many friendly actions
that he should write to Joan, urging her to come to London without
delay, and promising to meet her and see that she was taken care of.
If any among them thought that Joan would go probably to Eve's home,
they made no mention of it, for Eve's name was by a tacit understanding
banished from their mouths, and the memory of her lay as a seal to that
dark sepulchre wherein, with bitter scorn and hate, Adam lay buried.

There was no question now of Uncle Zebedee going, for the confinement,
the excitement and the degradation had been too much for the old man,
whose free and happy life had never known trouble or restraint, and
his mind had gradually weakened under the burden imposed upon it; so
that now, except when some unexpected incident roused the flickering
flame of memory, the past few months were blotted from his mind, and
in company with Jonathan--who, broken down by ill-usage and turned
out of prison to die, had managed to crawl back to the friends he knew
he should find shelter with--he roamed about harmless and contented,
always watching for the Lottery's return, and promising, when she did
come back, that he would give them all a fling such as Polperro had not
seen for many a day.

It was an easy matter to cheat him now, and when, her journey all
arranged, Joan stepped into the boat which was to take her round to
Plymouth and left old Zebedee standing on the shore, raising his thin
cracked voice to fetch her ear with cheery messages for Jerrem and
for Adam, whom she was going to meet, her cup of bitterness seemed to
overflow.

  _The Author of "Dorothy Fox."_

  [TO BE CONTINUED.]




A PIVOTAL POINT


We are but beginning to understand what this America of ours is to
do for the Old World. If we consider it under the figure of a vast
steamship journeying to the relief of the mother nations, surely the
beef and the flour, the cotton and the corn, even the inventions, with
which it is freighted, form the least portion of its immeasurable
cargo of supplies. Now, imagining our republic to be such a vessel,
if Alaska be the stern and Florida the prow turned toward the other
hemisphere for the peaceful conquest thereof, then must New York on
the left hand and Texas upon the right be, in the days to come, the
great paddle-wheels which shall drive it onward--New York not more so
in a commercial than Texas in an agricultural sense. But it is with
Texas only that we have here to do, and this in order to detail certain
things hitherto unpublished which may not be without their use to the
Humes and Motleys, the Froudes and Macaulays, of our nation in the
wonderful future.

It is well to bear in mind from the outset that Texas is by far the
largest of the States. To get even an idea of this, place within its
boundaries New England, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio
and Pennsylvania: even then you must pack into the crevices between
these two or three granite boulders each of the size of Massachusetts
to make a solid territory as large as Texas. As to that, however,
Alaska is vast, and so is Sahara. If you set out upon a journey south
and south-westward, beginning at the Potomac, and visit every Southern
State in its order upon the map, you will find--and that almost
immediately upon your arrival in Texas--that you have reached that
State of them all which surpasses the others as much in prosperity as
it does in dimensions. Near as Texas is to the equator, the oxygen of
its abnormal growth is perceived by the newcomer in almost his first
breath. There is a combination of causes for this. The Puritan who
landed on Plymouth Rock gave character to, and transmitted himself
down, the after ages of New England history; and the same is true
of the influence of the Connecticut Austin who in 1820 began the
settlement of Texas. The lapse of two centuries may have given a more
earthward direction to the old energy, but the energy itself is there;
and, somehow, the character and history of this larger New England of
the West have been along the same line. Everything has helped forward
the prosperity of the State. General health, moderate taxation,
fertility of soil, astonishing diversity of product, cheap and rapid
construction of railroads along lines both of latitude and longitude,
immeasurable reserves of alternate sections of land held sacred for
education,--these are some of the causes which are attracting an
immigration of about a hundred thousand a year to a realm so vast that
the two millions already there seem but pioneers of the coming hosts.

But that which strikes the stranger most is the seemingly small
proportion of negroes to whites in comparison with other Southern
States; and this is becoming more marked every year. In one thing the
population seems to be unanimous, and that is that Texas shall remain,
vast as it is, one undivided State, a recent legislature having set
apart three millions of acres toward the construction of a new capitol
at Austin which shall be worthy of that one of the United States which
is also, and in itself, an empire so much larger than Germany that
to bring the balance to a level you must cast into the scale with it
Jamaica, Holland, Denmark, Belgium and Greece. There is the momentum
as of its enormous bulk in the prosperity of Texas; and not a man of
us, however wide awake he is, but is a Rip Van Winkle as to what it is
coming to be.

But all this is said in order to something else. Heaven knows that the
history of Texas was romantic enough during the era of the mysterious
Aztec, then of the Frenchman, the Spaniard, the Mexican, and after that
of the original and unadulterated Texan of the battles of '36, and yet
there is a page, unprinted hitherto, of its annals, in connection with
the Confederacy, which is, in some senses, the most interesting of
all. To appreciate it one must remember that, unlike any other State,
Texas was once a republic which had won its independence with its own
sword. Of its own free will it deliberately abdicated its nationality
as such to become one of the United States. When the fever of Secession
set in, of all the Southern States it was, on account both of its size
and strategic location, the most important. An anecdote in regard to
Mr. Lincoln may illustrate this. One of the early settlers of Texas
was a gentleman whom I will designate as Mr. S----. There is hardly a
citizen of the State but will know who is meant, so long and thoroughly
has he been recognized over its broad domain for his indomitable
energy, sagacity and magnificent success, as well as for an integrity
and high sense of honor unimpeached by any. Except as he was compelled
by the very qualities of his clear-headed character to be a Union man
during the rebellion, Mr. S---- has never meddled in politics, and no
man stands higher to-day in the estimation of the best men in Texas
than he. As a Union man he was obliged to absent himself from the
State during the war, and was in Washington in 1864. As soon as Mr.
Lincoln knew of his arrival he sent for him, and held three different
interviews with him in regard to Texas. During these conversations
the President dwelt at length and with the utmost energy upon the
necessity, in a military sense, of Texas to the Federal cause. "If we
held Texas," he said, "we should not only outflank the Confederacy by
land, but by water also;" and he developed the statement in all its
details. "Go back," he entreated Mr. S----, "and say to your State that
if it will return to the Union the slaves will not be interfered with."

"But the Emancipation Proclamation has been issued," Mr. S----
exclaimed.

"No matter for that. We will consent to any plan for gradual
emancipation the Texans will make," replied the President: "they may
arrange for it not to go into effect for forty years to come if they
will but return. We will fix it to suit them. One thing is certain,"
he went on: "even if the Confederacy should succeed with the other
Southern States, we will never give up Texas. With it we can fence in
the Confederacy, and whatever befalls we can never let Texas go--never!"

After much further conversation the President led Mr. S---- to the
window and pointed to the trees. "Do you see," he said, "how the buds
upon those boughs are swelling as they yield to the coming spring and
summer? So is it in regard to the matters of which we are speaking:
there is a Power mightier than we which, inevitable, irresistible, is
dealing with them. Upon that Power we also can afford to wait. But we
will never give up Texas, Mr. S----: never!"

Let it be added here, as casting light upon the characteristics of
Texas, that it was never conquered by the Federal forces. Although
attacked often and from almost every quarter, it invariably repelled
the assault. When it succumbed at last it was from within, and not
as the result of any victory achieved by Federal troops upon its own
soil. But all this is merely to show that, superior in many respects
to every other Southern State, the case of Texas was unique in almost
every point of view; and this is stated with reference to what is now
to follow.

