McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 6, October, 1908

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Title: McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 6, October, 1908
Author: Various
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.

*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 6, October, 1908" ***

[Illustration: _From the painting by F. Brangwyn_

"THEIR LANTERN JUST BROUGHT OUT THE GHOSTLINESS OF GRAVESTONES LEANING
BETWEEN THE COLUMNS OF THE CYPRESSES"

_See "The Valley of Mills," page 659_]

McCLURE'S MAGAZINE

VOL. XXXI OCTOBER, 1908 No. 6

[Illustration]

FAMILIAR LETTERS OF AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

EDITED BY ROSE STANDISH NICHOLS

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

_Copyright, 1908, by The S. S. McClure Co. All rights reserved_

These familiar letters from Augustus Saint-Gaudens show the artist as
his intimate friends knew him. They were written at odd moments, often
in haste, and never with a shadow of self-consciousness. They are
interesting, not as literary productions, but as the simple record of a
critical period in his career.

"Le Coeur au Métier," the motto which he wished to place in his studio,
will be seen to express the spirit of his life. Other keen interests
he had, but they were never allowed to interfere with his work, and
he seldom felt the need of any recreation apart from it. One of his
friends used to complain that in the midst of their merrymaking an
abstracted look would come into his eyes and his mind would hark
back to sculpture. Although he was extremely modest and was given to
underrating his powers in other directions, from his childhood he
confidently expected to be a great artist. As a little school-boy, sent
from his father's shop to do errands, he would sit in the omnibus and
look about at his well-dressed fellow-passengers, and wonder what they
would think if they realized what he was going to be some day. But even
as a child he never dreamed of achieving his ambition without years of
ceaseless struggle.

When the boy left school, at the age of thirteen, this struggle began.
In 1848 his father, a Frenchman, had brought his Irish wife and his
baby, Augustus, to New York, where he worked as a shoemaker. He was
poor, and was anxious that his eldest son should become self-supporting
as soon as possible; so at thirteen the boy was apprenticed to a
cameo-cutter, whose trade he mastered with surprising readiness, at the
same time studying drawing at the Cooper Institute in the evenings. In
a little while he was not only earning his own living by cameo-cutting,
but excelled all his fellow-pupils at the night-school in talent and
perseverance.

[Illustration: AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS FROM A PHOTOGRAPH IN THE
COLLECTION OF MRS. ROSE NICHOLS]

Saint-Gaudens' artistic education was completed in Europe, where he
went at the age of eighteen and stayed almost continuously for nearly
fourteen years. His father sent him first to Paris. There his progress
in the art schools was marked, although he continued to support himself
by his trade, and could give only half his time to sculpture. At the
outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War he reluctantly refrained from
enlisting in the French army and left for Italy. It was in Rome that
he first found sculpture remunerative, and finally was able to drop
cameo-cutting. The years from 1866 to 1880, which he spent in Rome and
Paris, with only occasional visits to America, were singularly happy
ones, characterized by a capacity for continuous work at a high pitch
of excellence.

The letters from Saint-Gaudens printed here were written eighteen
years later, when the sculptor had come into full possession of his
genius. They cover a most critical period in his career, and record
his greatest artistic triumph--his recognition in France as one of the
foremost of modern sculptors. After he returned to the United States
in 1880 he lived and worked in New York, and by 1897 had built up a
national reputation. His work was progressing under the most favorable
conditions, with the encouragement of an ever-increasing circle of
friends and admirers. On the other hand, in France, his father's
country, where he himself had been educated, his work was practically
unknown. A few of his former comrades at the Beaux-Arts, judging his
sculpture from photographs, did not hesitate to tell Saint-Gaudens
that it had been over-praised in America and would obtain no such
appreciation in France. The sculptor felt that, in order to learn
his own deficiencies and to find out where he really stood among his
contemporaries, he must return to Paris, exhibit at the Salon, and run
the gauntlet of the best critics. All his friends on both sides of the
water discouraged him from taking this step, and he himself dreaded it;
but he believed that, in justice to himself and to his work, he must
make this venture.

After his decision was made, however, his departure had to be postponed
until various duties were fulfilled. The Shaw and Logan monuments had
first to be completed and unveiled, and a number of smaller commissions
had to be executed. From the beginning of his work upon the Shaw
memorial there had been bitter opposition upon the part of his friends
to the symbolical figure hovering above Colonel Shaw and his men, but
the sculptor clung to his original conception with great tenacity.
Saint-Gaudens' best friend, Bion, a Parisian sculptor and critic, whose
opinion he valued highly, had never liked the idea of this figure.
Just before Bion's death he received a photograph of the monument as
finished in the clay, and he wrote a long letter to Saint-Gaudens,
complaining that the angel was as superfluous as a figure of Simplicity
would be, floating in the air above the bent figures in Millet's
"Gleaners," and concluding: "I had no need of your 'nom de Dieu'
allegory on the ceiling. Your negroes marching in step and your Colonel
leading them told me enough. Your priestess merely bores me as she
tries to impress upon me the beauty of their action."

[Illustration: CARYATID FOR THE VANDERBILT HOUSE]

Concerning this letter of Bion's, Saint-Gaudens wrote:

"The Players, New York, Jan. 26th, 1897

"Dear ----

"I meant to write you at length tonight but I started with a
letter to Bion which has kept me busy till now, 11 P.M. It is in
reply to the one from him that I enclose, in which at the end he
says a word of you.

"I am not disturbed by his dislike of my figure. It is because
it does not look well in the photograph. If the figure in itself
looked well, he would have liked it, I know, and notwithstanding
his admirable comparison with the Millet I still think that a
figure, if well done in that relation to the rest of the scheme,
is a fine thing to do. The Greeks and Romans did it finely in
their sculpture. After all it's the way the thing's done that
makes it right or wrong, that's about the only creed I have in
art. However his letter is interesting, although very sad, dear
old boy.

[Illustration: DETAIL FROM THE SHAW MEMORIAL, SHOWING THE ALLEGORICAL
FIGURE FULL FACE, AS IN THE FIRST DESIGN]

[Illustration: _Copley print, copyrighted by Curtis and Cameron_

DETAIL FROM THE SHAW MEMORIAL, SHOWING THE ALLEGORICAL FIGURE WITH THE
HEAD TURNED MORE IN PROFILE, AS IN THE FINAL EXECUTION]

"All of the Shaw is out of the studio. They cast the Logan on
Monday and I am working like the devil on the Sherman. I've found
precisely the model I wished, just his size, the same pose of the
head and the same thinness; a Milanese peasant who poses like a
rock. Next week I commence the nude of the Victory from a South
Carolinian girl with a figure like a goddess.

"Affectionately yours
A. ST.-G."

Bion died shortly after writing his objections to the allegorical
figure, and if anything could have changed Saint-Gaudens' decision
regarding his composition of the Shaw monument, his friend's letter
would certainly have done so. Although Saint-Gaudens and Bion had
studied sculpture together at the Beaux-Arts in their youth, it was
not until years afterward that, through a constant interchange of
letters, their relation became a close one. Bion gave up sculpture as
a profession, and devoted himself to friendship and philosophy. He
dropped into the studios of a few intimates every day, frequented art
exhibitions, and attended lectures upon philosophy and psychology at
the Sorbonne or the Collège de France; but the long letters which he
used to write Saint-Gaudens every week became more and more the chief
business of his life. He kept his friend informed as to what was going
on in Paris; of the doings of their little circle of acquaintances; and
wrote him detailed descriptions of all important events in the world
of art, besides giving him a great deal of disinterested advice upon
every conceivable subject, including his work and the conduct of his
life. Saint-Gaudens used to reply at great length, but his letters were
destroyed, according to directions left in his friend's will. When the
news of Bion's death reached Saint-Gaudens, he wrote:

"148 W. 36th St., Feb. 17th, 1897

"Of course the one thing on my mind, the terrible spectre that
looms up, is poor Bion's death; night and day, at all moments, it
comes over me like a wave that overwhelms me, and it takes away
all heart that I may have in anything. Today, however, I have had
a kind of sad feeling of companionship with him, that seems to
bring him to me, in working over the head of the flying figure of
the Shaw. The bronze founders are not ready for it yet. I have had
a stamp made of the figure and have helped it a great deal, I am
sure you will think. You know that Thayer told me he thought an
idea I once had of turning the head more profile, was a better one
than that I had evolved, and I've always wished to do it. It is
done, and it's the feeling of death and mystery and love in the
making of it that brought my friend back to me so much today....
But the young, thank Heaven, do not feel these blows so profoundly
as do older people. In one of my blue fits the other day I felt
the end of all things, and reasoning from one thing to the other
and about the hopelessness of trying to fathom what it all means,
I reached this: that we know nothing, (of course) but a deep
conviction came over me like a flash that at the bottom of it all,
whatever it is, the mystery must be beneficent. It does not seem
as if the bottom of all were something malevolent; and the thought
was a great comfort.

[Illustration: _Copley print, copyrighted by Curtis and Cameron_

MONUMENT TO COLONEL ROBERT GOULD SHAW, ERECTED AT BOSTON]

"I shall be all the week at the figure. I've made an olive branch
instead of the palm,--it looks less 'Christian martyr'-like,--and
I have lightened and simplified the drapery a great deal. I had
not seen it for two or three months and I had a fresh impression.

"At 27th Street I've finished the nude of the Sherman and next
week I begin to put his clothes on him. I had another day with the
model for the Victory last Sunday, and that, too, is progressing
rapidly. Zorn, the Swedish artist, was with me all day Sunday
making an etching of me while the model rested; it is an admirable
thing and I will send you a copy of it.

"The studio is once more in a fearful condition with the casting
of the Logan, and the getting of the Puritan ready to photograph
and cast for the Boston Museum and to send abroad to have the
reductions made....

"This letter is no good, but it must go; the clatter of seven
moulders and sculptors does not help to the expression or the
development of thought, confusion only----

"Affectionately
A. ST.-G."

"May 15th or 16th, 1897

"The Shaw goes to Boston on Thursday or Friday. I've done little
else lately but run around about it until I am frantic. On the
other hand, while waiting for some workmen yesterday, I had a
great walk in the Babylonian East Side here. It was a beautiful
day and one of great impressions.

"I have not commenced the Howells medallion yet, as I expected to
be absent. I believe I told you I had a nice note from him.

A. ST.-G."

[Illustration: MURAL PLAQUE ERECTED IN MEMORY OF DR. JAMES McCOSH]

The Shaw memorial was unveiled in Boston, in the latter part of May,
1897. The erection of the monument had been so long delayed that
Saint-Gaudens feared that the public had lost interest in the work, or
would expect too much and be disappointed. On the contrary, its success
was immediate, and made him very happy. Its appeal was to men of every
condition, laymen as well as artists, and nothing ever pleased the
sculptor more than the way it arrested the attention of almost every
passer-by. In June, scarcely a month after the unveiling of the Shaw,
another soldier's monument, the equestrian statue of General Logan, was
unveiled at Chicago, and Saint-Gaudens went there to be present at the
ceremony.

[Illustration: STATUE OF PETER COOPER, NEW YORK]

"1142 The Rookery, Chicago, June 23, 1897

"I am again at the top of this big building here, and I will
give you some description of the last 24 hours. At one o'clock
yesterday Mrs. Deering, Mrs. French, Mr. French (brother and
sister-in-law of Dan French) and I were placed in one carriage,
Mr. Deering, Mrs. St. G. and the editor of the 'Chicago Tribune'
in another, and in the wake of a lot of other carriages and
followed by a procession of them, we drove to the big stand. A
great day; with a high wind and glorious sun. I was put in one
of the seats in the Holy of Holies alongside of Mrs. Logan,
if you please, and the president of the ceremonies. A lot of
speeches, one of which was very good, and at the right moment the
complicated arrangement of flags dropped, the cannon fired, the
band played, Mrs. Logan wept, and I posed for a thousand snap
photographs, 'a gleam of triumph passed over my face,' think of
that! (vide 'Chicago Tribune').

[Illustration: THE LOGAN MONUMENT, ERECTED AT CHICAGO]

"However, the monument looks impressive as I see it this morning
for the first time with much of the disfiguring scaffolding gone.
I stay here until Sunday, when I take the 5.30 P.M. train and
shall get to New York Monday at 6 or 7. Last night we went to a
great golf place where high merriment prevailed. This afternoon to
Fort Sheridan. Tonight a reception at the Art Institute; tomorrow
a lawn party at Burnham's and Sunday a visit to the great dredging
canal; on Monday the cars and rest."

After the sculptor's return from Chicago, he continued his preparations
for departure in New York.

"The Players, August 7, 1897

"Brander Matthews has just come and interrupted this with a long
and interesting talk on the conventional in art and an article he
has written and sent to Scribner's on it. You have often wondered
what I think about things--I wonder myself; I think anything and
everything. This seeing a subject so that I can side with either
side with equal sympathy and equal convictions I sometimes think a
weakness. Then again I'm thinking it a strength.

"Last night I dined with X---- and Y---- and passed a delightful
evening with them. X---- cracked his constructed jokes and
manufactured his silversmith puns, and cackled over them. We
talked literature, English, French, and Taine's great work on
English literature. We afterward went to the open air concert
at the Madison Square Garden, and when we were not talking of
anything else we talked on that subject of eternal interest and
mystery 'les femmes.'"

Finally, in the autumn of 1897, after both the Shaw and Logan monuments
had been unveiled, and various minor obstacles to his departure had
been removed, Saint-Gaudens was ready to leave America. Opposition to
his plan still came from every side. Many of his friends in New York
seemed to feel that he was casting a certain reproach upon his country
by his desire to profit by foreign criticism and to measure his work
by European standards. They prophesied that his work would deteriorate
under French influence. His few friends in Paris were equally
discouraging. They did not hesitate to warn him that if he persisted
in coming there he must be prepared to face indifference and failure.
Even Bion, when Saint-Gaudens had asked him to get the opinions of a
few French artists upon photographs of the Shaw memorial, had refused
to do so, saying: "I shan't show your photographs to anyone. Shiff,
MacMonnies, and Proctor have seen them, my poor old friend, and the
others do not know you. They are quite indifferent about what goes on
outside their own little show."

Saint-Gaudens himself feared that he might be making a serious mistake.
The ocean voyage in itself was an ordeal to him, and before leaving
he wrote: "I continue fencing and am preparing for the voyage as one
prepares for a fight. I go to the theatre and that tides over the
blue hours which lie between dinner and bed-time." But he felt that
he must make the venture, whatever lay before him, and that he could
never be satisfied until he had stood the test of a comparison with
his chief contemporaries and until his work had been passed upon by
the most sophisticated and penetrating critics of art. At the end of
September, 1897, accompanied by his wife and his son, Homer, he sailed
for England. After crossing to France, he thus described his first
impressions:

"Hotel Normandy, Paris, Nov. 7th, 1897

"The beauty of the scenery and of the English homes and villages
on the railroad from Southampton to London recalled the delightful
impression of the last trip, when I was so light-hearted. The
sense of order and thrift appealed to me strongly in comparison
with the shiftlessness of America. Then London with its
extraordinary impression of power and also of order. Homer and I
went to see Hamlet. Read it, R----. As I grow older, the greatness
of Shakspeare looms higher and higher; every line, every word is
so deep, so true, 'never offending the modesty of nature withal,'
as Hamlet himself advises the players.

"From London we came on the following day to Paris. The country
between Calais and Dover seemed very grand; great rolling lands
with immense fields being ploughed in the waning day. The peace,
simplicity, and calm of it all was profoundly impressive. Just a
ploughman and a boy, alone in the country on a hillside, following
the horses and the plough along the deep, straight furrows; no
fences, a clear sky with the half moon, and only a small clump or
two of trees--all so orderly and grand."

For the first few weeks in Paris Saint-Gaudens was miserable. His
studio, on the Rue de Bagneux, in the Latin Quarter, was large and
cheerful, with comfortable quarters adjoining for his assistants, and
he was extremely interested in his work upon the equestrian statue
of General Sherman. But he missed his old friends and haunts in New
York, the weather was gloomy and depressing, and he felt enervated and
homesick. Almost none of the friends of his student days were there to
welcome him back to Paris, and he was not in the mood to make new ones.
Dr. Shiff, a retired physician with a philosophic turn of mind, and
many years the sculptor's senior, was the only man he could count upon
for regular companionship, though occasionally an old friend like Henry
Adams, John Alexander, or Garnier would drop into the studio. John
Sargent was another warm friend who helped to keep up his spirits and
whom he admired intensely both as a man and as an artist. With Helleu,
the etcher, they enjoyed spending a day or two at Chartres and Rheims.
In the following letter he describes his first meeting with Whistler:

"Paris, Nov. 16th, 1897

"Mac and I made a short call on Whistler, whom I found much more
human than I imagined him to be, and today I went to the Court of
Appeals where a trial of his was to come off--it didn't,--but I
had a delightful chat with him. He is a very attractive man with
very queer clothes, a kind of 1830 coat with an enormous collar
greater even than those of that period; a monocle, a strong jaw,
very frizzly hair with a white mesh in it, and an extraordinary
hat."

The brightest spot in Saint-Gaudens' winter was his visit to the south
of France and to Italy, in the company of his friend Garnier, who, like
Bion, had been a fellow-student of his at the École des Beaux-Arts
years before. They left Paris in December, and went almost directly to
Aspet and Salies du Salat, Gascon villages where Saint-Gaudens' father
was born and where he worked at his trade as a young man. This was the
first time that Augustus Saint-Gaudens had visited that country on the
Spanish frontier where his paternal ancestors had lived for centuries
and where many of their name still survived.

"Aspet, December, 1897

"I write this in the village where my father was born and
today has been one of the most delightful days of my life. I
have invited my old friend Garnier (a dear friend and the most
delightful of companions) to travel with me. We left Paris
yesterday morning and slept at Toulouse last night. We left there
this morning before dawn and saw the sun rise over the Pyrenees on
our way to Salies du Salat, a most picturesque and dirty village
at the foot of the beautiful mountains. I inquired at the station
if any Saint-Gaudens lived there. 'Yes, opposite the mairie.' We
walked up a narrow Spanish-looking street and there was a little
shoe-store and on it the sign 'Saint-Gaudens.' I woke my cousin
up. His is the very house where father passed his childhood. We
three walked over the town up to the cradle of the 'Comminges'
just back of father's house, and we went around on the sward and
on the old moat where the children now play and where his father
and my father played when children. I cannot describe to you how I
was moved by it all.

"After a characteristic déjeuner with the cousin, a typical French
peasant, and his typical wife, we hired a wagon with two horses
and drove three hours into the mountains through a wonderfully
beautiful country, very Spanish in character, to this delightful
village. Here father was born, and baptized in the little church
right at hand from where I write. There are delightful fountains
at every corner and an air of thrift, order, and cleanliness that
you cannot imagine. We are in a nice hotel, a homelike place, and
tomorrow, after seeing Market Day, we walk to Saint-Gaudens, about
12 miles from here. It is a most romantic spot; all the country
and the people here have a good deal of the Spanish dignity. We
are 30 miles from the frontier of Spain. I must stop now because
my third cousin (his grandfather and mine were brothers) is
coming. He is the postman of the village and the surrounding
country, a handsome young fellow who carries the mail around on
horseback, and who between times makes shoes."

Leaving this out-of-the-way corner of Gascony, under the shadow of the
Pyrenees, Saint-Gaudens and Garnier traveled by Toulouse to Marseilles.
From this port the sculptor had sailed twenty-seven or eight years
before, when he first went to study in Rome. Now, with his old friend,
he again climbed up to where the church of Notre-Dame de la Garde
overlooks the Mediterranean, and was amused to remember the three
days he had spent upon that hill-top, with little to eat but figs and
chocolate, while awaiting the departure of his ship for Italy.

