Title: McClure's Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 4, September 1893
Author: Various
Language: English
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McCLURE'S MAGAZINE

VOL. I    SEPTEMBER, 1893    No. 4


Copyright, 1893, by S. S. MCCLURE, Limited. All rights reserved.



Table of Contents

                                                                  PAGE
  Edward E. Hale. The Man with a Country. By Herbert D. Ward.      291
  How Cassie Saved the Spoons. By Annie Howells Fréchette.         301
  Surrender. By Gertrude Hall.                                     308
  "Human Documents."                                               309
  Dreams Go By Contraries. By George H. Jessop.                    318
  The Tables Turned. By William Wordsworth.                        326
  Pasteur at Home. By Ida M. Tarbell.                              327
  Hugh Brontë'S Courtship. By Doctor William Wright.               341
  The Legend of the Elephant and the Lion. By Henry M. Stanley.    351
  Song. By Thomas Carew.                                           355
  The Life and Experiences of an Engineer of a Limited Express.
      By Cleveland Moffett.                                        356
  Among the Gorillas. By R. L. Garner.                             364



Illustrations

                                                                  PAGE
  Residence of Edward Everett Hale.                                292
  Sitting-Room.                                                    294
  Highland Street, With the Hale Place on the Right.               295
  Doctor Hale in His Study.                                        296
  The Library.                                                     298
  The Dining-Room.                                                 299
  E. E. Hale in 1847. From a Painting By Richard Hinsdale.         300
  Emperor William of Germany.                                      310
  Eugene Field.                                                    314
  Colonel Albert A. Pope.                                          316
  The Statue of Jupille.                                           327
  The Pasteur Institute.                                           328
  The Lodge.                                                       329
  M. Pasteur in His Salon.                                         330
  The House at Dôle.                                               331
  M. Pasteur at Thirty.                                            332
  At the Jubilee of M. Pasteur.                                    333
  Portraits of M. Pasteur.                                         334
  A Group of Patients.                                             336
  The Library.                                                     337
  M. Roux.                                                         337
  Dosing the Virus.                                                338
  Dr. Metchnikoff in His Laboratory.                               339
  Filling the Syringes.                                            339
  The Rabbits' Quarters.                                           340
  "The Flyer" Leaving the Grand Central Station, New York City.    357



EDWARD E. HALE.

THE MAN WITH A COUNTRY.

BY HERBERT D. WARD.


When General Ward drove the British out of Roxbury in the reign of
George the Third, the valuation of the town was about sixty
thousand dollars. I do not know at what high figure the historic
city that guards the ashes of John Eliot is held now, but I do
know that, in this age of rapacious corporations and untrustworthy
trusts, genius outranks gold, and that Roxbury receives no small
increment of her value from the fact that Edward E. Hale is one of
her most distinguished citizens. To one fond of perceiving the
innate or accidental fitness of things, it is, perhaps, more than a
coincidence that Doctor Hale lives on Highland Street, and that
his house reminds one, with its massive front and Ionic columns, of a
Greek temple.

This large house was built, about sixty years ago, by Mr. Bradford,
for his brother-in-law, Reverend Mr. Kent, and was used for a young
ladies' boarding-school. Even now, on some of the upper panes, girls'
names and girlish sentiments are to be read. When Doctor Hale took the
house, some twenty years ago, he introduced a carpenter to make what
are called "modern improvements."

"Mr. Hale," said the carpenter, after a thorough inspection, "you are
fortunate in your bargain. _This house was built on honor._" Mr. Hale
has had a great mind to make this reply the motto over his doorway.

When Doctor Hale once described his house to an eminent editor of one
of our leading magazines, he said: "You cannot mistake it; it is a
Greek temple just above Eliot Square."

The editor, with the gentle blush that frisky memory will bring to the
cheeks of the staidest, quickly answered: "Yes, I have often
worshipped there."

This is not a biographical paper. The readers of the "Atlantic" will
remember Doctor Hale's description of his father, the first of New
England's great railroad pioneers. Every one knows that our Mr. Hale
was named after his uncle, the great Edward Everett; but perhaps it is
not so generally known that Mrs. Hale is the granddaughter of Lyman
Beecher, and the niece of Mrs. Stowe. What may not be expected of
Doctor Hale's boys, with Beecher, Hale, and Everett blood in their
veins? There is no better selection, and the problem is an interesting
one.

But, to many of us, the most interesting of Doctor Hale's connections
is his distant relation, Helen Kellar. The first time that wonderful,
blind, deaf-mute child, then not eight years old, came to his home,
there happened to be an Egyptian statuette of the god Terminus outside
the piazza steps. The child touched it, and, with her marvellous
discernment, starting back, said in her own way: "Oh, the ugly old
man!"

Helen was then taken to the beautiful alto-relievo of Bernini,
representing the infants Christ and John playing together. It is a
little thing, and slowly the child ran her eye-fingers over the chubby
babes. Suddenly her sightless face lighted with the rarest smile. Her
soul had understood the significance of the holy group by an intuition
that science cannot gauge, and she bent over and kissed the sacred
children.

After all, every home exhibits a clinging pananthropoism, if one may
be permitted to coin the word. Books and pictures and statuary are the
man, just as much as his style. They are his most subtile expression.
They are his unlying interpreters. As you walk into Doctor Hale's
parlor, resting upon the floor, there confronts you a realistic
colored photograph of the compelling Matterhorn. That picture, with
its glacier, its precipices, and its summit, conquered only by
coöperative achievement, is a fit emblem of a family climbing from
height to height.

We left the table, and Lyman Beecher's splendid portrait, that formed
a strong background for Doctor Hale's impressive head, and stopped for
a moment in the boys' study, opposite the parlor. There is the
portrait of Edward Everett, by Stuart Newton: of Alexander Everett, by
Alexander, and of Mrs. Hale, by Ransom, and a striking picture of the
doctor himself. How many of these sedate portraits have been shocked
by shuttlecock and bumped by football at the hands of Doctor Hale's
rollicking boys, only one of whom, Robert, of rising literary
reputation, is left with his father in the home!

[Illustration: RESIDENCE OF EDWARD EVERETT HALE.]

Across the narrow back hall one takes a quick glimpse of the four
phases of the moon on the stairway, then of hundreds of volumes
lining the walls, billows of books, breaking upon one
everywhere--five thousand of them.

"That is Thomas Arnold's portrait--father of Matthew," said Doctor
Hale, pointing from his sofa, and then settling back into
reminiscences:--"Longfellow over there, and Dean Stanley. I liked
Stanley, and I think Stanley liked me. We were on very cordial terms.
He sat at the desk where you are, and I gave him Gladstone's article
on America, published that fall. There was a carriage at the door. I
was to show him some historical places. It was October, and cold. I
told the boys to bring some rugs. They came to the carriage with a lot
of Arab shawls. Stanley had just come from the desert, and with
marvellous dexterity he wound a shawl about him so that he looked like
an Arab sheik. I got a little frightened at the oriental look of it,
and said: 'Oh, we shall be in all the newspapers.' With reluctance he
consented to throw a cape over his shoulders instead. But I always
regretted that I did not allow him to go through the streets as an
Arab dean. When I bade him good-by that night, he said, with his
wonted thoughtfulness, 'Let me pay for this carriage; you would never
have had it if it hadn't been for me.'

"'No,' said I, 'when I go to Westminster you shall pay for me. When
you are in Boston, I shall pay for you.'

"When we got out of the carriage the hackman took off his hat and
said: 'If the carriage were mine, you shouldn't pay a cent. Doctor
Stanley is a good and great man, and I am proud to have carried him.'
That's pretty good for a Boston hackman."

As my eyes roamed over the mass of portfolios stacked in an orderly
manner in the case at the foot of his lounge, my imagination conjured
many an interview that Mr. Hale must have had with immortals,
contemporaries, and friends of the man before me.

And what invaluable letters must those portfolios contain! Doctor Hale
evidently caught my curiosity and my glance.

"You would like to see some autographs?" he generously asked.

"Yes, indeed, but I am afraid there is not time now. Tell me about
some of your most interesting ones."

Then it proved that Doctor Hale had advantages in the line of
presidential autographs, because of his eminent and political
ancestry. His collection in this respect is complete, and in this way,
he says, he began it.

"I was sitting one evening tearing up old papers, after my father's
death, and among them noticed a letter on the character of Washington.
Not considering it worth keeping, I took it to tear it up, when out
dropped a yellow paper, ancient and faded. It proved to be a letter of
George Washington himself, which had been enclosed in the other letter
by my father, evidently to illustrate a point in character which the
writer had raised. Then and there I resolved to make a collection of
presidential autographs. I don't dare to tell you how many family
commissions I hold in my portfolio. To me the collection is almost the
history of my family. I have been tempted to publish a couple of
volumes of national history of the nineteenth century, to be taken
bodily from my own portfolio of autographs. It might be rather
interesting."

"Changing the subject, when did you first meet Emerson?"

"Let me see, I first heard Emerson when I was eleven years old. He was
delivering his lecture on Mohammed. I first spoke to him in Harvard
College chapel, when a mutual acquaintance had just taken the highest
honors. Emerson said of him, with his keenest look:

"'I didn't know he was so fine a fellow. Now, if some misfortune could
only happen to him; if he could be turned out of college, or could be
unpopular in his class, or his father could fail in business, all
would be well with him.'

"This seemed at the time cynical, but when I read of the hardships of
Emerson's early life, and heard of the unhappy end of the man of
college honors, I understood it and was astounded at his penetration.

"I have a letter of Emerson's (and you can take a copy of it if you
like) which cleared up an anecdote that was told of him at the time.
It was said that on one of his ocean trips he committed 'Alaric' or
some other long poem to memory, in order to while away a few otherwise
unprofitable days. It proved to be 'Lycidas,' and I never heard of any
one else who has committed 'Lycidas' to memory on an ocean trip for
pastime. Who else but Emerson would have thought of it?"

  CONCORD, _January 26_.

  MY DEAR HALE:--I know by much experience of my own what it is to
  have Everett on the brain, and you, who have it in the blood, may
  easily believe that it could only be "Alaric" that I was crooning
  at sea. But it was not that, but Milton's "Lycidas," which I told
  of in a lecture on Memory, to which I must think you refer; though
  nothing of it was ever printed or reported that I know, and it
  must have been read (_i.e._, the lecture) when you were very
  young. I ought to be proud that the anecdote could reach you, but
  the mystery of the memory interested me much.

  I wrote you yesterday about Stirling's pamphlet, which I hope will
  come speedily to you. I do not recall the title, but it was,
  perhaps, "Remarks on Mr. Huxley's Protoplasm."

  Yours,
  R. W. EMERSON.

"Here's another story of Emerson," continued my host, with a twinkle,
"that reminds me of the story of the man who said he couldn't make a
speech like Henry Clay, but he had once held the statesman's hat when
Clay was speaking. When Mr. Emerson delivered his second Phi Beta
address, the desk had been removed from the pulpit of the church, so
that he had at the beginning to kneel uncomfortably to read his
manuscript. I went back in the vestry and found the desk, and, in the
first pause in Emerson's address, placed it before him. The audience
of course applauded. When the oration was over, Lowell, who presided,
congratulated Mr. Emerson on his success, and Emerson's first words
were, 'Where's that saint, Edward Hale?'"

[Illustration: SITTING-ROOM.]

"Have you any special reminiscence of Hawthorne?"

"Hardly any at all. Personally, Hawthorne was very reticent in
society. My own recollections of him, when I first saw him, were
that he hardly spoke a word to anybody. This little scrap of
Hawthorne's, which you may use, if you care to, was sent to the
'Boston Miscellany,' a magazine that my brother edited, and to
which all Young America at that time contributed. Lowell published
his first stories and articles in the 'Miscellany,' after those in
'Harvardiana.'

"But with Lowell my relations were singularly intimate. He was also
intimate with my brother Nathan. Our room in college was convenient
for him, as his was at a distance from recitations. He was a class in
advance of me. Those were the days when we borrowed Emerson's volume
of Tennyson's first poems, and copied the poems in our scrap-books.
Lowell was deep in the old dramatists then, and read papers on them in
the Alpha Delta, which was the literary club to which we both
belonged. The intimacy which was then begun lasted through our lives.
He edited 'The Atlantic' when I published my first stories there.

[Illustration: HIGHLAND STREET, WITH THE HALE PLACE ON THE RIGHT.]

"By the way, it is reported that Ruskin will be made poet laureate! My
candidate, however, is Jean Ingelow. The Queen ought to have named a
woman. Talking on the subject, I have seen with these eyes the
original correspondence with which Prince Albert offered the
laureateship to Samuel Rogers. Rogers was greatly pleased, but after
consideration declined, because he was so old. The Prince then wrote
to Rogers to ask him to name the laureate. Rogers named Tennyson. Then
came a letter from the prime minister, in which he said: 'We are not
acquainted with the works of this gentleman, and will you be good
enough to let me know whether he has ever written anything which would
make it improper for a woman to name him for this post?'"

Mr. Hale stopped and laughed heartily. "Just think of that!" he added,
with glee.

After some skirmishing about the bush--for the office of
"interlocutor" is not very familiar to me--I asked Doctor Hale:

"What do you consider the best thing you ever did?" He did not seem
annoyed or perplexed by the question. He thrust his arms behind his
head, extended himself the full length of the lounge, and regarded me
with his deep-set eyes. Doctor Hale's face wrinkles in a curious way
around his eyes. These are the features of his face. They are fine,
deep, sad, careless of human opinion--except it has to be conciliated
for a high purpose--and alert as a boy's, ready for a truth or for a
friend. I believe that a divine physiognomist would read Doctor Hale's
career in his gray eyes and their high ramparts. "Why, the young man's
head has an entirely different shape," said the elder Darwin of his
son Charles, on the young man's return from his voyage in the
"Beagle." It struck me oddly that in a like manner Doctor Hale's eyes
had been a mirror of his life.

"I think," began Doctor Hale thoughtfully, "that 'In His Name,' as a
bit of literary work, is to be regarded as the best book I ever wrote.
The story of 'The Man Without a Country' has circulated in much larger
numbers. It was forged in the fire, and I think its great popularity
is due to the subject."

"And what is your best literary work at present?"

After some hesitation Doctor Hale answered:

"I think my sermons are the best."

This serious answer caused no little astonishment; for one naturally
thinks of Doctor Hale as an author rather than as a hard-working
minister.

[Illustration: DOCTOR HALE IN HIS STUDY.]

"I attach a great deal of importance to the weekly printing and
circulating of sermons," he continued. "It is more than fifteen years
since I began printing them for our people. It keeps a man at his best
work. It does away with slipshod carelessness. I should advise every
minister to print his sermons. The fact of it is," he continued, with
increasing vivacity, "five-sixths of my work in this office is parish
work. I am a person who has never lost sight of my profession. People
complain that my books always carry a moral. I wouldn't write if they
didn't."

"How did you come to write--as an author, I mean?"

"Until 1861 I was only known in Boston as an energetic minister of an
active church. I didn't want anything else. I believe now, as then,
that if anything is going to be done, it is to be done through that
agency. Then the war came along. I was in the Massachusetts Rifle
Corps, and," he said this with a pardonable twinkle of pride, "I have
drilled a major-general. Then I was on the Sanitary Commission. To
save the country--that brought me into public life, and I have never
got back into simple parish life again. Then came 'The Man Without a
Country.' In 1871 'Ten Times One is Ten' was published. From that book
came a peculiarity of my life. It brought me into close contact with
all parts of the world. From it sprang the 'Lend a Hand' and the
'King's Daughters,' and a dozen such working societies, and indirectly
the Epworth League and the Christian Endeavor. They copied the idea,
with many of my mottoes."

The speaker stopped while the writer pondered how many a girl, from
East to West and North to South, carried upon her throat a plain
silver cross tied with a purple ribbon, her proudest ornament. It is
an inspiring picture and comes quickly to call. To make an era in
Christian self-surrender, to girdle the world with unselfish crosses,
to hammer high purposes into young souls, that is a better life than
to have written the best novel of the decade.

"Yes," said Doctor Hale, with the authority of his threescore years
and eleven, "the parish is at the basis of my life, and takes
five-sixths of my time. All this would have been impossible without
it."

In these days, when some of our eminent critics consider a moral
purpose detrimental to the literary value of a story, it is refreshing
to learn from the mouth of one of our most popular authors that his
success is due entirely to the inspiration of a Christian ideal. It
takes the modern school of critics to pat the Lord Jesus Christ upon
the back. Charles Kingsley and Doctor Hale will not be snuffed out by
them because they have chosen to Christianize their literary work.

Edward E. Hale regards the ministry as the most practical business in
the world. The theory that the minister spends his mornings reading
Hebrew, and his afternoons praying with dying old women, is exploded
in his career. He knocks about in the most active of city life. It
came out that the day before I called he went up to the State House to
argue in favor of an honest bill of some kind. He then signed the
lease of the "Noonday Rest," a club where working girls are to get
good food. He made himself responsible for fifteen hundred dollars a
year because the poor girls had to be cared for, and he "knew it would
come back to him all right." Then the duties of Vice-President of the
Industrial Aid called for his attention. "I am the man of business,"
he said, with flashing eyes. Of such are the charities of his life.

Even while the writer was sitting in the chair that Dean Stanley
occupied, and revolving the problem whether Doctor Hale summoned from
some other planet the time in which to write his sermons, we were
interrupted by a messenger from the Society for Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals, who came for about fifty pounds of stories which Doctor
Hale had read in order to determine the four winners of prizes.

"I was a little taken in," he said, with a boyish laugh, after the
messenger, stunned dumb by that kindly reception of Doctor Hale's
(which is denied to no one), had departed staggering; "I thought
they were to be short stories, and they turned out to be
sixty-thousand-word books."

Doctor Hale's study, which he calls his office, was once used as the
school-room for day scholars, and had a piazza, on one side of it.
This Mr. Hale has boarded up and uses the space--three feet wide--for
his thousands of pamphlets. I stepped in there while the messenger
from the society with the long name was occupying our host's
attention, and, for all the world, it seemed like a touch from Dickens
or a section from the Athenæum. That pamphlet alcove, narrow, musty,
yet busy, a composite of the stage-coach days and our electric era,
gave me a graver suspicion of Doctor Hale's cosmopolitan interests
than any word he had uttered or anything I had hitherto seen in the
temple.

When I came back Doctor Hale was again stretched upon the lounge. He
began almost fiercely upon his favorite topic, and I can do no better
than to give his own words:

"I have written twenty-five books, but I'm not an author; I'm a parish
minister. I don't care a snap for the difference between Balzac and
Daudet. That isn't important in life. I do care about the difference
between the classes of men who migrate to this country of mine."

Here I interrupted him:

"Is it better to do twenty things than one?"

"Not best for every one; but for a man who writes forty sermons a
year, it is better not to get into one rut. To write those sermons
well he must come into touch with forty things or forty men. As a man
of letters, I say the same thing. An author must be an all-around man
and take a many-sided view of life. My friends think it harms me. I
say it does not."

Although I was burning to ask a vital and perhaps an impertinent
question--for as he was so kind to me I wished not to be intrusive--I
waited while he chatted about his connection with Harvard.

It is one of Doctor Hale's happiest memories that he was an overseer
of Harvard University when the modern plan was introduced of having
more than one person to take charge of the chapel services. The new
custom was initiated by appointing the clerical members of the
overseers and faculty to take the chapel in turn. Doctor Hale thinks
there were nine of them. So he took a ninth part. That system in turn
gave way to the present system, by which five or six men are appointed
annually. Each in turn is given a room in college, so as to enter into
intimate pastoral relationship with the boys. This system has proved
wonderfully successful. In the inauguration of each of its phases
Doctor Hale was senior in the board, and heavily influential in the
working of the experiment. It is not to be wondered at, that of the
experiences of his long life he values making the acquaintance of a
"couple of thousand of as fine young men as the day can produce."

This is only another illustration of Doctor Hale's wide sweep and
influence.

[Illustration: THE LIBRARY.]

"Doctor Hale, you yourself have hinted at it, namely, that the worst
thing your friends say about you is, that you have too many irons in
the fire. Do you think that thereby you have missed an opportunity in
life?"

"I am glad you asked that question," he reassured me with his most
winning smile. "I don't think I have," he said slowly. "I might have
written better verses; by the way"--I thought he was changing the
subject--"I am just editing a collection of my verses for Roberts
Brothers, to be called 'For Fifty Years.' On the title-page this
quotation from the 'Ingham Papers' will be printed as a motto for the
poems. Read it aloud to me."

Judge how I was moved as I read the following words to him:

"Poor Ingham was painfully conscious that he had no peculiar genius
for one duty rather than another. If it were his duty to write verses,
he wrote verses; to lay telegraph, he laid telegraph; to fight
slavers, he fought slavers; to preach sermons, he preached sermons.
And he did one of these things with just as much alacrity as the
other; the moral purpose entirely controlling such mental aptness or
physical habits as he could bring to bear."

As my voice died away among the volumes, it flashed across me that in
these words could be found Doctor Hale's mental and spiritual
biography.

"Is this your epitaph?" I asked, very soberly.

"I am willing to stand by this as my epitaph," he repeated after me,
in his gravest tones.

Now this scene was not an interview, but a revelation, and I felt that
it "was good to be there." But, as an engagement called us to go out
together, we arose.

"I wish you could have seen more of my parish work," he said, as we
walked in the rain. He recurred to his favorite topic eagerly. "For
that is my real life."

[Illustration: THE DINING-ROOM.]

"Sermons?" The word started him off.

"I have no patience with the idea that it takes six days of grinding
to write a sermon. What nonsense! A sermon consists of about two
thousand five hundred words. I take a cup of coffee before breakfast
and write about six pages--that is, six hundred and fifty words. In
the morning I dictate to my amanuensis one thousand five hundred
words. I am intensely interested in the subject, and this takes only a
quarter of an hour. In the afternoon I look it over and add five or
six hundred words, and the sermon is done. In all, I haven't put my
hand for over two hours to paper."

Although I have written a sermon or two myself, and had a different
experience, I did not argue the point. I have a faint suspicion that
it would take most people fifty years of experience to arrive at such
a wonderful facility.

Power? Where did Doctor Hale get the strength to carry through his
hundred duties?--editing--writing--aiding public work and public and
private charities--correspondence--for he is the busiest man in
Boston, and his business increases upon him week by week in an
appalling ratio.

"How on earth do you do it all? Where do you get the power? What is
it?"

"The simple truth is," and I quote his words exactly, "that any child
of God, who in any adequate way believes that he can partake of the
divine nature, knows that he has strength enough for any business
which looks the right way; that is, which helps to bring God's kingdom
into the world. Well, if you are working with Aladdin's lamp, or with
Monte Cristo's treasures, you are not apt to think you will fail. Far
less will you think you will fail if you are working with the
omnipotence of the Lord God behind you. When people talk to me,
therefore, about optimism or good spirits or expecting success, if I
know them well enough I say that I am promised infinite power to work
with, and that whenever I have trusted it fairly and squarely, I have
found that the promise was true."