When the rebellion began, General Sam Houston, who had been president
of Texas when it was a republic, was governor of the State. In common
with the overwhelming majority of the people, Houston was utterly
hostile to Secession. With them he knew too well what Texas had been
and how it had come into the Union. There was a certain grand inertia
of the great State which resisted the noisy efforts of South Carolina
to drag it out, as a stately ship resists, of itself and although
its crew be passive, the attempts of a little tug to tow it along.
Not one-fourth of the people of the State voted, when the test came,
for Secession, and no man opposed it more determinedly than did its
governor. If, like Texas among the States, he towered among men, almost
a giant in stature and breadth of person, like Texas also he was
peculiar every way. It required men of marked individuality to settle
the country, to wrest it from Mexico, to erect it into a republic; and
no Texan was more emphatically "himself and nobody else" than was the
ponderous chief magistrate. Manifold stories illustrative of this are
still afloat there: let one suffice, even if it shows also the weakness
of the man. One morning when he was president of the republic the
envoy from France called to confer with him upon an affair of critical
importance. The executive mansion was but a log-cabin boarding-house at
the time, and the only thing to be done was for the portly president
to promenade up and down the long porch in front of the building, the
envoy, who was the most polished and nervous of Frenchmen, walking by
his side. But a small nurse-girl was engaged in drawing a screaming
baby upon the porch in a roughly-constructed child's wagon. When
he passed it the president said, with the politeness which always
characterized him when anything female was in question, "Will you be so
kind as to roll your charge somewhere else?" The nurse merely stared
at him, and continued to drag the squalling infant up and down upon
the squeaking wheels, the president and the envoy conferring together
as well as they could as they walked. "My young friend," the former
remonstrated at last as he halted before the girl, "I will esteem it
a singular favor if you will go elsewhere." But it was little the
nurse cared for the affairs of empires, and she paid no attention
to the request. It so chanced that when the rival occupants of the
porch passed each other the next time it was opposite the steep steps
leading down into the yard, the Frenchman being upon that side. As the
president came upon the rolling nuisance, now noisier than before,
he whirled about. "I had rather," he shouted to the astonished girl,
his face ablaze, his arms extended, "meet all hell in harness, and be
dragged down the streets of the New Jerusalem by wild horses, than meet
your horrible cart!" and, glancing around for his companion, he saw
that in the violence of his explosion he had hurled the represented
majesty of France down the steps and into the dirt.

He was an older man when Jeff Davis came along trundling _his_
species of nuisance upon their common path, but he was no milder in
his denunciation. Morning, noon and night, in public addresses and
in private conversation, he left no shadow of doubt in the mind of
any as to his opinion of Secession and its certain result. "Texas
and the Federal government are like two noble mastiffs," he told the
people from the steps of the Capitol at Austin in the earliest days
of the rebellion, "and these miserable politicians are like little
curs snapping and snarling about them to provoke them to fight. When
the mastiffs are launched at last into bloody battle these wretched
curs, holding themselves carefully out of danger, will circle about
the big dogs which are tearing each other to pieces, with their shrill
bow-wow-wows." And the writer remembers how well the old hero imitated
as he said it, and with more accuracy than dignity, the vicious
feebleness of the querulous spaniels.

Nor was the governor backward in doing also what he could to save his
State from the coming chaos. A well-known and efficient lawyer of Texas
hastened to Washington and had an audience with President Buchanan at
the very outset of things, commissioned, doubtless, to do so by General
Houston. "Relieve the officer now in command of that department," he
urged upon Buchanan, "and appoint Houston in his place. Do that, do it
at once, and we can assure you that you need have no fear of seeing
Texas secede." The poor President shrank aghast from the proposition.
We know how clerical in appearance Mr. Buchanan was, especially in the
spotless whiteness of his ample necktie. "When I mentioned Houston to
him," the lawyer said afterward, "he turned as pale as his cravat."

What was to be done? Governor Houston demanded it of himself as he
sat and whittled shingles in his easy-chair at the executive office
in the basement of the Capitol. General Twiggs was in command of the
United States troops in that department, and they comprised one-fourth
of the entire army then at the disposal of the Federal government.
There were one hundred and twenty-one commissioned officers then
in Texas--three thousand troops in thirteen forts and ten camps,
including seven companies of the Third Infantry. At the general's
head-quarters in San Antonio were fifty-five thousand dollars in cash,
and thirty-five thousand stand of arms and seventy cannon within
reach, with horses, mules, ammunition, wagons, tents, in abundance.
In other words, General Twiggs, with a disciplined army and military
stores of the value of over three millions of dollars, was available
for resistance to Secession. But what about the officer in command?
When General Twiggs shortly before had gone on leave of absence to
Georgia, he had left Robert E. Lee in charge, remarking even at that
early date, "If Old Hickory were President he could hold things." But
Twiggs had returned, and Lee had left Texas, saying, "I am going to
Virginia to turn planter. There will be at least one soldier the less
to do the fighting." Could the governor rely upon General Twiggs?
Captain R.M. Potter of the army, then in Texas, assures the writer that
Twiggs did it merely as a ruse and to save time, but the governor had
received tidings from him two months before that he could rely upon
him. As it was, the United States troops were scattered six hundred
miles along the frontier, and something must be done, secretly and
instantly. Governor Houston knew that he could count upon many thousand
volunteers. And not upon men merely as Union men: throughout the State
were multitudes of those whose devotion to Houston was more almost of a
religious nature than a matter of politics. These "Houston men" would
have rallied to him rifle in hand, more or less indifferent to the
cause he espoused, so that if there was to be a fight, and Houston was
to command, he could have had plenty of soldiers, whoever and whatever
was to be fought for or against.

And so the old governor sat awaiting events, a King Canute upon the
seashore, and the ocean already lapping his feet. Almost every one
of the many papers of Texas was ablaze with the prairie-fires of
Secession. Everywhere the men were being rapidly organized into
companies, ladies were making and presenting banners, editors,
recruits, haranguing politicians rushing into the affair as purely from
sentimental considerations, and with as little sound consideration,
as the youngest and most frivolous of the excited beauties who were
decking out lovers and brothers to their death. But the Secession
convention assembled at Austin: how could the governor prevent it?
Resisting the importunities of inflamed, remonstrating, exasperated,
vituperative, threatening men, the old man sat in the executive
department silently whittling away, a cypress shingle in one hand, a
jack-knife in the other. The swarming politicians could not but revere
and be afraid of him. Was he not "Old Sam," "the hero of San Jacinto"?
He had been president of the republic, United States Senator, possible
President of the United States. He was, as has been said, a very large
man, of commanding aspect, and he threw his whole weight, so to speak,
into his detestation and denunciation of Jeff Davis and all his crew.

As he sat and whittled he could not but hear the uproar in the
legislative hall overhead in which the convention was assembled: the
vehement applause of clapping hands and stamping feet reached his ears,
even if he could not hear the eloquence which had aroused it. So far,
he had fired blank shot only from behind his entrenchments, but he
outnumbered--and all knew it--in his one person, and ten times over,
the throngs of brave but mistaken men discussing and rushing through
grandiloquent resolutions above, not a man of whom but was thinking
all along of the governor down stairs as of a sort of legitimate Guy
Fawkes who might at any moment blow their noisy parliament to the moon.
"What do you think Old Sam will do?" That was the question of the day
with them beyond every other. Alas! that was the conundrum which the
governor, ponder as he might, was so far unable to answer. He had
conquered and driven out the Mexicans; had sent the Texan soldiers home
with the one charge, "Go and plant corn;" had seen Texas grow into a
republic under his care; had rejoiced when he had helped place it in
the Union. Now the imperial State was in the act of being hurled into
what he confidently regarded as the most causeless of catastrophes;
but what could he do? That was the supreme question. "What can I do to
prevent it? What ought I to do, to-day and before it is too late?"

Early one morning a man entered the executive office, locked the door
behind him and walked up to the pondering governor, his felt hat in
his hand. It was not his name, but I will content myself with calling
him Jack Jones. You would not have looked at him a second time had
you passed him in the street, for he was merely a tall, pallid-faced,
pigeon-chested, stoop-shouldered victim, apparently, of consumption,
and as mild as could be desired in tone and manner. Governor Houston
knew him well, however--knew him so well that he gave him a cordial
reception and listened to him to the end as his visitor proceeded
to unfold his plans. They were exceedingly simple, and in substance
this: "I hate these scoundrels of the convention as much as you do,
governor, and you know it, and you know _me_! I have got eight hundred
men of the same stripe up in Burnet county. We have plenty of guns and
ammunition, and are more than ready. We can save Texas. Only say the
word, governor, and we will clean out the convention in twenty-four
hours. What do you say?"