The two artists went by train from Marseilles to Nice and Ventimiglia,
and then walked along the superb Cornice road to San Remo, conscious
that every step brought them nearer to their beloved Italy. The hills,
covered with palms and orange-trees, the sacred-looking groves of
gray-green olives detached against the deep blue of the sea, recalled
to Saint-Gaudens a story by Anatole France describing some early
Christians in an olive grove overlooking the Mediterranean.

In Italy they stopped first at Pisa, and did not reach Rome much before
midnight. Regardless of fatigue, Saint-Gaudens insisted upon starting
out that night to revisit the favorite haunts of his student days,
taking the reluctant Garnier with him. At a late hour they ended their
excursion at the Café Greco, where the sculptor talked with a waiter
who had served him with coffee in 1871. The next morning they spent in
the gardens and the Bosco of the Villa Medici. Nothing seemed to them
much changed, and their happiness was as great as if they had found
their youth again in the land where they had left it. Saint-Gaudens
afterward said that on the night of that arrival in Rome he felt as if
he were slaking a great thirst. Before their return they also visited
the Bay of Naples. Vivid memories of Italy were present with the
sculptor until the end of his life, and during his last illness he said
that one thing he wished to live for was to take again the drive from
Salerno to Amalfi: the vineyards clinging to the hillsides, the cliffs
with the blue waves breaking at their base, haunted him as a vision of
exquisite beauty.

Late in the winter Saint-Gaudens returned to Paris, and when spring
and the pleasant weather came on he was working again with great
enthusiasm, preparing for the Salon. His exhibit at the Champs de
Mars attracted much attention and elicited unexpected praise from the
severest French critics.

"3, rue de Bagneux, Paris, May 16th, 1898

... "I must be brief today for Dr. Shiff is coming in to talk,
and help me with his consoling philosophy as Bion did; and I must
work, for the model leaves shortly, and I must use him every hour
I can; so I will tell you briefly of what has happened.

"This Paris experience, as far as my art goes, has been a great
thing for me. I never felt sure of myself before, I groped ahead.
All blindness seems to have been washed away. I see my place
clearly now, I know, or think I know, just where I stand. A great
self-confidence has come over me and a tremendous desire and will
to achieve high things, with a confidence that I shall, has taken
possession of me. I exhibited at the Champs de Mars and the papers
have spoken well and it seems as if I were having what they call
a 'success' here. I send you some of the extracts from several of
the principal artistic papers here, the 'Gazette des Beaux-Arts,'
'Art et Décoration,' and from the 'Dictionaire Encyclopédique
Larousse'; four of these have asked permission to reproduce my
work. The Director of the Luxembourg tells me he wishes something
of mine, and other friends have asked that I be given the Legion
of Honour. Of this latter you must say nothing, and I only speak
of it to give you a true idea of what impressions I am undergoing.

"For four months it rained incessantly, but the great interest of
preparing for the Salon has interested me. The sunshine has been a
blessing, and Paris, with her smiles and green dress and the blue
skies overhead captivates like a beautiful woman.

"There is something in the air here which pushes one to do
beautiful things; it seems something actually atmospheric,
something soft and gentle in the air.... Later Sargent came in
very good spirits. We dined and went to the theatre together
last night. He wished me to tell him when I go to London, as the
fellows there wish to give me a great 'blow off.' And so it all
goes; the sun is now pouring into the studio, and it all seems
like a great dream."

The article in _Art et Décoration_ to which Saint-Gaudens refers was
written by Paul Leprieur. After attacking with great severity Rodin's
"Balzac," the critic said:

"The more completely to forget this sinister vision, one may well
linger before the work of a great sculptor, almost unknown among
us, who reveals himself to us, so to speak, for the first time,
with an altogether remarkable collection of monumental sculpture
and photographs of monuments previously executed. We refer to M.
Saint-Gaudens, an Irishman by birth, who has worked mainly for America,
and who was, if I mistake not, the teacher of Mr. MacMonnies--a teacher
far superior to his pupil. His exhibit is one of the surprises and
delights of the Champs de Mars.

"Had we only the photographs which he shows us--whether of his Peter
Cooper, his President Lincoln, the noble and serious allegorical figure
for a tomb, called the Peace of God, or the charming caryatid for the
Vanderbilt house--we could already perceive the grasp of composition,
the decision of the contours, the depth of the sentiment expressed
without any splurge or noise. This sculpture, in its acceptance, or
ingenious re-shaping, of traditions from ancient sources, as well as in
its modern inventiveness, imparts a savor of intimate charm, of dignity
without parade, which are rare indeed in our day.

"The actual work exhibited simply confirms the impression of the
photographs. To say nothing of the placques and medallions, models of
a fine funeral bas-relief, and the highly entertaining and picturesque
statue of a Puritan, the large high-relief dedicated to the memory
of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw may well be esteemed as a model of
intelligent decoration.

"The idea of representing, not the death scene itself, but the moment
preceding it, and of showing the army of blacks, led by the white
officer, filing by as if in a march to death, grave of mien, solemn,
and heroic, is as novel as it is boldly treated. While presenting
prodigies of skill (absolutely without triviality or pettiness in
matters of detail), and modeled with a great freedom and understanding
of how to arrange the various groups of lines in perspective,--which
all men of his profession will admire,--everything is kept subordinate
to the ensemble and to the predetermined unity of motion. Upon each
of the faces one feels more or less the reflection of the motto of
self-sacrifice and enthusiastic faith inscribed on a flat surface in
the background (Omnia relinquit servare rem publicam), and the superb
figure of a woman with flying drapery, symbolical of glory or of death,
comparable to the loveliest creations in this style by Watts or Gustave
Moreau, succeeds in giving to this very sculpturesque composition a
distinguished moral significance."

Two months later the critic Léonce Benedite, in his article on the
salons of 1898, wrote, in the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_:

"It is a foreign sculptor, an American artist whose name alone had
previously reached us, M. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who affords us an
example of a commemorative monument composed of modern elements and
broadly executed in the simplest and purest sculptural spirit. Half
French, not only by descent, but by his whole education, trained in our
school,--which he honors today,--the illustrious chief of the future
American school of sculpture has produced numerous beautiful works in
his own country. Photographic reproductions of these accompany his
exhibited works and demonstrate their rare dignity and grandeur of
style. His beautiful mortuary statues, one of which is on exhibition at
the Salon, together with the caryatid of the Vanderbilt house--long and
slender, with beautiful, severe draperies--are figures of distinguished
elegance, of austere grace.

"But above all, the statues of President Lincoln and Peter Cooper, the
mural tablets of Dr. McCosh and Dr. Bellows, show us with how exalted
an appreciation of his art the American master has succeeded in making
the most of the complete modernity of his subjects. To be sure, he has
not misrepresented the characteristic local physiognomy of his models,
or the unique effect of the accessories of costume and furniture; far
from it. But with what elegance and vigor he makes them all speak to
one, from the skirt of the coat to the slightest fold of the trousers!

"We find ourselves face to face with a powerful and self-restrained
master, who is able to comprehend and to express emotion, who speaks a
simple but expressive language, and who has the power to convince and
to fascinate. The monument to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, erected at
Boston, and exhibited in plaster at the Salon, affords us a striking
proof of this. It is a large high-relief, set in a graceful and
exceedingly simple architectural frame. In the center a young officer,
mounted, sword in hand, is leading a company of black soldiers who
are marching by his side, musket on shoulder, with a drummer at their
head. In the upper field floats a grave and melancholy figure, flying
horizontally; it is Duty, and with a sweeping and eloquently mournful
gesture she points out to them the road leading to glory and to
death. The measured march of the men, the expression of resigned and
submissive gravity on the faces of those colored troops, contrasting
with the proud, absorbed energy of the young white man who leads
them, his beautiful young steed nervous and quivering, emphasizes
yet more the restrained enthusiasm and patient determination of the
commander. All this, and even the sculptural comprehension of all this
paraphernalia of war, impresses one simply yet powerfully, and holds
one enthralled by its genuine epic grandeur."

"June 14th, Paris

"I am going to stay alone in Paris and on Sundays go and see Brush
and Garnier and the Proctors and go to St. Moritz for a week or
ten days; further than that I have no plans.... I see Shiff every
other night and dine with him then; occasionally I see F----,
whom I rather like. I'm working hard but slowly. I want a little
rest, so in two days I go to London to see the exhibit there;
besides, Sargent gives me a dinner on the 20th. Paris is really
a wonderfully attractive city and the 'cut' atmosphere, to use
a very unpleasant phrase, is clearly a great thing. There can
never be more than a few big men that one respects, but there are
so many people deeply interested in art, literature and music,
so many that are working hard, that you feel a great deal of
intelligence around you in the direction in which you are working,
beside the unusual amount of general intelligence which surrounds
one."

Toward the end of June Saint-Gaudens and his family went to England.
In London, Sargent, always hospitable, gave a dinner to introduce
Saint-Gaudens to many distinguished sculptors and painters.
Burne-Jones, unfortunately, had died a few days before. Saint-Gaudens
had always admired his work greatly, and treasured photographs of his
pictures.

After two days at Broadway with Edwin Abbey, the family separated.
Saint-Gaudens and his son Homer then returned to Paris for the summer,
while Mrs. Saint-Gaudens went to take a cure at Vichy and St. Moritz.
During that summer in Paris Saint-Gaudens saw as much as possible
of George De Forest Brush and his family, who were then living near
Fontainebleau. His intimacy with the Brushes dated back to his student
days in Paris, and had been kept up in America. The two families had
often been neighbors at Cornish, New Hampshire. Indeed, the Brushes had
spent their first summer there encamped in an Indian "tepee," which was
pitched on the edge of a field in front of the Saint-Gaudens' house.
Their life always impressed every one as singularly beautiful and
happy, and their presence so near Paris helped Saint-Gaudens to get
through the long, dull weeks of the summer.

"Paris, July 10th or 11th

"Lately I have had a great time with X----, driving and lunching
with him and sometimes with the ladies, going to Versailles and
the museums. Next Sunday we go to Chantilly, another day to
Dampierre where Rude's great statue of Louis (XIII, I think) is.
We go to the Cluny, to the Louvre, and sit sipping in front of
cafés, X---- telling me how much the woman question from one point
of view troubles him and I doing the same from another, and the
big world turns round, and we all suffer, and men fight, and women
mourn. Courage and love is what we all need, isn't it?

"Yesterday I went with Homer to Fontainebleau to see Brush and
Proctor who live near there at 'Marlotte Montigny.' The day was
fine, and I enjoyed it greatly, particularly the walk with Brush
and his two lovely eldest children. How remarkable Brush is! All
the children are so beautiful and nice-mannered. He has commenced
another picture of his wife, this time with all the children and
himself, and it is already a stimulating thing, the composition is
so fine and what there is of it that is drawn, is so splendidly
drawn."

"Paris, July 14th

"It is the third or fourth really fine day that we have had
since coming to France eight months ago. The whole city is alive
with sunshine, a sky with white floating clouds, and every place
brilliant with flags, and there is an unusual feeling of peace in
this big studio as I sit alone in it and write to you.

"I have your letter with the enclosure from the _Transcript_.
'That's the way things is,' as Bryant said to me. I send you some
more Hosannahs in my honour by this mail, and there is going to be
more still in the 'Gazette des Beaux-Arts,' as I judge from the
way Ary Renan talked to me the other night. He is son of the great
Renan and is one of the editors of the 'Gazette des Beaux-Arts'
and wished to meet me so much that Pallier, another critic, asked
us to dine with him night before last. Pallier is the one who
wrote the long article in the Liberté about me.

"You speak of Browning--I shall read the 'Ring and the Book,' but
unless a man's style is clear I am too lazy and I have too little
time to devote to digging gold out of the rocks, fine as it may
be. On the other hand I got the Schopenhauer that Shiff spoke
about with the intention of sending it to you, but it is so deadly
in its pessimism, judging from the ten or eleven lines that I
read, that I flung it away. It was so terribly true from his point
of view, but what's the use of taking that point of view? We can't
remedy matters by weeping and gnashing our teeth over the misery
of things. 'That's the way things is' again, and although I have
been told all my life it's best to put on a brave face and bear
all cheerfully, it's only lately that it is really coming into my
philosophy.

"It seems as if we are all in one open boat on the ocean,
abandoned and drifting no one knows where, and while doing all
we can to get somewhere, it is better to be cheerful than to be
melancholy; the latter does not help the situation, and the former
cheers up one's comrades.

"Michel, a friend of mine, had a beautiful nude marble bought for
the Luxembourg, a pure noble chaste figure. There was a remarkable
statuette by Gerôme, two or three other good things in sculpture
and the same among the objets d'art, and one swell thing in
painting, the Puvis de Chavannes. _That_ appealed to me, but of
course there were a lot of other very fine things, by Aman Jean,
Henri Martin, Besnard and others. I send you some publications
with the good things marked. I think if the Champs-Elysées were
sifted there would be more good work found in it or as much as at
the Champs de Mars. It is remarkable how much good work is done in
Paris, but the first impression is bad, as the good is concealed
in such a mountain of trash; but it's like gold in a mountain."

"Paris, July 24th

"Last night I dined with an old 'camarade d'atelier' at his home
in the Cité Boileau at Passy and it was a great pleasure to be
with him, one of the nicest kind of Frenchmen, a sculptor who
is doing admirable work, a man of calm manners and large views,
intensely interested in his work. His wife and three children
are by the seaside, and on their return, if Homer does not go to
America and I remain too, I'm looking forward to Homer's meeting
his children. His boy, who is seventeen, is going to work in his
atelier with him. It was delightful, as he took one through the
rooms of his three children, to see the photographs of admirable
works of art they had selected to hang on the walls. He has a
house with a garden and we dined outside. (His name is) Lenoir
and he is the son of a distinguished architect and grandson of a
Lenoir whose bust is erected in the Cour des Beaux-Arts, a man
of great distinction here on account of his love of art and his
efforts to prevent the Revolutionists in 1795 from destroying the
public monuments."

Early in August, while his wife was still away, Saint-Gaudens took his
son Homer to Holland, where they had a delightful trip, extending to
the quaint dead cities of the north. Ten days or so after their return
to Paris they made another successful expedition together to join some
friends at the sea-shore.

"3 rue de Bagneux, Paris, Aug. 26.

"It was intensely hot in Paris. I discovered that the Brushes were
at Boulogne as well as the Proctors, so off we packed and we have
had a great time, what with bathing and lolling all day on the
cliffs, which I adore doing. The two Mears sisters followed us
down there, and we, the Brushes, Proctors, Mears, babies, and all
started off in the mornings, and, with the luncheon mixed up with
the babies in the carriage, passed most delightful days, either on
the cliffs or by the shore."

Saint-Gaudens, however, could never be happy long away from his work,
and he was soon writing from his studio again.

"Paris, Sept. 2d

"A Russian professor at one of the Universities here has sent me
his translation of Tolstoi's last work 'What is Art?' and has
asked me (with highly eulogistic terms about what I have done, in
an inscription on the fly leaf) to give him my opinion, which he
wishes to publish with those of other men of note. So I am in for
reading it. You read it too, please, and tell me what you think
of it, then I'll sign it and send it as my opinion! For I have
no opinion, or so many that trying to put them into shape would
result in driving me into the mad-house sooner than I am naturally
destined to be there. Yes, 5000 different points of view that are
possible. After all, we are like lots of microscopical microbes on
this infinitesimal ball in space, and all these discussions seem
humourous at times. I suppose that every earnest effort toward
great sincerity or honesty or beauty in one's production is a drop
added to the ocean of evolution, to the Something higher that I
suppose we are rising slowly (d----d slowly) to, and all the other
discussions upon the subject seem simply one way of helping the
seriousness of it all.

"Shiff's letter that I enclose is in reply to one asking whether
the professor's request was all right and whether I should bother
about it. In answer he wrote that the Russian was a very serious
man who had done admirable work. I once told Shiff that at times
I thought that 'beauty must mean at least some goodness'--that
explains part of his letter to me."

TO BE CONCLUDED IN NOVEMBER

[Illustration]

THURNLEY ABBEY

BY PERCEVAL LANDON

Three years ago I was on my way out to the East, and as an extra day
in London was of some importance, I took the Friday evening mail train
to Brindisi instead of the usual Thursday morning Marseilles express.
Many people shrink from the long forty-eight-hour train journey
through Europe, and the subsequent rush across the Mediterranean on
the nineteen-knot _Isis_ or the _Osiris_; but there is really very
little discomfort on either the train or the mail-boat, and unless
there is actually nothing for me to do, I always like to save the extra
day and a half in London before I say good-bye to her for one of my
longer tramps. This time--it was early, I remember, in the shipping
season, probably about the beginning of September--there were few
passengers, and I had a compartment in the P. and O. Indian express to
myself all the way from Calais. All Sunday I watched the blue waves
dimpling the Adriatic, and the pale rosemary along the cuttings; the
plain white towns, with their flat roofs and their bold "duomos," and
the gray-green gnarled olive orchards of Apulia. The journey was just
like any other. We ate in the dining-car as often and as long as we
decently could. We slept after luncheon; we dawdled the afternoon away
with yellow-backed novels; sometimes we exchanged platitudes in the
smoking-room, and it was there that I met Alistair Colvin.

Colvin was a man of middle height, with a resolute, well-cut jaw; his
hair was turning gray; his mustache was sun-whitened, otherwise he was
clean-shaven--obviously a gentleman, and obviously also a preoccupied
man. He had no great wit. When spoken to, he made the usual remarks in
the right way, and I dare say he refrained from banalities only because
he spoke less than the rest of us; most of the time he buried himself
in the Wagonlit Company's Time-table, but seemed unable to concentrate
his attention on any one page of it. He found that I had been over the
Siberian railway, and for a quarter of an hour he discussed it with
me. Then he lost interest in it, and rose to go to his compartment.
But he came back again very soon, and seemed glad to pick up the
conversation again.

Of course this did not seem to me to be of any importance. Most
travelers by train become a trifle infirm of purpose after thirty-six
hours' rattling. But Colvin's restless way I noticed in somewhat marked
contrast with the man's personal importance and dignity; especially
ill suited was it to his finely made large hand with strong, broad,
regular nails and its few lines. As I looked at his hand I noticed a
long, deep, and recent scar of ragged shape. However, it is absurd to
pretend that I thought anything was unusual. I went off at five o'clock
on Sunday afternoon to sleep away the hour or two that had still to be
got through before we arrived at Brindisi.

Once there, we few passengers transhipped our hand baggage, verified
our berths--there were only a score of us in all--and then, after an
aimless ramble of half an hour in Brindisi, we returned to dinner at
the Hôtel International, not wholly surprised that the town had been
the death of Virgil. If I remember rightly, there is a gaily painted
hall at the International--I do not wish to advertise anything, but
there is no other place in Brindisi at which to await the coming of the
mails--and after dinner I was looking with awe at a trellis overgrown
with blue vines, when Colvin moved across the room to my table. He
picked up _Il Secolo_, but almost immediately gave up the pretense of
reading it. He turned squarely to me and said:

"Would you do me a favor?"

One doesn't do favors to stray acquaintances on Continental expresses
without knowing something more of them than I knew of Colvin. But I
smiled in a noncommittal way, and asked him what he wanted. I wasn't
wrong in part of my estimate of him; he said bluntly:

"Will you let me sleep in your cabin on the _Osiris_?" And he colored a
little as he said it.

Now, there is nothing more tiresome than having to put up with a
stable-companion at sea, and I asked him rather pointedly:

"Surely there is room for all of us?" I thought that perhaps he had
been partnered off with some mangy Levantine, and wanted to escape from
him at all hazards.

Colvin, still somewhat confused, said: "Yes; I am in a cabin by myself.
But you would do me the greatest favor if you would allow me to share
yours."