He stopped, and under the shelter of a high steeple we separated: and
the parish priest, the author, the eager citizen, the helper of poor
girls and struggling young men, the man of power, the Christian
cosmopolitan, strode down the street, and was lost in the mist.

I could not help calling to mind a pretty story told of him while he
was travelling in the West. As the train stopped at some forsaken
hamlet in California, twenty girls were seen upon the platform. On
hearing that Edward E. Hale was to pass through, they had begged off
from school in order to greet him. They were "King's Daughters," and
Doctor Hale was their inspiration and their chief. Each girl was
loaded with a different flower, with which she garlanded her hero.

Such a tender and reverential free-masonry as this, founded by
himself, greets him daily through the mail, and overwhelms him when he
travels from his own home.

As the author of "The Man Without a Country," "In His Name," and "Ten
Times One is Ten," he sways our imagination and our hearts. But let
him also be known as a man content to be a parish minister, and as one
who never fails to lend a hand when the chance is given to him.

[Illustration: E. E. HALE IN 1847. FROM A PAINTING BY RICHARD HINSDALE.]



HOW CASSIE SAVED THE SPOONS.

BY ANNIE HOWELLS FRÉCHETTE.


The last good-by had been said, and the comfortable country carriage,
drawn by its two glossy bay horses, had disappeared around a knoll.

"They is do'rn," remarked the baby, as if just in possession of a
solemn fact.

"Torse they is do'rn, you blessed baby," answered Florence, his
fifteen-year-old sister, stooping down and lifting him in her strong
arms and kissing him.

The baby, let me remark, was a sturdy boy of four, with bright brown
eyes and red cheeks--cheeks so plump that when you had a side view of
his face you could only see the tip of his little pug nose.

"Well, if ever anybody has earned a holiday, they are father and
mother," said Cassie.

"Cassie, dear, your sentiment is better than your grammar," laughed
Rose, the eldest of the three sisters.

"Never you mind my grammar, Miss Eglantine. I mayn't have much 'book
larnin',' but I've got a head on my shoulders, as father frequently
remarks--which is a good thing, for I couldn't bear to look at myself
in the glass if I hadn't--and besides, how could I do my hair up so
neatly, (Cassie's hair was the joke of the family) if I hadn't? And
now I'm going up-stairs to cry, and I'll be down in three minutes to
help with the dishes," and the giddy girl flew into the house and
disappeared.

At the expiration of the three minutes which Cassie had set apart as
sacred to her grief, she reappeared, sniffing audibly, but otherwise
cheerful.

"Now, girls, I say let us buzz through the work like a swarm of
industrious bumble-bees, and then go down to the creek lots and put in
the day gathering nuts. Last night, as Ned and I came through them,
the nuts were falling like hail, and we can pick up our winter's
supply in a few hours."

This was favorably received, for they were all--even Rose--children
enough to enjoy a long day in the autumn woods. We all know that
willing hands make light work, and the morning's task was quickly
done; a basket of lunch was put up, and the girls, with the baby, were
soon scampering through the meadow toward the little creek, whose
borders for miles around were famous for their wealth of nuts.

The harvest was indeed bountiful, and they worked merrily and
untiringly until bags and baskets were filled and deposited by a great
log, where their brother would next day find them and cart them home.
So busy and happy had they been that they could scarcely believe that
the day had ended until the woods began to fill with shadows, and the
baby declared he was sleepy and wanted his supper.

"Who would ever have believed it so late?" cried Rose, peering from
under the low boughs toward the west, "and there are all those cows to
milk and the chickens to feed! Come, come, girls, not another nut;
we'll have to go home at once if we want to get through before dark.
Cassie, you are the quickest, do run ahead and let the bars down, and
get the pails ready, and I'll carry the baby--he's so tired, poor
little fellow, he can hardly stand. Florence can start the fire and
begin the supper while you and I do the chores."

Away sped the light-footed Cassie, while the others made such haste as
they could with the tired baby, who wept in a self-pitying way upon
Rose's shoulder.

"Oo dirls is 'tarvin' me an' walkin' me most to pieces, an' I want my
mover," he wailed, as he finally dozed off.

Rose laid him upon the lounge in the cozy sitting-room, and, waiting
for a moment to see Florence started with the supper, for which they
were all ready, hurried away to the barn, where she could hear Cassie
whistling, and talking to the cows as she milked.

Out from the kitchen's open door appetizing odors of coffee and frying
ham stole to greet the two girls, as they came towards the house with
their brimming pails of frothy milk.

"It smells good," said Cassie, "and I'm as hungry as a tramp----"

"Oh, Cassie! why did you say that? I've just been trying not to think
about tramps. I always feel creepy when I'm about the barn after dark,
anyway, and now----"

"Well, my saying that won't bring any along."

"They are positively the only things in the world that I'm afraid
of."

"Well, then, _I'm_ not afraid of them. And suppose one should come?
Surely three great stout girls ought to be able to take care of
themselves."

"Oh, Cassie, dear, please stop talking about them! I feel as if one
were stepping on my heels. Let's run."

"And spill the milk? Not much."

The kitchen looked so bright and cheery as they entered it that Rose
seemed to leave her fears outside with the duskiness, and by the time
she had strained the milk and put it away, she had forgotten that
tramps existed.

Cassie had gone up-stairs to make some needed changes in her toilet,
the baby had roused from a short nap and was taking a rather mournful
interest in the preparations for supper, when Rose, who had just
stopped to ask him whether he would rather have honey or preserves,
heard a stealthy step upon the porch. A moment later, the door was
pushed slowly open and a man walked in.

"Good evening, ladies. Is your pa at home?"

"N--no," faltered Rose, trying to settle to her own satisfaction
whether this dirty-looking stranger might be some new neighbor, who
had come upon legitimate business, or whether he was her one horror--a
tramp.

"Any of your big brothers in?" with rather a jocular manner.

"N--no, sir."

"And I don't see any bull-dog loafin' round," he added.

"Our dord, he is dead," explained the baby solemnly.

"Well, that's a good thing. Will the old gentleman be in soon?"

"I--I don't know--yes--I--I _hope_ so. Is there any message you would
like to leave for him?"

Before the man could answer, the baby's voice was again heard.

"My fahver he's dorn orf."

"Where's he gone, sonny?"

"He's dorn on the tars, so's my mohver; and my bid brover he putted
yem on, and he won't be home 'til I'm asleep, and he's doin' to brin'
me a drum and put it in my bed."

(Oh, how Rose longed to shake the baby!)

"Well, then, ladies, since you are likely to be alone, I think I'll
stay and keep you company; and since you press me, I _will_ take tea
and spend the evening. Don't go to any extra work for me, though; it
all looks very nice. I'm rather hungry, so you may dish up that ham at
once, my dear"--this to poor Florence, who had shrunk almost into
invisibility behind the stove-pipe, and who seemed glued to the
spot--"I've usually a very fair appetite, and I am sure I will relish
it."

He tossed his hat down beside the chair which he drew up to the
table.

With the light falling full upon his dirty, insolent face, Rose knew
that her greatest dread was before her. With her knees almost sinking
under her, she started toward the stairs, for she felt that she must
let the intrepid Cassie know, and find out what she advised.

"Where are you going, my dear?" asked the tramp, suspiciously. "You've
not got any big cousin or uncle or anything of that kind up-stairs
that you are going to call to tea, have you?"

"Oh, no, there is no one up-stairs but my poor sister," she managed to
gasp. She could not have told why she said "poor sister," unless it
was from the sense of calamity which had overtaken them all.

"In that case be spry, for I'm hungry, and I want you to pour out my
tea for me. I like to have a pretty face opposite me at table."

Rose dragged herself up the narrow enclosed stairs and into Cassie's
room.

"Well, Rose, you _must_ be about tuckered out. You come up-stairs as
if you were eighty," said Cassie, looking up from the shoe she was
fastening. "Why, what ails you? You look as if you had seen a ghost!"

"Oh, Cassie, there is one of them down-stairs!" came in a whisper.

"What _do_ you mean, Rose Bostwick? A _ghost_ down-stairs!"

"No--no--a tramp."

"Whew!" and Cassie gave a low whistle. "And I suppose you're scared?"

"Oh, Cassie, I feel as if I were choking! Do hurry down, he may be
killing poor little Florence and the baby. What shall we do? The baby
has told him we are all alone."

"The baby ought to be soundly spanked for that."

"What _can_ we do? Try to think."

Cassie sat swinging the button-hook in her hand and thinking very hard
and fast.

"Does he know I'm here?"

"Yes, I've told him."

"Then it would be no use for me to pretend to be Ned," thinking
aloud.

"I'm afraid not."

Another silence dedicated to thought.

"Rose?"

"Yes."

"I'm going to be crazy. I'm going to chase him off the farm."

"Oh, Cassie, you _can't_! He's a great, big, impudent wretch. What
folly to talk about chasing him off the farm!"

"It's our only chance."

"Don't count on me. _I_ can't help you. My teeth are chattering with
terror, and my legs are doubling up under me this very minute. I
couldn't help chase a fly."

"You can scream, I s'pose?"

"Oh, yes, I can do that."

"Well, you do the screaming and I'll do the chasing. Rush down-stairs
and scream and scream, and bang the door to, and just shriek: 'She's
out--she's out--she's coming down stairs!' And you'll see what a
perfectly beautiful lunatic I will be. It's a good thing I have this
old dress on, and only one shoe. Now make a rush, and scream."

Rose's over-strained nerves were her best allies, and as she flew down
the stairs it was the easiest thing in the world for her to give one
piercing shriek after another. They resounded from the narrow stairway
through the kitchen, and for the moment seemed to paralyze its
inmates. As she burst in upon them, Florence was transfixed midway of
the table and the stove with the platter of ham in her hands, the baby
had climbed upon a chair, and the tramp had arisen with a bewildered
air from the table. As her skirts cleared the door, she turned and
dashed it shut, and flung herself against it, shrieking, "She's
out--she's out of her room!"

To the mystified Florence there came but one solution to her
behavior--fright had overthrown her sister's reason, and with a wail
she rushed toward her, crying, "She's crazy! Oh, she's crazy!"

"Who's crazy?" yelled the tramp.

The baby, now wildly terrified, set up a loud weeping, while from the
stairway came a succession of blows and angry demands that the door be
opened. A moment later it was forced ajar, and a head crowned with a
mass of tossed hair was thrust out and quickly followed by a hand in
which was clutched a gun.

"She's got the gun! Oh, Florence, run to the baby!" cried Rose.

"Who's that?" demanded the apparition, making a rush toward the
tramp.

"Here, keep off! Leave me alone!" backing away and warding off an
expected blow.

She stood before him, tall, strong, and agile.

"I won't leave you alone. What do you mean by locking me in that room?
I'm no more crazy than you are. What's this?" as she stumbled over the
hat which the tramp had put beside the chair, and into which he had
deposited the silver spoons from the table. "Oh, I see, you are all in
league to rob me of my gold and precious stones!" and catching the hat
up on the muzzle of the gun she gave it a whirl which sent the spoons
glittering in every direction; then, advancing upon him, she thrust
hat and gun into the face of the horrified man. With a volley of oaths
he sprang backwards, upsetting his chair and falling over it.

"Oh, don't kill him, Cassie! don't kill him!"

"We'll have a merry time," gaily dancing about him and prodding him
sharply with the gun, as he tried to scramble to his feet.

"Keep off with that gun, can't you!" he yelled. "Can't you hold her,
you screaming idiots?" and half crawling, half pushed, he gained the
kitchen door, which had stood partly open since he had entered.

"Where are you going, my pretty maid? Don't you try to get away,"
shouted Cassie, as she lilted lightly after him. The tramp stayed not
to answer her question nor to obey her command, but clearing the door
fled wildly away through the dusk.

"Here's your hat; I'll fire it after you," she called, and a sharp
report rang out on the quiet evening air, then all was still.

The three girls stood for a moment in the door, watching the dim
outline fleeing across the meadow in the direction of the highway.

"He'll think twice before inviting himself to supper another time,"
quietly remarked Cassie with a satisfied smile.

"Oh, Cassie, darling, you have saved our lives," cried Florence,
flinging her arms around her sister.

"I don't know about that; but I've saved the spoons, anyway."

"There, there, baby," going to the still afflicted boy; "don't cry any
more. Sister Cassie was just making a dirty old tramp hop; she didn't
really shoot him, she was just playing shoot."

"Oh, Cassie, you splendid, brave girl! How _did_ you ever happen to
think to go crazy?" asked Rose, as she looked over her shoulder from
the door which she was barricading.

"Well, I knew something had to be done, and that just popped into my
mind. I was doing 'Ophelia' the other day up in my room, so I was in
practice; and didn't I make a sweetly pensive maniac? Now I hope you
girls will never again make disrespectful comments upon any little
private theatricals of mine. If I had never cultivated my dramatic
talents, what would have become of you, I'd like to know?"

It was some time before the tidal wave of excitement subsided
sufficiently for the girls to settle down for the evening, or for the
baby to go to sleep. Again and again they thought they heard
footsteps, and, although the door was locked and double-locked, they
drew up into battle line whenever the autumn wind shook down a shower
of leaves upon the roof.

Just as the clock was on the stroke of eight, a pleasant sound came
fitfully to them. It was a softly whistled tune, and the cheery
cadence told of a mind free from unpleasant doubts of welcome.

"Surely that can't be Ned back already; he wasn't to start home until
nine," said Rose, going to the window and cautiously peeping from
under the curtain.

"Right you are there, sister Rose," assented Cassie. "It surely can't
be, especially as Ned could no more whistle 'Marching through Georgia'
than you could have done the marching. It sounds uncommonly like young
Farmer Dunscomb's whistle to me."

"Well, whoever it is, I am deeply thankful that somebody besides a
tramp is coming," interrupted Florence.

"And so am I," demurely agreed Rose. "Do go to the door, Cassie, and
peep out, and make sure that it isn't that dreadful creature coming
back."

"Are you a dreadful creature coming to murder us all?" demanded Cassie
of the whistler, setting the door slightly ajar, and thrusting her
head out.

"Well, I don't go round giving myself out as a dreadful creature,"
responded a jolly voice from the porch. "Hello! What's this I'm
breaking my neck over?" as the owner of the voice tripped upon an old
slouch hat.

"Bring that article of wearing apparel to me, if you please,"
requested Cassie as she opened the door, letting a flood of light out
upon the visitor. "That is a little token of remembrance which I wish
to keep. There!" holding the hat out at arm's length, "I have long
wanted a gilt toasting-fork or rolling-pin, or something artistic, for
my room; now I shall embroider these shot-holes and gild the brim and
hang it up by long blue ribbons, just where my waking orbs can rest
upon it as they open in the morning. Ah, this hat will ever have
stirring memories for me, friend George," eying the young man
dramatically.

He looked at her a moment, then burst into a hearty laugh. "Is she
crazy, Rose?"

"Yes, she's the dearest and bravest lunatic in the world, George,"
answered Rose.



SURRENDER.

BY GERTRUDE HALL.


  Then lead me, Friend. Here is my hand,
    Not in dumb resignation lent,
  Because thee one cannot withstand--
    In love, Lord, with complete consent.

  Lead--and I, not as one born blind
    Obeys in sheer necessity,
  But one with muffled eyes designed,
    Will blindly trust myself to thee.

  Lead.--Though the road thou mak'st me tread
    Bring sweat of anguish to my brow,
  And on the flints my track be red,
    I will not murmur--it is thou.

  Lead.--If we come to the cliff's crest,
    And I hear deep below--oh, deep!--
  The torrent's roar, and "Leap!" thou sayst,
    I will not question--I will leap.



"HUMAN DOCUMENTS."

  "_For of the soule the bodie forme doth take,
  For soule is forme and doth the bodie make._"

  --From "An Hymne in Honour of Beautie."--SPENSER.


BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES.

WILLIAM II., EMPEROR OF GERMANY, was born January 27, 1859, and
received an education chiefly at home, under the supervision of his
parents, his tutors, and his military instructors. On March 9, 1888,
his grandfather, the first emperor, died. On June 15 of the same year
Emperor Frederick also died, and William II. succeeded. After spending
some time in personally visiting the courts of European sovereigns,
the young emperor took a decisive step towards his future standing as
a leader in European politics, by severing relations with his
grandfather's right-hand man, Prince Bismarck. From that time, he has
himself been the most prominent and dominating figure in the
administration of Germany's affairs. He has, without regard to
imperial precedent, personally connected himself with such questions
as concern the population of the whole world, notably the Socialistic
and Labor problems. He has made himself, also, a master of the
smallest details concerning the government of his people, and even of
his household. As yet without experience of actual warfare, he is an
alert and constant inspector of both his army and navy, and, in his
determined enforcement of the "Army Bill," has given evidence of his
desire to uphold Germany as a military power second to none. With the
exception of slight colonial difficulties in Samoa and Africa, he has
had as yet no foreign trouble to contend with. He is a close student
and an eager inquirer; he is a good shot, a skilled horseman, and
interested in all forms of sport.

EUGENE FIELD, poet and journalist, was born in St. Louis in 1850, but
spent the greater part of his youth in Massachusetts. He was educated
at Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, and the State University at
Columbia, Missouri. After a visit to Europe, he commenced work as a
journalist on the "St. Louis Journal." From that time to the present
he has been continually connected with the western newspaper press of
America, having occupied editorial positions in St. Joseph, Kansas
City, and Denver, and finally on the Chicago "News." His humorous and
satirical studies in that newspaper have made him widely known, and
his occasional verses have become very popular. His best work has been
published in book form under the titles: "A Little Book of Western
Verse," "A Second Book of Verse," and "A Little Book of Profitable
Tales." (See "Dialogue between Eugene Field and Hamlin Garland," in
the August number of MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE.)

COLONEL ALBERT AUGUSTUS POPE, President of the Pope Manufacturing
Company, was born in Boston in 1843. He received an ordinary
public-school education, and at nineteen years of age entered the
Union army as a volunteer, with the appointment of second lieutenant
in the 35th Massachusetts Infantry, serving with distinction, and
being gazetted lieutenant-colonel "for gallant conduct in the battles
of Knoxville, Poplar Springs Church, and front of Petersburg." At the
close of the war he commenced business in Boston, and, becoming
interested in the development of the bicycle, he began to introduce
the machines into the United States, commencing the manufacture of
them in 1878. The Pope Manufacturing Company are the proprietors of
the "Columbia" bicycle, and their works are among the largest of the
kind in the world. Colonel Pope has taken an active interest in
affairs of public moment both in his native State and throughout the
country, notably so in the movement for establishing better roads, and
in the welfare and education of factory employees.


EMPEROR WILLIAM OF GERMANY.

_Born January 27, 1859._

[Illustration: AGE 10. 1869. PRINCE WILLIAM OF PRUSSIA, YOUNGEST
LIEUTENANT IN THE ARMY.]

[Illustration: AGE 25. 1884. PRINCE WILLIAM, COLONEL OF INFANTRY.]

[Illustration: AGE 15. 1874. STUDENT AT CASSEL.]

[Illustration: AGE 20. 1879. PRINCE WILLIAM, PREMIER LIEUTENANT.]

[Illustration: AGE 29. CROWN PRINCE OF PRUSSIA, IN THE UNIFORM OF A
COLONEL OF HUSSARS.]

[Illustration: AGE 29. EMPEROR WILLIAM OF GERMANY, KING OF PRUSSIA, IN
THE UNIFORM OF A GENERAL OF CUIRASSIERS.]

[Illustration: AGE 33. DECEMBER, 1892. EMPEROR WILLIAM OF GERMANY, IN THE
UNIFORM OF A GENERAL OF CUIRASSIERS OF THE ROYAL BODY GUARD.]


EUGENE FIELD.

_Born in St. Louis, 1850._

[Illustration: AGE SIX MONTHS.]

[Illustration: AGE 12.]

[Illustration: AGE 20.]

[Illustration: AGE 23.]

[Illustration: AGE 30.]

[Illustration: AGE 34.]

[Illustration: AGE 42.]


COLONEL ALBERT A. POPE.

_Born in Boston, 1843._

[Illustration: AGE 7.]

[Illustration: AGE 15.]

[Illustration: AGE 19. 1862. LIEUTENANT IN THE 35TH MASSACHUSETTS
INFANTRY.]

[Illustration: AGE 27.]

[Illustration: AGE 48.]



DREAMS GO BY CONTRARIES.

BY GEORGE H. JESSOP.


"I don't want to hurry any one," remarked our host, shaking the ashes
out of a well-blackened meerschaum, "but we have a long day before us
to-morrow, and if any one wants any sleep this is the time to take
it."

No response from any one of the half-dozen men lounging in the snug
armchairs of that most perfectly appointed smoking-room.

"I don't mind," said Sir Alan. "Two or three hours in bed are enough
for me at any time. Please pass the spirit case, Jones. I wonder
you're not sleepy, Tom Everton. You used always to be in bed by eleven
when you had an early morning in prospect, but I suppose matrimony has
cured you of that along with other failings."

"Tom says he isn't going," some one remarked.

"Not going! Pooh, nonsense! I thought he'd made up his mind to bring
down a hart royal, at least, or leave his bones on Balmaquidder
Brae."

Mr. Everton looked decidedly uncomfortable.

"I--I should like to try of all things," he stammered, "but--well--I
won't--at least I think--I--I shan't go with you to-morrow--that is,
if Sir Alan will excuse me."

"Please yourself and you'll please me," replied the hospitable
baronet; "but if it isn't any secret I'd like to know what has made
you change your mind so suddenly."

"He promised Mrs. Everton he wouldn't go," broke in the previous
speaker. "She dreamed a dream, and, like Pharaoh's chief baker, she
thought there was something in it."

"Do be quiet, Jones," interrupted Everton, irritably. "My wife had a
rather odd dream last night, and she's a bit nervous, you know,
and--well, after all, it's not much to give up one day's
deer-stalking, if any one's going to make herself miserable over it."

We all knew each other pretty well, this little circle of guests
collected by Sir Alan to help him to shoot his Scotch mountain, and
very free and outspoken was the "chaff" that flew around poor Tom
Everton's devoted head. He bore it with great good-humor for some
time, till Jones made a rather uncalled-for remark involving questions
of free will and "petticoat government." Then Tom flared up.

"I don't stay at home because I'm afraid of anything, but simply
because I have promised. My wife dreamed that I went out with this
party, and it grew late without any of us coming back. Then she
thought she saw me lying face down in the Balmaquidder, and she seemed
to know I was dead. I don't remember the details, but I know she
worked herself up into a shocking nervous state about it till I
promised not to go. Of course it's all nonsense, I know that, but what
can I do?"

"Do as you promised!" It was Colonel Eyre's deep voice that uttered
the words, and we all glanced round at the speaker. He had remained
silent during the badinage occasioned by Everton's determination,
sitting with his tumbler of Scotch whiskey-and-water in front of him,
puffing away silently at the short brier-root, whose bowl scarcely
cleared the sweep of his heavy, grizzled mustache. He was holding the
pipe in his hand now, sitting erect and speaking with unmistakable
earnestness of manner. "Do as you promised, and don't be too sure it's
all nonsense, either. I have known cases in which men have lived to be
very thankful that they yielded to a presentiment."