The governor debated with himself as he sat. Suppose he consented.
There would be a fight, possibly a bloody massacre. Might not the
Secessionists call another convention to meet at Galveston, Houston,
somewhere else? In any case, war, civil war in its worst form, would
follow. Hat in hand, the messenger waited for his answer. "Thank you,
but not quite yet," the governor said. "Go back to Burnet county and
hold your men in readiness. When I send for you come, and come quick."

There was no time to be lost. "But these men: how am I to feed them
when they come?" the chief magistrate asked of himself.

"About two months before the passage of the Secession ordinance," said
the Mr. S---- to whom allusion has already been made, and in reluctant
answer to the questioning of the writer, "General Houston, Mrs. Houston
and some of their children drove out to my house in the country near
Austin, ostensibly upon a friendly visit. General Houston and myself
took seats on the porch, while the ladies retired to the parlor. After
some of the usual small-talk, the general remarked of the roses then
in bloom, 'I see you have a beautiful garden: let us take a walk among
them.' We did so, but soon took our seats in the arbor. There, after
pledging me to secrecy, he said, 'Although Mr. Lincoln is not yet
inaugurated, he has sent a Mr. Lander to me as an agent to assure me of
all the aid I need the day he takes office if I can but hold the State
until then. General Twiggs,'the governor added,'has agreed to do what
he can to help me. I have eight hundred men waiting to come at a word.
Volunteers will pour in. I am sure that I can, with the aid of General
Twiggs, hold Texas against any force the Confederacy can send. But my
men must be supplied with powder and lead, and must be fed. Above all,'
added the governor, 'they must have plenty of coffee. Can you undertake
the task? I am not going to rob the State treasury, but I pledge you
my honor as governor that you shall be paid in the end. Abundant
assurances have been made me from Washington that the money will be on
hand as soon as Lincoln is inaugurated, and no appropriation will be
necessary from the State.'

"The next day," continued Mr. S---- in narrating the facts to me, "I
saw the governor in his office. Locking himself with me into an inner
apartment, we discussed the whole matter, and I agreed to supply five
hundred thousand rations, and as many more as possible, the governor
insisting again and again upon there being, whatever else might be
lacking, an abundance of coffee. For these rations I was to be paid at
the rate of thirty cents each, and transportation. The governor then
wrote out the contract, spelling out every word aloud, according to his
habit, as he did so. I hastened away with the contract duly signed,
and, going down to Houston and Galveston, I purchased two hundred and
fifty-seven sacks of Rio coffee to begin with--all I could find--and
enough percussion-caps, bacon, rice and flour to meet the emergency
impending. Meanwhile, I could not but laugh at what seemed to me the
puerile efforts at fortification going on in Galveston;" and my friend
paused, as he told me the story yesterday, to unroll and put into my
hand the commission given him by the governor as quartermaster-general
upon his staff with the rank of colonel.

"In two weeks," continued Mr. S----, "I was back again, but the instant
the governor had locked me with him into his inner office he turned to
me with rage in his face. 'Sir,' he said to me in a manner and tone of
voice which I can never forget, 'Twiggs is a traitor!' Then he sank
into a chair, the tears trickling down his heroic countenance, and
sobbed like a child. He then clenched his fist and smote the table
with what seemed to be a suppressed curse, long and deep. After he had
somewhat recovered he repeated to me the message Captain Smith had
brought him from Twiggs. It was in such cautious language as to the
general's isolation and want of instructions from Washington that I
suggested to Governor Houston that possibly he misunderstood General
Twiggs. 'No, sir,' the governor exclaimed, again smiting the table with
his huge fist, 'there can be no mistake. Twiggs is a traitor! We are
to have a fearful civil war;' and he appealed to God for wisdom and
protection in a manner which touched me to the heart. In a few weeks
thereafter," added Mr. S----, "the ordinance of Secession was passed,
and Twiggs surrendered everything to a stageload of politicians and a
preconcerted show of a few men improvised as soldiers whom a corporal's
guard of loyal men could have easily dispersed if there had been any
one to give orders. About a year after this an ex-governor of Texas and
an ardent Secessionist whispered to me in the street, 'Take my advice
and destroy that contract with General Houston.' How it had become
known that there was such a contract is and for ever will be a mystery
to me. But the pity of the whole thing was that Governor Houston was
not the man he had once been--was too old."

Mr. S---- was perhaps the largest merchant at the capital, but the
choicest of his merchandise just then was seven tons of rifle-powder.
This was seized ere long by the Confederate authorities. When Mr. S----
protested against it and refused Confederate money in payment, the
State treasurer hastened to give him his price for the powder in silver
thalers which happened to be rusting in the vaults. Would the Federal
authorities have been as complaisant toward a man in their midst known
to be a rebel and who refused greenbacks? Surely, as in the hesitation
already alluded to of Twiggs and Lee, while the feelings of the leaders
were fired their judgment must to the last have remained but half
convinced as to the justice, and therefore ultimate success, of the
Confederate cause. Gallant as, in most instances, they were, they would
have struck more unhesitatingly, more vigorously, more victoriously,
had every man been able to put his entire self, brain and conscience as
well as heart, into the blow.

It was extremely little of themselves that the Union men of Texas
invested in their show of obedience to Secession when that was
required of them at last. How well the writer recalls the rueful
aspect of a body of these who, to save themselves from worse things,
had been organized into a military company! They comprised some of the
best citizens of Austin, but Falstaff himself did not have, morally
speaking, as forlorn a set of recruits when they formed into dismal
lines under the trees of Court-house Square. Every man had his weapons,
but they dispensed with music: gladly would they have marched and
countermarched without a flag also. But there were ladies ardent in the
cause of Secession who, unasked and with malicious haste, constructed
a particularly large and gorgeous Confederate flag for them. If it was
presented with enthusiasm, it was received by the dolorous warriors
in sepulchral silence, and the wheelings hither and thither of the
ununiformed heroes thereafter were more funereal, if possible, than
before. The one spark of hope in every bosom was that in some way
Governor Houston or somebody else might suddenly employ them against
the flag, more hateful to them than Fluellen's leek, which they were
constrained for the time to flaunt. "Never mind, men," a certain
Mr. O---- in their ranks whispered to them as they sadly trudged
along--"never you mind. Some day we may prove to be the _mucilage_
around which a Federal army will rally."

It so happened that the writer was about this time at the house of
Captain Whitely, a noble-hearted officer of the army who remained true
to the Union. It was in San Antonio, and one morning General Twiggs
drove up in his carriage and entered the parlor. He was a large and
unwieldy man, with an exceedingly red face, and he sat for a time
in sombre silence. "Whitely," he said at last, "what can I do? The
Southern people hate the North as Comanches do the whites, and the
North returns the compliment. Five times have I written to General
Scott, and not a word of instructions has he sent me. What can I do?"

Ignorant as the writer was of such matters, he easily conjectured,
what Twiggs must have well known, that all despatches to and fro were
intercepted. "Ah! what an opportunity!" he thought as he looked at
the hesitating man--"what an opportunity for you to act on your own
responsibility! You may become, if you do, as one of the immortals."

"You are my superior officer," was the only reply of Captain Whitely,
who knew what Twiggs had already determined to do, himself in
consequence thereof soon after a prisoner of war.