This was all very well, but, besides the fact that I always sleep
better when alone, there had been some recent thefts on board these
boats, and I hesitated, frank and honest and self-conscious as Colvin
was. Just then the mail-train came in with a clatter and a rush of
escaping steam, and I asked him to see me again about it on the boat
when we started. He answered me curtly--I suppose he saw the mistrust
in my manner--"I am a member of White's and the Beefsteak." I smiled
to myself as he said it, but I remembered in a moment that the man--if
he were really what he claimed to be, and I make no doubt that he
was--must have been sorely put to it before he urged the fact as a
guarantee of his respectability to a total stranger at a Brindisi hotel.

That evening, as we cleared the red and green harbor-lights of
Brindisi, Colvin explained. This is his story in his own words:

"When I was traveling in India some years ago, I made the acquaintance
of a youngish man in the Woods and Forests. We camped out together for
a week, and I found him a pleasant companion. John Broughton was a
light-hearted soul when off duty, but a steady and capable man in any
of the small emergencies that continually arise in that department. He
was liked and trusted by the natives, and his future was well assured
in Government service, when a fair-sized estate was unexpectedly left
to him, and he joyfully shook the dust of the Indian plains from his
feet and returned to England. For five years he drifted about London.
I saw him now and then. We dined together about every eighteen months,
and I could trace pretty exactly the gradual sickening of Broughton
with a merely idle life. He then set out on a couple of long voyages,
returned as restless as before, and at last told me that he had decided
to marry and settle down at his place, Thurnley Abbey, which had long
been empty. He spoke about looking after the property and standing
for his constituency in the usual way. He was quite happy and full of
information about his future.

"Among other things, I asked him about Thurnley Abbey. He confessed
that he hardly knew the place. The last tenant, a man called Clarke,
had lived in one wing for fifteen years and seen no one. He had been
a miser and a hermit. It was the rarest thing for a light to be seen
at the Abbey after dark. Only the barest necessities of life were
ordered, and the tenant himself received them at the side-door. His
one half-caste man-servant, after a month's stay in the house, had
abruptly left without warning, and had returned to the Southern States.
One thing Broughton complained bitterly about: Clarke had wilfully
spread the rumor among the villagers that the Abbey was haunted, and
had even condescended to play childish tricks with spirit-lamps and
salt in order to scare trespassers away at night. He had been detected
in the act of this tomfoolery, but the story spread, and no one, said
Broughton, would venture near the house except in broad daylight. The
hauntedness of Thurnley Abbey was now, he said with a grin, part of
the gospel of the countryside, but he and his young wife were going to
change all that. Would I propose myself any time I liked? I, of course,
said I would, and equally, of course, intended to do nothing of the
sort without a definite invitation.

"The house was put in thorough repair, though not a stick of the old
furniture and tapestry were removed. Floors and ceilings were relaid;
the roof was made watertight again, and the dust of half a century was
scoured out. He showed me some photographs of the place. It was called
an Abbey, though as a matter of fact it had been only the infirmary of
the long-vanished Abbey of Closter some five miles away. The larger
part of this building remained as it had been in pre-Reformation days,
but a wing had been added in Jacobean times, and that part of the
house had been kept in something like repair by Mr. Clarke. He had in
both the ground and the first floors set a heavy timber door, strongly
barred with iron, in the passage between the earlier and the Jacobean
parts of the house, and had entirely neglected the former. So there had
been a good deal of work to be done.

"Broughton, whom I saw in London two or three times about this time,
made a deal of fun over the positive refusal of the workmen to remain
after sundown. Even after the electric light had been put into every
room, nothing would induce them to remain, though, as Broughton
observed, electric light was death on ghosts. The legend of the Abbey's
ghosts had gone far and wide, and the men would take no risks. On the
whole, though nothing of any sort or kind had been conjured up even
by their heated imaginations during their five months' work upon the
Abbey, the belief in the ghosts was rather strengthened than otherwise
in Thurnley because of the men's confessed nervousness, and local
tradition declared itself in favor of the ghost of an immured nun.

"'Good old nun!' said Broughton.

"I asked him whether in general he believed in the possibility of
ghosts, and, rather to my surprise, he said that he couldn't say he
entirely disbelieved in them. A man in India had told him one morning
in camp that he believed that his mother was dead in England, as her
vision had come to his tent the night before. He had not been alarmed,
but had said nothing, and the figure vanished again. As a matter of
fact, the next possible dak-walla brought on a telegram announcing the
mother's death. 'There the thing was,' said Broughton.

"'My own idea,' said he, 'is that if a ghost ever does come in one's
way, one ought to speak to it.'

"I agreed. Little as I knew of the ghost world and its conventions,
I had already remembered that a spook was in honor bound to wait to
be spoken to. It didn't seem much to do, and I felt that the sound
of one's own voice would at any rate reassure oneself as to one's
wakefulness. But there are few ghosts outside Europe--few, that is,
that a white man can see--and I had never been troubled with any.
However, as I have said, I told Broughton that I agreed.

"So the wedding took place and I went to it in a tall hat which I
bought for the occasion, and the new Mrs. Broughton smiled very nicely
at me afterwards. As it had to happen, I took the Orient Express that
evening and was not in England again for nearly six months. Just before
I came back I got a letter from Broughton. He asked if I could see him
in London or come to Thurnley, as he thought I should be better able
to help him than any one else he knew. His wife sent a nice message to
me at the end, so I was reassured about at least one thing. I wrote
from Budapest that I would come and see him at Thurnley two days after
my arrival in London, and as I sauntered out of the Pannonia into the
Kerepesi Ut to post my letters, I wondered of what earthly service I
could be to Broughton. I had been out with him after tiger on foot,
and I could imagine few men better able at a pinch to manage their own
business. However, I had nothing to do, so after dealing with some
small accumulations of business during my absence, I packed a kit-bag
and departed to Euston.

"I was met by a trap at Thurnley Road station, and after a drive of
nearly seven miles we echoed through the sleepy streets of Thurnley
village, into which the main gates of the park thrust themselves,
splendid with pillars and spread-eagles and tom-cats rampant atop of
them. From the gates a quadruple avenue of beech-trees led inwards for
a quarter of a mile. Beneath them a neat strip of fine turf edged the
road and ran back until the poison of the dead beech-leaves had killed
it under the trees. There were many wheel-tracks on the road, and a
comfortable little pony trap jogged past me laden with a country parson
and his wife and daughter. Evidently there was some garden party going
on at the Abbey. The road dropped away to the right at the end of the
avenue, and I could see the Abbey across a wide pasturage and a broad
lawn thickly dotted with guests.

"The end of the building was plain. It must have been almost
mercilessly austere when it was first built, but time had crumbled the
edges and toned the stone down to an orange-lichened gray wherever it
showed behind its curtain of magnolia, jasmine, and ivy. Farther on
was the three-storied Jacobean house, plain and handsome. There had
not been the slightest attempt to adapt the one to the other, but the
kindly ivy had glossed over the touching-point. There was a tall flèche
in the middle of the building, surmounting a small bell tower. Behind
the house there rose the mountainous verdure of Spanish chestnuts all
the way up the hill.

"Broughton had seen me coming from afar, and walked across from his
other guests to welcome me before turning me over to the butler's care.
This man was sandy-haired and rather inclined to be talkative. He
could, however, answer hardly any questions about the house: he had, he
said, only been there three weeks. Mindful of what Broughton had told
me, I made no inquiries about ghosts, though the room into which I was
shown might have justified anything. It was a very large low room with
oak beams projecting from the white ceiling. Every inch of the walls,
including the doors, was covered with tapestry, and a remarkably fine
Italian fourpost bedstead, heavily draped, added to the darkness and
dignity of the place. All the furniture was old, well made, and dark.
Underfoot there was a plain green pile carpet, the only new thing about
the room except the electric light fittings and the jugs and basins.
Even the looking-glass on the dressing-table was an old pyramidal
Venetian glass set in heavy repoussé frame of tarnished silver.

"After a few minutes cleaning up, I went downstairs and out upon the
lawn, where I greeted my hostess. The people gathered there were of
the usual country type, all anxious to be pleased and roundly curious
as to the new master of the Abbey. Rather to my surprise, and quite to
my pleasure, I rediscovered Glenham, whom I had known well in old days
in Barotseland: he lived quite close, as, he remarked with a grin, I
ought to have known. 'But,' he added, 'I don't live in a place like
this.' He swept his hand to the long, low lines of the Abbey in obvious
admiration, and then, to my intense interest, muttered beneath his
breath, 'Thank God!' He saw that I had overheard him, and turning to me
said decidedly, 'Yes, thank God I said, and I meant I wouldn't live at
the Abbey for all Broughton's money.'

"'But surely,' I demurred, 'you know that old Clarke was discovered in
the very act of setting light to his bug-a-boos?'

"Glenham shrugged his shoulders. 'Yes, I know about that. But there is
something wrong with the place still. All I can say is that Broughton
is a different man since he has lived here. I don't believe that he
will remain much longer. But--you're staying here?--Well, you'll
hear all about it to-night. There's a big dinner, I understand.' The
conversation turned off to old reminiscences, and Glenham soon after
had to go.

"Before I went to dress that evening I had twenty minutes' talk with
Broughton in his library. There was no doubt that the man was altered,
gravely altered. He was nervous and fidgety, and I found him looking at
me only when my eye was off him. I naturally asked him what he wanted
of me. I told him I would do anything I could, but that I couldn't
conceive what he lacked that I could provide. He said with a lustreless
smile that there was, however, something, and that he would tell me the
following morning. It struck me that he was somehow ashamed of himself,
and perhaps ashamed of the part he was asking me to play. However, I
dismissed the subject from my mind and went up to dress in my palatial
room. As I shut the door a draught blew out the Queen of Sheba from the
wall, and I noticed that the tapestries were not fastened to the wall
at the bottom. I have always held very practical views about spooks,
and it has often seemed to me that the slow waving in firelight of
loose tapestry upon a wall would account for ninety-nine per cent of
the stories one hears, and certainly the dignified undulation of this
lady with her attendants and huntsmen--one of whom was untidily cutting
the throat of a fallow deer upon the very steps on which King Solomon,
a gray-faced Flemish nobleman with the order of the Golden Fleece,
awaited his fair visitor--gave color to my hypothesis.

"Nothing much happened at dinner. The people were very much like those
of the garden party. After the ladies had gone, I found myself talking
to the rural dean. He was a thin, earnest man, who at once turned the
conversation to old Clarke's buffooneries. But, he said, Mr. Broughton
had introduced such a new and cheerful spirit, not only into the Abbey,
but, he might say, into the whole neighborhood, that he had great
hopes that the ignorant superstitions of the past were from henceforth
destined to oblivion. Thereupon his other neighbor, a portly gentleman
of independent means and position, audibly remarked 'Amen,' which
damped the rural dean, and we talked of partridges past, partridges
present, and pheasants to come. At the other end of the table Broughton
sat with a couple of his friends, red-faced hunting men. Once I noticed
that they were discussing me, but I paid no attention to it at the
time. I remembered it a few hours later.

"By eleven all the guests were gone, and Broughton, his wife, and I
were alone together under the fine plaster ceiling of the Jacobean
drawing-room. Mrs. Broughton talked about one or two of the neighbors,
and then, with a smile, said that she knew I would excuse her, shook
hands with me, and went off to bed. I am not very good at analyzing
things, but I felt that she talked a little uncomfortably and with a
suspicion of effort, smiled rather conventionally, and was obviously
glad to go. These things seem trifling enough to repeat, but I had
throughout the faint feeling that everything was not square. Under the
circumstances, this was enough to set me wondering what on earth the
service could be that I was to render--wondering also whether the whole
business were not some ill-advised jest in order to make me come down
from London for a mere shooting party.

"Broughton said little after she had gone. But he was evidently
laboring to bring the conversation round to the so-called haunting
of the Abbey. As soon as I saw this, of course I asked him directly
about it. He then seemed at once to lose interest in the matter. There
was no doubt about it: Broughton was somehow a changed man, and to my
mind he had changed in no way for the better. Mrs. Broughton seemed no
sufficient cause. He was clearly very fond of her, and she of him. I
reminded him that he was going to tell me what I could do for him in
the morning, pleaded my journey, lighted a candle, and went upstairs
with him. At the end of the passage leading into the old house he
grinned weakly and said, 'Mind, if you see a ghost, do talk to it; you
said you would,' He stood irresolutely a moment and then turned away.
At the door of his dressing-room he paused a moment: 'I'm here,' he
called out, 'if you should want anything. Good-night,' and he shut his
door.

"I went along the passage to my room, undressed, switched on a lamp
beside my bed, read a few pages of the _Jungle Book_, and then, more
than ready for sleep, switched the light off and went fast asleep.

* * * * *

"Three hours later I woke up. There was not a breath of wind outside.
It was so silent that my ears found employment in listening for the
throbbing of the blood within them. There was not even a flicker of
light from the fireplace. As I lay there, an ash tinkled slightly
as it cooled, but there was hardly a gleam of the dullest red in the
grate. An owl cried among the silent Spanish chestnuts on the slope
outside. I idly reviewed the events of the day, hoping that I should
fall off to sleep again before I reached dinner. But at the end I
seemed as wakeful as ever. There was no help for it. I must read my
_Jungle Book_ again till I felt ready to go off, so I fumbled for
the pear at the end of the cord that hung down inside the bed, and I
switched on the bedside lamp. The sudden glory dazzled me for a moment.
I felt under my pillow for my book with half-shut eyes. Then, growing
used to the light, I happened to look down to the foot of my bed.

* * * * *

"I can never tell you really what happened then. Nothing I could ever
confess in the most abject words could even faintly picture to you
what I felt. I know that my heart stopped dead, and my throat shut
automatically. In one instinctive movement I crouched back up against
the head-boards of the bed, staring at the horror. The movement set my
heart going again, and the sweat dripped from every pore. I am not a
particularly religious man, but I had always believed that God would
never allow any supernatural appearance to present itself to man in
such a guise and in such circumstances that harm, either bodily or
mental, could result to him. I can only tell you that at that moment
both my life and my reason rocked unsteadily on their seats."

The other _Osiris_ passengers had gone to bed. Only he and I remained
leaning over the starboard railing, which rattled uneasily now and then
under the fierce vibration of the over-engined mail-boat. Far over,
there were the lights of a few fishing-smacks riding out the night, and
a great rush of white combing and seething water fell out and away from
us overside.

At last Colvin went on:

"Leaning over the foot of my bed, looking at me, was a figure swathed
in a rotten and tattered veiling. This shroud passed over the head, but
left both eyes and the right side of the face bare. It then followed
the line of the arm down to where the hand grasped the bed-end. The
face was not that entirely of a skull, though the eyes and the flesh of
the face were totally gone, There was a thin, dry skin drawn tightly
over the features, and there was some skin left on the hand. One wisp
of hair crossed the forehead. It was perfectly still. I looked at it,
and it looked at me, and my brains turned dry and hot in my head. I
had still got the pear of the electric lamp in my hand, and I played
idly with it; only I dared not turn the light out again. I shut my
eyes, only to open them in a hideous terror the same second. The thing
had not moved. My heart was thumping, and the sweat cooled me as it
evaporated. Another cinder tinkled in the grate, and a panel creaked in
the wall.

"My reason failed me. For twenty minutes, or twenty seconds, I was
able to think of nothing else but this awful figure, till there came,
hurtling through the empty channels of my senses, the remembrance that
Broughton and his friends had discussed me furtively at dinner. The dim
possibility of it being a hoax stole gratefully into my unhappy mind,
and once there, one's pluck came creeping back along a thousand tiny
veins. My first sensation was one of blind unreasoning thankfulness
that my brain was going to stand the trial. I am not a timid man,
but the best of us needs some human handle to steady him in time of
extremity, and in this faint but growing hope that after all it might
be only a brutal hoax, I found the fulcrum that I needed. At last I
moved.

"How I managed to do it, I cannot tell you, but with one spring
towards the foot of the bed I got within arm's length and struck out
one fearful blow with my fist at the thing. It crumbled under it, and
my hand was cut to the bone. With the sickening revulsion after my
terror, I dropped half-fainting across the end of the bed. So it was
merely a foul trick after all. No doubt the trick had been played many
a time before: no doubt Broughton and his friends had had some bet
among themselves as to what I should do when I discovered the gruesome
thing. From my state of abject terror I found myself transported into
an insensate anger. I shouted curses upon Broughton. I dived rather
than climbed over the bed-end on to the sofa. I tore at the robed
skeleton--how well the whole thing had been carried out, I thought--I
broke the skull against the floor, and stamped upon its dry bones. I
flung the head away under the bed, and rent the brittle bones of the
trunk in pieces. I snapped the thin thigh-bones across my knee, and
flung them in different directions. The shin-bones I set up against
a stool and broke with my heel. I raged like a Berserker against the
loathly thing, and stripped the ribs from the backbone and slung the
breastbone against the cupboard. My fury increased as the work of
destruction went on. I tore the frail rotten veil into twenty pieces,
and the dust went up over everything, over the clean blotting-paper and
the silver inkstand. At last my work was done. There was but a raffle
of broken bones and strips of parchment and crumbling wool. Then,
picking up a piece of the skull--it was the cheek and temple bone of
the right side, I remember--I opened the door and went down the passage
to Broughton's dressing-room. I remember still how my sweat-dripping
pajamas clung to me as I walked. At the door I kicked and entered.

"Broughton was in bed. He had already turned the light on and seemed
shrunken and horrified. For a moment he could hardly pull himself
together. Then I spoke. I don't know what I said. Only I know that from
a heart full and over-full with hatred and contempt, spurred on by
shame of my own recent cowardice, I let my tongue run on. He answered
nothing. I was amazed at my own fluency. My hair still clung lankily
to my wet temples, my hand was bleeding profusely, and I must have
looked a strange sight. Broughton huddled himself up at the head of
the bed just as I had. Still he made no answer, no defence. He seemed
preoccupied with something besides my reproaches, and once or twice
moistened his lips with his tongue. But he could say nothing, though he
moved his hands now and then, just as a baby who cannot speak moves his
hands.

"At last the door into Mrs. Broughton's room opened and she came in,
white and terrified. 'What is it? What is it? Oh, in God's name! what
is it?' she cried again and again, and then she went up to her husband
and sat on the bed; and the two faced me in speechless terror. I told
her what the matter was. I spared her husband not a word for her
presence there. Yet he seemed hardly to understand. I told the pair
that I had spoiled their cowardly joke for them. Broughton looked up.

"'I have smashed the foul thing into a hundred pieces,' I said.
Broughton licked his lips again and his mouth worked. 'By God!' I
shouted, 'it would serve you right if I thrashed you within an inch
of your life. I will take care that not a decent man or woman of my
acquaintance ever speaks to you again. And there,' I added, throwing
the broken piece of the skull upon the floor beside his bed, 'there is
a souvenir for you, of your damned work to-night!'

"Broughton saw the bone, and in a moment it was his turn to frighten
me. He squealed like a hare caught in a trap. He screamed and screamed
till Mrs. Broughton, almost as terrified as I, held on to him and
coaxed him like a child to be quiet. But Broughton--and as he moved I
thought that ten minutes ago I perhaps looked as terribly ill as he
did--thrust her from him, and scrambled out of the bed on to the floor,
and still screaming put out his hand to the bone. It had blood on it
from my hand. He paid no attention to me whatever. In truth I said
nothing. This was a new turn indeed to the horrors of the evening. He
rose from the floor with the bone in his hand, and stood silent. He
seemed to be listening. 'Time, time, perhaps,' he muttered, and almost
at the same moment fell at full length on the carpet, cutting his head
against the fender. The bone flew from his hand and came to rest near
the door. I picked Broughton up, haggard and broken, with blood over
his face. He whispered hoarsely and quickly, 'Listen, listen!' We
listened.

"After ten seconds' utter quiet, I seemed to hear something. I could
not be sure, but at last there was no doubt. There was a quiet sound
as of one moving along the passage. Little regular steps came towards
us over the hard oak flooring. Broughton moved to where his wife
sat, white and speechless, on the bed, and pressed her face into his
shoulder.