"But this was a dream, colonel," broke in the irrepressible Jones.

"Dream be it, then! Stay at home, Everton. As you say, it's not much
to miss a day's shooting. And if you neglect this warning the chances
are you may never live to regret it." The speaker took a sip from the
tumbler in front of him, replaced his pipe between his lips, and
leaned back as if the subject were at an end.

But the colonel, an Indian officer of many years' service, was
popularly supposed to have led a life of adventure, and to have
figured in more than one story whose exciting incidents could well
bear repetition. As a rule, he was a taciturn man, and it was by no
means easy to "set him talking," as the story goes. The present seemed
an opportunity too good to be lost, and several voices demanded the
experience by whose authority he had spoken so decidedly.

"Well, yes," said Colonel Eyre slowly, "I have seen a presentiment
very remarkably fulfilled. I am not much of a hand at yarning, but, if
you wish, I have no objection to give you a leaf out of my own book,
if it's only that you may leave my friend Tom here in peace to follow
his own course, without badgering him about it. Yes, I mean you, Mr.
Jones," he went on, impaling that helpless youngster with a glance
that sent him nervously to the spirit case, while the rest of us
settled ourselves comfortably to listen, and Sir Alan, with a "Fire
ahead, colonel," drew his chair forward into a better position.

"It was a good while after the breaking of the monsoon in '68," began
the colonel, slowly; "the weather was cool and pleasant enough, so
that, on the face of it, it seemed no great hardship when I was
ordered to take a detachment down to Sumbalpar. I was stationed at
Raipur at the time, in the Orissa district, and word came of some
trouble with the Zemindars above Sumbalpar. The only thing that seemed
inconvenient was the suddenness of the order. It was just 'Fall in and
march out' without delay of an hour. I was a young married man in
those days, pretty much in the position of my friend Tom Everton, with
a wife of two years and a bit of a baby a few months old. It wasn't
pleasant to leave them behind me in a place like Raipur, and, of
course, it was out of the question to start them at an hour's notice.
I spoke to my bearer, Josein, one of the best native servants I ever
saw, and directed him to make arrangements for an early march on the
following morning. He was to see my family driven quietly over to
Sumbalpar in the tonga. They were to travel by easy stages under the
charge of a careful bilewallah. If there are any 'griffs' in this
company, I may explain for their benefit that a tonga is a kind of
bullock wagon, and a bilewallah is the driver of the same. Well, I had
just time for a few words of comfort and farewell--Tom will appreciate
all that--before I rode out of Raipur at the head of my column. We
camped that night in the jungle, after a march of about twenty miles,
and it was under canvas that I was visited with the dream or
presentiment, or whatever you choose to call it, that gives such point
as it may possess to this old-time yarn of mine."

The colonel paused to refill his glass, but every one's interest was
now awakened, and no one broke the momentary silence that ensued.

"It was pretty late before I fell asleep," resumed Colonel Eyre,
setting down his tumbler, "and it was still dark when I awoke, or
seemed to awake, with my wife's voice ringing in my ears--a shriek of
agony that made me start up from my pillow and listen breathlessly.
There was a lantern burning in my tent--I had left it so when I lay
down--and by the glimmer of light I saw a large, dark mass spread
itself between me and the canvas roof and gradually settle down on my
head. I did not know what it was--it was vague and formless in
outline--but I had a consciousness that it was something of a
dangerous nature--something that threatened my life--and I struggled
to throw myself to one side or the other. In vain. I could not move
hand or foot. I lay as if chained to the bed, and still the dark mass
descended, shutting out light and air and seeming to suffocate me."

"Nightmare!" remarked Sir Alan.

"Very possibly," returned the colonel. "Suddenly, just as I gave
myself up for lost, and sank back on the pillow exhausted, I heard my
wife's voice again, this time clear and articulate. 'Save yourself,
Gerald,' it cried. 'Make one more effort for my sake.' I glanced up at
the threatening outline, nerving myself for a final struggle. It was
no longer formless; its approach had ceased to be slow. Swift as the
swoop of a falcon it descended upon me--the immense body of a tiger on
the spring--its cruel jaws agape, its enormous paws with every claw
unsheathed, and its hot, fetid breath on my very brow!"

"A decidedly uncomfortable dream," observed Jones.

"Of course all this passed in one-tenth of the time I take to tell it.
I rolled out from under the hungry jaws, and just as I reached the
ground I heard the angry growl of the baffled monster, followed by a
shattering roar loud enough to waken the Seven Sleepers. As my senses
came back to me, I found myself lying half on the ground, half on my
low camp bed, my body bathed in perspiration, and trembling in every
limb. Just then my batman put his head inside the tent-flap and asked
me if I had heard the roar, adding that there was a tiger in the camp.
I pulled on my clothes, and I could hear the men walking about among
the tents, searching and whispering--but no trace of a tiger could we
discover."

"Then it was a real tiger?" inquired Tom.

"It would seem so, as the whole camp had heard the roar as well as
myself. However, it was almost morning by this time, and as every one
was afoot and moments were precious I gave orders to push on at once.
A hurried chota hazree was quickly prepared and despatched, and by the
time the sun rose we were fairly on our way, with a good prospect of
reaching Sumbalpar before nightfall. I couldn't shake off the
impression of the dream, however, try as I would. Besides, some
natives who had come in before we broke camp told us of a man-eater
which had been infesting the district. A tiger that has once tasted
human flesh, as you may have heard, is never content with beef or
venison afterwards, and they sometimes make themselves the terror of a
whole country-side before they are shot. What with the vague
misgivings suggested by my dream, and the tangible danger of the
man-eater, I found myself growing more and more uneasy with every mile
we marched. Finally, I determined to turn back and meet my wife. I was
well mounted, and I believed I could gallop to the rear, assure myself
that all was well with her, and pick up my command again before it
reached Sumbalpar. I left the detachment in charge of a sergeant--poor
old Busbee, he died of jungle fever that same year--and rode back as
fast as King Tom, a very speedy chestnut, could lay leg to ground. I
passed the spot where we had spent the night, and kept on several
miles beyond without seeing anything to cause uneasiness. My fears
were beginning to disperse, and common sense made itself heard. I
realized that I might find it very difficult to give a satisfactory
explanation of my absence if the men reached Sumbalpar without
me--they do not pay much attention to dreams at headquarters. This
view of the case became more impressive with each mile I rode, and I
determined that if the next turn in the path did not bring my family
into view, or show me some other good reason for pushing on, I would
turn back and rejoin my command. Thus resolved, I cantered forward,
swung round the tangled angle of brush that limited my view, and
saw----"

Here the colonel stopped for another sip of whiskey-and-water.

"What did you see?" cried Sir Alan. "Your wife?"

"Yes, sir, I saw her. She was sitting with the baby in her lap in the
tonga--pale--I have never seen such an expression of strained terror
on any human countenance. The bilewallah was in front, trying to keep
the bullocks, which seemed almost frantic with fear, to the path. I
knew the man well--one of the best hands with a team at the
station--but just then his face was so distorted with fright that I
hardly recognized him. You know that lilac-grayish tinge a native's
face gets when he is scared almost to death----"

"I know, I know," broke in Sir Alan. "But what was the matter--what
was frightening them? Could you see anything?"

"Indeed I could," replied the colonel. "Cause enough they had; not
five yards behind them trotted the largest tiger it has ever been my
fortune to see."

Various exclamations testified to the completeness of the surprise to
which Colonel Eyre had treated his audience.

"Was it a man-eater?" I asked.

"At first I supposed it was, but if it had been I never should have
seen them alive. After I shot the beast----"

"Oh, you did shoot him?"

"Don't ask me how! I am counted a fair shot--I was far better then;
but when I levelled my rifle at that brute's heart, when I realized
how much hung on the result--for if I had missed, or if I had merely
wounded him, he would have been in the tonga at a single spring, and
nothing under heaven itself could have saved those dearest to me from
a horrible death--when I realized all this, I don't know how I found
the nerve to pull the trigger. I suppose I knew it was the only
chance. My appearance had enraged the animal and he was just preparing
to spring. This I do know, and I'm not ashamed to own it: when I saw
that I had laid the tiger out with a single shot--a thing that doesn't
happen twice in a lifetime--I fell flat beside the tonga in the act of
helping my wife down; for the first and last time in my life I
fainted.

"Yes, it was a pretty hard trial on the nerves," resumed the
colonel, as our discussion of the situation sank into silence, "but
nothing to what my wife had gone through. That tiger had followed
them for more than four miles through the jungle. The bilewallah,
with rare presence of mind, had managed to keep the bullocks to their
steady jog-trot--any increase of pace or appearance of flight would
have provoked a spring. She, poor woman, had succeeded in hushing
her baby, for had the child cried, nothing is surer than that the
sound would have led to an attack. It must have been an awful four
miles for her. It was years before she recovered from the effect."

"And why did not the tiger attack them?" inquired Jones. "Does any one
know?"

"The animal was doubtless waiting to kill them till they got into the
vicinity of water," explained Colonel Eyre. "Tigers often do that with
cattle and other large quarry. There was water a mile or less further
on. I had noticed it myself in passing. If I had not come upon the
ground, another ten minutes would have sealed their fate."

"So it may fairly be said that your dream was the means of saving
their lives," observed Tom Everton, who, although the most silent, had
not been the least attentive of the listeners.

"I think we may fairly admit so much," replied Colonel Eyre. "If it
had not been for my dream, I do not think the report of the man-eater
would have brought me back. On the other hand, but for hearing about
the man-eater and actually being awakened by the roar of a tiger, I am
not sure that the dream would have had weight enough with me to induce
me to leave a detachment on the march--a serious thing, gentlemen, as
some of you who are soldiers know well enough."

"It's a very curious circumstance, certainly," observed Sir Alan; and
then there was a pause.

"But see here, colonel," Tom broke in again, "the dream, if a warning
at all, was a warning of danger to you, yourself, and though you
certainly heard Mrs. Eyre's voice calling to you, yet it was urging
you to save yourself, and not summoning you to her assistance."

"That is very true, and it puzzled me at the time. But, as I argued,
it is wonderful enough to get a warning of danger in the future at
all; you must not expect to have it spelled out to you in large print.
Now, as to this dream of Mrs. Everton's--it prefigures danger to you,
as I understand?"

"You must go to Mrs. Everton herself for the details. All that I
remember is that she saw me lying drowned in the Balmaquidder, and
read the vision as a warning that some accident would befall me if I
joined the shooting-party to-morrow. But, by the light of your
experience, it would seem the danger is to her, not to me."

"I'm not quite so sure of that," returned the colonel, thoughtfully.

"Well, I think there can be no question that your dream saved your
wife's life," observed Jones, upon whose scepticism the colonel's
narrative had made some impression.

"No question at all," rejoined that officer, rising, "and therefore,
young man, pay attention to dreams, whether they be your own or those
of your better half, which should be, _a fortiori_, better and more
reliable than your own. Good-night, gentlemen. It's past one o'clock,
and we have an early start before us."

In ten minutes more silence and darkness reigned in the smoking-room
of Balmaquidder Lodge.

Next morning the men of the party were up and stirring betimes. As I
left my bedroom, candle in hand, I heard voices proceeding from the
apartment occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Everton. "Ah, ha," thought I,
"Tom's curtain lecture is not over yet." However, our friend's absence
was forgotten in the enjoyment of a substantial Highland breakfast,
and by the time the sun asserted his power against the mist we were
bravely breasting a steep mountain side, spurred on by the hope of a
good day's sport.

Only one incident occurred at our start. Sir Alan was setting his face
against a steep brae when he was stopped by the bare-legged gillie
who acted as our guide. "Dinna gae yon gait, Sir Alan. We must win
ower by the brig below."

"Can't we get across by the stepping-stones at the ford?" inquired our
host, impatiently. "The bridge is a mile of a round."

"I dinna ken that the stanes'll be ower muckle safe, Sir Alan, forbye
ye canna see them at a' wi' the white water swirling ower them, and
the pool maybe ten feet deep close in under them. We mought win ower
recht enoo, an' again we mought na--ye ken----"

"Yes, I ken," interrupted Sir Alan. "We'll go round by the bridge,
gentlemen. There's a flood in the river, it appears--a cheerful habit
the Balmaquidder has when you least want it or expect it."

By the bridge accordingly we went, and when I saw the brown water
whirling down in swift eddies I was thankful that we had not attempted
the stepping-stones.

It was evening, and fast growing dark, when we reached the glen on our
return, wet, tired, and hungry, but thoroughly satisfied with the
day's result. We were stepping out briskly, for we knew we were close
to home, when a big mountain hawk swooped right in front of us. Jones,
who had not drawn the cartridge from his rifle, let fly on the
instant, without remembering how small was his chance with a bullet at
quarry on the wing. We were amusing ourselves chaffing Jones as the
bird flew off untouched when Colonel Eyre, who was a few steps to the
rear, pulled up short and raised his hand to signal for silence.

We all heard it then--a shrill, lamentable voice ringing sharply from
the hillside; there was no mistaking the purport of that appeal, it
was a cry for help. But the mist was beginning to settle and the echo
baffled us. For a moment we looked blankly at each other and around,
not knowing whither to turn.

Again the cry, "Help, help, help!" with a note of agony in it that
stirred the blood like a trumpet. "God guide us--'tis at the foord
above you," cried the gillie, and, tired as we were, none of us were
far behind him when he reached the stepping-stones.

They were hidden by a mass of swirling, broken water, but just below
them lay the pool of which the guide had spoken--calm by comparison
with the ford, but agitated nevertheless with a swift current that
flashed between steep banks faced with granite; as ugly a place for an
accident as might be found in the whole length of the brawling
Balmaquidder.

And an accident had happened, plainly enough. On one of the granite
boulders knelt Mrs. Everton, leaning back with all her might against
the drag of a plaid, one end of which she held, while the other was
lost in the black shadows of the pool.

She heard our footsteps as we ran up, but did not turn her head.
"Help, help!" she cried again. "I can't hold on much longer, and
he--oh----"

She broke off with a sob, as strong hands relieved her of the
extemporized life-line, and Colonel Eyre, bending forward, peered down
into the obscurity of the pool. I was one of those who had grasped the
shore end of the plaid, and the strain told me that whoever was below
still maintained his grasp. "Can you hold on another moment?" asked
the colonel; then, without waiting for a reply, "Cling close for dear
life. Now, boys, gently does it. A steady, slow pull--no jerking;" and
in another moment the dripping, half-senseless form of Tom Everton was
drawn out on the bank, his drowning grip of the plaid still
unloosened, and laid beside the fainting form of his wife.

"It was this way," Tom explained some hours later, when we were all
assembled for our usual smoking-room symposium. "I dare say I was
pretty cross all day, thinking of the sport you fellows were having,
and all I was missing, and towards evening my wife suggested that we
should walk out and try to meet you. We kept along the river up to
the stepping-stones, but the crossing there looked so bad that my wife
would not hear of my attempting it. I did not think it so very
dangerous, but I dare say I'd have let her have her own way----"

"As you usually do," interjected Jones.

"----when all of a sudden I heard a shot close by on the other side.
Then I started over at once. I've been across the ford a dozen times,
but before I had taken three steps I found the stream was too strong
for me. I tried to turn back, but the current seemed to whirl me right
off my feet; I went sliding over the slippery stones, and in two
seconds I was soused well over my head into the pool below, and
spinning round like a troll in a brook. I tried to grasp hold of
something on the bank, but that was the only result"--showing his
lacerated hands--"and I think I must have been very close to kingdom
come, when something or another flapped in my face. I clutched it and
hung on like grim death; it was Jenny's plaid, which she had the
presence of mind to fling me and the pluck and strength to hold on to
till you came to help. God bless her, I say"--Tom's voice faltered a
little--"she's a wife to be proud of; and the next time she has a
dream and wants me to stay at home, she shan't have to ask me twice."

"Oh, by the by, the dream!" broke in Sir Alan. "Is this accident to
Tom to be regarded as the fulfilment of his wife's dream or not?"

"Mrs. Everton's dream was a warning," said the colonel. "I should say
that, having profited by the warning----"

"But stay," I argued, "did she profit by the warning? She persuaded
her husband to stay at home. Now, if he had gone with us he would have
crossed by the bridge and been as safe as any of us. The dream did not
save him. On the contrary, it very nearly drowned him."

"She acted for the best, and all's well that ends well," replied the
colonel. "Look at my dream, now. If I had not gone to my wife's help
and shot that tiger I should never have seen her again. No, no, as I
said before, you can't expect these warnings to be printed out in big
type. You must just take them as they come, and chance your reading
them aright."

"And come within an ace of drowning yourself, or some one else,"
interjected Jones.

"It only bears out the old saying that 'Dreams go by contraries,'" I
remarked. "Still, these are a very remarkable pair of coincidences."

"Here's my view," said Sir Alan. "Eat light suppers, go to bed
healthily tired, and you won't dream at all; or, if you must, forget
all about it as soon as possible. You can torture a warning out of
almost anything, and make yourself wretched trying to find out where
the hidden danger is, and very likely rush right into it, as Everton
did, trying to avoid it. Half the time dreams do go by contraries, and
it's dangerous meddling with what we don't understand."

And by the time the spirit case had completed its next round, we all
agreed with Sir Alan.



THE TABLES TURNED.

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.


  Up! up, my friend! and quit your books,
    Or surely you'll grow double;
  Up! up, my friend! and clear your looks;
    Why all this toil and trouble?

  The sun, above the mountain's head,
    A freshening lustre mellow
  Through all the long, green fields has spread,
    His first sweet evening yellow.

  Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife;
    Come, hear the woodland linnet--
  How sweet his music! on my life,
    There's more of wisdom in it!

  And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
    He, too, is no mean preacher;
  Come forth into the light of things--
    Let Nature be your teacher.

  She has a world of ready wealth,
    Our minds and hearts to bless;
  Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
    Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

  One impulse from a vernal wood
    May teach you more of man,
  Of moral evil and of good,
    Than all the sages can.

  Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
    Our meddling intellect
  Misshapes the beauteous forms of things--
    We murder to dissect.

  Enough of Science and of Art;
    Close up those barren leaves;
  Come forth, and bring with you a heart
    That watches and receives.



PASTEUR AT HOME.

WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE WORK DONE AT THE PASTEUR INSTITUTE IN PARIS.

BY IDA M. TARBELL.


"Institut Pasteur." The coachman nodded. The cab door slammed. The
vehicle rattled across the Seine, left the grand boulevards, passed
the garden of the Luxembourg, and fell into a long, narrow street
running off into the southwestern corner of Paris. The high, dignified
house-fronts and the stately portals were soon passed; busy little
shops took their place. We were in an industrial quarter whose
commonplace was only varied here and there by a fine old _hôtel_, the
country house of some rich proprietor, probably, in the days, not so
very long ago, when all this portion of the city was without the
walls, and when an industrial invasion was undreamed of.

The cab left the Rue Vaugirard, crossed a superb boulevard, entered
the Rue Dutot, and stopped. Behind a long, high, black _grille_, and
separated from it by a hedge of shrubbery, a grass plot, and a broad
gravelled drive-way, rose a red-brick, stone-trimmed façade. Across
the front, above the handsome doorway, one read _Institut Pasteur_;
and, still higher, _Subscription Publique, MDCCCLXXXVIII_.

On the grass plot in front of the stately marble steps stood a small
bronze statue mounted on a high granite pedestal. It represented a boy
of twelve or fourteen years in a life-and-death struggle with a mad
dog. He has succeeded in fastening about the neck of the furious
animal the thong of a long whip. He is strangling him. Beside the boy,
or the ground, is a wooden shoe. With it he will beat the beast to
death. The statue tells the story of one of the earliest subjects
treated by M. Pasteur for hydrophobia, Jean-Baptiste Jupille, a
shepherd lad, who, seeing a group of children attacked by a mad dog,
throttled the animal and beat it dead with his _sabot_. He carried
away a dozen or more bites from the conflict, was sent to Paris,
inoculated, and cured. A fitting subject to place before the doorway
of the Pasteur Institute!

[Illustration: THE STATUE OF JUPILLE.]

Statue, façade and lawn are new. The bricks have not yet lost their
glare. One can almost see the dust still on the stone. The bronze has
not lost its fresh lustre. Even the lawn has the unevenness of new
sod, the horse-chestnut trees are small, the ivy has not had time to
climb far up the walls.

Everything is still and sealed in front, but to the right, from the
_concierge's_ lodge back to a solid, practical, dark stone building
in the rear of the main hall, is a throng of idle people, chatting in
clusters, sunning themselves on the benches, walking up and down. It
is a strikingly cosmopolitan company. There are Arabs in red, brown,
blue, or white; Italian women in aprons and lace head-dresses; Spanish
peasants in dark cloaks and broad-brimmed hats; Yankees, Zouaves,
Russians. The low babel of a multitude of tongues fills the air.

One only brushes the edge of this crowd as he makes his way to the
doorway in the end of the main building, the entrance to the private
apartment of M. Pasteur.

Narrow winding stairs lead up to a suite of lofty rooms, furnished
with solid, dignified woods, carpeted with soft, dark rugs, windows
and doors hung with heavy stuffs. The immediate impression is one of
comfort, warmth and quiet. The impression deepens as one enters the
library, where, before a desk, sits the great French savant, Madame
Pasteur near by. There is something home-like here. This might be the
sitting-room of some well-to-do New England squire or judge.
Involuntarily one searches in the face of the eminent savant, eying
him so keenly and so kindly, for traces of relationship with the
Puritan type. There is the same square determination, the same
obstinacy of purpose, the same direct sincerity; but it is mellowed by
Latin tenderness, kindled by French brilliancy.

This is a great man, one feels instinctively--a man so great that he
despises notoriety--and a journalist. It is reassuring.

[Illustration: THE PASTEUR INSTITUTE.]

The great master does not look to be seventy years of age as he sits
behind his desk, his elbow on the table, his hand supporting his head.
His hair and beard are still iron-gray; the hair is concealed largely
by the silk skullcap he always wears, but the beard is abundant. The
eyes are as penetrating, as full of ardor, as ever. It is only when he
speaks or moves that one sees the ravages of the paralysis which
overtook him twenty-five years ago, after his terrible three years of
labor in the little house at Alais, investigating the disease of the
silk-worm. The whole left side has been since then nearly useless. His
speech is hesitating, his motion difficult, but in spite of his
feebleness he spares no pains to interest his guest. One talks with M.
Pasteur with the ease and naturalness of the fireside.

"Look at my birthplace," he says, rising, and taking from the mantel
a photograph of the humble home at Dôle, Jura, where he was born. "My
village gave it to me at my _fête_."

I happen to know the story of the picture, and examine it with
pleasure. There was, indeed, no more touching feature in the great
Pasteur jubilee of last December than the presentation of this
photograph by the Mayor of Dôle.

The little village has always had a loyal pride in the fact that M.
Pasteur was born there. Ten years ago it celebrated the French Fourth
of July (July 14) by placing a plaque on the façade of the house,
bearing the inscription:

                       ICI EST NÉ LOUIS PASTEUR,
                           LE 22 DEC., 1822.