And so in a few days Governor Houston's fears were realized. Everything
was surrendered to the Confederacy. As Twiggs rode through the streets
of San Antonio with his disgraced army, many of them weeping as they
went, in such triumphal procession as Rome never knew in its worst
degradation, it was not for nothing that San Antonio had given a large
majority against Secession. An old watchmaker known by everybody
shouted as Twiggs went by, "Hurrah for General Hull!" But the people
did not recognize the name of the man who in other days had dishonored
America by his surrender. They should know what was meant. Mounting
upon a goods box, his white hair upon the breeze, and in a voice heard
by all, the aged patriot shouted, "Three cheers for Benedict Arnold!"
In due time, as we know, the name of Twiggs was struck from the Army
List as a coward and traitor, nor did he make a new name for himself
in the Confederate ranks. The paymaster did not hand over the military
chest to the new authorities. Was there not the half conviction as to
Secession in this also? He placed it upon the porch of his house, and
let them take it instead. I know not how true it is, but it is said
that Davis could not be induced afterward to give employment to this
man, whose name has slipped into oblivion from my memory also.

Somehow, there is always a flash of farce even in the agony of the
darkest tragedy. When Twiggs surrendered his stores he demanded that
somebody should receipt to him for the three millions of United
States property which he gave up. Three small politicians stepped
eagerly forward and signed the document. But Twiggs was not content.
"I must have a more responsible name," he said. And so a Mr. M----,
the wealthiest man in San Antonio, was brought in, and, "as a mere
matter of form" he was told, he attached his name beneath that of the
others. Afterward the possible import of what he had done began to
dawn upon Mr. M----. One day, as he walked the troubled streets of San
Antonio, he was observed to stop and soliloquize aloud. "A---- has
signed that paper," he said to himself. "A----? Yes, he is worth about
one thousand dollars. B----, he signed it, and he couldn't raise over
three thousand to save his life. C----? Heavens! he is not worth one
cent! Three millions of dollars! Good Lord! and _I_ am responsible for
it all!" and, slapping his hand upon his forehead, he rushed away to
digest the thing in private.

The hurly-burly is hushed into silence now. Good men and bad, gallant
but mistaken heroes, and those who faltered not in the fiercest blowing
of the terrible storm--the whole period has come and gone. Like the
sudden "northers" peculiar to Texas, the tempest broke upon it and
passed away, leaving its imperial expanse all the greener and more
fruitful, as if enriched by the blood of so many of its noblest sons.
But for my part, as I look back into the darkness of those days, the
central figure of them all is that of the old governor sitting in his
chair in the basement of the Capitol, the tumultuous convention in
session overhead, sorrowfully meditating what it were best to do. As he
sat a day came when the officer of the gathering up stairs summoned the
old man three times to come forward and take the oath of allegiance,
as governor, to the Confederacy. I remember as yesterday the call
thrice repeated--"Sam Houston! Sam Houston! Sam Houston!" but the man
sat silent, immovable, in his chair below, whittling steadily on. The
pert lieutenant-governor stepped at last with brisk willingness upon
the platform, and was sworn in to an official nothingness in Houston's
place. Very early next morning, when the old man went as usual to his
office, he found his seat occupied by his smirk successor, and there
was nothing for him to do but to abandon his last hope of help from any
quarter and retire. Withdrawing to his plantation, he died before the
war ended, a Union man still.

  WILLIAM M. BAKER.




THE MISTAKES OF TWO PEOPLE.


It seemed an extraordinary chance which brought those two people
together upon that dirty little Neapolitan steamer. But then any
incident of our human lives, divorced from the chain of cause and
effect that has been forging since the world began, would seem
an extraordinary chance, just as this did, which really was not
extraordinary at all.

For the lady had been busy all winter in Rome copying in the Borghese
Gallery, and it was not until she had found herself almost alone among
the deserted rooms, whence all her companions of the year had fled
before fear of the fever, that she had also sought some place where
she could paint, and rest from painting when she would, the remainder
of the summer. This and a second-class railway-ticket were what had
brought her to Naples, where she had driven to the Mole and embarked
upon the little steamer just five minutes before the gentleman, who had
come from Rome in a first-class carriage, also stepped upon it.

His appearance there, just upon that day of all days, might be called
stranger than hers. For, really, there was no reason whatever for his
being there that sleepy midsummer day. Indeed, reason had nothing
whatever to do with it. It was brought about by something quite remote
from reason--by an indescribable longing, which was perhaps, however,
as unyielding a link in the chain of cause and effect--or of destiny,
let us say--as any more visible and tangible one.

These two people were not entirely strangers to each other. Fifteen
years before they had spent a summer together in an old farm-house far
away beyond where the sun would set this evening behind old Roman Baiæ.
That farm-house was wonderfully picturesque, although picturesqueness
had been none of its original builder's intention. It had been a sort
of manor-house, built by a blond and robust English family in memory
of the Elizabethan mansion in which, father and son and son's son,
they had thriven and decayed across the sea. Generations had come
and gone since then. The Tudor gables and overhanging stories, like
the Tudor nose in Westminster Abbey, had felt the tooth of time. The
nose is imperious still, although its royal end is broken off, and it
points heavenward with its regal pride not in the least abated with
its proportions. Unlike the Tudor nose, the Tudor gables had weakened,
and sunk and bulged in all sorts of picturesquely-pusillanimous lines
and curves under a soft veil of moss. The house had become a medley
of quaint humps and protuberances, huddled together without rhyme or
reason by the taste or needs of each succeeding heir. But, flooded and
dashed with blooming, radiant neglect, throttled with many-fingered
vines, the gray centre of a rainbow of wild brier, syringa, hollyhocks
and sunflowers, it was a delight to artistic eyes.

"It's only 'cos pa's enjoyed such pore health for long back, and we
bein' all girls, that the ole place looks so like creation," would
always say one of the "girls," thus apologetic of the dilapidation and
decay which were the chief means of the family's support. For never an
artist passed that way that he did not stay his steps and beg to be
sheltered by that quaint old roof for at least a day or two. And when,
gone hence, the strolling artist would sing of the idyllic nook he had
found in a crescent of hills by the sea, where heaven came down to
earth and board was but two dollars a week, others of his kind would be
sure to be lured by echo of his strain to the same spot.

Thus every summer for three years the house had been full of boarders.
Its owners gained thus the means to live during all the year, and also
were able to secure a reservoir of gossip and tittle-tattle from which
to draw refreshing streams during all the arid days between October's
late dahlias and the earliest roses of June.

The two people upon the Neapolitan steamer had met for the first
time in the great dining-room one noon of June. It was at a farmer's
dinner of beef, potatoes and dandelion-greens, finished with a sort
of machicolated decoration of square pieces of rhubarb pie set beside
each plate in saucers--nicked saucers, whereon indigo mandarins floated
airily over sky-blue hills on their pious way from one indigo pagoda
to another. Dancing vines at the open windows spread quaint, shifting
embroidery over the coarse tablecloth, yellow walls and unpainted
floor. The drowsy hum of bees was heard above the iron clatter of
knives and forks. Sweet incense of myriad rose-censers floated above
the vulgar odors of the meal, and the open doorway with its flat white
doorstone was a picture-frame sculptured in foliage and bloom around a
foreground of wild garden, of black sea-weed and sea-shell, roughened
rocks, and then a borderless stretch of blue glittering sea and sky.
There were half a dozen men and women around the table, who chanced at
the moment the new boarder appeared to be elevating half a dozen noses
in the air before the alkaline fumes of the hot biscuits.

She was rather a pretty little thing, with blue eyes, a collar all
awry, and the headless, leafless stalks of what had once been red roses
standing up valiantly in her brown hair.

"What a flutter-budget!" he thought as he saw by the swift, birdlike
motion of her head that indeed flowers must needs have more than
flower-like frames to remain long undecapitated amid all that
breeziness.

And indeed "flutter-budget" was not amiss as a descriptive word for her
who sang oftener than she spoke, because it was her nature to, and who
danced more naturally than she walked, because God had made her so.

It was rather ridiculous to think of her painting pictures. One
could scarcely imagine her doing anything that required a moment's
repose, and therefore was not unnatural the remark whispered by the
monochromatic Miss Grey into the ear of the water-colored Miss Bray as
the newcomer floated to her seat: "_She_ paint! Mmnph! I wouldn't trust
her to paint a yellow dog!"