"Then the last thing that I could see as he turned the light out, he
fell forward with his own head pressed into the pillow of the bed.
Something in their company, something in their cowardice, helped me,
and I faced the open doorway of the room, which was outlined fairly
clearly against the dimly lighted passage. I put out one hand and
touched Mrs. Broughton's shoulder in the darkness. But at the last
moment I too failed. I sank on my knees and put my face in the bed.
Only, we all heard. The footsteps came to the door, and there they
stopped. The piece of bone was lying a yard inside the door. There was
a rustle of moving stuff, and the thing was in the room. Mrs. Broughton
was silent: I could hear Broughton's voice praying, muffled in the
pillow: I was cursing my own cowardice. Then the steps moved out again
on the oak boards of the passage, and I heard the sounds dying away. In
a flash of remorse I went to the door and looked out. There at the end
of the corridor was a small bowed figure in a gray veil--I knew it only
too well. But this time there was a pathos in the drooped head that
left me standing with my forehead bowed in shame against the jamb of
the door.

"'You can turn the light on,' I said, and there was an answering flare.
There was no bone at my feet. Mrs. Broughton had fainted. Broughton was
almost useless, and it took me ten minutes to bring her to. Broughton
only said one thing worth remembering. For the most part he went on
muttering prayers. But I was glad afterwards to recollect that he had
said that thing. He said in a colorless voice, half as a question,
half as a reproach, 'You didn't speak to her.'

"We spent the remainder of the night together. Mrs. Broughton actually
fell off into a kind of sleep before dawn, but she suffered so horribly
in her dreams that I shook her into consciousness again. Never was dawn
so long in coming. Three or four times Broughton spoke to himself. Mrs.
Broughton would then just tighten her hold on his arm, but she could
say nothing. As for me, I can honestly say that I grew worse as the
hours passed and the light strengthened. The two violent reactions had
battered down my steadiness of view, and I felt that the foundations of
my life had been built upon the sand. I said nothing, and after binding
up my hand with a towel, I did not move. It was better so. They helped
me and I helped them, and we all three knew that our reason had gone
very near to ruin that night. At last, when the light came in pretty
strongly, and the birds outside were chattering and singing, we felt
that we must do something. Yet we never moved. You might have thought
that we should particularly dislike being found as we were by the
servants: yet nothing of the kind mattered a straw, and an overpowering
listlessness bound us as we sat, until Chapman, Broughton's man,
actually knocked and opened the door. None of us moved. Broughton,
speaking hardly and stiffly, said: 'Chapman, you can come back in
five minutes.' Chapman was a discreet man, but it would have made no
difference if he had carried his news to the 'room' at once.

"We looked at each other and I said I must go back. I meant to wait
outside till Chapman returned. I simply dared not re-enter my bedroom
alone. Broughton roused himself and said that he would come with me.
Mrs. Broughton agreed to remain in her own room for five minutes if the
blinds were drawn up and all the doors left open.

"So Broughton and I, leaning stiffly one against the other, went down
to my room. By the morning light that filtered past the blinds we could
see our way, and I released the blinds. There was nothing wrong in the
room from end to end, except smears of my own blood on the bed, on the
sofa, and on the carpet where I had torn the thing to pieces."

Colvin had finished his story. There was nothing to say. Seven bells
stuttered out from the fo'c'sle, and the answering cry wailed through
the darkness. I took him downstairs.

"Of course I am much better now, but it is a kindness of you to let me
sleep in your cabin."

THE TERROR

BY A. E. THOMAS

ILLUSTRATIONS BY HERMAN C. WALL

It was a gray and bitter morning in January when Tim first saw The
Vale. For weeks winter had lain heavy upon the sunny South. A cold rain
had swept the countryside; then came zero weather for days, till the
ice lay inch-thick on all the broad pikes of Lexington County, and only
the firs were green.

Tim and his mother had left the little cabin they called home at the
first crack of dawn and together had tramped the five miles that
spelled the road to The Vale. All the way they spoke scarce a word, for
they knew that parting was near and that it had to be. Colonel Darnton
was to take the boy and make a jockey of him, if he could, and the
stables of The Vale were to be his home thereafter.

The negroes were feeding the stallions when the boy and his mother
trudged up to the big barn. They sat on a feed-box until the Colonel
had finished his breakfast and come out from the big house under the
trees.

"Morning to you, Mrs. Doolin," said the Colonel. "And so you've brought
the boy, eh?"

"I have that," responded Mrs. Doolin, in her odd mixture of brogue and
Southern drawl. "An' I beg ye t' be good tew him. Since Pete died, he's
all I hov, an' it's the good lad he's been to me, an' phwat it is I'll
be doin' widout him whin he's gawn, I dinnaw. Will ye be afther lettin'
him come down t' see me wanst a fortnight, sor?"

"Of course I will," smiled the Colonel, and then he turned to Tim,
standing there, so pale and little.

"And you, boy," he said, taking the lad's chin in his big hand and
turning the blue eyes up to his gaze, "how about you--strong for the
hosses, eh?"

Tim's lip quivered. He was only twelve. But he looked the Colonel
bravely in the face.

"I reck'n," he said.

"Well, well, we'll see," said the Colonel, mercifully releasing the
boy's chin. "'Twould be odd if you weren't. Your father was mighty
handy with 'em all--mighty handy."

"Savin' yer prisince, Colonel, I'd hov jist wan wurrud wid th' boy,"
said the woman, and she drew Tim aside.

"Lookee yew here, yew Tim Doolin," she said, when she had him by
himself, "don't yew niver fergit thet yew're up here tew The Vale tew
larn hosses. Raymimber thet." The boy drew one ragged sleeve across his
blue eyes.

"All right, maw," he quavered.

"An' raymimber this, too," she went on. "There niver yit was wan Doolin
thet wasn't on the square. Hoss racin' ain't prayin', an' all them as
races hosses ain't like the Colonel. But there niver was wan Doolin yit
thet wasn't on the level. Mind yew ain't the fust crook in the clan, er
else yew needn't niver come home t' the Blue Grass ter look yewr maw in
the face."

Thin and gaunt and gray-haired, she stood in the biting wind that
fought to tear her shawl from her bony shoulders. For a moment she
stared, stern and dry-eyed, at the boy. Somehow he had never seemed so
tiny before.

"Will yew raymimber thet?" she demanded at last. Tim dropped his eyes
in boyish embarrassment.

"I reck'n," he said.

His mother drew her shawl tightly about her shoulders and departed
without more ado.

The life of a stable-boy on a great breeding-farm is not all beer and
skittles, whatever that may be. His principal business is to look sharp
and do as he is told and never forget. It's always early to rise,
before dawn in the winter time, and often late to bed, if some of the
priceless thoroughbreds are ailing. Moreover, the tongues of stable
foremen are sharp, and their hands are heavy.

Tim made his mistakes. Once, after they came to trust him at The Vale,
on a sharp morning when he was giving King Faraway, the head of the
stud, his morning gallop on the pike, he fell to dreaming. A little
brook ran under a wooden bridge built for carriage use. But to one
side there was a ford through which people drove in summer to give
their horses drink. The brook was solid ice that morning, but Tim, not
thinking, turned King Faraway into the ford. The great horse slipped
and fell.

Tim sprang up from the far side of the brook with the blood gushing
from a nasty cut on his forehead. But he didn't think of that. Was King
Faraway hurt?

He walked the three miles back to The Vale, the stallion limping behind
him, and at the stable he told the truth and got a thrashing.

King Faraway was on three legs for a month. But he recovered. Every
night of that month the boy slept on a heap of straw in the stallion's
box stall, waking up half a dozen times a night to rub the injured
stifle; and in the end the great horse was as good as new.

Again, one chilly November night Tim left one of his yearlings out in
the South Paddock. Late that night a cold, driving storm came up. In
the morning they found the yearling shivering by the paddock gate.
The Colonel himself worked his fingers off over that yearling colt,
for he was bred in the purple. The youngster had pneumonia, but they
saved him, and the Colonel said that Tim's nursing was what pulled him
through.

On an April morning something over two years after the day Tim came
to The Vale, he started with the season's two-year-olds for the big
tracks at New York. He had helped break the youngsters to the saddle
and to the track on the half-mile race-course on the farm, and he knew
every one of the lot as if he had been its mother. So when they rounded
them up to take them to the special box-cars that were waiting in the
freight yards, the Colonel took the lad aside.

"Really want to be a jockey, Tim?" he asked.

"Sure," said Tim.

"Want to leave us, then, eh?" The boy looked away, and the Colonel
spared him.

"All right," he said with a laugh. "To the races you go. You can come
back if you don't like it."

All the broad acres of The Vale and the costly stallions and the brood
mares belonged to David Holland, a captain of finance. He was too busy
manipulating the ticker to pay much attention to the stock-farm itself.
He knew nothing whatever about the breeding of horses and was clever
enough to admit it. He paid the bills and got his fun out of "seeing
'em run."

The Holland stable was already quartered at Sheepshead Bay when the
Colonel and Tim arrived with the two-year-olds. Pat Faulkner, the
trainer, was there to meet them. He and the Colonel drew aside and
left the boy to himself. The hours for morning gallops were long since
over, and when Tim climbed the white rail fence that enclosed the
back-stretch, the big and beautiful track was absolutely deserted.

"Well," said Faulkner, "what sort of a grist have you brought me this
trip? I've been bitin' me nails off to find out, but not a word would
you write."

They had out the chestnut colt with the one white foot, and the black
with the white blaze, and the bay filly by Checkers-Flighty, and a few
other individuals, while the trainer felt them over and looked them up
and down and round about, and had them walked and trotted and cantered
through the stable yard.

When it was all over, and he knew that here was material that would
make his rivals sit up, Faulkner's eyes fell upon a slim shape sitting
on the white rail fence.

"What's the kid?" he demanded.

"That?" said the Colonel, with a smile, "why, that's Tim Doolin, a
champion jockey I've brought you." The trainer grunted.

"How old?" he asked.

"Going on fifteen, weighs seventy-three pounds, is kind and clever,
knows the hosses, and they'll do for him. Try him out at exercise work,
and if he makes good, give him a chance to ride."

That same night the Colonel departed.

After that Tim's work was cut out for him. There were twenty-six
two-year-olds in the Holland stables, twelve three-year-olds, and six
or eight thoroughbreds in the aged division. Faulkner kept a big staff
of grooms and exercise boys, but there was always a day's work for each
of them. Aside from the routine exercise for every horse in training,
the feeding, the grooming, and so on, all the youngsters had to be
broken to the starting barrier. Some trainers didn't pay much attention
to that.

"Let 'em come to it in their races," said they. Not so, Faulkner. He
drilled every last one of his two-year-olds till the starting gate was
no more to them than so much steel and wood and webbing.

Tim was not long in winning the trainer's confidence. The job of
breaking to the barrier was turned over to the stable foreman, under
whose eyes the grooms and exercise boys worked. But one afternoon
Faulkner himself came out to see how things were going. He noticed that
the three two-year-olds that were Tim's especial care were already
barrier-broken. He cross-examined the lad. Tim was reticent.

"I--I--jest get 'em used to it," he faltered.

"How?" demanded the trainer.

"I--I jest lead 'em up to it, first along, an' let 'em smell of it
and look at it. Then I git one of the boys to spring it while I'm
a-standin' by at their heads. They git used to it pretty soon. Then I
ride 'em up to it."

"Humph!" grunted the trainer; but later he said to the foreman: "That
kid's got sense."

It wasn't long before Tim was exercising three-year-olds, and one gray
morning when he turned out of the loft where he slept, the foreman
shouted:

"Hurry up, you Tim, an' git yer breakfast."

The boy wondered and obeyed. He gulped down the last of his oatmeal,
shot out of the training kitchen, and ran up to the stables, where a
negro groom was holding a big bay horse, about which Faulkner himself
was busily working. The trainer arose as the boy ran up.

"Up you go, kid," he said and tossed Tim into the saddle.

And Tim knew that he was to exercise Lear! And everybody knew that the
Holland stable was pointing Lear for the Brooklyn Handicap! It was a
proud moment for Tim. But his honors didn't sit too heavily on his
small shoulders, for Faulkner was a hard task-master.

"Jog him to the mile post and send him the last half in .55 an' keep
yer eye on the flag," the trainer would order.

Then the boy would canter away through the gray light, and the trainer,
handkerchief in one hand and stop-watch in the other, would mount the
fence. If the clock said .57 for that last half mile, or anything
between that and .55, there was a slap on the back and a "Good kid,"
for Tim, but woe to him if the clicking hand cut it down to .53.

Mistakes he made, and many of them, but they grew fewer and fewer. Good
hands he had (for they are born with a boy, if he's ever to have them)
and an intuitive knowledge of the temper of a horse. A good seat they
had taught him at The Vale. And gradually, little by little and bit by
bit, he came to be what only one jockey in fifty ever grows into--an
unerring judge of pace.

Just what it is that tells a boy whether the muscles of steel that he
bestrides are shooting him rhythmically over a furlong of dull brown
earth or black and slimy mud in .12-1/2 or .13-1/4, some person may
perhaps be able to tell, but certain it is that no person ever has told
it. Long after Tim had learned the secret as few boys have ever known
it, I asked him.

"Why," said he, "yew know your hoss, an' after thet, why, yew jest feel
it."

It was not until the autumn meeting at Gravesend that Tim first wore
the colors. It was in an overnight selling race for two-year-olds, for
which Faulkner had in despair named Gracious.

Gracious was a merry little short-bodied filly, who was bred as well as
any of the Holland lot, but who hadn't done well. Out of six starts she
had never shown anything, and Faulkner had determined to start her once
more and then weed her out. The weight, eighty-seven pounds, was so
light that the stable jockey couldn't make it. Then Faulkner remembered
the Colonel's words: "Give him a chance, if he makes good."

"I'll do it," he said, and told Tim.

Tim didn't sleep well that night, and with wide eyes he welcomed the
first light of the great day. At last he was to wear the colors!

"Just get her off well and take your time," said Faulkner, as he put
the boy up. "Rate her along to the stretch and then drive her."

Tim did all that. Coming into the stretch, there were four horses
ahead of him on the rail. But two of them were weakening. Then Tim
called on the filly. She answered and went up. But the colt next her
was staggering. He swerved, and Tim had to pull out. He got Gracious
going again and landed her third, only a head behind the second horse.
Faulkner was radiant as Tim dismounted.

"Good kid," he said. He had backed the filly a bit to run third. But
Tim was almost weeping.

"I could have won," he moaned, "if thet there Blinger hed kep'
straight."

The boy rode half a dozen races in the next month, all of them for
two-year-olds. He won once and was second twice. Among the other
apprentice riders he was already a personage, although, of course, he
scarcely dared speak to the full-fledged jockeys.

And then the Terror came.

It was Gracious that brought it. There were eight two-years-olds in the
seven-furlong sprint on the main track at Morris Park. The filly had
gone slightly off her feed the night before the race, but she seemed
perfectly fit otherwise, and Faulkner determined to start her.

"She won't finish as strong as she would a week ago," he told the boy,
as the saddling bugle blew. "So you send her along a bit at the start
and get the rail. Keep her goin' an' let her die in front."

"I reck'n," said Tim confidently, and they swung him into the saddle.

Gracious, under Tim's riding, was a quick breaker. She leaped away the
instant the barrier rose, and from the middle of the track the boy took
her to the rail before the run up the back-stretch was over. She held
her lead till the field had rounded into the stretch, and then he felt
her falter. In an instant he began to ride, first with hands, then with
hands and feet, then with hands and feet and whip. But it was not in
the filly to answer. At the six-furlong pole she had gone stale--gone
stale between two jumps. But the boy kept at her with might and main.

[Illustration: "TIM AND HIS MOTHER HAD LEFT THEIR LITTLE CABIN AT THE
FIRST CRACK OF DAWN"]

It was useless. In six strides a brown muzzle crept up to his saddle
girth. In two jumps more it reached the filly's shoulder. In three more
strides the two were head and head; and then the brown muzzle was in
front.

Suddenly the brown muzzle drooped, and the colt faltered. Tim took
heart again. Perhaps, perhaps he might still nurse the filly home in
front. He gripped her withers a bit tighter with his knees and spoke to
her, softly and pleadingly, as was his wont, through his clenched teeth:

"Come on, yew gal--come on, yew baby--come jes' once mo'--jes'
once--we's mos' home now--come--come. Come, yew gal!"

Back to the boy's stirrup came the saddle girth of the brown colt, as
his stride shortened under the staggering drive. Tim's heart leaped in
his bosom, for there was the wire not ten jumps away and--he was going
to win.

"Come--come, yew baby," he whispered almost into the filly's ear, as he
leaned far over her nodding head. The ecstasy of victory thrilled his
small body to his very toes.

At that instant the brown colt swerved against him. The pungent odor
of sweating horseflesh smote his nostrils--the roar of a horrified
crowd filled his ears--the track rose up to meet him. A flash of red
enveloped his brain--then came darkness and oblivion.

When he came to himself, the first faint light of dawn was sifting in
through a window somewhere. "Time I was up fer exercisin'," he thought,
and he struggled to rise. A flash of pain in his left arm turned him
faint and sick. As he wondered over this, he became aware of a dull,
steady roar that filled the room.

Again he opened his eyes. Dimly he made out the form of a white-capped
woman standing over him. Then he knew that he was not lying in the
loft at Sheepshead Bay.

"Are you awake, little boy?" said a soft voice.

"I--I reck'n," said Tim faintly.

There came the rattle of a heavy vehicle pounding over pavements, the
shrill shriek of a whistle, the roar of horses' hoofs.

Then he remembered it all and turned his face to the wall.

That same evening Faulkner came in to see him.

"Well, Tim," he said, "'twas a bad tumble, hey? How d'you feel? better?"

"Sure," said the boy feebly.

"That's fine, that's fine," cried the trainer heartily. "'Twa'n't your
fault. You done fine. You'd 'a' won, sure, 'f that chump Reilly had
kep' his colt straight. But don't you care. We'll have you out in a few
days, the Doc says. I telegraphed the Colonel you was all to the good,
an' he'll tell yer ma, so don't you worry about that, kid." He leaned
over, smiled kindly, and put a huge hand on the boy's head.

It smelled horribly of sweaty horseflesh. With a shudder Tim turned his
head away.

"You musn't mind a little thing like a tumble," said the trainer
anxiously. "They all get 'em. Why, I remember when I was ridin' a hoss
named ----"

And the kindly horseman blundered on in an attempt to cheer the
helpless lad. It seemed to Tim that he simply must cry out to him to
stop, when the nurse came swiftly up and warned the trainer not to stay
any longer.

"Well, so long, kid," was Faulkner's parting word. "Oh, 'course yer
busted arm won't let yer ride again this fall, but the season's most
over anyway. Only two more days o' Morris Park, and y' know we ain't
got any cheap ones to start at Aqueduct. Anythin' I kin do f' you?" Tim
opened his eyes again.

"Filly hurted?" he asked faintly.

The trainer laughed.

"Nothin' to hurt," he said. "Skinned her knees a bit, but I was goin'
to put her out o' trainin' anyhow. She's O.K."

To Tim's unspeakable relief he lumbered away.

With his arm in a sling, Tim was out again at the end of a week.
Much against the boy's will, Faulkner took him one day to the
meeting at Aqueduct. There the trainer was soon surrounded by
professional colleagues, and Tim fled to a seat in the highest row
of the grandstand. Thence he looked down upon the first stages of a
six-furlong sprint, but when three horses labored home in a tight-fit
finish he buried his face in his hands that he might not see them.

When he lifted his face again, he glanced furtively about, thankful,
oh, so thankful, that nobody had noticed him.