M. Pasteur was present and made a speech. In the course of it he
referred to his parents, their ambition for him, their self-sacrifice,
their faith in him. He recalled his father's words: "Louis, if I see
you one day a professor in the college of Arbois I shall be the
happiest man on earth." Overpowered by his recollections, he broke
down, sobbing.

The villagers of Dôle have never forgotten the scene. When the great
Pasteur jubilee was celebrated they sent up their mayor, commissioned
to present the picture of the early home, together with a facsimile of
the register of M. Pasteur's birth. That they were not mistaken in
thinking that he would be pleased, it is easy to see as he stands
before me, eying the humble house with tender pride.

[Illustration: THE LODGE.]

"Have you no picture of yourself taken in your boyhood at Dôle?"

"No," he answered. "The earliest picture I have is much later. Let me
see, I must have been decorated then. Where is the old album?"

The album is brought, a small square book, looking as if it had just
come off the table in the best room of a New England farm-house. There
is the same high-relief decoration, the same gilt lines edging the
photograph apertures. And these people? Verily, they might have lived
in New England forty years ago!

M. Pasteur turns the leaves. Madame Pasteur leans over his shoulder.
They stop now and then and exchange a smile as they come upon an old
friend. At last the sought-for photograph is found. M. Pasteur at
thirty--a great man already, for already he has made discoveries in
crystallography which have won him a name among scientists.

The plans for investigation which filled the head of the young man who
sits up so straight in the old photograph were never completed. The
enthusiastic student of crystallography was forced to change the
subject of his studies. Even now the great savant laments the change.

"If I have a regret," he says, "it is that I did not follow that
route, less rude, it seems to me, and which would have led, I am
convinced, to wonderful discoveries. A sudden turn threw me into the
study of fermentations, fermentations set me at diseases, but I am
still inconsolable to think that I have never had time to go back to
my old subject."

Beside the hero of the studies in crystallography M. Pasteur places
his latest picture. It lacks in youthfulness, but it has gained in
ripeness. This photograph has much of the vigor and the alertness one
sees in the splendid bust by Paul Dubois displayed in the Salon of
1880, and now in a gallery at Copenhagen. This bust is the most
satisfactory portrait of M. Pasteur ever made, unless it be the
painting by Edelfelt displayed in the Salon of 1886. In the same Salon
appeared Bonnat's portrait of M. Pasteur and his granddaughter.

[Illustration: M. PASTEUR IN HIS SALON.]

As I look at M. Pasteur in his library, however, I see only the
old model of Bonnat. I have difficulty in believing, indeed, as I
watch him bending smilingly over the old album, now and then
laughing aloud at the discovery of some forgotten picture, that
this man, over fifty years ago, for the sake of an education, made
himself a jack-of-all-trades in the college of Besançon, and was
aroused every morning at four o'clock with the night-watchman's cry:
"_Come, Pasteur, chase the demon of laziness._" It is difficult to
picture him in the intoxication of scientific enthusiasm and
discovery, sacrificing health, leisure, pleasure, to the passion of
learning which had taken possession of him.

He is so gentle, it seems incredible that he has had to meet coldness,
contempt, opposition of every species, in his life; that, when he
asked the most modest of appropriations from the government, he met
the contemptuous reply that "there was no rubric in the budget for
allowing three hundred dollars a year for experiments;" that for every
step in his discoveries he has had literally to fight, contending with
Pouchet and Joly on the subject of spontaneous generation, with Liebig
on fermentations, with the Germans and Italians on the attenuation of
virus, with the popular opinion of his own compatriots when he dared
vaccinate for hydrophobia, and when his supporters dared erect the
present Institute to facilitate his work.

One cannot picture him _tête-à-tête_ with mad dogs. It is hard to
believe him capable of that astonishing self-mastery which made him
withhold for months, and sometimes even years, the results of
incomplete investigations, and of the equal hardihood which, when he
was convinced of a truth, led him to accept the most severe and most
public tests of its exactness.

I make an attempt to find the scientist and venture a question.

"Oh," says M. Pasteur, "if you want to know that, you must go and see
M. Roux. You will find him in the laboratory."

We rise and go into the long hall. At the opposite end from the
library two large doors open into the spacious vestibule which
occupies the centre of the main building.

"You can go out by the main hall and directly into the laboratory, or
down the private stairs." I hesitated. No, I would not spoil my
impression of M. Pasteur at home. I would keep laboratory and home
separate. I descended to the private entrance, and, as I went down,
two kindly faces looked over at me, and the gentle, hesitating voice
of the great savant said:

"Take care, it is dark. Don't slip. Take care." On the last step I
stopped and looked up. The two friendly faces were still looking
down.

[Illustration: THE HOUSE AT DÔLE, WHERE M. PASTEUR WAS BORN.]

I had come to see the destroyer of the theory of spontaneous
generation, the demonstrator of the microbe origin of disease, the
conqueror of hydrophobia. I had found something greater, perhaps, than
them all--a perfectly gentle soul.


IN M. PASTEUR'S WORKSHOP.

I crossed the lawn and entered a large waiting-room occupying the
middle of the building devoted to laboratory work. The room is flooded
with light, seated with benches, and decorated with no other ornaments
than a series of photographs of the Pasteur Institute at Rio
Janeiro, two great maps on which are marked the cities where
institutions similar to this at Paris are to be found, and cards
containing certain rules applicable to patients coming for treatment
against hydrophobia. Among these latter the important ones are that
the treatment is gratuitous, that each patient must bathe before
coming for inoculation, that board and lodging are not furnished, and
that the grateful may, if they wish, leave a gift at the end of
their term of treatment.

There were sixty or seventy persons in the room. They had come to be
vaccinated against hydrophobia. They were of the greatest contrast in
age, in condition, in culture. Beside a shrivelled, leather-brown Arab
woman from the desert was a pink and white little miss from London. A
young man with the refined face, correct dress and distinguished
manners of a gentleman sat beside a huge and none-too-clean German
laborer. As a rule, it was a friendly, cheerful company. It was only
here and there that one saw a person who seemed conscious that in his
veins a hideous poison was at work. Most of them took it for granted
that their cure was certain. Some of them scoffed at the nonsense of
going to the trouble of being vaccinated.

A dignified liveried servant entered, calling "Attention." The company
bestirred itself and disappeared. I made my way to the inoculating
room.

The operation of inoculating for hydrophobia is founded on the theory
that if an "attenuated" microbe, that is a microbe so treated that its
power of doing harm has been reduced to a low degree, is introduced
into a body, it will produce an indisposition which is not itself
serious, but which is sufficient to render the body proof against
attacks of the original microbe.

Now M. Pasteur has discovered that it is possible to so treat a
microbe that its power of evil is of any degree; that is, to "exalt"
as well as to "attenuate" it. Having these microbes of varying
strengths he invented a method of graduated vaccination; that is, by
beginning with a virus of low degree, and increasing each day the
strength of the virus, an operator arrives at a point where he can
vaccinate a body with a virus stronger than there is any danger of its
ever being exposed to in nature. He thus secures lasting immunity.

Thus, in vaccinating against rabies, the patient is treated first with
a weak virus; this is followed by one more powerful, and so on, until
at the end a highly "exalted" one is injected safely.

[Illustration: M. PASTEUR AT THIRTY.]

It is this treatment which is practised daily at the Pasteur
Institute, in the inoculation room where I found myself.

Gathered in a kind of pen formed by a little fence were three members
of the institution: a secretary, whose business it is to keep track of
the number of persons to be treated with each particular virus; an
assistant, who has prepared the virus for the day's use; twelve small
wine glasses of cloudy liquid protected by small paper funnels; and,
by a table, the inoculator. The roll was called and a half dozen men
entered the room. They were to be inoculated with a virus of the
lowest strength, most of them for the first time. They showed a
bewildered and comic embarrassment as the attendant directed them to
bare the hypogastrium. The embarrassment changed to a momentary look
of distress as they felt their arms pinned behind their backs, and the
sharp needle injected a syringeful of virus into the delicate flesh.
The first class of men and boys passed out, and the women and little
children entered. They were succeeded by a second class, and so on
until all had been treated.

The simplicity of the operation seemed out of proportion to the horror
of the disease. I remembered the shrugs I had seen and the doubts I
had heard expressed over the treatment. "It is not sure yet." "It does
not always work; such-a-one died, you know." "They have not found the
microbe either." My faith was shaking. Evidently I must see Doctor
Roux.

On the second floor of the building I found the office and private
laboratory of the under-director of the Pasteur Institute, a man
whose researches in connection with Pasteur, whose devotion in the
cholera mission in Egypt in 1883, and whose independent investigations
on diphtheria, have made him famous in the medical world. The office
was small, and it had something of the attraction of a curio shop.
There was none of the precision of the man of small affairs here. It
was the confusion of the man of big affairs, who cannot endure to have
his things meddled with. Over a table where culture tubes, blow-pipes,
virus glasses and bottles filled with suspicious-looking fluids were
scattered promiscuously around a valuable microscope, hung a gem of a
painting--a dashing charge of cavalry. Beside a case of books, and
partly concealing a fine portrait of Pasteur, hung the gray-white
laboratory blouses of M. Roux. Under an exquisite etching askew in a
corner stood a cage of brown-and-white guinea-pigs, martyrs to
science, probably.

[Illustration: AT THE JUBILEE OF M. PASTEUR. THE PRESIDENT OF THE
REPUBLIC WELCOMING M. PASTEUR IN THE AMPHITHEATRE OF THE OLD SORBONNE.]

Curiosity was cut short, for a quick step was heard in the outer room,
and Doctor Roux entered. A slight figure, bent a little from a life
spent over books, tubes and microscopes, but tingling to the
finger-tips with nervous energy; a face a little pale, but fresh in
color; brown hair and beard, glowing brown eyes, perhaps forty
years--such is this eminent associate of Pasteur. As he runs over the
pile of letters cut and awaiting him, he talks.

"So you have just seen the inoculation? Do I believe it a sure cure?"
The doctor lays down his letters as he repeats the latter question in
an astonished tone. "Of course I do. There is nothing surer in medical
science. Look at these figures." He rises and draws out from the midst
of a pile of papers a big black _serviette_, fumbles for a moment
among the documents it contains, and pulls out the latest report made
by the Institute on the results of vaccination for hydrophobia, that
for 1891.

"Now listen to these figures. In 1886 the Pasteur made its first
report: 2,671 persons were vaccinated that year against hydrophobia;
25 of them died--.94 of one per cent. In 1887, 1,770 persons were
treated; 13 died--.73 of one per cent. In 1888, 1,622 were treated; 9
died--.55 of one per cent. In 1889, 1,830 were treated; 7 died--.38 of
one per cent. In 1890, 1,540 were treated; 5 died--.32 of one per
cent. In 1891, 1,559 were treated; 3 died--.19 of one per cent. You
notice each year the per cent. of deaths has been lower. In the six
years the treatment has been reported, we average just about one-half
of one per cent of loss. Tell me where you find a treatment surer?"

"But you have not found the microbe?"

"Humph! that does not prevent the method working. It is aggravating
not to have found him. It prevents, possibly, the simplification of
the inoculation process. Nevertheless it works. So does vaccination
for small-pox. We do not know the microbe of small-pox. There is much
we do not know yet. Remember, too, that it was only in 1880 that M.
Pasteur made up his mind to begin an exhaustive study of hydrophobia,
and that all he foresaw at first was the possibility of vaccinating
dogs against rabies, and that it was only in 1885 that the first
person, little Joseph Meister, was inoculated, after a council of
physicians had decided that his death was certain, and that his life
was saved."


PORTRAITS OF M. PASTEUR.

[Illustration: BY LAFON.]

[Illustration: BUST BY P. DUBOIS.]

[Illustration: BY BONNAT.]

[Illustration: BY A. EDELFALT.]

The newness of the Pasteur doctrines and treatment is, indeed, one of
the most striking things about the Institute. One rubs his eyes to
remember that, thirteen years ago, very few people admitted the _rôle_
of bacteria in the world, and that those who did admit their existence
were very much at sea about what to do with them.

The doctrine of microbe, the theory that ferments and virus are living
beings, that a vaccine is an attenuated virus, that medicine is based
on the artificial attenuation of virus--all this is now so widely
received, is so thoroughly a part of popular belief, that one is
bewildered in remembering that twelve years ago the general theory of
disease was that it is "in us, from us, by us." Especially is all this
astonishing, standing in the Pasteur Institute, the crystallization of
the microbe doctrine.

"Yes," continued Doctor Roux, "we have conquered hydrophobia; nothing
is more certain."

"And you hope to conquer other diseases in the same way?"

The doctor made a fine nervous gesture. "In science one does not hope;
one proves. In every thirty thousand experiments one succeeds. We
study diseases here. Each physician has his special line of
investigation. We hope for nothing. We simply report what we find."

"But you yourself, Doctor Roux, have certainly hopes that diphtheria
is almost conquered?"

The doctor pursed up his mouth.

"The investigations in diphtheria are in just this condition. We have
proved at the Pasteur Institute" (Doctor Roux is modest and says 'we,'
which means himself and his assistant, M. Versin) "that diphtheria is
a toxic disease; that is, that it results from a poison. The microbe
of diphtheria does not penetrate throughout the system as in the case
of most other microbic diseases. It exists only in the mucus found on
the pharynx. This microbe does not cause death, but it secretes a
poison which penetrates throughout the body and kills. This being
proved, of course the next step is to find what will destroy the
poison.

"Doctor Behring, working at Berlin, has found that the blood of
animals vaccinated for diphtheria gives a therapeutic serum which
destroys the diphtheric poison. We are now testing the practical value
of the serum at the Institute. This is absolutely our 'last word' on
diphtheria."

"And as for cholera! What is the last word?"

"The _bacillus virgula_ of Doctor Koch is believed, by the great
majority of savants, to be the true cholera germ. We are trying
here, as experimenters are trying elsewhere, to give immunity to
animals against the microbe. It is absolutely all that one can say
authoritatively on the cholera."

"And the method of vaccination which Doctor Haffkine believes he has
discovered?"

"It has not been proved yet that it will give immunity. Until we have
that proof we neither hope nor fear. We simply work and wait. Doctor
Haffkine has, you know, severed his connection with the Pasteur
Institute and gone to India to continue his researches."

"But he has had faith enough in his method to try its effects on
himself, has he not?"

"Very true, and so have perhaps a hundred others tried its effects.
But that proves nothing."

There is a self-repression about these severe statements which has
something of the heroic in it. Who would be so glad to announce
absolute safeguards against diphtheria and cholera as this man who has
risked his life to find them? Yet, until he is sure, he will not even
say "hope."

I remember the words of Pasteur himself: "To believe that one has
found an important scientific fact, to be in a fever to announce it,
to compel one's self for days, weeks, sometimes years, to be silent,
to force one's self to destroy his own experiments and to announce
nothing until he has exhausted all contrary hypotheses--that is
hard."

It is hard, but it is one of the strongest elements in the Pasteur
spirit of scientific research. Evidently Doctor Roux has learned to
practise it vigorously.

"In the same way that we are investigating diphtheria and cholera,"
continues the doctor, "we are studying other diseases. But one cannot
get a fair idea of what the Pasteur Institute does by any other means
than looking at its organizations. There is a great deal done here
besides original investigation. In the first place, we are an
absolutely independent and free institution. The money was given by
popular subscription and without conditions.

"The entire lower floor is devoted to practical work. There are
performed the inoculations for hydrophobia on an average of some
seventy a day. The practical department is not, however, confined to
the treatment of hydrophobia. There are prepared the vaccines for all
those diseases of animals which M. Pasteur has proved can be cured by
inoculation, such as chicken cholera, splenic fever, and _rouget_ of
swine.

[Illustration: A GROUP OF PATIENTS.]

"Quantities of virus are sold constantly to farmers for vaccinating
their stock. It is these sales which help support the institution. It
is an example of science living by science.

"Here on this floor we do our instructing. In the lecture hall across
the way M. Ducloux gives his lessons on microbic chemistry, studies
the process of fermentation, microbic poisons, all phases, in short,
of biological chemistry.

"My work is lectures on, and experiments illustrating, the technique
of the microbic method. Those who follow the courses are divided into
two classes, students who simply follow the courses and repeat the
experiments in the general laboratory, and the savants who conduct
original researches here. The latter are furnished each with a private
laboratory in the third story. Here for a merely nominal rent they can
have the exclusive use of a laboratory furnished with all necessary
apparatus, and can pursue whatever class of investigation pleases
them."

"And you have many students?"

"We have always fifteen or twenty, and from all parts of the world.
Look at my roll."

The doctor rose and drew out from the mass of pamphlets and papers on
his table a big roll-book.

"I have the names of those who have taken my lectures. Here is an
Egyptian, many Russians, a Turk, numbers from South America, from
Canada, from the East, from everywhere. Let us look for your
compatriots."

Doctor Roux ran his finger down the pages. "Here is one, Doctor
Orchinard of New Orleans. Here another, Doctor Tabadie of New York;
and then there is Kenyoun of the United States Marine Service. But
there have been more students in the institution from South America
than from North.

[Illustration: THE LIBRARY.]

"The department of original work is in the third story, and is under
Doctor Metchnikoff, who is, you know, a Russian who has established
himself here in order to devote himself to scientific investigation.
Doctor Metchnikoff is aided by his wife, who acts as _preparateur_.
She is an assistant of great skill and delicacy. He receives no salary
for his labor. There are, in fact, three of the leading members of our
faculty who receive no salary--M. Pasteur himself, M. Ducloux, and M.
Metchnikoff. They have resigned the award they deserve because of our
insufficient income."

"But the common opinion is that you are rich here."

"I know, but it is a mistake. The Pasteur Institute is very poorly
endowed. Its yearly income is only about twenty-four thousand dollars.
This revenue comes from three sources: the small appropriations made
by the government, the income from the remnant of the private
subscription with which it was built, and the product of the sales of
vaccine. The fact that we can partly support ourselves," added the
doctor, laughingly, "is the best proof one can have of the
practicability of bacteriology.

"The most surprising feature about it is, that in the case of almost
every institution copied after us, and there are some eighteen or
twenty of them in various parts of the world, the income is much
larger than ours. At Berlin and St. Petersburg the incomes are four or
five times as large as ours, and, excepting Berlin, we are the only
Pasteur Institute doing practical work. It is the old story," said the
doctor resignedly, "one sows and another reaps."

[Illustration: M. ROUX.]

There is certainly injustice and short-sightedness in such a state of
things. The investigations of Pasteur have taken too heavy a bundle
from the load of horrors which humanity carries, to be allowed to be
limited for lack of money:

Immunity from infectious diseases, and nothing else is the logical
outcome of the Pasteur doctrines, means too much to make economy on
the part of purse-holders excusable, when it is a question of funds
for the investigations. When men like Doctor Roux and his associates,
men trained in the severe Pasteur spirit and passionate for truth, are
ready to sacrifice their lives to this work, overcoming the earth's
plagues, money is the last thing they should be wanting. Especially is
this true now, when the work on two of the most terrible scourges of
humanity--diphtheria and cholera--stands at critical stages.

There is something harshly ironical, too, in the idea that the
institution of Louis Pasteur, whose discoveries have, declares
Professor Huxley, made good the war indemnity of five thousand million
francs paid by France to Germany, should be crippled for funds.

The doctor's confidences were cut short by an imperative summons from
without. I rose to go.

"Take a stroll through the building," advised he as he said good-by. I
followed his advice.

[Illustration: DOSING THE VIRUS.]

From the library one naturally passes to the laboratories. They open
from the long halls in numbers. One wonders how so much room can be
utilized, but none seems to be going to waste. In each some step of
the microbic process is going on. Here is a doctor inoculating a
rabbit with the poison of a mad dog sent to the Institute only the day
before. The little animal lies on the table insensible, chloroformed,
while with the sharp-toothed little trephine the operator makes a tiny
hole in its skull, lays bare the brain, and inserts the virus. By the
time the aperture is closed Brer Rabbit is sitting up, looking about,
none the worse for his experience, save a bald spot on his forehead,
a tiny tin tag covered with hieroglyphics hanging from his ear. Two
minutes later he was nibbling a carrot; fifteen days later he died
"mad as a March hare."

It is not only rabbits which undergo this operation. Guinea-pigs,
chickens, mice and rats are used in quantities. In the laboratory of
autopsy there are to be seen aquariums filled with the dainty axolotl
of Mexico, glasses of odd fish, even cages of birds.

In another room an experimenter is dissecting a rabbit which has died
of rabies, and from whose spinal cord he expects to get material for
vaccinal virus.

[Illustration: DR. METCHNIKOFF IN HIS LABORATORY.]

In a small dark room, whose temperature is never allowed to vary,
which is never swept nor dusted for fear of arousing tranquil
microbes, and whose door is never opened except when absolutely
necessary, are arranged rows of drying bottles, in which hang bits of
the marrow. These bottles are marked with the degree of violence of
the rabies from which the animal died, and with the date when the
marrow was put up to dry.

Here, attendants are preparing the veal broth and the gelatines in
which the infected marrows will be cultivated.

[Illustration: FILLING THE SYRINGES.]

Thus as one goes from room to room he can follow the whole method of
successive cultures, that method which is "the key-stone of the arch,
and without which there could be no vigorous demonstration of the
Pasteur method."

On every hand one sees the interesting "ways of doing things" which
characterize the Institute. Here, the cleaning of jars, syringes and
tubes is going on; not a simple washing and drying. In the Pasteur
household articles are sterilized as well as cleaned--that is, burned
in the flames of a spirit lamp, or in an oven. There, a man is blowing
bulbs, droll balloon pipettes, all the multitude of glass contrivances
the laboratories demand. Here, under a microscope, an investigator has
the diphtheria pest, an inoffensive speck; there, another has in his
field a whole colony of lively little straight and bent sticks; it is
a company of Doctor Koch's cholera microbes.

Wherever one goes in the building there is a busy intentness, an
absorption, an absolute blindness to everything but the work in hand,
be it the contents of a culture tube, or the film on a microscope
slide. One can easily believe of these workers the story told of M.
Pasteur himself, that he had to be hunted up on his wedding morning
and pulled away from his microscope, in order to be got into his
dress-coat and gloves in time for the ceremony.

Evidently, too, they have not forgotten the words their master spoke
on the day of the inauguration of the Institute:

"All the enthusiasm you have had since the beginning, my dear
co-laborers, I beg of you to keep; but give it, as an inseparable
companion, a severe control. Announce nothing that you cannot prove in
a simple, decisive fashion.

"Cultivate the critical spirit. Left to itself it neither awakens
ideas nor stimulates to great deeds, but without it all is lost."

As one goes from room to room, and talks with one and another of the
busy, courteous savants, he realizes finally that it is here that
Pasteur the scientist is to be found. The labors that made the great
savant famous are all summed up here. Here his methods are at work,
here is his spirit alive in the men who have best comprehended him,
and whom he has been able most deeply to inspire. It is a great thing
to achieve. It is a greater thing to inspire others to achieve. Louis
Pasteur has done both.