Miss Grey, by the by, didn't paint: she only taught Art in five lessons
at seventy-five cents a lesson.

But the monochromatic maiden was right. Annie Deane would have made
a queer mess of painting a yellow dog. But if one chose to give her
an order for a flower-piece, then would be seen how she rivalled
the pearly finish of Nature--how she gathered the rare tints, the
marvellous transparencies and shadows, the breath-broken dewiness,
almost even the fragrance of field and garden favorites, upon her
paper. Thus in time even the yellow-dog sceptic was brought to realize
that there are artistic triumphs even for one who quails and cowers
before the ochreous canine.

"Shall I help you to some more of the greens?" were his first words to
her, seeing her indigo mandarins loom up dimly from her nearly empty
plate.

"No, thank you, but I will trouble you for the vinegar," were her first
words to him.

There was nothing novel or suggestive in this, was there? Is there
often anything novel or suggestive in the first greetings we exchange
as we float upon the sea of life with those who hereafter will cause
our wreck or share it?

These two people, He and She, became great friends that summer.
Her fresh, blithe nature was pleasant to him, although, it may be
confessed, its manifestations were sometimes confusing. He was of
rather elephantine temperament, as he was also heroic of stature and
handsome. He was so unswift of speech and motion that she could dance
around him a dozen times before he could say "Jack Robinson;" which, by
the way, he never did say. She often got sadly in the way of his slow,
conscientious sketching from Nature, but he did not complain, for she
was pleasant, he thought, to look upon, even though his palette dried
and the cloud-shadow on hill and sea floated miles away while he did
so.

It was not a sentimental relation that grew up between them. How could
it be when everybody said there was "no sentiment in Ben Shaw, or even
in his pictures"? They were never known to raise any clamor concerning
their "kinship of souls" and all the usual sentimental etcetera. They
liked each other, and took "solid comfort" in the companionship that
made that summer's sketching so much pleasanter than had sketching ever
been for either of them before. That was all.

It was not very long before he very naturally took the place of teacher
and she of pupil, for it was an open secret that she aspired to higher
art than still life, while he, although not six months her senior,
had been longer a student than she. Simpletons that they both were,
they grappled audaciously with the purple, gold-filtered, ever-elusive
and brooding mystery of the distant hills, and struggled with the
infinite suggestiveness of the great, awful sea. They came home every
night from both grapple and struggle with canvases as expressive of
the mighty influences they had labored with as a child's fairy-tale
hints at the divine splendor of mystery of the book of Revelation, and
sat down to their supper of cold beef and doughnuts believing they
feasted on ambrosia and nectar, and lived as divinely as were those
not Massachusetts but Thessalian hills. How insolent is youth, and how
foolish, to us who have outlived it!

Unsymmetrical as this friendship was--that is, so dwarfed on the
sentimental side--there was one of those two silly mortals who thus
fooled themselves with the fancy that this was Olympus and their green
apple-sauce honey of Hymettus who would not have changed places with
the divinest divinity of all the immortal host.

As one moon after another waxed baby-faced and then pined away to a
wan shadow the friends became more inseparable than ever. And, behold!
seeing these things, all the masculine boarders and the "girls" of the
manor-house looked at each other obliquely with an expression that
consorts best with paganism and pig-tails, while the lady-boarders
smiled with that exasperating significance which when given to one's
own affairs makes one yearn for the smiler's scalp. But in spite of
these oblique glances and significant smiles, in spite of everything
indicative of the contrary, they were not an atom in love with each
other.

Unless they both of them fibbed! Which young people in their
circumstances were never known to do.

Nevertheless, one day Annie Deane was sitting in an embrasured window
writing, school-girl fashion, upon an atlas in her lap. She wore a blue
gingham dress in the style of a loose blouse. The skirt was short, and
had no scruples about revealing two nicely-booted feet crossed one over
the other, the toe of one pointing to the zenith, the other toward the
coast of Europe. This was her sketching-costume, and she had not found
time to change it for the more conventional one in which she usually
took tea, as she was hurrying to finish a letter in time for the
butcher, who would soon pass by on his return from Mansfield, to take
to the post-office at Baysville.

The room was spacious, and tried its best to be gloomy. The canopied
bed against the wall was hung with funereal drapery, and reminded one
somehow of a _Cinque-cento_ tomb. When an occupant was extended there
the resemblance could not but be dolorously striking. A tremendous old
chest of drawers opposite, mighty among furniture as Goliath among men,
hung its brass rings massively downward; and I was forcibly reminded
of that chest of drawers the other day when I saw how the sainted dead
of imperial Rome were packed away in the Catacombs of St. Calixtus.
Imagine a chest of drawers which gives an impression that upon pulling
its brass rings one will see, not dainty garments frothy with lace and
ruffles, but a spectacle of rich animal mould and white holy bones!
There were one or two dignified old chairs--judicial, majestic chairs,
which evidently imagined that they impressed the vulgar radicals
of this New World with the idea that in their own country they had
been thrones or something of that sort. It was a most dignified and
impressive room in spite of its rag carpet, its cane-seated rockers,
camp-stools, books, the sketches pinned upon the walls, flowers, and
all the odds and ends of feminine finery that betrayed the levity
of its modern habit. That is, perhaps one might better say it would
have been dignified and impressive had one ever been able to see it
otherwise than as merely an architectural background, like the chairs
behind Giovanni Bellini's gracious Madonnas, to the pretty picture of
youth and content writing there by the seaward window. Everybody always
spoke of Annie Deane as "little," although she was five feet four in
her stockings. Everybody always ran away with the impression--and
treated her accordingly--that she was very young, although she had
seen every day of twenty-five years. "I was born young, and have never
learned much of anything since," she would laughingly say when somebody
had called her "child" and advised her about her manners.

She _was_ a child spiritually, and it certainly seemed as if she would
never be spiritually grown up. Her father had died at sixty, so springy
of step, so airy of movement, so jaunty, so natty, so nice in his No.
3 gaiters and his nobby hats, that to see him ten paces off one would
have sworn he had not twenty years upon his canary-bird head. Annie was
like him, and her head swung and swayed, fluttered and tiptilted on its
graceful neck, as much as his had done as a young canary-bird's ways
are like an old one's.

"Ef the air of that girl ain't enough to make a hoss larf!" said,
with edifying perseverance, the youngest and burnt-umberest of the
burnt-umber maidens with whom they boarded.

Miss Roberta Editha was sentimental and thirty-five. She pressed a
vision of beauty to her virginal breast. Years before she had cut
from some illustrated paper a very pretty picture representing some
strolling actor who played Hamlet and Claude Melnotte upon the boards
of rural theatres. It had miraculously large eyes, a small mouth with
downward curves, and flat rings of hair upon its pallid brow. Its air
was generally cankered and worm-eaten, but Miss Roberta ("Old Bob,"
some of the graceless artists called her behind her back) interpreted
that air as expressive of a soul which found this life of too rank and
coarse a flavor for its daily food. She had cut out this woodcut, and
had worn it for years in a massive heirloom locket around her long,
brown neck.

It was the Ideal of her Yearning Soul. "Never till I meet a Being like
this will I give my heart," she had said, now these many years. Once
she thought she had met that Being: it was the natty clerk who sold her
calico and clothes-pins at Mansfield. But when that mercenary Hylas
married a Baysville widow with money she wept a while, and then saw
clearly through her tears that the deceiver looked not in the least
like a Being, but only like a very commonplace man. Once again it was
an artist who had boarded with them a summer, and whose red hair fell
over his rosy brow in a manner that indicated a possible Being. But it
turned out that this artist was married and the father of a thriving
family; whereupon he too faded out of Roberta Editha's ideal world into
the prosaic region where are not Beings, but only men and women. After
that it was several artists, all of whom in turn had died, under some
blight, out from the thoughts of the burnt-umber maiden. Latterly she
had been bending soulful eyes upon Ben Shaw, sure that at last in his
lineaments she could trace the adored image. Ben's eyes were neither
miraculously large nor superlatively dark: neither had he a small mouth
with downward curves. He was blond and robust, inclined to be rather
high-colored, especially after dinner, which proved his digestion
defective or that appetite outran it; but, setting such little
discrepancies aside, she was sure her Ideal was there.