Then self-scorn descended upon him. If he could only go away somewhere
and die! Furtively, he wept, wiping the tears away with one pudgy,
brown fist. For some minutes he stared, heavy-eyed and broken, at his
feet.

"Ta-ra-ta-ta-ta! Ta-ra-ta-ta!"

The bugle spoke, calling the handicap horses to the post.

Tim started up and edged toward the aisle. His racing feet carried him
in panic half way down to the lawn. One idea possessed him--to get
away--to hide himself, he didn't care where--anywhere where he couldn't
see the horses run.

A hand seized him by the shoulder and spun him around.

"Hey, kid," said a voice, "how you feelin'? All to the mustard, hey?"

It was Bud Noble, star jockey of the Holland stable, radiant with all
the prestige that comes with twenty thousand a year and the adulation
of the racing public.

"I reck'n," said Tim, and fled again.

He had no notion of flight. His feet bore him along unsentiently.
Suddenly they stopped. And then he knew that he couldn't run away.
He must see that race. Something within him that would not be denied
commanded it. Slowly he retraced his steps, muttering unconsciously: "I
gotter do it. I gotter do it."

Presently he found himself back in the top row of the grandstand. As in
a dream, he watched the parade of brilliant colors to the post. As in
a dream, he saw the barrier flash up. The old-time roar "They're off!"
came faint and faraway to his ears. Dreamlike, the field drifted up the
back stretch, rounded the turn, and straightened out for home. He dug
the fingers of his one good hand into the hard wooden bench and held
his eyes upon the horses.

"I gotter do it. I gotter do it," he muttered still.

They were years in reaching the wire. No mortal thoroughbreds ever
ran so slowly before since time began. But at last, at the end of the
world, they finished. And up on the highest bench of the grandstand a
little boy, with white face and wide eyes, sat back, limp and still.

Tim's arm was still in a sling when he got back to Lexington, and it
was January before he could use it to any effect. The intervening weeks
he spent at home, helping his mother as best he could in the round of
her hard life, running her errands and bearing to and fro the various
washings by which she lived. For the first time in his life it worried
him to see her work so hard.

[Illustration: "A NEGRO GROOM WAS HOLDING A BIG BAY HORSE, ABOUT WHICH
FALKNER WAS BUSILY WORKING"]

"Nivver mind, Tim," she would say, lifting her bent back from the tub
in the corner of the kitchen, "soon you'll be the famous jockey wid
thousands a year. Thin it's your ould mother that'll be wearin' the
fine duds and wurruk no more."

And then the boy, sick with shame and fear, would steal from the
house--anywhere to be out of the sight of her and the sound of her
voice.

Sometimes the Terror would grip him in his sleep, in the middle of the
winter night, when the wind shrieked under the shingles on the cabin
roof or the cold rain drove against the window-pane. More than once he
started up, broad awake, with the smell of sweating horseflesh sharp
and agonizing in his nostrils. Once it was the sound of his own voice
that woke him, and he was crying out:

"Come on, yew baby, come, come, yew gal!"

Then he sat on the edge of his cot, with the blanket over his
shoulders, until daybreak, with such thoughts as a boy may know.

But on a sunny morning in February, it was Tim who stood in the great
doorway of the stallion stable at The Vale, saying to the Colonel:

"Thought mebbe I could help yew with the two-year-olds."

Day by day he strove with himself. Little by little he fought the
Terror down. The very smell of the stables turned him faint for a week.
He used to creep into King Faraway's box-stall when the big horse
stood, wet under his blanket, after his morning gallop, and bury his
face in the stallion's mane and rub his nose along the giant withers,
till at last the horrible smell of sweating horseflesh had power
to terrify him no more. It was weeks before he could mount without
trembling, but at last he came to do it and--to hope.

At last came April, and one evening, as Tim was helping with the
feeding, he heard the Colonel's voice calling him. He trembled a
little, for he knew what was coming.

"I've a letter from Faulkner," said the Colonel, "and he's asking
for you, Tim. Shall I tell him you'll be up with the new batch of
youngsters?" It was the cast of the die.

"I reck'n," said Tim stoutly.

But it wasn't quite the same old Sheepshead Bay that Tim went back to.
He did his work as faithfully and skilfully as ever. His hand was just
as light and sure; he had not lost his sense of pace. But the first
pale light of day did not send him out to the stables with every nerve
in his lithe body tingling for very joy of the work that was coming.
And once, when he saw a stable-boy thrown--the Terror rose at him
again; not with the old terrible leap, to be sure, but he saw Its face
for an instant.

He will never forget his first race that spring. Again he rode a
two-year-old, and he won without difficulty, nobody guessed at what
expense. As the season went on, he rode again and again, and sometimes
he won, and oftener not.

But Faulkner saw and shook his head. If Tim's horse won, it was because
its own speed and the judgment of its rider did it. Nobody ever saw Tim
take a chance. Other boys might leave him space to squeeze through if
they liked. He never did it. It was the longest way 'round and plain
sailing for Tim. No mad, brilliant rush for the rail. No fine finishes
from unlucky beginnings.

And Faulkner watched and saw it all. Once the boy caught the trainer
looking at him, thoughtful and puzzled. A big lump rose in his throat
and strangled him, and he stumbled away with his grief. It seemed to
him that he could not live on any longer. He grew even more grave and
silent as the days went on, shunned the other stable-boys, and kept
stolidly to himself.

It had to end sometime, somehow, and the ending of it was
notable--because Tim was Tim, I suppose.

For the Suburban Handicap, with the Brooklyn the greatest of the
classic races for the older horses, the Holland stable had two
candidates. The first was the five-year-old Gladstone, son of Juniper
and winner of fifteen races, one of them a Metropolitan. The second
was Kate Greenaway, a three-year-old filly by King Faraway, whose only
claim to distinction was that she had won third place in the Futurity
of the preceding year. But, though Gladstone was the stable's main
reliance, the filly's work had been dazzling, and the shrewd Faulkner
had hopes of her.

Bud Noble, as stable jockey, was to ride Gladstone, while the trainer
relied on the light-weight Ban Johnson, on whom the stable had second
call, to handle Kate Greenaway. Tim knew the filly as no one else knew
her or could know her. Down at The Vale, before ever he came to the
races, he had been the first to put halter and bridle on her; his small
legs were the first to bestride her; he had broken her to the barrier
until she seemed actually to like the thing, and in her work she had
been his especial charge. But he had never ridden her in a race.

The running of a big handicap at a Metropolitan track is an impressive
event, even to the man who knows nothing of horses. To him who loves
the thoroughbred it is inspiring. To Tim it was something more than
that--a thing to make you tremble.

All morning the boy hung uneasily about the stable. He ate scarcely
any dinner and roved restlessly about until it was time to take the
filly to the paddock. He got her there just as the horses were going to
the post for the third race. The Suburban was the fourth. Up and down
under the great shed he walked his charge, blanketed and hooded, in the
wake of towering, black Gladstone. Soon a shouting from the grandstand
announced that the third race was over.

Then came a rush of hundreds to see the Suburban horses saddled. One
by one, the candidates filed out to the track for their warming-up
gallops--Boston, top-weight, favorite and winner of the Metropolitan,
and second in the Brooklyn; Carley, winner of the Advance the season
before; Catchall, the speedy Hastings mare; and all the rest--all save
Kate Greenaway. Once, in a warming-up gallop, she had run away, and
Faulkner would never take chances with her after that. So Tim walked
her up and down by herself, thankful, yet ashamed, that somebody else
was to ride her.

Suddenly the stable foreman ran up.

"Hi, you Tim," he shouted, "hustle over to the dressin' room an' git on
yer duds. Skin along, now, no time to lose."

Tim stood gaping.

"Git a move on--git a move! My Gawd! You ain't got no time to lose.
Ban's fell down an' sprained his ankle."

Tim trudged over to the jockey's house, his eyes on the ground. Over in
the paddock, Faulkner listened stubbornly to the foreman.

"I tell you," the latter was saying, "the kid's lost his nerve. Ain't
you seen it all along? He ain't took a chance sence his tumble. Why
dontcher give the mount to Tyson or Biff Barry? They ain't neither of
'em got a mount."

"Nothin' doin'," rejoined the trainer. "The kid knows the
filly--brought her up, almost. He can ride, too, if he don't get in
a tight place, an' that ain't likely. Tyson can't make the weight.
B'sides, I told the Colonel I'd give the kid a chance. An'," he
concluded, "this is it."

"All right," said the foreman, "but you'll see. He's lost his nerve.
Why, he got white eraoun' the gills when I tol' him."

[Illustration: "HE SAT ON THE EDGE OF HIS COT, WITH THE BLANKET OVER
HIS SHOULDERS, UNTIL DAYBREAK"]

Tim had grown like a weed since he first saw Sheepshead Bay, but it
was a slender, fragile figure that the trainer tossed into the chestnut
filly's saddle when the bugle blew.

"Now, kid," said Faulkner quietly, throwing one arm over the crupper,
"you're third from the rail. You know the filly as well as I do. She's
fit to the minute. She'll run in 2.03, if she ain't rushed in the first
half. Hold yer place an' let the sprinters do their sprintin'. They'll
come back. Keep her goin' her pace for a mile, an' if you have to ride
her the last quarter, make her sweat for it. She's game fer a drive.
They don't make 'em no gamer."

The lad heard scarcely a word. He wasn't frightened. He was sullen,
rebellious against--against everything. It was one more race to
him--commonplace, perfunctory, tiresome. He was going to get through
with it in the easiest way he could. He thought with relief of the wide
spaces and easy turns of the great track.

"Keep up yer nerve, kid," said Bud Noble, turning in his saddle and
looking back at Tim as the field filed through the paddock gate.

Tim grinned scornfully. What a notion! Why should anybody need nerve
to gallop a horse around a track? He had only one idea--to keep out
of trouble. So, perfectly calm and very much bored, he danced to the
starting-gate on the chestnut filly. He paid little attention to the
fretful doings there. He was haunted by no fear that he might be left.
It was a nuisance to have to keep an eye on the vicious heels of Baldy,
the swayback gelding at his left--that was all.

But Kate Greenaway had no intention of being left. She kept her dainty
nose on the webbing from the instant she got it there, for hadn't
Tim taught her that? And when, at last, all the fussing and fuming
was over, and the whips of the starter's assistants had ceased their
hissing, and the pleadings and threats of the starter himself were
done, and the gate swished up before the fourteen racers, the filly's
first bound beat the gate by half a length.

Tim was a trifle disgusted. "Blast the filly, anyhow!" he thought. It
was no part of his plan to lead that roaring field. He took a double
wrap on the reins, and his mount came back till two lithe, lean forms
slid up abreast her on the rail, and a third on the outside. That
was better, thought Tim, and the sprinters drew out ahead of him.
Contentedly he fell in on the rail behind them.

A storm of dirt clods smote the filly in the face. Another pelted
Tim on the forehead. He took a tighter hold on Kate Greenaway, and
the sprinters drew away another length. It would have been an easy
thing for him to choke her back still further, but somehow a surge
of generous feeling for the game creature beat down his sullen
selfishness, and he hadn't the heart to strangle her.

[Illustration: "IN HIS EARS WAS THE ROAR FROM THIRTY THOUSAND THROATS
IN THE GRANDSTAND"]

The leaders had by this time swung around the first turn, and as they
passed the half-mile mark two noses intruded themselves on Tim's vision
on the outside.

"Hello," he thought, "old long-distance Boston is movin' up. An'
Carley, to keep him from gettin' lonesome." But the track was wide,
they ran straight and true and kept their distance.

Suddenly the sprinters began to come back. In five seconds Tim would
have to pull up behind them. This was disgusting! If only he were on
the outside! A clod of earth struck his breast. Instinctively he let
out a wrap on the reins.

The filly went up to the sprinters in ten jumps. As he ranged
alongside, Tim took another hold on her. No more front positions for
him. He was outside, and he meant to stay there and be derned to 'em!

Then one of the sprinters fell back, beaten already, and as Boston
somehow sifted into the vacant place Tim noted with a gasp that here
was the far turn already, and he was with the leaders. This surprised
him so much that the last turn leaped past before he realised that
there were only two horses between him and the rail. One of them was
black Boston, top-weight at one hundred and twenty-nine; the other was
Carley.

He was getting a bit interested in spite of himself. The boys on the
older horses began to urge them a bit, and as they swung around the
turn and into the stretch they drew away a couple of lengths. Tim sat
still. He was in that delightful outside place, with acres of room. He
even glanced over at the in-field where the patrol judge stood with his
glasses to his eyes. He remembered afterward that that official's weird
whiskers amused him. Then something happened.

Kate Greenaway became mistress of herself. As she swung round the turn,
a wide space confronted her, left by the leaders between themselves and
the rail. Kate Greenaway had been taught to hunt that rail as a homing
pigeon its cote. She sought it now so sharply that Tim all but lost his
seat.

Instantly the boy awoke. He remembered the prize he was riding for--the
Suburban! the Suburban! Straight before him for a quarter of a mile
gleamed the track, yellow in the June sunlight. Nothing to do but
ride--straight--straight to the wire.

All the slumbering life in his body awoke from its sullen sleep. He
blessed the splendid filly racing so true and so strong beneath him,
and he sat down for the first time to help her with every ounce of his
power and every trace of his skill.

He knew she could win. He knew she had been going well within herself,
and still she was where she could strike. Now was the time to ride,
and he rode as he had never ridden before, standing in the stirrups,
crouched over the gallant filly's neck, rising and falling in perfect
rhythm with her every stride. And, bless her! that stride had not begun
to shorten yet.

Steadily she crept up on the older horses fighting their duel before
her. Tim could see from the tail of his eye that both their riders were
working for dear life--and he had only just begun to ride. His heart
bounded again beneath his brilliant jacket, and again he urged the
filly.

But what was that? Surely, surely his path was growing narrower. In six
strides more he was sure of it. Carley, on the outside, was boring in
under the drive, and Boston was pulling in to keep from fouling.

There's no time to pick daisies in the last furlong of the Suburban.
All the months of Tim's purgatory called to him to pull up before
they squeezed him against that deadly rail. He tried to do it, but
his wrists had gone limp. The next instant the bay and the black were
running stride for stride half a length before the filly--and closing
in.

Then rose the Terror and gripped Tim by the throat. The moment had
come. They had pinned him on the rail.

Under the gruelling drive Carley staggered again. He bumped Boston. Tim
felt the big horse graze his boot as he wavered. Instantly that pungent
smell of sweating horseflesh stung his nostrils, and with it flashed
the memory of that awful day to smite him helpless.

Again he tried to pull up, and again he failed. His wrists were
palsied. Why didn't he fall! Oh, why didn't he fall!

Under his quaking knees the withers of the gallant filly still rose and
fell, mightily, rhythmically; her lean, beautiful neck stretched out
as if to meet the goal, her nostrils wide and blood-red, through which
the air came and went, roaring, like the escape of steam from a mighty
valve, her eyeballs starting from their sockets.

Then sickening shame smote him on his quivering lips. He seemed to
realise for the first time that the filly was waging her terrible fight
alone.

The Terror dropped from the boy like a bad dream when one awakes. A
frenzy of pride and love for the filly swept over him. He had no hope.
The next instant he would hear that terrified roar of the crowd, the
track would leap up to meet him, that flash of red would smite him,
and blackness would fold him about. But the beautiful filly should not
go down with a coward astride her! He found himself talking to her as
of old, crouching low till his lips all but brushed her fine, straight
ears:

"Come on, yew gal! Katie--yew Katie! Come on! Almos' home! Almos'!
Come--come, yew darlin'!"

Closer pressed the driven Boston, till his rider's stirrup locked
Tim's. And then the boy knew that the last moment had come. It was fall
or win and instantly. In his ears was the creak and protest of the
straining saddles and girths, the roar from thirty thousand throats in
the grandstand, the whistle of the breath of three great horses locked
in a desperate struggle, the thunder of the flying hoofs behind him. He
had the right of way--let them unbar it, or crash to destruction--all
three!

Gripping the reins with his right hand, he raised his whip in his left
and let it fall, once--twice--three times. Somewhere in her straining,
breathless, driven body the filly had one ounce more left. Gallantly,
instantly, she gave it. The rail grazed the boy's left boot. His right
was driven up to the filly's loins.

She faltered--but she was through--through that strangling pocket,
reeling, staggering, half-blind and splendid, and the Suburban was hers
by a nod.

They lifted Tim in the famous floral horse-shoe, and they cheered and
cheered him again. "Grandest finish I ever see," said Faulkner, and "My
Gawd! what a drive!" said the stable foreman, gaping.

But to little Tim it meant only one thing--the greatest, most beautiful
thing that could be--the Terror was gone forever. He took a deep breath
and looked about him on a new world.

[Illustration]

JAPAN'S STRENGTH IN WAR

BY GENERAL KUROPATKIN

TRANSLATED BY GEORGE KENNAN

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

Although the trial of war through which our country and our army passed
in 1904-5 is now a subject for history, the material thus far collected
is not sufficiently abundant to enable the historian to estimate fairly
the events that preceded the war, nor to give a detailed explanation
of the defeats that we sustained in the course of it. It is urgently
necessary, however, that we should make immediate use of our recent
experience, because by ascertaining the nature of our mistakes and the
weaknesses of our troops we may learn what means should be adopted
to increase, hereafter, the material and spiritual strength of our
military force.

In times past, when wars were carried on by small standing armies,
defeats did not affect the every-day interests of the whole nation
so profoundly as they affect them now, when the obligation to render
military service is general, and when, in time of war, most of our
soldiers are drawn from the great body of the people. If a war is to
be successful, in these days, it must be carried on, not by an army,
but by an armed nation, and in such a contest all sides of the national
life are more seriously affected and all defeats are more acutely felt
than they were in times past.

When the national pride has been humiliated by failure in war, attempts
are usually made to ascertain what brought about the failure and who
was responsible for it. Some persons attribute it to general causes,
others to special causes. Some censure the system, or the régime,
while others throw the blame on particular individuals. I have been
so closely connected with immensely important events in the Far East,
and have been responsible to such an extent for the failure of our
military operations there, that I can hardly hope to take an absolutely
dispassionate and objective view of the persons and matters that I
shall deal with in the present work; but my object is not so much
to justify myself by replying to the charges that have been brought
against me personally as to furnish material that will make it easier
for the future historian to state fairly the reasons for our defeat,
and thus render possible the adoption of measures that will prevent
such defeats hereafter. The army that Russia put into the field in
1904-5 was unable, in the time allowed, to conquer the Japanese; and
yet Japan, only a short time before the war began, had no regular army
and was regarded by us as a second-class Power. How was she able to win
a complete victory over Russia at sea, and to defeat a powerful Russian
army on land? Many writers will study this question and, in time, they
will give us a comprehensive answer to it; but I shall confine myself,
in the present work, to an enumeration of the most broad and general
reasons for Japanese success. Among the most important of such reasons
is the following:--we did not fully appreciate the material and moral
strength of Japan and did not regard a conflict with her seriously
enough.[A]

_The Secret Growth of Japan's Army_

The Japanese first became our neighbors when, in the reign of Peter
the Great, we acquired the peninsula of Kamchatka. In 1860, by virtue
of the Treaty of Peking, we took peaceful possession of the extensive
Usuri territory; moved down to the boundary of Korea; and obtained
an outlet on the Sea of Japan. This sea, which is almost completely
enclosed by Korea and the Japanese islands, was immensely important
to the whole adjacent coast of the main land; but as the straits that
connected it with the ocean were in the hands of the Japanese, we might
easily be prevented by them from getting free access to the Pacific.
When we acquired the island of Sakhalin, we obtained an outlet through
the Tartar Strait; but that was all we had, and during a large part of
the time it was frozen over.