[Illustration: THE RABBITS' QUARTERS.]



STRANGER THAN FICTION.

HUGH BRONTË'S COURTSHIP. THE ELOPEMENT OF HUGH BRONTË AND ALICE MCCLORY.

Unpublished Chapters from "The Brontës in Ireland."

BY DOCTOR WILLIAM WRIGHT.

  NOTE.--"The Brontës in Ireland" will be issued in book form by D.
  Appleton & Co., after the serial publication is concluded in
  MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE.


I. LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT.

The visit to McClory's in County Down was another momentous step in
the life of Hugh Brontë. He had shaken off the nightmare of cruel
slavery. His work, mostly in the open air, suited him. He was well
paid, had good food and clothing, and in two years the starved and
ragged boy had become a large, handsome, well-dressed man. Like most
handsome people, Hugh knew that he was handsome, and the resources of
Dundalk were taxed in those days to the utmost to set off to
perfection his manly and stately figure.

On Christmas Eve Hugh Brontë drove up furiously in a Newry gig to the
house of McClory in Ballynaskeagh. He was a somewhat vain man, and
fond of admiration, and, no doubt, as he approached McClory's thatched
cottage, with his pockets full of money, and with the self-confidence
which prosperity breeds, he meant to flutter the house with his
greatness.

But a surprise was in store for him. The cottage door was opened, in
response to his somewhat boisterous knock, by a young woman of
dazzling beauty. Hugh Brontë, previous to his flight, had seen few
women except his Aunt Mary, and in the days of his freedom he had
become acquainted only with lodging-house keepers and County Louth
women who carried their fowl and eggs to Dundalk fairs and markets. He
had scarcely ever seen a comely girl, and never in his life any one
who had any attractions for him.

The simply dressed, artless girl who opened the door was probably the
prettiest girl in County Down at the time. The rector of Magherally,
who married her, pronounced her the most beautiful woman he had ever
seen. Her hair, which hung in a profusion of ringlets round her
shoulders, was luminous gold. Her forehead was Parian marble. Her
evenly set teeth were lustrous pearls, and the roses of health glowed
on her cheeks. She had the long brown eyelashes that in Ireland so
often accompany golden hair, and her deep brown eyes had the violet
tint and melting expression which, in a diluted form, descended to her
granddaughters, and made the plain and irregular faces of the Brontë
girls really attractive. The eyes also contained the lambent fire that
Mrs. Gaskell noticed in Charlotte's eyes, ready to flash indignation
and scorn. She had a tall and stately figure, with head well poised
above a graceful neck and well-formed bust; but she did not
communicate these graces of form to her granddaughters. There are
people still living who remember the stately old woman, "Alys Brontë,"
as she was called by her neighbors in her old age.

Hugh Brontë was completely unmanned by the radiant beauty of the
simple country girl who stood before him. He stood awkwardly staring
at her with his mouth open, working with his hat, and trying in vain
to say something. At last he stammered out a question about Mr.
McClory, and the girl, who was Alice McClory, told him that her
brother would soon be home, and invited him into the house.

He entered, blushing and feeling uncomfortable, but the unaffected
simplicity of Alice McClory's manner soon put him at his ease, and
before the brother Patrick, known afterwards as "Red Paddy," had
returned home, he was madly and hopelessly in love with his sister.

Like his son, the Reverend Patrick Brontë, in England, and like the
Irish curate who proposed marriage to Charlotte on the strength of one
night's acquaintance, Hugh, dazzled by beauty and blinded by love,
declared his passion before he had discovered any signs of mutual
liking, or had any evidence that his advances would be agreeable.

Alice, in simple, but cold and business-like manner, told him that she
did not yet know him; but that as he was a Protestant, and she a
Catholic, there was an insuperable bar between them.

Hugh urged that he himself had no religion, never having darkened a
church door, and that he was quite willing to be anything she wished
him to be.

Alice met his earnest pleadings with playful sallies which
disconcerted him, and little by little she led him to the story of his
life, episodes of which she had heard from her brother. Pity melts the
heart to love, and Alice was moved greatly by Hugh's simple
narrative.


II. PURE LOVE AND PARTY STRIFE.

The Christmas holidays passed pleasantly under the hospitable roof of
the McClory family. The chief amusement of the neighborhood was
drinking in the shebeen, or local public house, but Hugh declined to
accompany Paddy to the shebeen, preferring solitude with his sister.

Before the holidays had come to a close, Hugh and Alice had become
engaged, but the course of true love in their case was destined to the
proverbial fate. All Miss McClory's friends were scandalized at the
thought of her consenting to marry a Protestant.

Religion, among Catholics and Orangemen, in those days, consisted
largely of party hatred. He was a good Protestant who, sober as well
as drunk, cursed the Pope, and on the 12th of July wore orange colors,
and played with fife and drum a tune known as "The Battle of the
Boyne." And he was a good Catholic who, in whatever condition, used
equally emphatic language regarding King William. No more genuine
expression of religious feeling was looked for on either side.

There is a story told in the McClory district which illustrates the
current religious sentiment. Two brother Orangemen, good men after
their lights, had long been fast friends. They seldom missed an
opportunity, in the presence of Catholics, of consigning the Pope to
an uncomfortable place, to which he himself has been wont to consign
heretics.

It happened that one of the two Orangemen fell sick, and when he was
at the point of death his friend became greatly concerned about his
spiritual state, and visited him. He found him in an unconscious
condition, and sinking fast; and putting his lips close to the ear of
his sick friend, he asked him to give him a sign that he felt
spiritually happy. The dying man, with a last supreme effort, raised
his voice above a whisper, and in the venerable and well-known formula
cursed the Pope. His friend was comforted, believing that all was
well.

Whether this gruesome story be true or not, it goes to illustrate the
fact that blasphemous bigotry had largely usurped the place of
religion. But bitter party feeling did not end with mere words. Bloody
battles between Orangemen and Catholics were periodically fought on
the 12th of July, the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne, and on
the 17th of March, Saint Patrick's day. Within six miles of McClory's
house more than a dozen pitched battles were fought, sometimes with
scythes tied on poles, and sometimes with firearms. One of these
murderous onsets, known as the battle of Ballynafern, took place
within sight of McClory's house.

At Dolly's Brae a battle was fought in 1849, in presence of a large
body of troops, who remained neutral spectators of the conflict till
the Catholics fled, and then joined with the victors in firing on the
flying foe.

The scenes of these struggles, such as Tillyorier, Katesbridge,
Hilltown, The Diamond, etc., are classic spots now. Each has had its
poet, and ballads are sung to celebrate the prowess of the victors,
who were uniformly the Orangemen, inasmuch as they used firearms,
while the Catholics generally fought with pikes and scythes.

Hugh Brontë had not yet discovered the deep and wide gulf that yawned
between Protestants and Catholics, and so he made light of the
religious objections of which he had heard so much from Alice. But the
Catholic friends of Miss McClory, who had heard the Pope cursed by
Protestant lips almost every day of their lives, could not stand by
and see a Catholic lamb removed into the Protestant shambles. They
came to look on Brontë as a Protestant emissary, more influenced by a
fiendish desire to plunder the Catholic fold than by love for their
beautiful relative.

Hugh Brontë, in his eager simplicity, wanted to supersede all
opposition by getting married immediately, but so great a commotion
ensued that he had to return to the kilns at Mount Pleasant, leaving
his matrimonial prospects in a very unsatisfactory condition.

Troops of relatives invaded the McClory house daily, and ardent
Catholics tried in vain to argue down Alice McClory's newly kindled
love. All the Roman Catholic neighbors joined in giving copious
advice, and little was talked of in fairs and markets, and at chapel,
but the proposed marriage of Alice McClory with an unknown Protestant
heretic.

The priest, also, as family friend, was drawn into the matter. In
those days Irish priests were educated in France or Italy, and were
generally men of culture and refinement. Their horizon had been
widened. They had come in contact with the language, literature, and
social habits of other peoples, and they had become courteous men of
the world. They had to some extent got out of touch with the fierce
fanaticism of party strife.

The priest called on Miss McClory. Everybody knew that he had, and
awaited the result; but Alice's beauty and simplicity and tears made
such an impression on the kind-hearted old priest that his chivalrous
instinct was aroused, and he was almost won to the lady's side. The
centre of the agitation then shifted from McClory's cottage to the
priest's manse, and so hot was the anger of the infuriated Catholics
that the good-natured priest promised, sorely against his will, that
he would not consent to marry the pair.

Hugh Brontë was nominally a Protestant, but he had not been in a
church of any kind from the time he was five years of age. He had
received no religious instruction. He could not read the Bible for
himself, and no one had ever read it to him, and he was as innocent of
any religious bias or bigotry as a savage in Central Africa. Suddenly
he found himself the central figure in a fierce religious drama.

At first he was greatly amused, and laughed at the very suggestion of
his religion being considered a stumbling-block. From the time he left
his father's house he had seldom heard the divine name except in some
form of malediction, and religion had brought no consolation to his
hard life. He had never presumed to think that he had any relationship
to the church, its priests were so gorgeous, and its people so
well-to-do. Gallagher had made him familiar with the dread powers of
the infernal world, and with the "Blessed Virgin and the saints" in
their malevolent capacity, but the malignant hypocrisy of Gallagher
was quite as repulsive to him as the vindictive blasphemy of his
uncle. In fact, he had lived in an atmosphere untouched by the light
or warmth of religion.

Hugh's bondage and suffering had made him neither cringing nor cruel,
and his freedom had come in time to permit the full development of a
large and generous heart in a robust and healthy body. In his
simplicity of heart he prevailed on Alice to invite her friends to
meet him. He would soon remove their dislike with regard to his
religion. Under the impulse of his enthusiasm he thought he could
disarm prejudice by a frank and open avowal of his absolute
indifference to all religions.

Nothing, perhaps, in the whole history of the Brontës exceeded in
interest that meeting. A dozen wily Ulster Catholics gathered round
simple-hearted Hugh Brontë in Paddy McClory's kitchen. How the Orange
champions would have trembled for the Protestant cause if they had
been aware of Hugh's danger!

The preliminary salutations over, a black bottle was produced, and a
glass of whiskey handed round. Hugh had never learned to drink
whiskey, and, at that time, detested the very smell of it. His refusal
to drink with McClory's friends was a first ground of offence, but the
whiskey had not yet brought the drinkers into the quarrelsome mood.

When several bottles of McClory's whiskey had been drunk, and the
temperature of the guests had risen, the religious question was
approached. Brontë was urged, in peremptory tones, to abjure
Protestantism. He had his answer ready. He was no more a Protestant
than they were, and he had no Protestantism to abjure. "Will you then
curse King William?" said a fiery little man, who had taken much
liquor, and seemed to be the spokesman of the party.

There is a principle in human nature which has been taken far too
little account of by both philosophers and peasants. It has been the
dominant principle in many of the important decisions that have sealed
the fate of nations as well as of individuals. The principle is
expressed by a word which is always pronounced in one way by the
cultured, and in quite a different way by the unlettered. The word in
its illiterate use is "contr_air_yness," and but for the principle
expressed by this word the Brontë girls would never have made their
mark in literature, and this history would never have been written.

"Curse King William," shouted the fiery little man, supported by a
hoarse shout from the other half-tipsy guests, all of whom had turned
fierce and glaring eyes on the supposed Protestant.

"I cannot curse King William," replied Hugh, smiling. "He never did me
any harm; besides, he is beyond the region of my blessings and
cursings. But," added he, warming with his subject, "I should not mind
cursing the Pope, if he is the author of your fierce and besotted
religion."

Alice first saw the danger, and uttered a sharp cry. Suddenly the
family party sprang upon Hugh, as the ambushed Philistines once flung
themselves on Samson, but he shook them off, and left them sprawling
on the floor. Alice drew him from the house, bleeding and disheveled,
and after a tender parting in the grove beside the stream, he started
on foot for Mount Pleasant.

Two immediate results followed that conflict. Hugh Brontë became a
furious Protestant and a frantic lover. There was no lukewarmness or
indifference as to his Protestantism. The Brontë _contrairyness_ had
met the kind of opposition to give it a stubborn set, and he there and
then became a Protestant, double-dyed, in the warp and in the woof.
The process of his conversion, such as it was, was prompt, decisive,
effectual. It was somewhat orange in hue and militant in fibre, and
was a genuine product of the times.

Hugh's love for Alice was fanned into a fierce flame by the events of
that night. When he first met her he had been dazzled by her rare
beauty. He had seen few women, and never one like Alice. For the first
time he had come under the spell of a simple but beautiful girl. They
were young, shy lovers; very happy in each other's company, but each
sufficiently self-possessed to be happy enough in self.

From the crucible of contradiction on that night the jewel love had
leaped forth. Each was drawn out from the self-centre in which each
had been concentrated in self; he to declare his love in the face of
relentless foes, and she to cling to him, and protect him, when
bruised and torn by her friends. Beneath the pines, that night, they
pledged, with mingling tears, undying love. They parted, but their
hearts were one; and persecution, poverty and bereavement only welded
them more closely together in the changing years.


III. LOVE'S SUBTERFUGES.

Hugh returned to the Mount Pleasant kilns, but his heart was no longer
in his work. The burning of lime requires incessant care. The
limestones must be broken to a proper size, layers of coal in due
proportion must be added, and there must be constant watchfulness lest
the fires should die out. Farmers' sons and servants started generally
from County Down about midnight, and after traveling all night arrived
at the kilns for their loads about dawn. A badly burnt kiln of lime
was a grave loss to the owners, as well as a serious disappointment to
the customers, and likely to result in loss of custom.

There were many complaints as to the character of the lime immediately
after Christmas, and the farmers on several occasions found, on
slaking their loads at home, that only the surface of the stones was
burnt, and that they had paid for, and imported, heaps of raw
limestone.

Hugh's thoughts were not in his business. He had made several Sunday
journeys to Ballynaskeagh, to have secret meetings with Alice. They
met in the grove by the brook, in a spot still pointed out as the
"Lovers' Arbor" or "Courting Bower," and there, under willows
festooned with ivy and honeysuckle and sweetbriers, they spent lonely
but happy Sundays.

They were at last betrayed by a Catholic servant who had been
intrusted with a message to Alice. Then began a system of espionage
and petty persecution, and all the forces of the McClory clan were
united in an effort to compel Alice to marry a Catholic neighbor,
called Joe Burns.

At this time Hugh began to learn to read and write, and he succeeded
so far, by the light from the eye of the kiln at night, as to be able
to write love letters which Alice was able to read. He also, about the
same time, succeeded in spelling his way through the New Testament.

Like many other professions, a lime-kiln is a jealous mistress, and
requires constant attentions. Young Brontë brought to it a divided
mind, and gave it the second place in his thoughts. He was constantly
leaving the kilns in the care of a companion on Saturday evenings and
making long journeys to see Alice, returning on Monday morning, after
a fatiguing night's journey. At first his companions did all they
could to make up for his absence and absent-mindedness; but a change
came, and they did their best to throw the light of exaggeration on
his deficiencies.

News had reached them from the North that he was a Protestant
firebrand, that he had cursed the Pope, and made a savage attack on
some harmless Catholics. At the kilns his manner had changed, and he
had become moody and morose. Besides, he was constantly reading a
little book by the light of the burning lime at night, instead of
telling stories and singing songs, as in former times. The book was
said to be the Bible, but it was in fact a New Testament that he was
learning to read.

A plot was immediately hatched to get rid of so dangerous a colleague.
One of the Catholics undertook, as usual, to look after the kilns
while he made an expedition to County Down; but he not only failed to
charge the kilns properly, but he sent for the owner on Monday morning
early, that he might see for himself the condition of things. The
northern carts arrived by dawn, to find that there was nothing for
them but unburnt lime. While the matter was being explained Hugh
arrived, haggard and weary after his night's journey, and was
peremptorily dismissed, without any explanation from either side being
tendered or accepted.

I have no record of Hugh's proceedings immediately after his
dismissal, but he must have been reduced to considerable straits, for
he went to the hiring ground in Newry, and engaged himself, as a
common servant-boy, to a farmer who resided in Donoughmore. As a farm
laborer in those days he would receive about six pounds per annum,
with board and lodging; but then he was near his Alice, and that made
every burden light.

Hugh's new master, James Harshaw, was not an ordinary farmer. The
Harshaws had occupied the farm from early in the fifteenth century,
and James, who had received the education of a gentleman, had behind
him the traditions of an old and respectable family. In the Harshaw
home shrewd and steady industry was brightened by culture and
refinement. The wheel of fortune had brought Hugh Brontë into a family
where mental alacrity had full play.

Brontë seems to have been treated with consideration and kindness by
the Harshaws, who probably recognized in him something superior to the
ordinary farm servant. At any rate, in those days the walls of class
distinction were not raised so high as they are now, and the Harshaw
children taught him to read.

Hugh was much with the family. He drove them to Donoughmore
Presbyterian Meeting House on Sundays, and sat with them in their pew,
and he accompanied them to rustic singing parties, and such local
gatherings. He used also to drive them in the summer time to
Warrenpoint and Newcastle, and other watering-places, and remain with
them as their attendant.

In such treatment of a servant there was nothing unusual, and Mr. John
Harshaw, the present proprietor of the ancestral home, has no very
decisive information regarding this particular servant. He says, "The
probability is that Hugh Brontë hired with my grandfather, whose land
touched the Lough, but I fear it is too true that he passed through my
grandfather's service and left no permanent record behind him."[1]

I think it is more than probable that Brontë repaid his young masters
and mistresses for their teaching, by telling them stories. Under
Harshaw's roof he found not only work and shelter, but a home and
comfort, and it is inconceivable that under those circumstances he
allowed the gift that was in him, of charming by vivid narration, to
lie dormant.

As long as he lived he spoke of the Harshaws with gratitude and
affection, and I do not believe he could have been so glad and happy
without contributing to the general enjoyment.

In the latter part of last century, the _raconteur_ occupied the place
in Ireland now taken by the modern novelist, and I believe Hugh Brontë
dropped doctrines into the minds of the young Harshaws which produced
far-reaching results. Such was the fixed conviction of my old teacher,
the Reverend W. McAllister.

It happened that the Martins, another ancient family, lived quite near
to the Harshaws. The land of the two families enclosed Loughorne
round. The Martins were rich and slightly aristocratic, but the two
families were thrown much together, and Samuel Martin, the son of the
one house, married Jane Harshaw, the daughter of the other.

She was a deeply religious and resolute woman, with a stern sense of
duty. One of her nephews tells me she always conducted family worship
after the death of her husband. She died of a fever, caught while
ministering to the dying, in accordance with her high sense of
Christian duty. Her life was given for others, and, at her funeral,
the Reverend S. J. Moore said: "She was a woman who knew her duty and
did it."

Her second son, John Martin, inherited his mother's great mental
capacity and strong sense of duty. At school, in Newry, he met young
John Mitchel, and inspired him with something of his own enthusiasm,
and the two youths came to the conclusion that it was their duty to
put right Ireland's wrongs. John Mitchel was sent to penal servitude
for fifteen or twenty years, and then John Martin stepped into the
place vacated by his friend, and was transported to Van Diemen's Land
for ten years.

The conviction of "honest John Martin" gave a blow to the old system
in Ireland from which it has never recovered. Even his enemies were
shocked at the ferocity of the sentence; but then he had written a
pamphlet under the text: "_Your land, strangers devour it in your
presence, and it is desolate._" (Isaiah, i. 7.) He had proclaimed from
the housetops Hugh Brontë's tenant-right doctrines, of which more
anon. He had attacked the sacred rights of landlordism, and he was
sent to a safe and distant place for quite a different offence, called
treason felony.

John Martin was a man of large property, but he devoted his life and
all his income to what he considered the good of others.

He had taken his B.A. degree at Trinity College, Dublin, and studied
medicine, and for many years he gave advice and medicine gratuitously
to all who came to him. The poor were passionately attached to him.

I remember seeing him and speaking to him once, after he had received
a free pardon, and become a member of parliament. No one could have
looked on the great, capacious head, and the handsome, benevolent
face, without questioning the system that had no better use for such a
man than sending him to rot in penal servitude. Lord Palmerston beheld
the ex-convict with profound admiration, and expressed deep sympathy
with him as the victim of a bad system.

John Martin preached and suffered for the very doctrines that Hugh
Brontë enunciated with such passionate conviction. Where did he get
those doctrines? I have a profound belief, though I have no positive
proofs, that John Martin's beliefs and principles grew from seeds sown
by Hugh Brontë, the servant boy. In this belief the Reverend W.
McAllister and the Reverend David McKee shared, or, rather, my faith
has grown from their convictions.

Jane Harshaw, however she got them, carried the doctrines into the
Martin family. They mingled with and strengthened her strong sense
of duty, and they added passion to her lust after justice and the
thing that was right. With her son John, the feeling of obligation
to break the ban of Ireland's curse became irresistible. He was
dowered with an inexhaustible grace of pity for all sufferers, and the
impulse to redress the wrongs of the oppressed overpowered him and
led him to acts of impatience and imprudence, which gave his
cool-headed enemies the opportunity they were ready enough to
embrace. But the revolutionary doctrines for which John Martin
suffered came from the same seed that produced Charlotte Brontë's
radical sentiments, and it is interesting to note that in both cases
the seed produced its fruit about the same period (1847-1848).

I must now leave these historical speculations, however plausible and
probable they may be, and return to the direct narration of known
facts.

Hugh Brontë had disappeared forever from the Mount Pleasant kilns.
Those who had plotted his dismissal exaggerated every foible of his
life, and invented others, after he was gone, until, by a spiteful
blending of fact and fancy, they made him into a monster.

The farmers' sons and servants who carted lime from Mount Pleasant to
County Down brought with them wonderful tales of his misdeeds and
disgrace. And Alice McClory's guardians believed that he had
disappeared forever into the distant South, from whence he had
emerged. They never suspected that he was actually living in their
neighborhood, and that he and Alice had met at Warrenpoint, Newcastle,
and elsewhere.

  [1] As we shall see, the parish records of Hugh's marriage and
      Patrick's baptism are both lost, and though Patrick was
      schoolmaster in Glascar Presbyterian school, and in Drumgooland
      Episcopalian school, he has left no permanent record behind him
      in either place. Records in those days were ill-kept.


IV. THE ELOPEMENT.

Under restraint, Alice had drooped and pined, but now that Brontë had
left the country she was permitted to ride about the neighborhood
quite alone. She enjoyed horse exercise greatly, but no matter in what
direction she left home her way lay always through Loughorne. Perhaps
the roads were better in that direction, but she always exchanged
salutations with a handsome working-man, by the expanse of water in
Loughorne. When he was not about she used very humanely to take her
horse down to the lake to drink, and from a hole in an old tree she
used to remove a scrap of paper, leaving something instead. The tree
used to be pointed out as "Brontë's post-box," but the lake has
recently been drained, and the trees have, I believe, disappeared.