But while Roberta Editha described Annie Deane's airy manners in such
unflattering terms, it is more than probable that Ben Shaw would be
saying to the latter at that very moment, "Never lose your youthful
nature, and always preserve your young ways, Annie: they are your
greatest charm." For this was a habit with Ben Shaw.

She was smiling and bridling now as she wrote by the seaward window,
although she must have known that nothing could see her save that
turquoise crescent of sea, the blue arch of the sky and the swaying
rose-globes and leaves that shadowed her paper. She could not even
dip her pen into the ink like anybody else, but must needs poise over
it for a breezy instant, just as a humming-bird flutters over honeyed
flowers.

She had just written these words: "Truly, mamma dear, he has never said
a word of love to me, and yet, strange as it may seem, I am as sure
that he loves me as--"

A voice called up from the southern-wood thicket under her window,
where somebody, rubicund with stooping, was picking burdock-burrs from
off his trousers' legs, "Miss Deane, will you go with me to see the
sunset from Castle Rock? We can be home in time for supper."

When the butcher rattled by in company with a staring calf's head
and quivering pig's liver, nobody hailed him from the Tudor mansion.
Roberta Editha was kneading bread on top of a flour-barrel in the
buttery; Ethelberta was picking over currants on the back doorstep;
and Miss Bray stood a little way off toward the lichen-grown stone
wall blocking in her Antignone wailing over Polynices. Miss Bray had
chosen the elder and more commonplace Ethelberta for her suggestion of
a position, rather than the younger and more poetic Roberta Editha, for
the simple reason that the former's attitude over her currants was more
suggestive of an heroic corpse on her knees and less of a chastised
infant than Roberta's would be under any circumstances.

Rowena, the eldest of the "girls," was busy at that moment, if the
truth must be told, in looking to see if any of the boarders had
carelessly left bureau-drawers or writing-desks unlocked. The boarders
were all absent upon hill or shore, the invalid father slept in his
chair, the mother in Baysville cemetery, and the Tudor mansion was
still.

On a monster rock a mile or more away two figures made silhouettes
against the jewelled sunset.

"Annie," said one of the figures, "I did not wish to make a
sensation by telling it first at the supper-table, and I want _your_
congratulations before any others. I have sold my _Esmeralda_. I go to
Boston to-morrow, and shall sail for Europe next week."

Her sight was darkened, her heart stood still. Life seemed to die out
of her with one horrible pang. Nevertheless, in an instant her head
tiptilted, and she twittered her congratulations as airily as if the
whole universe had burst into a sudden marvel of bloom and beauty and
she were the first humming-bird born into it.

"Always keep your young nature and preserve your young ways, Annie," he
said admiringly: "they are your greatest charm."

Then they turned and walked supperward together.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Neapolitan steamer was greasy and smelled of garlic and bitumen.
The red-shirted sailors were singing "Santa Lucia" from high and low,
and a stalwart contadina was accompanying them with her tambourine down
in the third-class place. Very few passengers were scattered about the
deck, and the general speech was of the Blue Grotto. Evidently, of the
first-class passengers only two were making more than an excursion from
Naples, the excursionists intending to return with the steamer after a
peep into the famous cave.

One of these two persons was rather a remarkable-looking lady. She wore
a jaunty hat many years too young for the face: it did _not_ shade.
Her coquettish jacket and short skirt made her from a distance--a very
long one--seem like a girl of eighteen. She wore her hair in a girlish
braid--alas, woefully faded! She was airy of motion and coquettish of
gesture, evidently one of those sad women who, burying their heads from
the sight of the passing years, fancy that Time forgets to touch them.

The other person was a handsome gentleman of more than forty. The
Hyperion curls had been thicker on his brow than now, and his shadow
more slender, but it by no means follows that he was as bald as
Cæsar or as bulky as the Belvidere Torso. He was dressed in elegant
travelling costume, and, as well-dressed men must be, with coat
evidently of London make and trousers Parisian.

As he dropped a handsome travelling-satchel on the coal-flecked seat
beside the lady's color-box he chanced to meet her eye. It was a
curious meeting of eyes that had last met so differently. He had only
time to commune with his secret soul, "What a larky old girl!" when a
look of half-startled recognition came into his face.

It was reflected in hers, and a humming-bird tremor passed over her.

"Was this not formerly Miss Deane?" he asked.

"It _is_ Miss Deane, Mr. Shaw," twittered the lady, with head tiptilted
like a frosted flower.

Alas! what a tyrant is that power which makes and moulds us like
potter's clay to her own patterns, whether of glory or shame, and whom
we call Nature!--a tyrant which forms us into that which we would cry
and pray not to be were there any ear to be moved by our beseeching.
Alas, poor Annie! It was not her fault that Nature took a canary-bird
for her model. And it is the fault of none of us that the graces of our
youth become grotesquenesses with our forties.

"Who would ever have dreamed of our meeting here? And to think you
are still Miss Deane!" he exclaimed with obtuseness pre-eminently
masculine. "But you are very pale: does the motion of the steamer make
you ill?"

Nearer and nearer came the opalescent isle, drawn like a jewelled
chariot by thousands of blue coursers with foaming mouths.

After fifteen minutes or so of vague reminiscences and comparisons of
experiences of travel the gentleman seemed to fall into a brown study
and to become almost rudely oblivious of his companion's presence. His
eyes were riveted upon the island with a strange intensity. Could the
airy little old maid by his side have heard the beating of the heart
in that broad bachelor bosom, she would have been astonished, as would
almost anybody else, to hear its sentimental music. "At last, after
all these cruel years!" was its refrain.

Cruelty was evidently a discipline that did not impoverish his physical
system.

Upon the beach was a scene of uproar and confusion. Brown-faced
peasant-girls, with dark eyes like wild sylvan creatures, thrust
wilted flowers into the travellers' hands and clamored for _soldi_.
Fisher-boys, almost as naked as bronze cupids, yelled offers to guide
anybody and everybody up the heights to the village. Bright-shirted
and bare-legged boatmen, with Indian locks and huge gold crescents in
their ears, bellowed to each other, while weatherbeaten crones screamed
till they were hoarse that here were the saddled donkeys on which _i
signori_ could ride.

Mr. Shaw assisted Miss Deane--whom, until he saw her nearly pulled in
pieces between two donkey-women, he had quite forgotten--upon one of
the most docile-looking of the animals.

She mounted with such thistledown sprightliness that she nearly went
over the saddle and down on the other side. He looked astonished as she
fluttered above his hat, and then--forgot her.

If any one find this portly bachelor discourteous and basely recreant
to certain of the best memories of his manhood, let that one stop a
moment and think. This frisky lady, who always seemed carrying on a
most desperate flirtation with some invisible adorer, was certainly not
the Annie of his summer in the Tudor mansion. She was spiritually not a
day older than Annie, but her face was very much older; and what, after
all, is the same soul to us if the casket is strange? What is a young
face grown old to us who knew its youth and have not seen its changing?
Moreover, that perennial youth of hers, touching and sad as it may
possibly seem when thought about, would have been the object of your
ridicule could you have seen it face to face.

Much as we may prate of natures ever young, there is no more melancholy
sight in the world than soul and body that miss step with each other in
this heavy and forced march called Life. Why should we seek to keep our
hearts young, we who must die? For unto youth or youthfulness what is
death but darkness and night at noonday?

Then another thing to excuse Mr. Shaw's apparent neglect: he was
approaching a crisis of his own life, and what are the convulsions of a
universe compared to those quicker heart-beats which we call Crises in
our little lives?