For a long time, Japan lived a life that was wholly apart from ours and
did not particularly attract our attention. We knew the Japanese as
extremely skilful and patient artisans; we were fond of the things that
they made; and we were charmed with the delicacy and bright coloring of
their artistic products; but, from a military point of view, we took no
interest in them and regarded them as a weak nation. Our sailors always
spoke with sympathetic appreciation of the country and its inhabitants,
and were delighted to stay in Japanese ports--especially Nagasaki,
where they were liked and favorably remembered; but our travellers,
diplomats, and naval officers entirely overlooked the awakening of an
energetic, independent people.

In 1867, the army of Japan consisted of nine battalions of infantry,
two squadrons of cavalry, and eight batteries, and numbered only 10,000
men. This force, which formed the _cadre_ of the present army, had French
teachers and adopted from the latter the French uniform. After the
Franco-German war of 1870-71, German officers took the places of the
French instructors; military service was made a national obligation;
and Japanese officers were sent to Europe, every year, for the purpose
of study. At the time of her war with China, Japan had an army
consisting of seven infantry divisions; but finding herself unable, at
the end of that war, to retain the fruits of her victory, on account
of her weakness both on land and at sea, she made every possible
effort to create an army and a fleet that would be strong enough to
protect her interests. On the 19th of March, 1896, the Mikado issued
a decree providing for such a reorganization of the army as would
double its strength in the course of seven years. This reorganization
was completed in 1903. Our military and naval authorities did not
overlook the creation and development in Japan of a strong army and
fleet; but they confined themselves to the collection and tabulation of
statistics. We kept an account of every ship built and every division
of troops organized; but we did not estimate highly enough these
beginnings of Japan, and did not admit the possibility of measuring her
fighting-power by European standards. The latest information that we
had with regard to her military strength, prior to the late war, was
compiled by our General Staff from the reports of Colonel Vannofski
and other Russian military agents in Tokio. It showed that her army,
on a peace footing, numbered 8,116 officers and 133,457 men (not
including the troops in Formosa); and on a war footing, 10,735 officers
(not including reserve officers) and 348,074 men, with perhaps 50,000
untrained reserve recruits. There was no mention of additional reserve
forces.

_Russian Generals Pigeonhole Reports of Japan's Fighting Strength_

In 1903 Colonel Adabash, who had just visited Japan, gave to General
Zhilinski, of our General Staff, very important information with regard
to new reserves which the Japanese were organizing for service in case
of war. Inasmuch, however, as this information did not agree at all
with that previously furnished by Colonel Vannofski, General Zhilinski
did not give it credence. A few months later, Captain Rusine, a very
talented officer who was acting as naval observer in Japan, made a
similar report upon Japanese reserves to his superiors, and extracts
from it were furnished to General Sakharoff, Chief of Staff of the
army. Although the information contained in this report ultimately
proved to be perfectly accurate, the report was pigeonholed, simply
because Generals Zhilinski and Sakharoff did not believe it; and in our
compendium of data with regard to the military strength of Japan in
1903-4, no reference whatever was made to additional reserve forces.
According to the figures of our General Staff, therefore, the total
number of available men in the standing army, the territorial army, and
the regular reserve of Japan, was a little more than 400,000.[B]

[Illustration: _Stereograph copyright, 1904, by Underwood & Underwood_

SCHOOL CHILDREN BEING DRILLED IN MILITARY TACTICS NEAR TOKIO, JAPAN]

Recently published official reports of General Kipke, Chief Medical
Inspector of the Japanese army, show that the loss of the Japanese in
killed and wounded, in the course of the war, was as follows:

Killed 47,387
Wounded 173,425

Total 220,812

Their loss in killed, wounded, and sick was 554,885--a number
considerably greater than the whole force which, according to the
figures of our General Staff, they could put into the field. They sent
320,000 sick and wounded back from Manchuria to Japan.

[Illustration: VISCOUNT KATSURA

PRIME MINISTER OF JAPAN DURING THE RUSSIAN-JAPANESE WAR]

Other available information is to the effect that the bodies of 60,624
killed were buried in the cemetery of honor in Tokio, and that, in
addition to these, 75,545 men died from wounds or disease. The Japanese
thus admit the loss of 135,000 men by death.[C]

Their Chief Medical Inspector says that their killed and wounded
amounted to 14.58 per cent of their entire force, from which it would
appear that they put into the field against us troops of various
categories to the number of 1,500,000--or more than three times the
estimate of our General Staff. In view of these facts, it is evident
that our information with regard to their fighting strength was
insufficient. At the time when they had hundreds of avowed and secret
agents in the Far East, studying the strength of our land and naval
forces, we entrusted the collection of data with regard to their
military strength and resources to a single officer of the General
Staff, and, unfortunately, our military observers were not always
well selected. One of these experts in Japanese affairs said, in
Vladivostok, before hostilities began, that, in the event of war, we
might count on one Russian soldier as equal to three Japanese. After
the first engagements he moderated his tone and admitted that it might
be necessary to put one Russian against every Japanese. At the end of
another month he declared that, in order to win victories, we must meet
every Japanese soldier in the field with three Russians. Another of
our military agents, who had been in Japan, predicted authoritatively
that Port Arthur would fall in a very short time, and that immediately
thereafter the same fate would overtake Vladivostok. I sharply
reprimanded the faint-hearted babbler and threatened to dismiss him
from the army if he continued to make such injurious and inopportune
remarks.

_Moral Superiority of the Japanese_

But it was not only with regard to Japan's material strength that
our information was insufficient. We underestimated, or entirely
overlooked, her moral strength. According to that great leader
Napoleon, three fourths of an army's success in war is due to the moral
character of its soldiers. This relation of moral character to material
success still exists, although the conditions of battle, in these
days, are more trying than they were in the Napoleonic wars. And now,
more than ever before, the moral strength of the army depends upon the
temper of the nation. Armies are now so organized that, in case of war,
soldiers are drawn, for the most part, from the reserves. A successful
war, therefore, must be a popular war, and victory must be attained by
the hearty coöperation of the whole people with its Government.
The recent contest in Manchuria was a popular war for the Japanese, but
not for us. The Korean question, and the question of naval supremacy
on the waters of the Pacific, involved vital Japanese interests, and
the immense importance of these interests was so clearly understood
and so fully appreciated by the Japanese people that the war for their
protection was a national war. Japan spent ten years in preparing
for it, and then the whole nation carried it on. Japanese soldiers,
deeply conscious of the bearing that their exploits might have on
the future of the country, fought with a self-sacrificing devotion
and a stubbornness that we had never seen in any war in which we had
previously been engaged. Sometimes, in villages that we had taken by
assault, a handful of Japanese soldiers would barricade themselves in
native houses and die there rather than retreat or surrender. Japanese
officers who fell into our hands--even wounded officers--generally
committed suicide.

It is quite possible that when we have a true history of the war based
on Japanese sources of information, our pride may receive another blow.
We already know that in many cases we outnumbered the enemy, and still
we were not victorious. The explanation of this, however, is very
simple. The Japanese, in these cases, were inferior to us materially,
but they were stronger than we morally.[D] To this aspect of the
struggle we should give particular attention, because military history
shows that, in all wars, the antagonist who is strongest morally wins
the victory. The only exceptions are such contests as that between the
English and the Boers in South Africa and that between the North and
the South in America. The English were weaker than the Boers morally,
but they put into the field an overwhelming force, and, in spite of
many defeats, they finally conquered. In the American war, the army
of the South was in the same position that the Boer army was, and the
Northerners had to put a superior force into the field in order to
overcome it.

[Illustration: GENERAL TERAUCHI

JAPANESE MINISTER OF WAR]

_Extraordinary Popularity of the War in Japan_

Among the sources of moral strength that failed to attract our
attention in Japan were the following: The training of her citizens had
long been patriotic and warlike in tendency; her educational system had
inculcated an ardent love of country; and even in her primary schools
children were prepared, from their earliest years, to be soldiers. The
people regarded the army with profound respect and trust, and young
men served in it with pride. All these things we failed to see, and we
overlooked also the iron discipline enforced in the army and the rôle
played in it by the samurai officers. We wholly failed to appreciate,
moreover, the vital importance of the Korean question to Japan, and the
strength of the hostile feeling that was raised against us when the
Japanese were deprived of the fruits of their victory after their war
with China. The party of Young Japan had long insisted upon war with
Russia and had been restrained only by a prudent Government.

When the war began, we recovered our powers of perception, but it was
then too late. And at that time, when the war was not only unpopular
in Russia but incomprehensible to the Russian people, the Japanese,
with a great outburst of enthusiastic patriotism, were responding,
like a single man, to the call to arms. In some cases Japanese mothers
even killed themselves, when their sons, on account of weakness or ill
health, were denied admission to the army. Hundreds of men volunteered
to undertake the most desperate enterprises, in the face of certain
death; and many officers and soldiers, before going to the front, had
funeral ceremonies performed over their bodies, in order to show that
they intended to die for their native land. The youth of the Empire
crowded into the army, and the heads of the most distinguished families
sought to serve their country by enlisting themselves, by sending
their sons to the front, or by helping to pay the expenses of the war.
Some Japanese regiments, in attacking our positions, threw themselves
with the cry of "Banzai!" upon our obstructions, struggled over or
through them, filled our ditches with the bodies of their dead, and
then, rushing across upon the corpses of their comrades, forced their
way into our entrenchments. The army and the whole people appreciated
the importance of the war, understood the significance of the events
that were taking place, and were ready to make sacrifices in order to
achieve success.

[Illustration: _Copyrighted by Underwood & Underwood_

GENERAL KODAMA

CHIEF STAFF OFFICER OF THE JAPANESE ARMY IN MANCHURIA]

_Military Training of Japanese Children_

After the Japanese-Chinese war, of which I made a most careful and
detailed study, I myself was inspired with a feeling of respect for the
Japanese army and watched its growth with anxiety. Then, in 1900, the
part played by the Japanese troops that coöperated with ours in the
province of Pechili confirmed me in the belief that they were excellent
soldiers. During my short stay in Japan, I was unable to acquaint
myself thoroughly with the country and its military forces, but what I
did learn was enough to convince me that the results attained by the
Japanese in the course of twenty-five or thirty years were astounding.
I saw a beautiful country, with a large and industrious population.
Intense activity prevailed everywhere, and I was impressed by the
people's joy in life, their love of country, and their faith in
their future. In their military school, where I saw a Spartan system
of education, the exercises of the cadets with pikes, rifles, and
broadswords were not approached by anything of the kind that I had
witnessed in Europe,--it was fighting of the fiercest character. At
the end of the struggle there was a hand-to-hand combat, which lasted
until the victors stood triumphant over the bodies of the vanquished
and tore off their masks. In these exercises, which were very severe,
the cadets struck one another fiercely and with wild cries; but the
moment a prearranged signal was given, or the fight came to an end,
the combatants drew themselves up in a line and their faces assumed an
expression of wooden composure.

[Illustration: _Stereograph copyrighted by the H. C. White Co._

MARSHAL OYAMA

COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF IN MANCHURIA OF THE JAPANESE ARMY DURING THE
RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR]

In all the public schools prominence was given to military exercises,
and the pupils took part in them with enthusiasm. Even in their walks
they practised running, flanking, and sudden, unexpected attacks of
one party on another. The history of Japan was everywhere made a means
of strengthening the pupils' patriotism and their belief in Japan's
invincibility. Particular stress was laid upon the country's successful
wars, the heroes of them were extolled, and the children were taught
that none of Japan's military enterprises had ever failed.

_Japan's Material Resources_

In the manufactories of arms I saw the turning out of rifles in immense
numbers, and the work was being done swiftly, accurately, and cheaply.
In Kobe and Nagasaki I inspected attentively the ship-building yards,
where they were constructing not only torpedo boats but armored
cruisers, and where all the work was being done by their own mechanics
and foremen under the direction of their own engineers. At the great
national exposition in Osaka there was a splendid and instructive
display of the country's manufactures, including textiles, products of
cottage industry, complicated instruments, grand pianos, and guns of
the largest caliber--all made in Japan, by Japanese workmen, and out of
Japanese materials. I saw nothing of foreign origin except raw cotton
and iron, which were imported from China and Europe. And the products
displayed at this exposition were not more worthy of attention than the
observant, courteous, and always dignified throng of Japanese visitors.

In the agriculture of Japan many of the methods were ancient, but the
culture was unquestionably high. The fields were carefully worked,
and the effort to make every foot of land yield all that it could,
the struggle to raise crops even on the mountain sides, and the
insufficiency of the country's food products despite this intensive
culture, showed that the people were becoming overcrowded on their
islands, and that the Korean question was for them a question of vital
importance. I lived ten days among the fishermen, and saw something
of the reverse side of Japan's rapid development under European
conditions. Many complaints were made to me of heavy taxes, which
had increased greatly in later years, and of the high cost of the
necessaries of life.

I witnessed reviews of the Japanese troops, including the division
of Guards, two regiments of the First Division, two regiments of
cavalry, and many batteries. The marching was admirable, and the
common soldiers appeared like our younkers. The officers and leaders
of the Japanese army whom I saw and met made upon me a very favorable
impression. The culture and knowledge of military affairs that many
of them possessed would have given them places of honor in any army.
With General Terauchi, the Japanese Minister of War, I had had
friendly relations ever since 1886, when we met in France at the
great manoeuvers directed by General Levalle. Among others whose
acquaintance I made were Generals Yamagata, Oyama, Kodama, Fukushima,
Nodzu, Hasegawa, and Murata, and the Imperial princes, Fushimi and
Kanin. In spite of a terrible war, which has separated by a barrier
nations that were apparently created for union and friendship, I
still cherish a sympathetic feeling for my Tokio acquaintances.
Especially do I remember with respect their ardent love of country and
their devotion to their Emperor--feelings that they have since made
manifest in deeds. I met also in Tokio many leaders in fields other
than that of war, among whom were Ito, Katsura, and Komura. In the
report that I made to the Emperor, after my return from Japan, I placed
the military power of the Japanese on a level with that of European
nations. I regarded one of our battalions as equal to two battalions of
Japanese in defence, but I estimated that in attack we should have two
battalions to their one. The test of war has shown that my conclusions
were correct. There were lamentable cases, of course, in which the
Japanese, with a smaller number of battalions, drove our forces from
the positions that they occupied; but these results were due either to
mistakes in the direction of our troops, or to numerical inferiority
in the fighting strength of our battalions. In the last days of the
battle of Mukden, some of our brigades consisted of hardly more than a
thousand bayonets. It is evident that the Japanese had to put into the
field only two or three battalions in order to deal successfully with a
brigade of such depleted strength.

All that I saw and learned of Japan, or her military strength, and of
the nature of her problems in the Far East, convinced me that it would
be necessary for us to come to a peaceable understanding with her, and
that we should have to make great concessions--concessions that, at
first sight, might seem humiliating to our national pride--in order to
avoid war with her. As I have already said, I did not hesitate even
to propose the return of Port Arthur and Kwang-tung to China and the
sale of the southern branch of the Eastern Chinese Railway. I foresaw
that the threatened war would be extremely unpopular in Russia; that
there would be no manifestation of patriotic spirit, on account of the
people's ignorance of the objects of the war; and that the leaders of
the anti-Government party would avail themselves of the opportunity
to increase domestic discontent and disorder. I did not, however,
anticipate that the Japanese would display so much energy, activity,
courage, and lofty patriotism, and I therefore erred in my estimate of
the time that the struggle would require. In view of the insufficiency
of our railroad transportation, we should have allowed three years for
the war, instead of the year and a half that I thought would be enough.

With all their strong points, the Japanese manifested weaknesses that
may be shown again in future wars. I shall not enumerate them, but I
will say that, in many cases, the outcome of the fight was in doubt,
and that in other cases we escaped defeat only through the errors of
the Japanese commanders. There is a saying that "the victor is not
judged." I may add that to the victor is rendered homage, and this is
true of the Japanese. The general tone of the whole press was favorable
to them, and even their practical and well-balanced heads might well
have been turned by the praise that they received. No one went further
in this direction than Count Leo Tolstoi. In an article published in
a foreign journal,[E] our gifted author and philosopher expressed
the conviction that the Japanese defeated us because, owing to their
warlike patriotism and the power of their ruling authorities, they are
the mightiest nation on earth, and are not to be conquered by any one,
either at sea or on land.

[Illustration: _Stereograph copyrighted by Underwood & Underwood_

JAPANESE ARMY TRANSPORTATION CORPS MOVING ONE OF THE GREAT SIEGE GUNS
WHICH WERE USED IN THE DESTRUCTION OF PORT ARTHUR]

The strength of Japan was in the complete union of her people, army,
and government, and it was this union that gave her the victory. We
carried on the contest with our army alone, and even the army was
weakened by the unfavorable disposition of the people toward all things
military. Our aims in the Far East were not understood by our officers
and soldiers, and, furthermore, the general feeling of discontent
which already prevailed in all classes of our population made the war
so hateful that it aroused no patriotism whatever. Many good officers
hastened to offer their services--a fact that is easily explained--but
all ranks of society remained indifferent. A few hundreds of the common
people volunteered, but no eagerness to enter the army was shown by the
sons of our high dignitaries, of our merchants, or of our scientific
men. Out of the tens of thousands of students who were then living
in idleness,[F] many of them at the expense of the Empire, only a
handful volunteered,[G] while at that very time, in Japan, sons of the
most distinguished citizens--even boys fourteen and fifteen years of
age--were striving for places in the ranks. Japanese mothers, as I have
already said, killed themselves through shame, when their sons were
found to be physically unfit for military service.

_Russian Discipline Undermined by the Revolutionists_

The indifference of Russia to the bloody struggle which her sons were
carrying on--for little understood objects and in a foreign land--could
not fail to discourage even the best soldiers. Men are not inspired
to deeds of heroism by such an attitude toward them on the part of
their country. But Russia was not merely indifferent. Leaders of the
revolutionary party strove, with extraordinary energy, to multiply our
chances of failure, hoping thus to facilitate the attainment of their
own dark objects. There appeared a whole literature of clandestine
publications, intended to lessen the confidence of officers in their
superiors, to shake the trust of soldiers in their officers, and to
undermine the faith of the whole army in the Government. In an "Address
to the Officers of the Russian Army," published and widely circulated
by the Social Revolutionists, the main idea was expressed as follows:

"The worst and most dangerous enemy of the Russian people--in fact, its
only enemy--is the present Government. It is this Government that is
carrying on the war with Japan, and you are fighting under its banners
in an unjust cause. Every victory that you win threatens Russia with
the calamity involved in the maintenance of what the Government calls
'order,' and every defeat that you suffer brings nearer the hour of
deliverance. Is it surprising, therefore, that Russians rejoice when
your adversary is victorious?"

But persons who had nothing in common with the Social Revolutionary
party, and who sincerely loved their country, gave aid to Russia's
enemies by expressing the opinion, in the press, that the war was
irrational, and by criticizing the mistakes of the Government that had
failed to prevent it. In a brochure entitled "Thoughts Suggested by
Recent Military Operations," M. Gorbatoff referred to such persons as
follows:

"But it is a still more grievous fact that while our heroic soldiers
are carrying on a life-and-death struggle, these so-called friends of
the people whisper to them: 'Gentlemen, you are heroes, but you are
facing death without reason. You will die to pay for Russia's mistaken
policy, and not to defend Russia's vital interests.' What can be more
terrible than the part played by these so-called friends of the people
when they undermine in this way the intellectual faith of heroic men
who are going to their death? One can easily imagine the state of
mind of an officer or soldier who goes into battle after reading,
in newspapers or magazines, articles referring in this way to the
irrationality and uselessness of the war. It is from these self-styled
friends of the people that the revolutionary party gets support in its
effort to break down the discipline of our troops."