Everything that could be done was done, to please Miss McClory, but no
opportunity was missed to further Farmer Burns's suit. He was a
prosperous man. He had a good farm, a good house, plenty of horses and
cows, and was a very desirable husband for Alice. He was also a
Catholic. Brontë had shown that he did not care for her by going away,
and never thinking of her more. The priest joined with Alice's female
friends in pleading for Burns. At length, by incessant perseverance,
they prevailed on her to consent to marry Burns, and forget Brontë.
The incessant drip had made an impression at last, and the crafty
relatives had gained their end.

There was joy in the Catholic camp when it was publicly announced that
Miss McClory and Mr. Burns were soon to be married. McClory's house
was thatched anew, and whitewashed and renovated throughout. The roses
were nailed up around the windows; the street was strewn with fresh
sand; new window-blinds and bed-curtains were provided, and pots and
pans were burnished. Never before had McClory's house been subjected
to such an outburst of sweeping and brushing and washing and scouring;
the whole place became redolent of potash and suds. It was spring
cleaning _in excelsis_.

The local dressmaker, Annie McCabe, whose granddaughter, of the same
name, is now dressmaker in the same place, assisted by Miss
McClory's female relatives, was busily engaged on the bridal dress.
Burns used to look in daily on the incessant preparations, his
countenance beaming with joy, but Alice would not permit him to
destroy the pleasures of imagination by approaching near to her. She
would lift her finger coyly, and warn him off, if he presumed on any
familiarities, but she allowed him to sit on the other side of the
fire from that graced by herself.

At length the wedding-day arrived. Such signs of feasting had never
before been seen in Ballynaskeagh. New loaves had been procured from
Newry, fresh beef from Rathfriland, whiskey from Banbridge. A great
pudding, composed of flour and potatoes, and boiled for many hours
over a slow fire, with hot coals on the lid of the oven, had been
prepared. Two of the largest turkeys had been boiled, and laid out on
great dishes with an abundant coating of melted butter, and a huge
roll of roasted beef was served up as a burnt offering. Signs of
abundance stood on table and dresser and hob, while rows of bottles
peeped from behind the window-curtains; and neither envy nor spite
could say that Red Paddy McClory was not providing a splendid wedding
for his sister. The morning rose glorious, and, as the custom then
was, Burns and his friends, mounted on their best horses, raced to the
house of the bride "_for the broth_," first in being the winner. On
such occasions crowds of neighbors crowned the hilltops. The cavalcade
was greeted with ringing cheers, as it swept in a cloud of dust down
the road from the Knock Hill. Several riders were unhorsed, but the
steeds arrived in McClory's court, champing their bits and covered
with foam. A covered car from Newry stood near the house, on the road,
to take Alice to the chapel, but she was to ride away from the chapel
mounted on the pillion, behind her husband.

There was an unexpected pause; no one knew why. Some dismounted and
stood by their stirrups, ready to mount when the bride had entered her
carriage. Glasses of whiskey were handed round, and then the pause
became more awkward and the suspense more intense. At last it became
known that Alice, who had been up nearly all night finishing her new
gowns, had felt weary, and fitting on her wedding dress, had gone out
on her mare for a spurt, to shake off drowsiness. Messengers were sent
in different directions to search for her, but they had not returned.
Some accident must have befallen her.

Burns, who rode a powerful black horse, and who had won the broth,
galloped off wildly towards Loughbrickland. The other cavaliers
scoured the country in different directions; but, while all kinds of
surmises were being hazarded, a messenger on foot from Banbridge, with
dainties for the feast, arrived, and reported that he had met Miss
McClory and a tall gentleman galloping furiously toward the river
Bann, near Banbridge. There was great excitement among the guests, and
whiskey and strong language without measure. After a hurried
consultation the mounted guests agreed to pursue the fugitives and
bring Miss McClory back; but, while they were tightening their girths
and getting ready for a gallop of five or six miles, a boy rode up to
the house on the mare that had been ridden by Alice, bearing a letter
to say she had just been married to Hugh Brontë in Magherally church.
She sent her love and grateful thanks to her brother, hoped the party
would enjoy the wedding dinner, and begged them to drink her health
as Mrs. Brontë.

The plucky manner in which the lady had carried out her own plan,
outwitting the coercionists by her own cleverness, called forth
admiration in the midst of disappointment, and the cheery message
touched every heart. The calamity that had befallen Burns did not
weigh heavily on the hearts of the guests, in presence of the splendid
dinner before them, and especially as it was now clear that the lady
was being forced to marry him against her will.

At this juncture the kind and courteous old priest rose, and with
great skill and good-humor talked about the events of the day. He
brought into special prominence the humorous and heroic episode in a
manner that appealed to the chivalry of his hearers, and then, with
tender pathos, referring to the beautiful daughter of the house,
called upon the guests to drink her health. The toast was responded to
with a hearty ringing cheer. Burns, who has left a good reputation
behind him, promptly proposed prosperity to the new-married couple,
and Red Paddy, always kind and generous, promised to send the united
good wishes of the whole party to the bride and bridegroom, and to
assure them of a hearty welcome, in which the past would be forgotten.
Paddy, as we shall see, kept his word. Thus the grandfather and
grandmother of the great novelists were married in 1776, in the
Protestant church of Magherally, the clergyman who officiated
pronouncing the bride the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

       *       *       *       *       *

The following verses have always been known as the product of Hugh
Brontë's muse. I am inclined to think they may have, in an original
form, been produced by Hugh, and smoothed down by his son Patrick. And
perhaps, in the refining process, they have lost in strength more than
they have gained in sound.

I do not think old Hugh would have known anything, at first hand, of
"the peach bloom," or of "the blood-red Mars." The poem, forty years
ago, had many variations, but there is one line of special interest,
as it shows that the verses were known to Charlotte Brontë. The verse,
with a slight variation, is put into the mouth of Jane Eyre. Rochester
says: "Jane suits me; do I suit her?" Jane answers: "To the finest
fibre of my nature, sir."


ALICE AND HUGH.

  The red rose paled before the blush
    That mantled o'er thy dimpled cheek,
  The peach bloom faded at the flush
    That tinged thy beauty ripe and meek.

  Thy milk-white brow outshone the snow:
    Thy lustrous eyes outglanced the stars:
  Thy cherry lips, with love aglow,
    Burned ruddier than the blood-red Mars.

  Thy sweet, low voice waked in my heart
    Dead memories of my mother's love.
  My long-lost sister's artless art
    Lived in thy smiles, my gentle dove.

  Dear Alice, how thy charm and grace
    Kindled my dull and stagnant life!
  From first I saw thy winning face,
    My whole heart claimed thee for my wife.

  I thought you'd make me happy, dear:
    I sought you for my very own:
  You clung to me through storm and fear:
    You loved me still, though poor and lone.

  My love was centred all in self:
    Thy love was centred all in me:
  True wife, above all pride and pelf,
    My life's deep current flows for thee.

  The finest fibres of my soul
    Entwine with thine in love's strong fold;
  Our tin cup is a golden bowl;
    Love fills our cot with wealth untold.



THE LEGEND OF THE ELEPHANT AND THE LION.

BY HENRY M. STANLEY.

Copyright, 1893, by Henry M. Stanley.


It was a custom with us, when crossing Africa in 1874-77, to meet
after dinner around the camp-fire, to while away the evening with
pleasant gossip, reminiscences, curious African legends. Sunset in the
tropics is soon followed by darkness, and the heavy vapors rising from
the hot, steaming ground appear to give thickness and substance to it.
A large fire is then very agreeable, as it drives away the damp and
dew; and it is a comfort to look into its flames and glowing embers,
wherein each man sees what he sees. No doubt the drift of the mind at
such times, to think of such things as are driven away by the needs of
the stirring day, suggested that we could be more sociable and more
interested if we related to one another such stories as were told to
us by the old folks at home. On trial it was found that there were
some of our men who were most accomplished in the art of narration,
and I fancied, after writing one or two out, that there was some kind
of a moral of an African character in each, after which I paid more
attention to them, and, on retiring from the circle, I would hastily
jot down what I had heard. If there were some points still obscure in
the story I would invite its narrator to relate it to me at the first
halting-place. But then I would find also that there was a great deal
of difference between the story told to me alone and that related to
the audience round the fire--there was then less local color, less
detail, and less animation.

       *       *       *       *       *

At a camp on the Upper Congo, in 1877, Chakanja drew near our fire as
story-telling was about to begin, and was immediately beset with eager
demands for a tale from him. Like a singer, who always professes to
have a cold before indulging us, Chakanja needed more than a few
entreaties; but finally, after vowing that he never could remember
anything, he consented to gratify us with the legend of the Elephant
and the Lion.

"Well," he answered, with a deep sigh, "if I must, I must. You must
know we Waganda are fond of three things--to have a nice wife, a
pleasant farm, and to hear good news, or a lively story. I have heard
a great many stories in my life, but, unlike Kadu, my mind remembers
them not. Men's heads are not the same, any more than men's hearts are
like. But I take it that a poor tale is better than none. It comes
back to me like a dream, this tale of the Elephant and the Lion. I
heard it first when on a visit to Gabunga's; but who can tell it like
him? If you think the tale is not well told, it is my fault; but then,
do not blame me too much, or I shall think I ought to blame you
to-morrow, when it will be your turn to amuse the party.

"Now open your ears. A huge and sour-tempered elephant went and
wandered in the forest. His inside was slack for want of juicy roots
and succulent reeds, but his head was as full of dark thoughts as a
gadfly is full of blood. As he looked this way and that, he observed a
young lion asleep at the foot of a tree. He regarded it for a while,
then, as he was in a wicked mind, it came to him that he might as well
kill it, and he accordingly rushed at it, and impaled it with his
tusks. He lifted it with his trunk, swung it about, dashed it against
the tree, and afterwards kneeled on the body until it became as
shapeless as a crushed banana pulp. He then laughed, and said, 'Ha!
ha! This is a proof that I am strong. I have killed a lion, and people
will say proud things of me, and will wonder at my strength.'

"Presently a brother elephant came up and greeted him.

"'See,' said the first elephant, 'what I have done. It was I that
killed him. I lifted him on high, and, lo! he lies like a rotten
banana. Do you not think I am very strong? Come, be frank now, and
give me some credit for what I have done.'

"Elephant No. 2 replied: 'It is true that you are strong, but that was
only a young lion. There are others of his kind, and I have seen them,
who would give you considerable trouble.'

"'Ho, ho!' laughed the first elephant. 'Get out, stupid! You may bring
his whole tribe here, and I will show you what I can do. Ay, and to
your dam to boot.'

"'What! My own mother, too!'

"'Yes. Go and fetch her if you like.'

"'Well, well,' said No. 2, 'you are far gone, there is no doubt. Fare
you well.'

"No. 2 proceeded on his wanderings, resolved in his own mind that, if
he had an opportunity, he would send some one to test the boaster's
strength. No. 1 called out to him:

"'Away you go. Good-by to you.'

"A little way on, No. 2 elephant met a lion and lioness, full grown,
and splendid creatures, who turned out to be the parents of the
youngster which had been slain, and he said to them, after a sociable
chat:

"'If you go further on along the path I came, you will meet a kind of
game which requires killing badly. He has just mangled your cub.'

"Meantime elephant No. 1, chuckling to himself very conceitedly,
proceeded to the pool near by to bathe and cool himself. At every step
he went you could hear this: 'Ha, ha, ha! Lo! I have killed a lion.'
While he was in the pool, spurting the water in a shower over his
back, he suddenly looked up, and at the water's edge beheld a grown
lion and lioness regarding him sternly.

"'Well, what do you want?' he asked. 'Why are you standing there
looking at me?'

"'Are you the rogue who killed our child?' they asked.

"'Perhaps I am,' he answered. 'Why do you want to know?'

"'Because we are in search of him. If it be you that did it, you will
have to do the same to us before you leave this ground.'

"'Ho! ho!' laughed the elephant loudly. 'Well, hark! It was I who
killed your cub. Come now, it was I. Do you hear? And if you do not
leave here mighty quick, I shall have to serve you both as I served
him.'

"The lions roared aloud in their fury, and switched their tails
violently.

"'Ho, ho!' laughed the elephant gayly. 'This is grand! There is no
doubt I shall run soon, they make me so skeery;' and he danced round
the pool, and jeered at them, then drank a great quantity of water and
blew it in a shower over them.

"The lions stirred not, but kept steadfastly gazing at him, planning
how best to attack him.

"Perceiving that they were obstinate, he threw another stream of water
over the lions and then backed into the deepest part of the pool,
until there was nothing seen of him but the tip of his trunk. When he
arose again the lions were still watching him and had not moved.

"'Ho, ho!' he trumpeted, 'still there? Wait a little, I am coming to
you.' He advanced towards the shore, but, when he was close enough,
the lion sire sprang into the air, and alighted on the elephant's
back, and furiously tore at the muscles of the neck, and bit deep into
the shoulder. The elephant retreated into the deepest part of the pool
again, and submerged himself and his enemy, until the lion was
compelled to abandon his back and begin to swim ashore. No sooner had
he felt himself relieved than the elephant rose to the surface, and
hastily followed and seized the lion with his trunk. Despite the
lion's struggles, he was pressed beneath the surface, dragged under
the elephant's knees, and trodden into the mud, and in a short time
the lion sire was dead.

"The elephant laughed triumphantly, and cried, 'Ho, ho! am I not
strong, Ma Lion? Did you ever see the like of me before? Two of you,
Young Lion and Pa Lion, are now killed. Ma Lion, you had better try
now, just to see if you won't have better luck. Come on, old woman,
just once.'

"The lioness fiercely answered, while she retreated from the pool,
'Hold on where you are. I am going to find my brother, and will be
back shortly.'

"The elephant trumpeted his scorn of her kind, and seizing the carcass
of her lord, flung it on shore after her, and declared his readiness
to abide where he was, that he might make mash of all the lion
family.

"In a short time the lioness had found her brother, who was a mighty
fellow, and full of fight. As they advanced near the pool together,
they consulted as to the best means of getting at him. Then the
lioness sprang forward to the edge of the pool. The elephant retreated
a short distance. The lioness upon this crept along the pool, and
pretended to lap the water. The elephant moved towards her. The lion
waited his chance, and finally, with a great roar, sprang upon his
shoulders and commenced tearing away at the very place which had been
wounded by lion sire.

"The elephant backed quickly into deep water, and submerged himself,
but the lion maintained his hold and bit deeper. The elephant then
sank down until there was nothing to be seen but the tip of his trunk,
upon which the lion, to avoid suffocation, relaxed his hold, and swam
vigorously toward shore. The elephant rose up, and as the lion was
stepping on shore, seized him, and drove one of his tusks through his
body; but, as he was in the act, the lioness sprang upon the
elephant's neck, and bit and tore so furiously that he fell dead, and
with his fall crushed the dying lion.

"Soon after the close of the terrible combat, elephant No. 2 came up,
and discovered the lioness licking her chops and paws, and said:

"'Hello, it seems there has been quite a quarrel here lately. Three
lions are dead, and here lies one of my own kind, stiffening.'

"'Yes,' replied the lioness gloomily, 'the rogue elephant killed my
cub while the little fellow was asleep in the woods. He then killed my
husband and brother, and I killed him; but I do not think the elephant
has gained much by fighting with us. I did not have much trouble in
killing him. Should you meet any friends of his, you may warn them to
leave the lioness alone, or she may be tempted to make short work of
them.'

"Elephant No. 2, though a patient person generally, was annoyed at
this, and gave a sudden kick with one of his hind feet which sent her
sprawling a good distance off; and asked:

"'How do you like that, Ma Lion?'

"'What do you mean by that?' demanded the enraged lioness.

"'Oh, because I hate to hear so much bragging.'

"'Do you also wish to fight?' she asked.

"'We should never talk about doing an impossible thing, Ma Lion,' he
answered. 'I have travelled many years through these woods, and I have
never fought yet. I find that when a person minds his own business he
seldom comes to trouble, and when I meet one who is even stronger than
myself, I greet him pleasantly, and pass on, and I should advise you
to do the same, Ma Lion.'

"'You are saucy, elephant. It would be well for you to think upon your
stupid brother there, who lies so stark under your nose, before you
trouble one who slew him, with your insolence.'

"'Well, words never yet made a plantation; it is the handling of a hoe
that makes fields. See here, Ma Lion, if I talked to you all day I
could not make you wise. I will just turn my back to you. If you will
bite me you will soon learn how weak you are.'

"The lioness, angered still more by the elephant's contempt, sprang at
his shoulders, and clung to him; upon which he rushed at a stout tree,
and, pressing his shoulders against it, crushed the breath out of her
body, and she ceased her struggles. When he relaxed his pressure, the
body fell to the ground, and he knelt upon it, and kneaded it until
every bone was broken.

"While the elephant was meditatively standing over the body, and
thinking what misfortunes happen to boasters, a man came along,
carrying a spear; and seeing that the elephant was unaware of his
presence, he thought what great luck had happened to him.

"Said he, 'Ah, what fine tusks he has! I shall be rich with them, and
shall buy slaves and cattle, and with these I will get a wife and a
farm,' saying which he advanced silently, and when he was near enough,
darted his spear into a place behind the shoulder.

"The elephant turned around quickly, and, on beholding his enemy,
rushed after him, and, overtaking him, mauled him until in a few
moments he was a mangled corpse.

"At this time a woman approached, and seeing four lions and one
elephant and her husband dead, she raised up her hands wonderingly,
and cried, 'How did all this happen?' The elephant, hearing her voice,
came from behind a tree, with a spear quivering in his side, and
bleeding profusely. At the sight of him the woman turned round to fly,
but the elephant cried out to her, 'Nay, run not, woman, for I can do
you no harm. The happy days in the woods are ended for all the tribes.
The memory of this scene will never be forgotten. Animals will be at
constant war one with another. Lions will no more greet elephants, the
buffaloes will be shy, the rhinoceroses will live apart, and man, when
he comes within the shadows, will think of nothing else than his
terrors, and he will fancy an enemy in every shadow. I am sorely
wounded, for thy man stole up to my side and drove his spear into me,
and soon I shall die.'

"When she had heard these words the woman hastened home, and all the
villagers, old and young, hurried into the woods, by the pool, where
they found four lions, two elephants, and one of their own tribe lying
still and lifeless.

"The words of the elephant have turned out to be true, for no man goes
nowadays into the silent and deserted woods but he feels as though
something was haunting them, and thinks of goblinry, and starts at
every sound. Out of the shadows, which shift with the sun, forms seem
crawling and phantoms appear to glide, and we are in a fever almost
from the horrible illusions of fancy. We breathe quickly and fear to
speak, for the smallest vibration in the silence would jar on our
nerves. I speak the truth, for when I am in the woods near the night,
there swim before my eyes a multitude of terrible things which I never
see by the light of day. The flash of a firefly is a ghost, the chant
of a frog becomes a frightful roar, the sudden piping of a bird
signalizes murder, and I run. No, no, no woods for me when alone."

And Chakanja rose to his feet and went to his own quarters, solemnly
shaking his head. But we all smiled at Chakanja, and thought how
terribly frightened he would be if any one suddenly rose from behind a
dark bush and cried "Boo!" to him.



SONG.

BY THOMAS CAREW.
(1589-1639.)


  Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
  When June is past, the fading rose,
  For in your beauty's orient deep
  These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

  Ask me no more whither do stray
  The golden atoms of the day,
  For, in pure love, heaven did prepare
  Those powders to enrich your hair.

  Ask me no more where those stars light
  That downwards fall in dead of night,
  For in your eyes they sit, and there
  Fixed become as in their sphere.

  Ask me no more whither doth haste
  The nightingale when May is past,
  For in your sweet dividing throat
  She winters, and keeps warm her note.



AT THE THROTTLE.

THE LIFE AND EXPERIENCES OF AN ENGINEER OF A LIMITED EXPRESS.

BY CLEVELAND MOFFETT.

  "_See the huge creature with muscles of steel, his heart a furnace
  of glowing coal, and the strength of a thousand horses nerving his
  sinews. See him strut forth from his stable, and, saluting the
  train of cars with a dozen sonorous puffs from his iron nostrils,
  stand panting to be gone. He would drag the pyramids across the
  Desert of Sahara if they could be hitched on._"


The average New Yorker who rides to Chicago in twenty hours on the
World's Fair flyer does an easy day's work, in fact, does no work at
all. He rests comfortably at night, enjoys well-served meals, and
reaches his destination almost before he knows it. Having paid the
price, such is the arrogance of money, he takes all that is done for
him quite as a matter of course, and knows no more of the workings of
this wonderful train than a school-boy, while he cares rather less. An
engine pulls the cars, steam works the engine, and as for the
engineer, the New Yorker never thinks of him except to growl at him
when the train is late, and to advocate hanging him if there is an
accident.

Meantime, what is the engineer of this fastest train in the world
doing for the passenger? In the first place, the Chicago flyer is not
driven by one but by many engineers. In order to cover the nine
hundred and sixty-four miles between the two cities in twenty hours,
including nine stops, there are required seven huge engines in relays,
driven by seven grimy heroes. A run of less than one hundred and fifty
miles is the limit per day for each engine, while three hours of the
plunging rush wears out the strongest engineer. Sixty, seventy, eighty
miles an hour--what does that mean to the man at the throttle? It
means that the six and a half feet drivers turn five times every
second and advance one hundred feet. Tic-tic-tic, and the train has
run the length of New York's highest steeple. The engineer turns his
head for five seconds to look at the gauges, and in that time the
terrible iron creature, putting forth the strength of a thousand
horses, may have shot past a red signal with its danger warning five
hundred feet away. Ten seconds, and one thousand feet are left
behind--one-fifth of a mile. Who knows what horrors may lie within
that thousand feet! There may be death lurking round a curve, death
spreading its arms in a tunnel, and the engineer must see and be
responsible for everything. Not only must he note instantly all that
is before him, the signals, switches, bridges, the passing trains, and
the condition of the rails, but he must act at the same moment,
working throttle, air-brakes, or reversing-lever, not as quick as
thought, but quicker, for there is no time to think. His muscles must
do the right thing automatically under circumstances where a second is
an age. In the three hours of his vigil there are ten thousand eight
hundred seconds, during each one of which he must watch with the
mental alertness of an athlete springing for a flying trapeze from
the roof of an amphitheatre, with the courageous self-possession of a
matador awaiting the deadly rush of a maddened bull; and far more
depends upon the engineer's watching well, because, if he fails by a
hair's breadth in coolness or precision of judgment, there may come
destruction, not only to himself, but to hundreds of passengers, who,
while he stands guard, are perhaps grumbling at the waiters in the
dining-car or telling funny stories in the smoker.