After assisting Miss Deane he mounted another donkey, and rode, not
exactly like paladin of old, but like a portly and absent-minded modern
tourist, silently by her side up the steep path, whither their luggage
followed them upon the heads of women.

Between their donkeys strode a bare-legged woman in a ragged petticoat.
She was bronzed and wrinkled, with straggling hair thrust through with
a silver arrow, and coarse brown chemise falling widely open over an
unlovely neck and breast. She uttered many a strident yell, accentuated
by heavy thwacks of her club upon her donkeys' flanks. She was dirty,
wild-eyed and hideous. It were as difficult to imagine her comely
and young as to believe this little dried-up old girl had not been a
flirting old maid from her cradle.

Ah, but Nature is cruel to woman! Freshness and beauty of flesh are
hers, not that she may rejoice in her own beauty and freshness, but
that she may become the mother of men. Bearing children, in the bearing
dies one beauty and charm after another, just as trees die, leaf
by leaf, which have enriched the world by their allotted harvests.
Childless, her beauty and freshness die of her unfruitfulness, while
Nature's pet offspring, man, waxes strong and proud years after all her
leaves have fallen.

Look at these three people: the handsome and robust bachelor was the
oldest of them all.

"What a capital model she would make for an Erinnys hunting Orestes to
his fate!" thought Miss Deane.

She was bumping up and down in her saddle like a rubber ball.
Nevertheless, in the pauses of those bumps she had time enough to grow
very angry at something she saw. She turned a regular Spitzenberg red
as she detected the searching, passionate gaze her companion bent
upon every pretty islander they met. She saw the black-eyed girl with
a huge bundle of fagots on her head, the brown-eyed one with immense
building-timbers pressing down her curly locks, the blue-eyed one with
copper water-jar gleaming goldenly over her dagger-thrust braids, smile
significantly after coquettishly returning his gaze.

They are not so guileless as one might think, those picturesque,
brown-skinned island-girls. Too many foreign artists have come this
way, and too many strong-limbed, full-chested girls have become first
their models, then mothers of their children, and then their wedded
wives, not now-a-days to look upon every gazing _forestiere_ as a
possible husband, or at least lover.

Yet is it true that not one of them dreamed of the feeling beneath that
immaculately-laundried shirt-bosom as the wearer turned away from them,
one girl after another. Why should they, forsooth? Had not even Ben
Shaw's own friends always declared there was no sentiment in him, or
even in his pictures?

At one of her donkeys' stumbles over the lava-stones the driver yelled
so horribly in Miss Deane's ears that that lady's discomfort puckered
her face up like a frozen apple.

Mr. Shaw saw it. "By Jove!" he remarked to his donkey, who laid back
its ears and pretended to understand English, "I must have been very
veally ever to find that face pretty! But there's one thing sure: she
has taken on a thousand girlish airs and graces with every year she has
lived since then."

Poor Annie! Not an air or a grace had she more than fifteen years
before. And how was she to know that she was too old for a girl's ways,
she who had never ceased to be a girl to become wife and mother?

Quoth Mr. Shaw to the driver, "My good woman, if you will drive these
beasts with less noise it will be better for your _buona mancia_."

The "good woman" stared. She had done a good deal of staring since they
left the beach far down below. Her eyes in this moment looked out
fiercer than ever from the bed of wrinkles folded about them by many a
tropical sun and scorching sirocco. "Has the signor ever been upon the
island before?" she asked a moment later.

"Si, madre mia: I was here one summer several years ago. I lived in
yonder palm-shaded house facing toward Sicily. I painted pictures
here. Afterward I went away to my own country." Then he added, with
melancholy intonation, half under his breath, "I ought to have returned
long ago: I have come only to-day."

Miss Deane was looking over the tops of lava-walls that narrowed in
their climbing way. She saw pale-green vineyards changing color and
trembling in the sea air like a maiden under her lover's first kiss.
Gloomy stone-pines guarded the hills like eternal sentinels. Through
dim gray-green olive-thickets houses that seemed of alabaster shimmered
and shone in the sunshine.

They had now climbed so high up the orange- and lemon-flecked sides of
the island that Vesuvius yonder seemed to sink low and slumberously
upon the bosom of the radiant bay, while Naples across the little
stretch of sea showed vaguely white in the golden distance, scarcely
more real than a city sculptured in snow beneath an August sun. Up from
vineyard and thicket, down from the village and the cactus-pencilled
heights beyond, came the long-drawn, melancholy wail which is the
islander's song at his labor, but which is weird and mournful enough to
be the swan-song of a parting soul to its mate.

She was aroused from her artistic dreaminess by the croaking of a voice
broken by years of vociferous yellings: "Dio mio! si: you painted
Antonia Pisano. Yes, yes, I remember. You painted her over on yonder
cliff, from whence she watched the barca of her lover Giuseppe gone
fishing for coral over on the African coast. You called the picture
_Good-bye, Sweetheart_. Si, I remember. You were handsomer than you
are now, and your shoulders were not so broad. There were patches all
over your velveteen blouse, and you remained here after all the other
foreign artists were gone, because the money came not with which you
must pay Giaccomo for the macaroni you had eaten for months, and the
barber Angelo in the piazza for the canvases and colors you had used in
painting Antonia all the months of that summer. Si, si, I remember."

The handsome bachelor looked distressed at the coarsely-vivid realism
with which the woman pictured that most idyllic summer of his life.

Miss Deane considerately pretended not to have heard, and kept her blue
eyes vaguely set in the direction of the dread volcano dreaming in the
arms of the bay. But she had mistaken the cause of her countryman's
embarrassment. And who would not have done so, believing as all the
world does that romance and robustness mate not together?

"Yes, I was very poor in those days. Many and many a dinner did I go
without, that I might buy a new kerchief for Antonia or send to Naples
for another string of beads for her neck. Those patches betrayed
only half my poverty, for nobody knew that I put them there myself
to save the few soldi a seamstress would demand, that I might give
Antonia another festa and worship her wild grace as she danced the
tarantella and rattled her castanets upon the moonlighted roof of some
fisher-friend's house."

He seemed to address Miss Deane, for he spoke in English. She, in
common politeness, could not do less than say, "Indeed! And who was
Antonia?"

"She is the loveliest creature on the island, and as good as she is
beautiful. She came as straight from the heart of Nature as a flower
or a bird's song. Neither poetry nor painting could ever grasp the
freshness of her wild sweetness: one must see her to know the abject
poverty of their highest efforts."

To hear such adolescent rubbish from middle-aged lips what sensible
mortal would not have giggled in his sleeve?

Strangely enough, it was the donkey-woman who proved her good sense and
surprised them both not only by laughing discordantly aloud, but by
speaking in very broken but intelligible English: "Si, si, I remember.
And why have you come back to the island, signor?"

Actually, the bachelor blushed. "To marry Antonia," he said as
bashfully as if he weighed one hundred instead of two hundred and
twenty pounds, "and to remain on this savagely-beautiful isle all the
rest of my life."

This he had said in Italian. But he continued, half musingly, in his
mother tongue: "I could not take her away with me _then_, even though
I loved her with all my heart and she was willing to share my poverty.
I had not the heart to see her pine and pale in narrow city streets. I
knew that she was a wild flower that would lose fragrance and beauty,
would die, if transplanted from its native soil. I went away to earn
money enough that I might come back and live with my darling where only
she could live at her best. I have worked hard for her in all these
years. I know I ought to have come sooner, but it insensibly grew a
habit with me each year to wait yet one year more, that I might come to
her a little richer. But I have come at last. I have sent her letters
and presents each year, and she has written me often through some
amanuensis, for she cannot write herself; and I am come to her able to
say truly that she is the only woman I ever loved, or ever imagined
myself to have loved, in all my life."

How little that man dreamed who heard him say this--that one heard him
who for fifteen long years had guarded in the purest crystal of her
memory the belief, "though all things fade and die, and even he forget
me, yet _once_ he loved me"! This to her, the faded, slight little
old maid, thumping up and down on her donkey like a Neapolitan girl's
fist on her tambourine, whose crystal-guarded treasure turned to dust
before her eyes, and who knew thus for the first time that it was but a
spurious treasure she had guarded since that summer by the sea!