Soldiers of the reserves, when called into active service, were
furnished by the anti-Government party with proclamations intended
to prejudice them against their officers, and similar proclamations
were sent to the army in Manchuria. Troops in the field received
letters apprising them of popular disorders in Russia, and men sick in
hospitals, as well as men on duty in our advanced positions, read in
the newspapers articles that undermined their faith in their commanders
and their leaders. The work of breaking down the discipline of the army
was carried on energetically, and, of course, it was not altogether
fruitless. The leaders of the movement, in striving to attain their
well defined objects, took for their motto: "The worse things are, the
better"; and the ideal at which they aimed was the state of affairs
brought about by the mutinous sailors on the armor-clad warship
"Potemkin." These enemies of the army and the country were aided by
certain other persons who were simply foolish and unreasonable. One can
imagine the indignation that the Menchikoffs, the Kirilloffs and the
Kuprins would feel, if they were told that they played the same part in
the army that was played by the persons who incited the insubordination
on the "Potemkin"; yet such was the case. It would be difficult,
indeed, to imagine anything that could have been said to the sailors of
the armor-clad for the purpose of exciting them against their officers
that would have been worse than the language of Menchikoff, when, in
writing of our army officers, he referred to their "blunted conscience,
their drunkenness, their moral looseness, and their inveterate
laziness." Firm in spirit though Russians might be, the indifference of
one class of the population, and the seditious incitement of another,
could hardly fail to have upon many of them an influence that was not
favorable to the successful prosecution of war.

_Attacks of the Russian Press_

[Illustration: _Copyrighted by Underwood & Underwood_

SCENE IN SHIBA PARK, TOKIO, WHERE TOGO'S NAVAL VICTORY WAS CELEBRATED
WITH WILD ENTHUSIASM]

The party opposed to the Government distributed among our troops,
especially in the West, hundreds of thousands of seditious
proclamations exhorting the soldiers to work for defeat rather than
for victory. Writers for newspapers and magazines, even though they
did not belong to the anti-Government party, contributed to its
success by lavishing abuse upon the army and its representatives. War
correspondents, who knew little about our operations and still less
about those of the Japanese, and who based their statements, not upon
what they had seen, but upon what they had heard from untrustworthy
sources, increased the disaffection of the people by exaggerating the
seriousness of our failures. Even army officers, writing from the
theatre of war, or after returning to Russia for reasons that were
not always creditable to them, sought to gain reputation by means of
hasty criticism which was often erroneous in its statements of fact and
generally discouraging or complaining in tone. On the fighting line,
heroic men without number faced and fought the enemy courageously for
months, without ever losing their faith in ultimate victory; but from
that part of the field little trustworthy news came. Brave soldiers,
modest junior officers, and the commanders of regiments, companies,
squadrons, and batteries in our advanced positions, did not write and
had no time to write of their own labors and exploits, and few of the
correspondents were willing to share their perils for the sake of being
able to observe and describe their heroic deeds. There were among the
correspondents some brave men who sincerely wished to be of use; but
their lack of even elementary training in military science made it
impossible for them to understand the complicated problems of war, and
their work therefore was comparatively unproductive. The persons best
qualified to see and judge, and to give information to the reading
public, were the foreign military observers, who were attached to our
armies in the field and who, in many cases, were extremely fortunate
selections. These officers felt a brotherly affection for the soldiers
whose perils and hardships they shared, and were regarded by the latter
with love and esteem. Their reports, however, are very long in coming
to us.

[Illustration: _Stereograph copyrighted by the H. C. White Co._

JAPANESE ARTILLERY TRANSPORTING A 7-1/2 C. M. MOUNTAIN GUN ACROSS THE
HILLS]

Some of our correspondents, who lived in the rear of the army and saw
the seamy side of the war, wrote descriptions of drunkenness, revelry,
and profligacy (at Kharbin, for example) which distressed our reading
public and gave a one-sided view of army life. Our press might have
made our first defeats a means of rousing the spirit of patriotism
and self-sacrifice; it might have exhorted the people to redouble
their efforts as the difficulties of the war increased; it might have
helped the Government to fill the gaps in our thinned ranks; it might
have encouraged the faint-hearted, called forth the country's noblest
sons, and opened to the army new sources of material and spiritual
strength. But instead of doing any of these things, it played more or
less into the hands of our foreign and domestic enemies; made the war
hateful to the great mass of the population; depressed the spirits of
soldiers going to the front, and undermined, in every way, the latter's
faith in their officers and their rulers. This course of procedure
did not rouse in the nation a determination to increase its efforts
and to win victory at last, in spite of all difficulties. Quite the
contrary! The soldiers who went to the front to fill up or reinforce
our army carried with them seditious proclamations and the seeds of
future defeats. Commanding officers in the Siberian military districts
reported, as early as February, that detachments of supernumerary
troops and reservists had plundered several railway stations, and at
a later time regular troops, on their way to the front, were guilty
of similar bad conduct. The drifting to the rear of large numbers
of soldiers--especially the older reservists--while battles were in
progress, was due not so much to cowardice as to the unsettling of
the men's minds and to a disinclination on their part to continue the
war. I may add that the opening of peace negotiations in Portsmouth,
at a time when we were preparing for decisive operations, affected
unfavorably the morale of the army's strongest elements.

_The Russian Army Cut Off from the Nation_

Mr. E. Martinoff, in an article entitled "Spirit and Temper of the
Two Armies," points out that "even in time of peace, the Japanese
people were so educated as to develop in them a patriotic and martial
spirit. The very idea of war with Russia was generally popular, and
throughout the contest the army was supported by the sympathy of the
nation. In Russia, the reverse was true. Patriotism was shaken by the
dissemination of ideas of cosmopolitanism and disarmament, and in the
midst of a difficult campaign the attitude of the country toward the
army was one of indifference, if not of actual hostility."

This judgment is accurate, and it is evident, of course, that with
such a relation between Russian society and the Manchurian army, it
was impossible to expect from the latter any patriotic spirit, or
any readiness to sacrifice life for the sake of the fatherland. In
an admirable article entitled "The Feeling of Duty and the Love of
Country," published in the "Russian Invalid" in 1906, Mr. A. Bilderling
expressed certain profoundly true ideas as follows:

"Our lack of success may have been due, in part, to various and
complicated causes; to the misconduct of particular persons, to bad
generalship, to lack of preparation in the army and the navy, to
inadequacy of material resources, and to misappropriations in the
departments of equipment and supply; but the principal reason for our
defeat lies deeper, and is to be found in lack of patriotism, and in
the absence of a feeling of duty toward and love for the fatherland.
In a conflict between two peoples, the things of most importance are
not material resources, but moral strength, exaltation of spirit, and
patriotism. Victory is most likely to be achieved by the nation in
which these qualities are most highly developed. Japan had long been
preparing for war with us; all of her people desired it; and a feeling
of lofty patriotism pervaded the whole country. In her army and her
fleet, therefore, every man, from the commander-in-chief to the last
soldier, not only knew what he was fighting for and what he might have
to die for, but understood clearly that upon success in the struggle
depended the fate of Japan, her political importance, and her future in
the history of the world. Every soldier knew also that the whole nation
stood behind him. With us, on the other hand, the war was unpopular
from the very beginning. We neither desired it nor anticipated it, and,
consequently, we were not prepared for it. Soldiers were hastily put
into railway trains, and when, after a journey that lasted a month,
they alighted in Manchuria, they did not know in what country they
were, nor whom they were to fight, nor what the war was about. Even our
higher commanders went to the front unwillingly and from a mere sense
of duty. The whole army, moreover, felt that it was regarded by the
country with indifference; that its life was not shared by the people;
and that it was a mere fragment, cut off from the nation, thrown to a
distance of nine thousand versts, and there abandoned to the caprice of
fate. Before decisive fighting began, therefore, one of the contending
armies advanced with the full expectation and confident belief that it
would be victorious, while the other went forward with a demoralizing
doubt of its own success."

Generally speaking, the man who conquers in war is the man who is
least afraid of death. We were unprepared in previous wars, as well
as in this, and in previous wars we made mistakes; but when the
preponderance of moral strength was on our side, as in the wars with
the Swedes, the French, the Turks, the Caucasian mountaineers and the
natives of Central Asia, we were victorious. In the late war, for
reasons that are extremely complicated, our moral strength was less
than that of the Japanese; and it was this inferiority, rather than
mistakes in generalship, that caused our defeats, and that forced us
to make tremendous efforts in order to succeed at all. Our lack of
moral strength--as compared with the Japanese--affected all ranks of
our army, from the highest to the lowest, and greatly reduced our
fighting power. In a war waged under different conditions--a war in
which the army had the confidence and encouragement of the country--the
same officers and the same troops would have accomplished far more
than they accomplished in Manchuria. The lack of martial spirit, of
moral exaltation, and of heroic impulse, affected particularly our
stubbornness in battle. In many cases we did not have dogged resolution
enough to conquer such antagonists as the Japanese. Instead of holding,
with unshakable tenacity, the positions assigned them, our troops often
retreated, and, in such cases, our commanding officers of all ranks,
without exception, lacked the power or the means to set things right.
Instead of making renewed and extraordinary efforts to wrest victory
from the enemy, they either permitted the retreat of the troops under
their command, or themselves ordered such retreat. The army, however,
never lost its strong sense of duty; and it was this that enabled
many divisions, regiments, and battalions to increase their power
of resistance with every battle. This peculiarity of the late war,
together with our final acquirement of numerical preponderance and a
noticeable decline of Japanese ardor, gave us reason to regard the
future with confidence, and left no room for doubt as to our ultimate
victory.

_The Failure of the Russian Fleet_

Among other reasons for the success of the Japanese, I may mention the
following.

The leading part in the war was to have been taken by our fleet. In the
General Staff of the navy, as well as in that of the army, a detailed
account was kept of all Japan's ships of war; but the directors
of naval affairs in the Far East reckoned only tonnage, guns, and
calibers, and when, in 1903, they found that the arithmetical totals
of our Far Eastern fleet exceeded those of the entire Japanese fleet,
they adopted, as a basis for our plan of operations, the following
conclusions:

1. "The relation that the strength of the Japanese fleet bears to the
strength of our fleet is such that the possibility of the defeat of the
latter is inadmissible."

2. "The landing of the Japanese at Yinkow, or in Korea Bay, is not to
be regarded as practicable."

The strength of the land force that a war with Japan would require
depended upon three things: (1) the strength of the army that the
Japanese could put into Manchuria, or across our boundary; (2) the
strength of our fleet; and (3) the transporting capacity of the railway
upon which our troops would have to depend in concentration. If our
fleet could defeat the fleet of the Japanese, military operations on
the main land would be unnecessary. And even if the Japanese were
not defeated in a general naval engagement, they would either have
to obtain complete mastery of the sea, or leave a considerable part
of their army at home for the protection of their own coast. Without
command of the sea, moreover, they could not risk a landing on the
Liao-tung peninsula, but would have to march through Korea, and that
would give us time for concentration. By their desperate night attack
upon our fleet at Port Arthur, before the declaration of war,[H] they
obtained a temporary superiority in armored vessels, and made great
use of it in getting command of the sea. Our fleet--especially after
the death of Admiral Makaroff at the most critical moment in the
execution of the Japanese plan of campaign--offered no resistance to
the enemy whatever. Even when they landed in the immediate vicinity of
Port Arthur, we did not make so much as an attempt to interfere with
them. The results of this inaction were very damaging to our army. The
Japanese, instead of finding it impossible to land troops in Korea Bay,
as our naval authorities anticipated, were able to threaten us with a
descent along the whole coast of the Liao-tung peninsula, beginning at
Kwang-tung. Notwithstanding our weakness on land, Admiral Alexeieff
thought it necessary to authorize a wide scattering of our troops, so
we prepared to meet the Japanese on the Yalu, at Yinkow, and in the
province of Kwang-tung. He had also permitted a dispersal of our naval
forces, so that we were weak everywhere.

_Advantages Secured by Japan's Naval Victory_

Instead of making a landing in Korea only,--as was anticipated in the
plan worked out at Port Arthur,--the Japanese, with their immense fleet
of transports, landed three armies on the Liao-tung peninsula and a
fourth in Korea. Then, leaving one army in front of Port Arthur, they
pushed the other three forward toward our forces, Which were slowly
concentrating on the Haicheng-Liaoyang line in southern Manchuria.
Thus, having taken the initiative at sea, they obtained the same
advantage on land. Their command of the sea enabled them to disregard
the defence of their own coast and move against us with their entire
strength. In this way--contrary to our anticipations--they were able,
in the first stage of the war, to put into the field a force that was
superior to ours. Command of the sea, moreover, made it possible for
them to supply their armies quickly with all necessary munitions, and
to transport to the field, in a few days, masses of heavy supplies,
which we, with our feeble railroad, were hardly able to get in months.
But command of the sea, and the almost complete inactivity of our
fleet, gave them another advantage, not less important, and that
was the possibility of bringing safely to their ports and arsenals
quantities of commissary and military stores, weapons, horses, and
cattle, which had been ordered in Europe and America. Their line of
communications, furthermore, was short and secure, while we were at
a distance of eight thousand versts from our base of supplies and
were connected with our country only by one weak line of railway. The
advantage that they had over us in this respect was immense. The slow
concentration of our army, which had to be brought eight thousand
versts over a single-track railroad, gave them time, after the war
began, to form new bodies of troops, in considerable numbers, and send
them to the front. They had time enough, also, to supply their army
with innumerable machine guns, after they had observed, in the early
stages of the war, the importance of machine-gun fire.

The field of military operations in Manchuria had been familiar to the
Japanese ever since their war with China. Its heat, its heavy rains,
its mountains and its kiaoliang, were well known to them, because they
had seen them all in their own country. In the mountains, especially,
they felt perfectly at home, while a mountainous environment, to our
troops, was oppressive. The Japanese, moreover, in their ten years of
preparation for war with us, had not only studied Manchuria, but had
secured there their own agents, who were of the greatest use to their
army. The Chinese, I may add, assisted the Japanese, notwithstanding
the severity and even cruelty with which the latter treated them.

The Japanese had a considerable advantage over us, also, in their
high-powered ammunition, their machine guns, their innumerable mountain
guns, their abundant supply of explosives, and their means of attack
and defence in the shape of wire, mines, and hand grenades. Their
organization, equipment, and transport carts were all better adapted
to the field of operations than ours were, and their bodies of sappers
were more numerous than ours.

The Japanese soldiers had been so trained as to develop self-reliance
and ability to take the lead, and they were credited by foreign
military observers with "intelligence, initiative, and quickness," In
the fighting instructions that were given them, very material changes
were made after the war began. At the outset, for example, night
attacks were not recommended; but they soon satisfied themselves that
night attacks were profitable and they afterward made great use of
them. Major von Luwitz, of the German army, in a brochure entitled "The
Japanese Attack in the War in Eastern Asia in 1904-05" says that while
the Japanese did not neglect any means of making attacks effective, the
secret of their success lay in their determination to get close to the
enemy, regardless of consequences.

_The Intellectual Superiority of the Japanese Soldier_

The non-commissioned officers in the Japanese army were much superior
to ours, on account of the better education and greater intellectual
development of the Japanese common people. Many of them might have
discharged the duties of commissioned officers with perfect success.
The defects of our soldiers--both regulars and reservists--were the
defects of the population as a whole. The peasants were imperfectly
developed intellectually, and they made soldiers who had the same
failing. The intellectual backwardness of our soldiers was a great
disadvantage to us, because war now requires far more intelligence and
initiative, on the part of the individual soldier, than ever before.
Our men fought heroically in compact masses, or in fairly close
formation, but if deprived of their officers they were more likely to
fall back than to advance. In the mass we had immense strength; but few
of our soldiers were capable of fighting intelligently as individuals.
In this respect the Japanese were much superior to us. Their
non-commissioned officers were far better developed, intellectually,
than ours, and among such officers, as well as among many of the
common soldiers, whom we took as prisoners, we found diaries which
showed not only good education but knowledge of what was happening and
intelligent comprehension of the military problems to be solved. Many
of them could draw maps skilfully, and one common soldier was able to
show accurately, by means of a plan sketched in the sand, the relative
positions of the Japanese forces and ours.

But the qualities that contributed most to the triumph of the Japanese
were their high moral spirit, and the stubborn determination with which
the struggle for success was carried on by every man in their army,
from the common soldier to the commander-in-chief. In many cases, their
situation was so distressing that it required extraordinary power
of will on their part to stand fast or to advance. But the officers
seemed to have resolution enough to call on their men for impossible
efforts--not even hesitating to shoot those that fell back--and the
soldiers, rallying their last physical and spiritual strength, often
wrested the victory away from us. One thing is certain: if the whole
Japanese army had not been inspired with an ardent patriotism; if it
had not been sympathetically supported by the whole nation; and if all
its officers and soldiers had not appreciated the immense importance
of the struggle, even such resolution as that of the Japanese leaders
would have failed to achieve such results.

[A] General Kuropatkin makes frequent use of the expression
"moral strength," or "moral character," and often employs the
English word "moral" instead of the corresponding Russian word.
He evidently intends that the adjective shall be understood in
its broadest signification, as a term covering patriotism, the
sense of duty, capacity for self-sacrifice, and all the qualities
that go to make up character as distinct from mere intellectual
ability.--G. K.

[B] Considerations of space have forced me to omit the greater
part of General Kuropatkin's detailed and somewhat technical
statement with regard to Japan's military strength and the extent
to which it was underestimated by the Russian General Staff.--G. K.

[C] According to information contained in Immanuel's work, "The
Russo-Japanese War," the Japanese lost 218,000 men in battle.

[D] General Kuropatkin uses the English words "materially" and
"morally."--G. K.

[E] _Fortnightly Review._

[F] On account of student disorders that had led to the closing of
the universities.--G. K.

[G] Medical students excepted.

[H] General Kuropatkin, it will be noticed, calls this night
attack "desperate," but does not characterize it as treacherous
or unfair. At the time when it occurred, however, the Russian
Government denounced it as a dishonorable violation of civilized
usage, if not of international law, while the loyal Russian
press held Japan up to the scorn of the world as a tricky and
treacherous antagonist. It is an interesting but little known fact
that the Tsar himself had ordered Admiral Alexeieff to attack
the Japanese in the same way, without notice and before any
declaration of war had been made. In the historically important
series of official dispatches from the archives of Port Arthur,
published in the liberal Russian review "Osvobozhdenie" at
Stuttgart in 1905 appears the following telegram sent by the Tsar
to the Viceroy just after the Japanese had broken off diplomatic
relations.

ST. PETERSBURG, JANUARY 26, 1904, O. S.

ALEXEIEFF

PORT ARTHUR.

It is desirable that the Japanese, and not we, should begin
military operations. If, therefore, they do not attack us, you
must not oppose their landing in southern Korea, or on the eastern
coast as far north as Gensan, inclusive. But if their fleet makes
a descent upon the western coast, or, without making a descent,
goes north of the 38th parallel, you are authorized to attack
them, without waiting for the first shot from their side. I rely
on you. May God assist you.

(Signed)

NICHOLAS

(Signature in the Tsar's own hand)

It thus appears that Russia intended to attack Japan without
notice and without a declaration of war, but Alexeieff was not
quick enough--G. K.

[Illustration]

THE DEATH OF HENRY IRVING

BY ELLEN TERRY

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

_Copyright, 1908, by Ellen Terry (Mrs. Carew)_

I have now nearly finished the history of my fifty years upon the stage.

A good deal has been left out through want of skill in selection. Some
things have been included which perhaps it would have been wiser to
omit. I have tried my best to tell "all things faithfully," and it is
possible that I have given offence where offence was not dreamed of;
that some people will think that I should not have said this, while
others, approving of "this," will be quite certain that I ought not to
have said "that."

"One said it thundered ... another that an angel spake----"

It's the point of view.

During my struggles with my refractory, fragmentary, and unsatisfactory
memories, I have realised that life itself is a point of view. So if
any one said to me: "And is this, then, what you call your life?" I
should not resent the question one little bit.