In addition to this constant mental tension the engineer on this
hurling train has to endure material discomfort, often bodily
suffering. The air sweeps back in his face with the breath of a
hurricane, blowing smoke and cinders into his eyes. Most people know
the intense pain a cinder causes in a man's eye, particularly a hot
cinder. The suffering is almost unbearable, and yet, suffering or no
suffering, the engineer who gets a cinder in his eye can have no
relief until the end of his relay. They shut their lips, these
unflinching men, keep looking ahead, and bear it. Long after they
leave the cab, the burning sensation in their eyes and eyelids
continues, and even persists after hours of sleep. "It seems as if
nothing would rest my eyes, sir," said one of the new men after his
first week on the flyer. No wonder the eyesight of engineers fails
rapidly, no wonder many of them are removed from their positions every
year because the examining doctors find them unable to distinguish the
signals. The engineer suffers also from the plunging and tossing of
the monster locomotive, which bruises his whole body with its violent
rocking, and causes sharp pains in the back, particularly where there
is any tendency to kidney trouble. One has only to watch these strong
men as they stumble down from their engines at the end of a relay, has
only to observe their white faces and unsteady gait, and see the
condition of physical collapse which follows, to understand what it
costs in vitality and grit to give the ease-loving public this
incomparable train service.

[Illustration: "THE FLYER" LEAVING THE GRAND CENTRAL STATION, NEW YORK
CITY.]

Thus it is that while the New Yorker gets to Chicago with scarcely
more discomfort than if he had remained at home, the same journey
wears out seven engineers, all picked men; for many of them who have
seen years of service on trains running forty miles an hour, break
down entirely when put upon the flyer. So exhausted are these seven
engineers by their comparatively short relays that they are obliged
to lay off entirely during the following day to recover from the
shock. They do not even take the opposite-bound flyer back over
their stretch, but return with their engines to their respective
starting-points, drawing slower trains. Thus, seven strong men do
two days' work every time the flyer runs from New York to Chicago,
and seven other men do two days' work every time it runs back. Each
engineer works three hours on the flyer, returns home on an easy
train, and then rests forty hours before his muscles and nerves and
brain are in condition to repeat the operation.

So it results that twenty-eight engineers, one at a time, are required
to run this wonderful train from New York to Chicago and back again.
Fourteen veterans drive the great engines one way, and fourteen
brother veterans drive them the other. Twenty-eight men for a single
complete trip of a single train, and they the flower of American
engineers, splendid fellows every one of them, with cool heads, stanch
hearts, and the experience of years at the throttle. The fact is,
these men of iron, who, after all, are made of flesh and blood, have
been called upon of late years to bear a mental and physical strain
which has increased steadily as the speed rates have advanced. Forty,
fifty, sixty, seventy, and now eighty miles an hour, each greater
velocity has meant greater pressure, not only on the boilers and
cylinders, but on men's brains; has meant greater expenditure, not
only of coal and dollars, but of nerve force, until now experts
recognize with concern that the limit of human endurance has been
almost reached. Science may remove the mechanical difficulties in the
way of running a hundred miles an hour, or more, for such a rate has
already been predicted; money may buy better axles, wheels,
lubricators, and machinery, but where are the men who will run these
trains of the future when they are built? Can science breed us a race
of giants? Can money purchase an immunity against suffering or eyes
that are indestructible? If twenty-eight engineers are required to-day
on the Chicago flyer, how many, pray, will be necessary on a train
running fifty or one hundred per cent. faster?

I gained a vivid impression of what it means to drive one of these
monster engines, by actually travelling from New York to Albany, a few
days ago, in the cab of Engine 870, which takes the Empire State
express over the first stretch of its journey--one hundred and
forty-two miles--at a rate rather faster than that of the Chicago
flyer. At the throttle was Archie Buchanan, a silent man with gray
eyes and earnest face, who comes of a family of engineers, and is one
of the most trusted of the New York Central employees. Buchanan's
brother John, a skilled engineer in his time, was cut in two some
years ago in an accident near East Albany. His brother James is a
master mechanic at the shops at West Albany, and his brother William,
after serving for years as a New York Central engineer, was made
Superintendent of Rolling Stock, a position he still holds.

Buchanan smiled quietly as I climbed upon the fireman's seat at the
left. It was a perfect July morning, and at 8.39 the shrill whistle
sounded, worked by the conductor's bell-rope, and we were off, nine
minutes behind time on account of some trouble with the air-brakes.

"We must make up the delay, Al," said the engineer to his fireman, as
the wheels began to turn. Those were the only words he spoke until we
reached Albany, and, had he spoken, neither Al nor I could have heard
him for the roar.

Now the slow, heavy pant of the engine quickens, and we shoot under
bridges and streets, passing out of New York. For a few minutes
Buchanan, working the reversing-lever, lets the pistons go the full
length of the cylinders, but he gradually cuts down their stroke to
eight inches, making the steam expansion do the rest. This lessens the
noise from the exhaust, but the noise from the pounding of the
mountain of iron on the rails increases in geometrical ratio. A shower
of cinders blows in with black smoke, and a hot one settles in my
neck. The smoke tastes of oil, the cinder burns--this is but a
foretaste of things to come. I turn my head to avoid suffocation and
get a scorching blast from the fire-box, whose door is swung wide
open. The fireman's orders are to make up the lost time, and he
proposes to do it. In goes coal at the rate of two shovelfuls a minute
for the first half-hour. Before we reach Albany he has shovelled in
more than three tons, and had the day been windy it would have taken
more. In the intervals he rakes and prods the white-hot crater and
rings the bell as we shoot past towns and cities. Buchanan tends to
the whistle and air-brakes. The noise is dreadful, as if a thousand
devils were dancing in one's head. The motion is so violent from side
to side that we all have to hold on tightly. A little more and one
would be seasick.

As the hundred-ton engine pounds along with horrible din, a strange
sense of exhilaration succeeds that of physical discomfort. One
becomes indifferent to everything, and, courting now the smoke-laden
hurricane, thrusts one's head from the window into the sweeping
air-billows, which dash against the face like breakers and with the
same strangling force. I was seized with a wild desire to go faster;
seventy miles an hour was not enough, and I would fain have opened
everything to its full capacity, stop-cocks, levers, throttle, and
all, and taken part in a furious, splendid runaway. Strange thoughts
chased through my mind; the houses of flying towns seemed to be
rushing at each other in battle from either side, a long line of loose
ties between the tracks suggested an endless procession of turtles,
the trees seemed to be dancing down the hills, and the people who
stared up at us while stepping away from the dangerous suction seemed
to be creatures of another race. I have learned since that engineers
often have that feeling of belonging to some other world, and it comes
upon them particularly at night. A man of highly strung organization
could easily go mad riding on an engine running seventy miles an
hour.

These curious illusions of the senses were presently succeeded by a
period of intense and perfectly normal curiosity. I counted the number
of strokes made by the piston in a minute, and found there were about
three hundred. I counted the number of puffs from the smoke-stack, and
decided correctly that there were four times as many of these as there
were piston-strokes, that is, about twenty to the second. Then I
counted the oil-cans, the gauges, and made mental photographs of the
inside of the cab.

From start to finish we made no stop and only slackened our speed
twice to "pick up water," this important operation being accomplished
with a great splashing by a scoop under the tender, which drops into a
trough running lengthwise of the track for about twelve hundred feet,
and always kept full to the brim. The scoop is controlled by a lever
in the tender, which the fireman directs. In the winter, steam-pipes
through the troughs keep the water from freezing. During the whole
distance Buchanan scarcely changed his position, and never turned his
head. For two hours and thirty-six minutes he stood at the right of
the boiler, an immovable figure in gray overalls and black skullcap,
his left hand on the throttle, while his right clutched the window to
steady him. I never once saw his eyes, which were fixed on the track
ahead as if held there by a magnet. No matter how the smoke and
cinders poured in through the open windows in front, no matter the
bridges and tunnels nor the mad rush of air, his eyes stayed forward
always, sweeping the line before us anxiously, constantly on the alert
for signals, for switches, for obstructions, for the long tunnel, for
the train side-tracked near Poughkeepsie, for the water troughs, for a
score of things, the missing any one of which might mean disaster.
And, as he watched, silent and motionless, there was one thought in
his mind and only one, whether we would make up the lost nine minutes
and get into Albany on time. Al's thoughts were the same, and, like
one of Dante's demons, he worked at the coal and the fire and the
water, now oiling the drivers, now looking at the gauges, ever busy
and ever growing blacker and oilier in hands and face.

Very proud we were as we ran into Albany at 11.15 A.M. on time to the
minute, having made the run of one hundred and forty-two miles in one
hundred and fifty-six minutes, an average of 53.8 miles an hour. This
exceeds the average of the Chicago flyer, which is 48.2 miles an hour,
although for a much greater distance. Several times our speed had
reached seventy miles an hour, and with better coal and other
conditions equally favorable, Buchanan has driven 870 up to the
eighty-mile point. With the sound devils still dancing in my head, I
watched the engineer as he rubbed down his iron horse after the hard
run. He was tired himself, and his face was white, but he went over
the rods and cylinders as tenderly and carefully as if he was
refreshing the muscles and sinews of a living creature.

"She's a beauty, isn't she?" he said, in a tone which bore witness to
the love felt by the man for the machine. "You see, she has always
been true to me, 870 has, and I've run her ever since she was built.
She's never cranky or sick, and she makes her three hundred miles a
day three hundred and sixty-five times a year, and does her duty every
time. That's more than you can say of many men, or women either, isn't
it?"

It seems that there are about fifty engines in constant use on the New
York Central with the power and dimensions of 870, and only the
peerless 999, with her heavier build and smoke-consuming device, can
boast any points of superiority. The life of an engine like 870 is
about twenty years, during which time she makes several visits to the
hospital for new cylinders, new flues, and a new fire-box. Aside from
that, the engine needs about an hour's care morning and night, and a
washout and blowout of her boilers at the end of alternate weeks.
Only at these periods is the engine's fire allowed to go out.

I asked Buchanan what were the principal qualifications for a
first-class engineer, and what was the training necessary to become
one. "To begin with," he said, "a man must be a first-class fireman,
which is no easy matter. He must know just how much coal to put on the
fire and when to put it on, so as to keep the steam at full pressure
without burning too much fuel. The great secret of good firing is to
put coal on often and a little at a time. You noticed Al did that on
our run up. When a fireman has shown himself worthy of it, he is given
a chance to drive an engine for switching work or on a freight train.
The first years of his life as an engineer are very hard, for he has
to run at all sorts of hours, day and night, winter and summer, and on
the meanest kinds of trains. If this does not kill him he finally
becomes engineer on an express and has a better time of it, but a good
many of the boys prefer to remain firemen all their lives rather than
stand such hardships. My man Al has tried driving an engine twice, and
come back to me both times. You can be pretty sure that a man who gets
to be an engineer on one of the fine trains to-day has earned his
position. He must know his engine like a book, backwards and forwards,
must know how to manage her when she is sick and well, and what to do
if an eccentric breaks or a piston gets leaking or a valve-spindle is
bent. He must know how to work the injector so as to keep water enough
in the boiler without wasting any by the steam blowing off. He must be
able to save power by working the steam expansively and yet keeping up
his speed; he must know every inch of the road, the grades, bridges,
switches, curves, and tunnels, and all the trains he has to pass or
which may pass him. He must be able to control his train and engine at
full speed, must understand the effect of the weather on the rails,
must know how to use the air-brakes and the reversing-lever, and when
not to use them."

I listened and marvelled.

"What would you do in a collision?" I asked.

The engineer pushed back the little black skullcap from his iron-gray
hair and said, in the low tone which is usual with him:

"It is pretty hard to say what a man should do when he hears the
whistle of danger ahead or sees that a crash is coming. Even the best
of us are liable to get confused at such a moment. What would you do
if you woke up in the night and found a burglar holding a pistol at
your head? There are no rules for such cases. What I would not do,
though, is to reverse my engine, although many engineers are liable to
lose their heads at a critical moment and make that mistake. It is a
curious thing that reversing your engine suddenly when going at high
speed makes the train go faster instead of slower. The reason is that
the drivers slip and the locomotive shoots ahead as if she were on
skates. The only thing to do is to put on the air-brakes and pray
hard."

The man's words, all the more impressive for their rugged simplicity,
brought to my mind again the thought of danger, for in spite of the
wonderful system by which these flying trains are run, in spite of the
elaborate precautions taken and the many eyes forever watching to see
that they are carried out, it is impossible to go through such an
experience as mine without realizing that there is danger in these
desperate dashes. Suppose something goes wrong on the track ahead
while the train is making sixty or seventy miles an hour. Suppose, as
the whirling caravan rounds a curve or plunges through a tunnel,
another whirling caravan is seen blocking the path. Then what? Would
there be time to stop? Could the engineer, with all his skill and
bravery, prevent disaster? With the old trains running forty miles an
hour, seven hundred and sixty feet of track was necessary to bring the
locomotive and six cars to a dead stop from full speed. No one has
ever made the experiment with the Chicago flyer or the Empire State
express, but unquestionably it would take at least a thousand feet of
track to stop either of them, and many things can happen in a thousand
feet. There are never more than a thousand feet, and very often only a
few hundred, between the three sets of signals, with their red, green,
and yellow bars, which are shown at each station of the block system
all along the route. As there are a hundred of these stations between
New York and Albany, that gives three hundred sets of signals to be
instantly recognized and obeyed on this relay alone, and a man had
better die than make a mistake. Now there are two difficulties with
these signals; in the first place, some of them are so close together
that no human power could stop the train in the space between them;
and in the second place, going at such a speed, it is almost
impossible to distinguish the green signals against the background of
foliage. Already it has been found necessary to substitute yellow
signals for green ones in a number of cases.

While we were talking, a trainman drew a dead chicken from between two
bars of the cowcatcher, where its head was wedged. It had been struck
so suddenly that the feathers were scarcely rumpled, and the lucky
finder evidently proposed to have broiled poulet for dinner. I had
noticed the poor fowl on the way up, scurrying along in front of the
engine, and pitied its stupidity in refusing to leave the track, as it
might perfectly well have done. Buchanan told me that they often catch
chickens in this way, and find them excellent eating. Then he went on
to describe the sensations of running over animals and men.

"It always seems to me, sir, that the engine hates to kill a man as
much as we do. Of course, it's only a fancy, but once, up at
Germantown, when the sheet-iron flange around the tender cut off a
man's head clean as a razor, the fireman and I both felt the engine
tremble in a queer way. Another time there was a man on the track who
had just come out of a hospital, and, instead of killing him, old 870
just caught him gently on her cowcatcher and threw him off the track
without doing him any injury except a broken arm. It's curious about
animals. The ones we dread most are hogs. A fat hog will throw a train
off the track quicker than a horse or a cow. When we see a cow or
horse ahead we put on full speed and try to hurl them clear of the
track. If we strike them going slow we are apt to get the worst of
it."

There is a sympathy which draws together two men who have ridden side
by side on an engine running seventy miles an hour, and I was glad to
accept Engineer Buchanan's invitation to pay him a visit at his place
up the Hudson. No contrast could be greater or more charming than that
between the engineer at his post of danger and endurance, and the
father and husband, in his pretty vine-covered home by the river. Mr.
Buchanan in private life is a prosperous resident of Morris Heights,
where he owns valuable property, and enjoys alternate days among the
flowers, fruits, and vegetables of his garden. This garden is the
pride of his life, and, next to bringing a train in on time, I believe
he takes more pride in his roses, grapes, peas, and onions than in
anything in the world. We sat for a long time on the engineer's
favorite bench, under a cool grape arbor, with the river running
lazily at our feet. Buchanan, looking like a different man in
citizen's dress, talked unpretentiously of his life. There was no
posing as a hero, no complaining about hardships, just a simple,
straight-forward story of twenty-six years passed almost entirely on
an engine--twenty-six years of constant danger. Surely that ought to
have some curious influence on the human mind and character. In
Buchanan's case this influence certainly has been for good, for he
told me how, as a young man, he had come out of the war with
shiftless, lazy habits, fond of wasting his time and money in Eighth
Avenue saloons, and then how he had become steady and saving, when he
began to run regularly on an engine.

"When I used to be away on long stretches," he said, "with nothing to
do but think, I saw how foolish it was giving my money to a saloon
keeper for him to put in the bank instead of putting it there myself.
It used to come to me at night, as the engine ran along through the
shadows, that the friends I had down in the city were not good for
much, and that, if I lost my job or was hurt in an accident, they
would be the first to turn their backs on me. At last I decided to get
away from all my bad associations and from New York too; so I scraped
together what money I could and bought this land, where I have lived
ever since with my wife and children. That was the best day's work I
ever did. It was a hard-looking place when I bought it, nothing but
rocks and weeds, but I was proud of it, and put in all my spare time
fixing it up until I have made it what it is to-day."

As he spoke the engineer's eyes wandered complacently over the
gardens, the trim gravel walks, and the pretty house--everything as
neat and spic-span as the kitchen of a Dutch house-wife.

When not busy with his garden Buchanan's favorite occupation is
reading histories of the war and reminiscences of its great generals.
He will sit in his rocking-chair on the shady piazza for hours,
reading of Lincoln and McClellan and the stirring scenes in which he
himself took part--the battles of Second Bull Run, Seven Days, Big
Bethel, and Bristol Station. He has fought these battles over again
hundreds of times in his fancy, and many a lonely hour on the track
has been brightened by the memories of what he saw and did in the
great struggle. His admiration for General McClellan knows no bound,
and he entered into quite an argument to show that "McClellan did all
the work, sir, and the other fellows got all the glory." The only
vacation Buchanan has taken in a quarter of a century was a few years
ago, when he went South for a month to see the old battlefields once
more; but they were all changed, and he came back saddened. "I shall
never lay off again," he said, "until I lay off for good."

Archie Buchanan is but a fair type of the loyal fellows who drive the
flying engines of to-day. Many of them are as thrifty as he is; he
told me of one veteran in the company's employ, Thomas Dormatty, who
has property in Schenectady valued at one hundred thousand dollars,
and who, in spite of his seventy years, does his regular run between
Albany and Syracuse. It is easy to see what that means of saving and
prudent investment, when one remembers that the best engineers receive
only from one hundred and forty to one hundred and sixty dollars per
month. And when they have finished their terms of usefulness, and are
unable to run any longer, that same day their pay stops, as it stops
when they are ill; for railway companies are not philanthropists and
have no pension system.

I was glad to learn that there is no truth in the popular notion that
engineers are full of superstition. Buchanan told me he had never
experienced any such feeling, and had never known a superstitious
engineer, with the exception of Nat Sawyer, the veteran who is now at
Chicago with Engine 999. It is Nat who runs "the bosses' engine"--that
is, the luxurious observation car which takes the directors and
officials of the road on their tours of inspection. In spite of his
well-proven courage, Engineer Sawyer always hesitates to go out on his
engine if he meets a cross-eyed person in the morning on his way to
the roundhouse. That, however, is only the exception which proves the
rule.

As he was showing me about his house, which is furnished with taste
and comfort, Buchanan stopped before two large portraits of his father
and mother. Both of them are alive. His father is eighty-seven, his
mother four years younger. Speaking of his parents, the engineer said
reverently: "My father was a blacksmith and gave me a strong body, but
my mother did more for me than that, because she has prayed for me
every day of her life, and I have never had an accident on a train and
never got so much as a scratch in the war."

When I spoke of religion Buchanan showed some reticence. "How can I
get time to go to church," he said, "when I run my engine every other
day in the year, Sundays, holidays, and all? I guess my religion is
hard work, and I don't know but it's as good as any other."

The religion of hard work! Is it possible for the man who drives one
of our great modern trains to have any other religion than that?
Fifteen days in the month, twelve months in the year, he runs his
engine three hundred miles; and besides that, does extra work when a
sick comrade must be replaced, or the occasion demands. The remaining
days of the year he is resting for the strain and responsibility of
the morrow. He worships in the same place that he does his duty, under
the broad arch of heaven; his creed is to keep the train on time, his
prayer that danger may be averted. And when his eyes fail or his
health breaks down, he says good-by to the old engine which has been
his comrade on many a thrilling ride, and spends the years that remain
in some quiet, vine-covered home like the one I saw up the Hudson.



AMONG THE GORILLAS.

A VOICE FROM THE WILDERNESS.

BY R. L. GARNER, Author of "The Speech of Monkeys," etc.


An article written from the wilds of Africa may be expected to contain
long tales of bloody deeds and great perils, of narrow escapes from
hungry lions, battles with hordes of gory cannibals, and dramatic
rescue in the nick of time, followed by a swift revenge and a grand
flourish of trumpets; but as I have never been so fortunate in my
travels as to meet with the romantic events that are so common to many
travellers, I must ask my readers to be content with some plain facts,
set forth in simple prose; and as my mission to Africa is in search of
the truth in certain lines, I feel excused from any attempt to paint,
in the rosy hues of fancy, such thrilling scenes as some depict.

I shall omit some details of travel which are full of interest, but as
many of my detours have been over routes that have been travelled by
others and described by some, in various tints of truth and fiction, I
shall pass, with long strides, over the time since my arrival on the
coast to the present.

As the chief object of my visit to this wilderness is to study the
habits of the gorilla and chimpanzee in a state of nature, I shall
confine myself chiefly to them, and to such things as I find among the
natives in common with them.

After a long voyage of thirty-six days from England, I arrived in
Gaboon, the capital of the French Congo, where I was kindly received
by the governor and others, and assured of any aid that they could
render me. They manifested great interest in my work and anxiety for
its success.

During my stay of some weeks there I acquired much information, of
great value to me, about the distribution of various tribes, and also
of the apes. In the meantime I paid a visit to the king of the
M'pongwè people, in his country called Denni, lying on the south side
of the Gaboon River. The name of the king is Adandè Repontjombo, which
means _the son_ of Repontjombo, who was king when Paul du Chaillu was
in Africa.

The dignity of king, in Africa, does not rank with such a title in
Europe. Here his powers are but little superior to those of any other
native. He works, hunts, loafs, begs and lies just as others do. I
must make an exception of the King of Denni, who is, by far, the best
of all the royal Africans I have met, much of which is due to a good
education, and his contact with white men. King Adandè is an
intelligent man, and well informed on many subjects. He reads, writes
and speaks English and French in addition to his native tongue.

A visit to the king, here, is not a matter of so much pomp and
ceremony as such a visit to the sovereign of Great Britain, but to me
it was novel and full of deep interest.

Leaving Gaboon near the beginning of the year, I came to this section,
known as Fernan Vaz, but by the natives called Eliüe N'Kãmi. The
portion to which this name belongs extends from about one degree south
latitude to about one degree forty-five minutes south along the coast,
and thence, toward the interior, about three or four days' journey up
the Rembo N'Kãmi, embracing the great lake and surrounding country;
and this is the true habitat of the gorilla, which the natives called
_n'jina_ (n'geena).

After arranging here for a sojourn of a few months, I placed the most
of my heavy effects in the custody of the Ste. Anne Mission, and began
a journey up the Ogowe. I proceeded as far as N'djolè, which is about
two hundred and twenty miles from the coast. Along the way I made many
inquiries about the gorilla, but elicited little information of any
value. At a village called Ouimbiana, near an outlet of a lake called
Ezhanga, a native offered me quite a fine skull of a gorilla in
exchange for rum or tobacco, but, not having either of these current
articles of trade, I could not make the purchase. The animal had been
killed near Lake Ezhanga, which lies on the south side of the Ogowe,
and about four days from the coast. At Lambarenè, about one day higher
up the river, I was presented with a fine skull from near that same
lake. At N'djolè I was assured that five gorillas had been seen near
there only a few weeks before my visit, and that two native Pangwès
had been killed by them, on the south side of the river. But it is
very rare that one is ever seen so far away from the coast. I did not
hear of one on the north side of the river, and the natives all along
told me that they were all on the south side.