She seemed somehow much smaller and paler, more faded and wrinkled,
than before, when the donkey-woman laughed again. That unlovely
creature said, with witch-like laughter, "You told Antonia that you
loved her better than Giuseppe ever could--that you would marry her and
make her a signora who should wear a gold ring and have shoes for every
day. You went away saying that you would come back when you had sold
your pictures. You have not come back until to-day, and you come back
to laugh at poor Antonia for being such a fool as to believe a foreign
signor would tell the truth to an island-girl."

She gave a thundering thwack upon the donkeys' flanks as the party
rushed across the tiny lava-paved piazza where all the island was
gathered to see the new arrivals pass on through a dusky-arched street
to the albergo-door.

The cook, chambermaid, landlord, facchino and landlady rushed to bid
the travellers welcome in island fashion. The landlord was barefooted;
the landlady was the fruitful bough from which hung an apple-shaped
infant; the cook, chambermaid and facchino were each armed with
the insignia of their different professions--stewpan, broom and
blacking-brush.

Returning their salutations, the gentleman and lady descended from
their steeds. Mr. Shaw turned to pay the donkey-woman for her services.

And, behold! she lifted up once more that hoarse, broken voice to croak
with frightful glee, "Make it a good buona mancia, Signor Ben, for the
sake of old times. It was Giuseppe who answered your letters: I am
Antonia his wife, mother of his ten children. It should be a good, a
brave buona mancia that I did not wait for you--not thirteen years, not
even six months, only till Giuseppe came home from his coral-fishing."

Till her dying day the little old maid will never forget the look
that settled upon his face after the first paralyzed moment in which
he realized the woman's meaning. It was such a look that she hastily
averted her eyes and tremblingly followed the chambermaid up the wide
stone stairs.

She never saw him afterward, for he left the island that same evening.
But she heard of him only last summer. He has married a sprightly girl
of eighteen, and has some renown in his own country--that of being
the heaviest eater, sleeper, talker and _sitter_ of the Lotus Club.

As his friends always said, he has no sentiment, even in his pictures.

As for Miss Deane, she is no older now than then. The volatile drops in
her blood effervesce as of old, and her flirtation is as desperate with
that invisible adorer as if she were twenty instead of--more.

But it is true that sometimes, at long intervals, she takes a bit of
yellow paper from a secret place, and her spectacles grow dim (she
wears them only in private) as she reads, in a feminine hand that seems
to skip and chipper all over the page, "Truly, mamma dear, he has
never said a word of love to me, and yet, strange as it may seem, I
am as sure that he loves me as--" Then she usually giggles, in queer,
mirthless fashion, as she chirrups, "What a ridiculous little goosie
I was!" before she folds the paper away for another long repose,
readjusts her coquettish but scanty frizzes, and goes down stairs again
to her invisible adorer and her perpetual flirtation.

And nobody hears the wail in her foolish old-young heart as she goes:
"Ah, why might it not have been?"

Alas! why not?

For then she might have been less lively, and he less dead, both grown
side by side into richer, fuller, sweeter ripeness for the great
harvester whom we call Death.

  MARGARET BERTHA WRIGHT.




LIMOGES, AND ITS PORCELAIN.


The traveller who, leaving Paris by express at 10 A.M., reaches the
Orleans dépôt at Limoges at six in the evening, will see spacious
boulevards, imposing buildings and a general air of stateliness and
pretension, recalling the metropolis he left behind him in the morning.
His omnibus will whisk him through streets crowded with promenaders, a
picturesque panorama of well-dressed people, with a generous sprinkling
of the light-blue jackets of the chasseurs, the gleaming helmets of the
dragoons, the red kepis of the infantry, the broad-brimmed hats and
sable mantles of the priesthood and the red-and-orange head-kerchiefs
of the working-women. If it be late in the season and the days are
short, he will see at every turn cafés ablaze with light, and the wide
sidewalks before them lined with tables at which, cool as it may be,
crowds of loungers are seated sipping bier, absinthe or eau sucrée.
But, looking up the dingy side-streets, here and there he may detect,
by the lines of flickering, straggling gas-lights, glimpses of another
Limoges--glimpses of steep streets ending in stairways; of narrow and
darkened passages where the opposite buildings nod to each other from
across the street until they all but touch; of courts where curious
little enshrined images of the Madonna and the saints look down from
niches in the corners, and where heads are peeping out from every
window to catch a whiff of evening air; and of sombre alleys, each
lighted by a single lamp suspended midway, under the uncertain rays
of which swarms of children and dogs are vying to awaken the loudest
echoes.

A great conflagration devastated Limoges in 1865, but it proved to
that city what our political economists would have us believe the
national debt has been to the United States--a blessing in disguise.
Incident to the rebuilding of the burnt quarter a spirit of general
renovation seems to have crept over the minds of the city fathers, and
from that time to the present the work of tearing down old buildings
and widening or straightening narrow or crooked streets has been
pushed forward to such a degree that were some Limousin Rip Van
Winkle, after a twenty years' slumber in the adjacent mountains, to
happen in suddenly upon the haunts of his childhood, he would open
his eyes as wide as did his Knickerbocker namesake. But there are
some things that no amount of outlay or engineering can accomplish;
and though many costly improvements have been made in modernizing
Limoges and bringing it up to a realizing sense of its dignity as the
great porcelain-manufacturing city of Europe, there are yet within its
walls some streets so crooked that nothing short of total demolition
will ever straighten them, and others so steep and rocky that enough
nitro-glycerine to shake down a hundred neighboring houses would have
to be employed to level them. So it has come to be acknowledged that,
with all the goodwill in the world for putting on modern airs, there
are tumble-down, straggling, rickety relics of the past in Limoges
which no amount of municipal resolutions or appropriations--nothing, in
fact, but an earthquake--can ever remove. Every lover of the antique
and quaint will fervently pray that no such disaster may ever come to
efface the curious reminders of a time gone by.

For they are the pages upon which successive centuries have left their
imprints. Here, for instance, is a street called the Rue du Consulat.
By a happy coincidence, the United States consular office fronts upon
it, but let not the patriotic American flatter himself that the street
thence derives its name. Here lived one of the Roman proconsuls, and
here stood the building in which the governors of the city, formerly
known as "consuls," held their sessions. In this simple fact we
discover a suggestion of the impress left by the domination of the
Romans. But on their heels, in turn, came the Visigoths; then Clovis,
who made Limoges one of his first conquests; and then the Saracens, who
barely set foot on the soil ere Charles Martel's victory at Poitiers
compelled them to leave. Some fragmentary bands, however, remained
in the province, and one of them founded the neighboring city of
Eymontiers, where buildings of Arabic architecture are still standing.

The Moors, surging northward from Spain, have left their impress in
these fertile valleys that border the Vienne--an impress everywhere
visible in the olive complexions and the costumes of the people, and
audible in their language. The ethnologist is astonished at discovering
so far to the North all the characteristics of a Spanish population.
On fair-days, when the peasantry from a wide circuit are gathered on
the Champ de Foires, one hears spoken a dialect incomprehensible to
ordinary Frenchmen. It is a patois, a rolling, mellifluous brogue, much
resembling the Gascon or the tongue spoken in the Basque provinces
among the Pyrenees. Nor are the country-people the sole monopolists
of this singular accent: the talk of most of the town-people is more
or less tinctured with it. It is to the pure French what a good sweet
Irish brogue is to the pure English. It is "Gascon"--and, after all,
that is the only word that describes it--and you hear it spoken at
every corner in Limoges, just as you meet everywhere swarthy faces,
lustrous black eyes, raven hair and a marked dominance of the Southern
type.

Limoges has had many masters. Charlemagne made a present of it to
his son, Louis le Débo

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