On my return I went into the Lake Ezhanga section, where I had heard
they were abundant, but, on reaching the south side of the lake, I was
told that they lived far away in the bush, and that ten boys and a
canoe could take me in one day to the very spot where schools of them
revel all the day and howl most of the night; but I didn't go.

I must digress for a moment to tell you what a superb lake the Ezhanga
is, dotted with islands, among which are some perfect gems of wild
and varied beauty. It is a sublime panorama. Down to the very edge of
the water hang perfect walls of trailing vines and weeping trees,
which look like the ivy-clad ruins of mediæval England. Towers of
green, of every shade the most vivid fancy can depict; crumbling
turrets and broken arches, hung with garlands of flowers. Here are
some of the most brilliant flowers and gorgeous foliage I have yet
seen in this tropical land. In one part of the lake is a vast
archipelago, which forms a gigantic labyrinth of coves and grottos. At
places the boughs from island to island almost meet overhead, forming
a grand archway of varied green set with the jewels of the floral
queen, and looking as though Dame Nature and her maids had decked it
for their own triumphal arch. Within the deep and solemn shadows of
these sylvan naves no sunbeams kiss the limpid waters, and not a voice
disturbs their quiet, save the harsh scream of the eagle or the wail
of the lone ibis. Now and then is seen some bird with plumage of most
brilliant tint, which looks as if its costume were designed for such a
place, and here and there the fish disport in some retired nook.

When once this fairy land is passed, the waters broaden to an inland
sea, with only a few islands of a larger size. Some of these are
skirted with wide bands of grass, sometimes sweeping away between the
trees in a long vista, on whose green expanse stands, perhaps, a
solitary hut, and on which feed the herds of hippopotami which lead a
life of idle luxury along these fertile shores and in the lonely
waters of this sea of dreams.

Coming on down the Ogowe, I spent four days in a native village of the
Orungo tribe. The town is called M'biro, but I do not know what the
name signifies unless it is _mud_. I was kindly treated by the people,
who delighted in hearing of some of the wonders of my country. The old
king was in ecstasies at my efforts to speak a few phrases of his
language, and vowed that nothing except a former betrothal restrained
him from offering me his daughter for a wife, to go with me to my
country and see some of the things of which I had told him. At this
place I was again assured that the gorilla lived on the south side of
the river.

My next point was Fernan Vaz, which I reached in two days' journey
along the Jimbogombi, one of the most beautiful rivers one can
imagine. It is bordered with myriads of stately palms, bamboos, and
ferns, relieved by vines, orchids, and flowers. Here the monkey revels
in the plenitude of wild fruits, and the pheasant finds a safe retreat
from crafty woodsmen, while birds of diverse kinds invoke the spirit
of nature with the voice of song.

On reaching Ste. Anne I selected a site for my cage and erected it at
once. It is located in the heart of the jungle, a trifle more than a
mile from any human habitation, and I named it Fort Gorilla. It is in
a spot where nothing but the denizens of the bush has any cause to
come. It is near a grove of plantains, on which the gorilla feasts
with the gusto of a charter member of the Gourmand Club. He does not
care so much for the fruit, but takes out the tender heart of the
young stalk, which is quite succulent, and eats it with an appetite
peculiar to his race.

Before my cage was quite in order to receive, I had my first call from
a young gorilla, who came within about ten yards, as if to see what
was going on. I had my rifle in my hand, but did not fire at him, as I
desired to have him call again and bring his friends. He didn't tarry
long, but hurried off into the bush as though he had something to
tell.

The third day after my cage was complete, a family of ten gorillas
crossed the rear of the open grounds belonging to the mission, and not
more than two hundred yards from the house. A small native boy was
within some twenty yards of them when they crossed the path in front
of him. Within a few minutes I was notified of the fact, and took my
rifle and followed them into the bush until I lost their trail. A few
hours later they were seen again by some natives, not far away from my
cage, but they did not call on me. The next day, however, I had a
visit from a group who came within some thirty yards of the cage. The
bush was so dense that I could not see them, but I could easily
distinguish four or five voices, which seemed to be engaged in a
family broil of some kind. I suppose that they were the same family
that had been seen the day before.

Père Buleon, _le père supérieur_ of Ste. Anne, tells me that he has
twice seen a family of gorillas feeding in a plantain grove, and that,
on both occasions, the father gorilla sat quietly eating the fruit
which the others gathered and brought to him. I have learned from
other reliable sources that gorillas are often seen in groups or
families of twelve or fifteen, and always have one which seems to be
chief among them, and this one the natives call _ekombo n'jina_, which
means gorilla king.

It is the current belief that these groups consist of one adult male,
and a number of females and their young. The gorilla is evidently
polygamous, but when he once adopts a wife she remains so for years,
and a certain degree of marital fidelity is observed. The same
practice prevails with the natives, with one exception in favor of the
gorilla, and that is that I have never heard of one selling one of his
wives, which the natives frequently do.

As far as it can be said that the gorilla has any form of government,
it is strictly patriarchal, and there are reasons to justify the
belief that they have some fixed ideas of order and justice. Many of
the natives declare that they have seen the gorillas holding a
palaver, at which the king always presided, while the others stood or
sat in a semicircle, talking in an excited manner. They do not claim
to have interpreted what was said or understood the nature of the
quarrel, but, as a rule, all natives believe that the gorilla has a
language which is understood among themselves, and used in the same
manner as man uses his speech.

To my mind it is quite evident that the habit of the gorilla is to go
in groups, although it is a very common thing to see one quite alone,
or to see a single pair of them. I think, as a rule, when you see one
alone it is a young male who has set out in the world for himself, and
the pair is perhaps a bridal couple.

The next visit I received was by a fine young chimpanzee, who came to
an opening in the bush, where he stopped and took quite a look at the
situation. He betrayed no sign of alarm, and seemed half-way tempted
to come nearer, but after a halt of nearly a minute he resumed his
march with an air of great leisure, nor did he deign to turn his head
to see if I followed him.

On the day after this a young gorilla came within six or seven yards
of my cage and took a good peep at me. He stood for a few seconds,
holding on to a bush with one hand; his lips were relaxed and his
mouth half open, as if surprised and perplexed at what he beheld. His
countenance did not portray either fear or anger, but utter amazement.
I heard him creeping through the bush before I saw him, and I don't
think he was aware of my presence until he was so near. During this
short visit I sat as still as a statue, and I think he was in doubt as
to whether I was alive or not; but when he turned away into the bush
he lost no time in getting out of reach. He uttered no sound except a
suppressed _umph_!

A day or two later I heard a couple among the plantains, but could
only get the faintest glimpse of them. They were talking but little,
and I don't think they broke any of the stalks. As well as I could
determine, there were only two, but they were of good size and alike
in color.

At this moment I hear one tearing a plantain stalk within about thirty
yards of me. I can only hear one voice, but as they do not talk much
when alone, I presume there are more of them not far away. He is
uttering a low murmuring sound which seems to express pleasure, but I
am not yet able to translate it into English. Time and patience,
however, will accomplish that, and much more.

It is a fact worthy of notice that some of the sounds uttered by the
gorilla and chimpanzee are identical with certain sounds in the
native language, and it is quite as easy to find letters to represent
them. One word in N'Kãmi, meaning _yes_ or _assent_, is exactly the
same as one sound that is much used by the chimpanzee, but is not
within the scope of any known system of phonetic symbols. The same is
true of the word for _five_ in one dialect of Kroo speech.

My visitor has gone from the plantain grove without calling to pay his
respects, but I am now being closely inspected by a young porcupine,
who doesn't appear to be so shy as his elders are; and just in the
rear of my domicile is a large school of mangaby monkeys who come
frequently to visit me. There are about twenty of them, some very
large, and as I have never disturbed them, they seem to be getting
more familiar. In fact, I am seldom without something to interest,
amuse, or edify me. Parrots, toucans, and scores of other birds keep
up a constant babel, and it is no longer such a novelty to me to hear
a gorilla near my fort. At night I frequently have a leopard or
bush-cat visit me; it is then too dark to shoot them, but my interest
is centr----s--s--st!--s--s--st! Oh, the precious moment! I have just
had a new and grand experience. I am a trifle nervous, but I must tell
you. While writing the last few lines above, a large dog from the
mission came to pay me a visit. He has become attached to me, and has
learned the way to my retreat. He soon found a bone which I had thrown
into the bush, and began to gnaw with great vigor. Within a few feet
of my cage is a small, rough path cut through the bush to mark the
boundary of the mission lands. Suddenly there appeared on the edge of
this path a huge female gorilla, carrying a young one on her back. She
was not more than thirty feet from me when I first saw her, and her
tread was so stealthy that I did not hear the rustle of a leaf. She
peeped along the edge of the bush with the greatest caution, with her
whole attention fixed upon the dog. In a few moments she advanced very
softly towards him, with the evident purpose of attack, until she was
within a measured distance of eleven feet of me, without having
observed my presence, I think. The dog was not aware of her approach,
and she was now within fourteen feet of him. With my rifle at my elbow
I was prepared for action in an instant, as I did not want her to kill
the dog. As I cocked my gun she stopped, sat down on the ground for a
few seconds, and gave me such a look of scorn that I almost felt that
I had done wrong to interfere. She then turned away uneasily and
retraced her steps with moderate haste, but she did not run, or betray
much sign of fear. In an instant she was lost in the bush, and not the
faintest sound was uttered. There were doubtless more of them near by,
as the natives say it is very rare to find one female and babe alone,
but so far as I could see she was all alone. She may have been a
widow, and if so, I should think her chances to remain so were very
fine, if beauty goes at par among her beaux, for she certainly was one
of the most hideous-looking things I have ever seen.

The temptation to shoot her was almost too great to resist, and the
desire to capture the babe made it all the more so, but I have
refrained, so far, from firing my gun anywhere near my cage. I could
have shot this one to-day with such ease and safety that I almost
regret that I did not, but she may return.

I have had the pleasure this afternoon of hearing three others howling
in different directions, one of which appears to be a very large one.

I have been told that the gorilla builds a rude hut or shelter in
which he makes his home, but, so far, I have found no trace of any
kind of structure built by them, nor can any native tell me where one
can be found. I do not believe that he has the most remote idea of a
home. He is nomadic in habit, and I doubt if he ever spends two nights
in the same place. During the day gorillas wander about from place to
place in quest of food, and wherever night finds them they remain till
morning. They are not nocturnal in habit, and the stories of their
howling and talking all night are not well founded. They do sometimes
yell at night, I have no doubt, but I think it is not common with
them, though at the first sign of dawn they make their presence known,
and no one will mistake the cause of the sound. One morning, about
five o'clock, I was startled from my sleep by one of the most terrific
yells, within about one hundred feet of my cage. It was not simply one
great shout, but a long series of sounds of varying pitch and
loudness, and at intervals of something like a minute they were
repeated, for about ten or twelve times, and to my ear appeared to be
exactly the same each time. I quietly turned out of bed and dressed
myself; I took my rifle and sat down, and watched until long after
sunrise, in the hope that they would pass by my cage. All the sounds
came from one direction until the last two, which indicated to me that
the author of them was changing his location. My interpretation of the
sound was that it was from the king gorilla, to arouse his family, who
were doubtless scattered off into different trees for the night. The
sound did not suggest to my mind any idea of fear, anger, or mirth,
but business, and I am inclined to believe that the chief of the clan
summons all to the march when he thinks it time to move. The
succeeding morning I heard the same sounds repeated in another
direction, and, I suspect, by the same gorilla.

The usual pictures of the gorilla do not represent him as I have seen
him. He has not only a crouching habit, but he walks on all four of
his legs, and has the motion of most quadrupeds, using his right arm
and left leg at the same time, and alternates with the left arm and
right leg. It is not exactly a walk or a trot, but a kind of ambling
gait, while the chimpanzee uses his arms as crutches, but lifts one
foot from the ground a little in advance of the other. They do not
place the palm of the hand on the ground, but use the back of the
fingers from the second joint, and at times the one I have described
above seemed to touch only the back of the nails, but this was when
she was scarcely moving at all. I am now preparing to photograph some
of them, and I think I can give a more reliable picture of this
animal than I have ever seen heretofore.

As to the stories about their howling all night, I would add that
there is a large bird here which makes a sound very much like one
sound made by the gorilla, and it is a very easy matter to mistake it.
When I first came I was often deceived by it myself, but now I can
detect it very easily. This bird cries at all hours, and I think it
has imposed upon the honest credulity of many strangers.

It is said that at night the king gorilla selects a large tree in
which he places his family, and then takes up position at the base of
the tree to ward off any harm during the night. I very much doubt this
story. I think it quite probable that the gorillas habitually sleep in
trees at night, but from all I can learn of the king, he looks after
his own comfort and safety first, and lets his family do as they can.
I have also heard that the king always finds a place of safety for
them before he will attack a foe, but this is not confirmed by any
fact that I can obtain. The gorilla will avoid an attack unless
surprised or wounded, and in such an event he wastes no time in
formalities.

Two stories of the gorilla are in stereotype, and every native will
furnish you with a certified copy, without the slightest variation of
the text. One is, that when a gorilla kills a man he tears open the
breast and drinks the blood of his victim; and the other, that a
gorilla seizes the barrel of a gun and crushes it with his teeth. The
uniform version of these two stories is such as to make one believe
that they have been taught by rote, and I am in doubt as to their
authorship; they have a strong tincture of the white man's yarns.

The thrilling stories about gorillas stealing women and holding them
as captives in the bush, and of their taking children and holding them
for ransom, are mere freaks of fancy, and I can find no native of the
land in which the gorilla is found who believes that such a thing ever
occurred, but all assert that man, woman, and child fare alike in the
hands of this cruel beast. Such stories abound in the parts where no
gorillas were ever seen, but when you get into his true range his
real history loses much of its poesy.

Many of the stories told of him, however, in his own land, are novel
and curious, but conflicting, and some of them absurd; yet all agree
in one respect, and that is that his savage instincts and great
strength make him the terror of the forest, and I have no doubt that
when he is in a rage he is both fierce and powerful; but I am still
inclined to believe that both his ferocity and his strength are rated
far above their true value, and it is stated as a current fact that in
combat with the chimpanzee the gorilla always gets whipped, and often
killed. I cannot testify to this, as I have not seen such a fight, and
they seldom occur, yet I have reason to believe it to be true.

I have heard a story of the origin of man and the gorilla, which I
shall relate as a queer bit of native lore. It is confined to the
Galoi tribe, and appears to be of recent origin, and, to my mind, has
a strong Caucasian flavor; besides, no vestige of such a tale is found
in any other tribe that I have seen.

They say that Einyambie (God) had four sons who lived with him in some
aërial abode, and three of them came to the earth, leaving the oldest
one with Einyambie. On their arrival here they held a big palaver as
to what mode of life they should adopt. The oldest of the three wanted
to build a town and plant some fruit, but the other two preferred to
live in the forest and subsist upon the wild products of nature.
Accordingly they separated, and the oldest went and built him a town,
and planted some bananas and manioc, while the other two roamed about
through the primeval bush, and ate such wild fruits as they could
find, but they had no fire. After some talk about the matter, it was
agreed that the older of the two should go to the brother in the town,
and ask him for fire, while the younger should remain in the bush and
gather up sticks of dry wood to burn. The one who had gone to town
soon returned with fire, and the two got on quite well for a time, but
when the wet season came on they found it more difficult to procure
food, and at last it was decided that the elder should again visit the
town to ask their brother to supply them, and the younger should
remain to keep up the fire; but the youth went to sleep and let it die
out, so, when the other returned with food, they had no fire to cook
it. This vexed the elder very much and a quarrel ensued, in
consequence of which they separated. The youngest brother was left
alone in the deep bush, and, thus cut off from all fellowship with his
brethren, he wandered about until he became wild and fierce, and for
want of clothing was exposed to the weather, until a coat of hair grew
all over him, and in this wise came the gorilla into the world.

The next older brother, on leaving the remote forest, took up his
abode near the town, and by this means came in contact at times with
his brother in the town, from whom he learned a few useful things, and
thus became more wise and civil than the one left in the bush; and
from this one came the "bushman;" while the progeny of the one who
built the town are _the people_ of the world. Such is the origin on
earth of these three kindred races, as told by the sages of Galoi.

You will observe that this novel has no woman in it, and her origin
remains a question in Galoi.

As a rule, the natives do not eat the gorilla, and very seldom kill
one, but this I attribute more to fear than to respect. That great
tribe of cannibals known as Pangwe, however, slay and eat him without
compunction. This tribe was scarcely known on the coast a few years
ago, but they are shifting like the desert sands from the interior,
northeast of the Gaboon, to the coast southwest, until to-day they are
found throughout the valley of the Ogowe, and as far south as Selle
Kama, on the coast. They are the Jews of West Africa, and the life and
soul of the trade of this part. They go into the bush for ivory,
ebony, piassava, and dye-woods, and carry them for days to find sale
for them. They drink much less rum than other natives, and deprecate
slavery in all forms, except as hostage; but they are cruel, savage,
and treacherous, and hold human life at small value.

Up to this time I have not told you of the chimpanzee, which I have
long believed to be the social and mental superior of the gorilla. My
opinion was based upon a study of their skulls, and I was aware that
many great men of science held opposite views; but all the evidence
that I can find here, where they are best known, tends to confirm my
belief. Every instinct of the gorilla seems to be averse to all human
society; he delights in a life of seclusion in the most remote and
desolate parts of the jungle, and I have never heard of but one
gorilla that became even tolerant to man, much less attached to him,
and this one was a mere infant. I have seen a few in captivity, but
all of them are vicious, and devoid of any sense of gratitude
whatever. On the other hand, the chimpanzee delights in the society of
man, and displays many good traits. It is not at all rare to find tame
ones on this coast, going about the premises at large, and quite as
much at home as any resident. With this short preface I desire to
introduce my own young friend, who lives with me in my forest home. He
is a fine specimen of the chimpanzee race, and I call him Moses,
because he was found in a papyrus swamp of the Ogowe. He is devoted to
me, and cries after me like a spoiled baby, and follows me like a pet
dog. I do not confine him, so he goes about in the bush near the cage,
and selects some of the tender buds of young plants and vines, and
returns to me to be petted and caressed. He is a great pleasure to me
as well as a great plague, for he wants to hug me all the time, and
never wants me to put him down. About ten o'clock every day he comes
for a nap, and when I wrap him up and lay him on a box by my side, he
sleeps quietly till noon. After a good sleep he climbs on my lap and
embraces me with devotion, until I really tire of him. Much of the
time I write with him on my lap, and when I put him outside the cage
he climbs up near me, and begs and pulls my sleeve until I relent, and
let him come inside again. When I leave my cage I usually take him
with me, and when he sees me take my rifle he begins to fret, until I
let him mount my back, which he does with great skill, and hangs on to
me like the ivy to a church wall. A few days since, as we were
returning from a short tour, I saw a young chimpanzee crossing the
path about thirty yards from us, and I tried to induce Moses to call
his little cousin; but he declined to do so, and I accused him of
being proud because he was mounted and the other was afoot, and hence
he would not speak to him.

I am trying to teach Moses to speak English, but up to this time he
has not succeeded. He tries to move his lips as I do, but makes no
sound. However, he has only been in school a very short term, and I
think he will learn by and by. I am also trying him on some simple
problems with blocks, and sometimes I think he is doing quite
well. I am giving him some lessons in cleanliness, and he listens
with profound silence to my precepts, but when it comes to taking a
bath, Moses is a rank heretic. He will allow his hands to be washed,
but when it comes to wetting his face, no logic will convince him
that he needs it. He has a great horror for large bugs, and when one
comes near him he will talk like a phonograph, and brush at it
with his hands until he gets rid of it. When he sees or hears anything
strange, he always tells me in a low tone, unless it comes too
near, and then he announces it with a yell. At times I refuse to pay
any attention to him, and he will fall down, scream, and sulk like
a very naughty child. He is extremely jealous, and does not want
any one to come near me. I have made him a neat little house, with
hammock and mosquito-bar, and at night I tuck him in, when he
sleeps quietly until late in the morning. Then he crawls out, rubbing
his eyes, and wants his breakfast. He wants to try everything he
sees me eat.

I must now tell you of the most novel and singular thing known of the
chimpanzee, the native name of which is "_n'tyigo_" (n'cheego). All
native tribes in this part of Africa use some species of drum to make
the music for their frequent dances. The drum used by the N'Kãmi is
called _n'gäma_, and the dance is called _kãnjo_. The chimpanzees have
a similar fête, and set to similar music. They meet in great numbers
at a certain place in the bush, and beat their strange tum-tum, which
the natives call the _n'gäma n'tyigo_. The performer makes a peculiar
humming vocal sound while he beats on his mysterious drum with great
zeal, during which time all the others go through a series of frantic
motions which resemble a dance, and which the natives call the _kãnjo
n'tyigo_. When the music ceases, the dance ends for the time, and all
the group join in a loud, wild shout. After a brief pause the dance is
resumed, and these festivities are often continued for two or three
hours. At intervals the musician is relieved by another taking his
place, and two at a time have been known to beat and hum.

I have heard of this in many parts of Africa with some slight
changes of detail, but have as often been assured that it had
defied the skill of all woodsmen to ascertain the real character of
the drum used by them in this unique _n'kãnjo_. Some assert that
they beat upon a dead tree, others that they use a concave piece of
wood or bark, while some contend that they strike the breast with
their hands; but, during my sojourn here, I have been shown what I
believe is the genuine _n'gäma n'tyigo_. It is a peculiar spot of
sonorous earth, of irregular shape but usually about two feet in
diameter, and formed of clay superimposed upon a soil resembling
peat. It appears to be artificial, but the natives cannot tell
whether it is natural or made by the _n'tyigo_, but it is fairly
certain that it is used by the chimpanzee as described, and it is
not a bad imitation of the native _n'gäma_. I have examined one of
these with much care, and I am inclined to believe that it is
artificial, as it is isolated from all similar clay, and appears to
have been kneaded.

I have, as yet, seen but few chimpanzees since I have taken up my
abode at Fort Gorilla, but I hope to enjoy some private interviews
with them before I decamp.

It is difficult for me to tell you what it is to be alone in the bosom
of the N'Kãmi forest. No fancy can portray the solitude of such a time
and place. Just now the elements are in an angry mood; the thunder
rolls along the sky, until the earth recoils and trembles at the
sound; the wind shrieks through the jungle as if to find a refuge from
impending wrath; the pouring rain pursues it with the speed of fear;
the lightning waves its torch, and glowing chains of fire fall. Such
is the way in which the long and dreary nights approach my hermitage.
And yet, I am content among the dismal shadows of the wilderness, for
Nature makes me her confidant, and every hour divulges some new
secret; and my cage affords me such immunity from danger that I can
sit quiescently and witness all her sports, as no one ever witnessed
them before.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "McClure's Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 4, September 1893" ***

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