"We have heard," continues my imaginary and disappointed interlocutor,
"a great deal about your life in the theatre. You have told us of plays
and parts and rehearsals, of actors good and bad, of critics and of
playwrights, of success and failure, but after all your whole life has
not been lived in the theatre. Have you nothing to tell us about your
different homes, your family life, your social diversions, your friends
and acquaintances? During your long life there have been great changes
in manners and customs; political parties have altered; a great Queen
has died; your country has been engaged in two or three serious wars.
Did all these things make no impression on you? Can you tell us nothing
of your life in the world?"

And I have to answer that I have lived very little in the world. After
all, the life of an actress belongs to the theatre, as the life of a
politician to the State.

* * * * *

The recognition of my fifty years of stage life by the public and by
my profession was quite unexpected. Henry Irving said to me not long
before his death in 1905 that he believed that they (the theatrical
profession) "intended to celebrate our Jubilee." (If he had lived, he
would have completed his fifty years on the stage in the autumn of
1906.) He said that there would be a monster performance at Drury Lane,
and that already the profession were discussing what form it was to
take.

After his death, I thought no more of the matter. Indeed, I did not
want to think about it, for any recognition of my Jubilee which did not
include his seemed to me very unnecessary.

[Illustration: SIR HENRY IRVING

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH IN THE POSSESSION OF MISS EVELYN SMALLEY]

[Illustration: _From the collection of Miss Evelyn Smalley_

"OLIVIA"

DRAWN BY SIR EDWIN HENRY FOR MISS HENRY'S JUBILEE PROGRAMME]

Of course, I was pleased that others thought it necessary. I enjoyed
all the celebrations. Even the speeches that I had to make did not
spoil my enjoyment. The difficulty was to thank people as they deserved.

I can never forget that London's youngest newspaper first conceived the
idea of celebrating my stage Jubilee. Of course, the old-established
journals didn't like it, but I suppose no scheme of this kind is ever
organized without some people not liking something!

The matinée given in my honour at Drury Lane by the theatrical
profession was a wonderful sight. The two things about it which touched
me most deeply were my visit the night before to the crowd who were
waiting to get into the gallery, and the presence of Eleonora Duse,
who came all the way from Florence just to honour me. I appreciated
very much, too, the kindness of Signor Caruso in singing for me. I did
not know him at all, and the gift of his service was essentially the
impersonal desire of an artist to honour another artist.

When the details of my Jubilee performance at Drury Lane were being
arranged, the committee decided to ask certain distinguished artists
to contribute to the programme. They were all delighted about it, and
such busy men as Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Mr. Abbey, Mr. Byam Shaw,
Mr. Walter Crane, Mr. Bernard Partridge, Mr. James Pryde, Mr. Orpen,
and Mr. William Nicholson all gave some of their work to me. Mr.
Sargent was asked if he would allow the first Lady Macbeth sketch to
be reproduced. He found that it would not reproduce well, so in the
height of the season and of his work with fashionable sitters, he did
an entirely new sketch, in black and white, of the same subject! This
act of kind friendship I could never forget, even if the picture were
not in front of me at this minute to remind me of it! "You must think
of me as one of the people bowing down to you in the picture," he wrote
to me when he sent the new version for the programme. Nothing during my
Jubilee celebrations touched me more than this wonderful kindness of
Mr. Sargent's.

Burne-Jones would have done something for my Jubilee programme too,
I think, had he lived. He was one of my kindest friends, and his
letters--he was a heaven-born letter-writer--were like no one else's,
full of charm and humour and feeling. Once, when I sent him a trifle
for some charity, he wrote me this particularly charming letter:

"Dear Lady,

"This morning came the delightful crinkly paper that always means
you! If anybody else ever used it, I think I should assault them! I
certainly wouldn't read their letter or answer it.

"And I know the cheque will be very useful. If I thought much about
those wretched homes, or saw them often, I should do no more work, I
know. There is but one thing to do--to help with a little money if you
can manage it, and then try hard to forget. Yes, I am certain that I
should never paint again if I saw much of those hopeless lives that
have no remedy....

"You would always have been lovely and made some beauty about you if
you had been born there--but I should have got drunk and beaten my
family and been altogether horrible! When everything goes just as I
like, and painting prospers a bit, and the air is warm, and friends
well, and everything perfectly comfortable, I can just manage to behave
decently, and a spoilt fool I am--that's the truth. But wherever you
were, some garden would grow.

"Yes, I know Winchelsea and Rye and Lynn and Hythe--all bonny places,
and Hythe has a church it may be proud of. Under the sea is another
Winchelsea, a poor drowned city--about a mile out at sea, I think,
always marked in old maps as 'Winchelsea Dround.' If ever the sea goes
back on that changing coast, there may be great fun when the spires and
towers come up again. It's a pretty land to drive in.

"I am growing downright stupid--I can't work at all, nor think of
anything. Will my wits ever come back to me?

[Illustration: _From the collection of Miss Evelyn Smalley_

_Copyright by Window & Grove_

ELLEN TERRY AS HERMIONE IN "THE WINTER'S TALE"

THE PART PLAYED BY MISS TERRY AT HIS MAJESTY'S THEATRE IN 1906]

"And when are you coming back--when will the Lyceum be in its rightful
hands again? I refuse to go there till you come back...."

* * * * *

One of those little things almost too good to be true happened at
the close of the Drury Lane matinée. A four-wheeler was hailed for
me by the stage-door keeper, and my daughter and I drove off to Lady
Bancroft's in Berkeley Square to leave some flowers. Outside the
house, the cabman told my daughter that in old days he had often
driven Charles Kean from the Princess Theatre, and that sometimes the
little Miss Terrys were put inside the cab too and given a lift! My
daughter thought it such an extraordinary coincidence that the old
man should have come to the stage door of Drury Lane by a mere chance
on my Jubilee day, that she took his address, and I was to send him a
photograph and remuneration. But I promptly lost the address, and was
never able to trace the old man.

[Illustration: 150 GRAFTON STREET

THE HOUSE WHERE HENRY IRVING LIVED DURING THE PERIOD OF HIS LYCEUM
MANAGEMENT]

I was often asked during these Jubilee days, "how I felt about it all,"
and I never could answer sensibly. The strange thing is that I don't
know even now what was in my heart. Perhaps it was one of my chief joys
that I had not to say good-bye at any of the celebrations. I could
still speak to my profession as a fellow-comrade on the active list and
to the public as one still in their service.

All the time I knew perfectly well that the great show of honour and
"friending" was not for me alone. Never for one instant did I forget
this, nor that the light of the great man by whose side I had worked
for a quarter of a century was still shining on me from his grave.

* * * * *

It is commonly known, I think, that Henry Irving's health first began
to fail in 1896.

He went home to Grafton Street after the first night of the revival
of "Richard III." and slipped on the stairs, injuring his knee. With
characteristic fortitude, he struggled to his feet unassisted and
walked to his room. This made the consequences of the accident far more
serious, and he was not able to act for weeks.

It was a bad year at the Lyceum.

In 1898, when we were on tour, he caught a chill. Inflammation of the
lungs, bronchitis, pneumonia followed. His heart was affected. He was
never really well again.

When I think of his work during the next seven years, I could weep!
Never was there a more admirable, extraordinary worker; never was any
one more splendid-couraged and patient.

The seriousness of his illness in 1898 was never really known. He
nearly died.

"I am still fearfully anxious about H," I wrote to my daughter at the
time. "It will be a long time at the best before he gains strength....
But now I do hope for the best. I'm fairly well so far. All he wants is
for me to keep my health, not my head. He knows I'm doing that! Last
night I did three acts of Sans-Gêne and Nance Oldfield thrown in! That
is a bit too much--awful work--and I can't risk it again.

"A telegram just came: 'Steadily improving.' ... You should have seen
Norman[I] as Shylock! It was not a bare 'get-through.' It was--the
first night--an admirable performance, as well as a plucky one.... H.
is more seriously ill than anyone dreams.... His look! Like the last
act of Louis XI."

[Illustration: HENRY IRVING AS BECKET

THE PART IN WHICH IRVING MADE HIS LAST APPEARANCE ON OCTOBER 13, 1905,
THE NIGHT OF HIS DEATH]

In 1902, on the last provincial tour that we ever went together, he
was ill again, but he did not give in. One night when his cough was
rending him, and he could hardly stand up for weakness, he acted so
brilliantly and strongly that it was easy to believe in Christian
Science "treatment." Strange to say, a newspaper man noticed the
splendid power of his performance that night and wrote of it with
uncommon discernment--a _provincial_ critic, by the way.

In London, at the time, they were always urging Henry Irving to produce
new plays by new playwrights! But in the face of the failure of most of
the new work, and of his departing strength--and of the extraordinary
support given him in the old plays (during this 1902 tour we took
£4,000 at Glasgow in one week!)--Henry took the wiser course in doing
nothing but the old plays to the end of the chapter.

I realised how near, not only the end of the chapter, but the end of
the book was when he was taken ill at Wolverhampton in the spring of
1905.

We had not acted together for more than two years then, and times were
changed indeed.

I went down to Wolverhampton when the news of his illness reached
London. I arrived late and went to an hotel. It was not a good hotel,
nor could I find a very good florist when I got up early the next
day and went out with the intention of buying Henry some flowers. I
wanted some bright-coloured ones for him--he had always liked bright
flowers--and this florist dealt chiefly in white flowers--_funeral_
flowers.

At last I found some daffodils--my favourite flower. I bought a bunch,
and the kind florist, whose heart was in the right place if his flowers
were not, found me a nice simple glass to put it in. I knew the sort of
vase that I should find at Henry's hotel.

I remembered, on my way to the doctor's--for I had decided to see the
doctor first--that in 1892, when my dear mother died, and I did not
act for a few nights, when I came back, I found my room at the Lyceum
filled with daffodils. "To make it look like sunshine," Henry said.

The doctor talked to me quite frankly.

"His heart is dangerously weak," he said.

"Have you told him?" I asked.

"I had to, because, the heart being in that condition, he must be
careful."

"Did he understand _really_?"

"Oh, yes. He said he quite understood."

(Yet, a few minutes later when I saw Henry, and begged him to remember
what the doctor had said about his heart, he exclaimed: "Fiddle! It's
not my heart at all! It's my _breath_!" Oh, the ignorance of great men!)

"I also told him," the Wolverhampton doctor went on, "that he must not
work so hard in future."

I said; "He will, though,--and he's stronger than any one."

Then I went round to the hotel.

I found him sitting up in bed, drinking his coffee.

He looked like some beautiful gray tree that I have seen in Savannah.
His old dressing-gown hung about his frail yet majestic figure like
some mysterious gray drapery.

We were both very much moved and said little.

"I'm glad you've come. Two Queens have been kind to me this morning.
Queen Alexandra telegraphed to say how sorry she was I was ill, and now
you----"

He showed me the Queen's gracious message.

I told him he looked thin and ill, but _rested_.

"Rested! I should think so. I have plenty of time to rest. They tell
me I shall be here eight weeks. Of course I shan't, but still--It
was that rug in front of the door. I tripped over it. A commercial
traveller picked me up--a kind fellow, but damn him, he wouldn't leave
me afterwards--wanted to talk to me all night."

I remembered his having said this, when I was told by his servant,
Walter Collinson, that on the night of his death at Bradford he
stumbled over the rug when he walked into the hotel corridor.

We fell to talking about work. He said he hoped that I had a good
manager ... agreed very heartily with me about Frohman, saying he was
always so fair--more than fair.

"What a wonderful life you've had, haven't you?" I exclaimed, thinking
of it all in a flash.

"Oh, yes," he said quietly, ... "a wonderful life--of work."

[Illustration: _Copyright by the London Stereoscopic Co._

HENRY IRVING AS MATTHIAS IN "THE BELLS"

IRVING GAVE HIS LAST PERFORMANCE OF "THE BELLS" AT BRADFORD, ON
OCTOBER 12, 1905, THE NIGHT BEFORE HIS DEATH ]

[Illustration: _Copyright by the Topical Press Agency_

IRVING'S DEATH MASK]

"And there's nothing better, after all, is there?"

"Nothing."

"What have you got out of it all?... You and I are 'getting on,' as
they say. Do you ever think, as I do sometimes, what you have got out
of life?"

"What have I got out of it?" said Henry, stroking his chin and
smiling slightly. "Let me see.... Well, a good cigar, a good glass of
wine--good friends--" Here he kissed my hand with courtesy. Always he
was so courteous--always his actions, like this little one of kissing
my hand, were so beautifully timed. They came just before the spoken
words, and gave them peculiar value.

"That's not a bad summing up of it all," I said. "And the end.... How
would you like that to come?"

"How would I like that to come?" He repeated my question, lightly, yet
meditatively too. Then he was silent for some thirty seconds before he
snapped his fingers--the action again before the words.

"Like that!"

I thought of the definition of inspiration--"A calculation quickly
made." Perhaps he had never thought of the manner of his death before.
Now he had an inspiration as to how it would come.

We were silent a long time, I thinking how like some splendid Doge of
Venice he looked, sitting up in bed, his beautiful mobile hand stroking
his chin.

I agreed, when I could speak, that to be snuffed out like a candle
would save a lot of trouble.

After Henry Irving's death in October of the same year, some of his
friends protested against the statement that it was the kind of death
he desired--that they knew, on the contrary, that he thought sudden
death inexpressibly sad.

I can only say what he told me.

I stayed with him about three hours at Wolverhampton. Before I left,
I went back to see the doctor again--a very nice man, by the way, and
clever. He told me that Henry ought never to play "The Bells" again,
even if he acted again, which he said ought not to be.

It was clever of the doctor to see what a terrible emotional strain
"The Bells" put upon Henry--how he never could play the part of
Matthias "on his head," as he could Louis XI., for example.

Every time he heard the sound of the bells, the throbbing of his heart
must have nearly killed him. He used always to turn quite white--there
was no trick about it. It was imagination acting physically on the body.

[Illustration: _From the collection of Miss Evelyn Smalley_

IRVING'S TOMB IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY]

His death as Matthias--the death of a strong, robust man--was different
from all his other stage deaths. He did really almost die--he imagined
death with such horrible intensity. His eyes would disappear upwards,
his face grow gray, his limbs cold.

No wonder, then, that the first time that the Wolverhampton doctor's
warning was disregarded, and Henry played "The Bells" at Bradford, his
heart could not stand the strain. Within twenty-four hours of his last
death as Matthias, he was dead.

What a heroic thing was that last performance of Becket which came
between! I am told by those who were in the company at the time that
he was obviously suffering and dazed this last night of life. But he
went through it all as usual. All that he had done for years, he did
faithfully for the last time.

Yes, I know it seems sad to the ordinary mind that he should have
died in the entrance to an hotel in a country town, with no friend,
no relation near him; only his faithful and devoted servant, Walter
Collinson, whom--as was not his usual custom--he had asked to drive
back to the hotel with him that night, was there. Do I not feel the
tragedy of the beautiful body, for so many years the house of a
thousand souls, being laid out in death by hands faithful and devoted
enough, but not the hands of his kindred either in blood or in
sympathy?...

I do feel it, yet I know it was more appropriate to such a man than
the deathbed where friends and relations weep. Henry Irving belonged
to England, not to a family. England showed that she knew it when she
buried him in Westminster Abbey.

Years before I had discussed, half in joke, the possibility of this
honour. I remember his saying to me with great simplicity, when I asked
him what he expected of the public after his death: "I should like them
to do their duty by me. And they will--they will!"

There was not a touch of arrogance in this, just as I hope there was
no touch of heartlessness in me because my chief thought during the
funeral in Westminster Abbey was: "How Henry would have liked it!"
The right note was struck, as I think was not the case at Tennyson's
funeral thirteen years earlier.

"Tennyson is buried to-day in Westminster Abbey," I wrote in my diary
October 12th, 1892. "His majestic life and death spoke of him better
than the service.... The music was poor and dull and weak while he was
_strong_. The triumphant should have been the sentiment expressed.
Faces one knew everywhere. Lord Salisbury looked fine. His massive head
and sad eyes were remarkable. No face there, however, looked anything
by the side of Henry's.... He looked very pale and slim and wonderful!"

How terribly I missed that face at Henry's own funeral! I kept on
expecting to see it, for indeed it seemed to me that he was directing
the whole most moving and impressive ceremony.... I could almost hear
him saying "Get on! get on!" in the parts of the service that dragged.
When the sun, such a splendid tawny sun, burst across the solemn misty
gray of the Abbey, at the very moment when the coffin, under its superb
pall of laurel leaves, was carried up to the choir, I felt that it was
an effect which he would have loved.

I can understand any one who was present at Henry Irving's funeral
thinking that this was his best memorial, and that any attempt to
honour him afterwards would be superfluous and inadequate. But after
all it was Henry Irving's commanding genius and his devotion of it
to high objects, his personal influence on the English people, which
secured him burial among England's great dead. The petition for the
burial, presented to the Dean of the Chapter, and signed on the
initiative of Henry Irving's leading fellow-actors by representative
personages of influence, succeeded only because of Henry's unique
position.

"We worked very hard to get it done," I heard said more than once. And
I often longed to answer: "Yes, you worked for it between Henry's death
and his funeral. He worked for it all his life!"

I have always desired some other memorial to Henry Irving than his
honoured grave; not so much for his sake as for the sake of those who
loved him, and would gladly welcome the opportunity of some great test
of their devotion.

THE END

[I] Mr. Norman Forbes-Robertson.

THE VALLEY OF MILLS

BY H. G. DWIGHT

WITH A PAINTING BY F. BRANGWYN

_The American Dragoman narrates to the Second Secretary_

I shall never forget the night I got there. The train went no farther
than Nicomedia in those days, and it took so long that you nearly died
of old age on the way. But when the three red lights on the tail of
it dwindled into the dark, I had the queerest sense of having been
dropped into another world. It was the more so because one couldn't
see an earthly thing--not a star, not even the Gulf which we were to
cross. I only heard the lapping of it, close by, when the rumble of the
train died out of the stillness. That and the crunch of steps on the
sand were all there was to hear, and an occasional word I didn't catch.
The men could hardly have been more silent if our lives had depended
on it. I had no idea how many of them there were, or what they looked
like--much less where they were taking me. They simply hoisted a sail
and put off into the night. I would have sworn, too, that there was
no wind. The sail filled, however: I could see the swaying pallor of
it, and hear the ripple under the bow. And as my eyes got used to the
darkness, I discovered an irregular silhouette in front of us, and a
floating will-o'-the-wisp of a light. The silhouette grew taller and
blacker till the boat grounded under it. Then, by the light of the
will-o'-the-wisp, which was a sputtering oil lantern on shore, I made
out some immense cypresses. You have no idea how eerie that landing
was, in a waterside cemetery that was for all the world like Böcklin's
Island of Death. The men moved like shadows about their Flying
Dutchman of a boat, and their lantern just brought out the ghostliness
of gravestones leaning between the columns of the cypresses. And I
suddenly became aware of the strangest sound. I had no idea what it was
or where it came from, but it was a sort of low moaning that fairly
went into your bones. It grew louder when we started on again. We
climbed an invisible trail where branches slashed at us in the dark,
and all kinds of sharp and sweet and queer smells came put of it in
waves. And nightingales began to sing like mad around us, and off in
the distance somewhere jackals were barking, and under it all that low
moaning went on and on and on. And at last we came out into an open
space on top of the hill, where a bonfire made a hole in the black, and
a couple of naked figures stood redly out in the penumbra of it, with a
ring of faces flickering around them....

I found out afterwards that the bonfire business was nothing but a
wrestling match--they had them almost every night on the _meidan_--and
the moaning came from the mill-wheels in the valley. But I never quite
got over that first impression--that sense of walking through all kinds
of things without seeing them. No sooner would I begin to feel a bit at
home than something would bring me up with a jerk and remind me that
I was a stranger in a strange land. I suppose it was natural enough,
considering that I had only just come out then. The place was nothing
but a snarl of muddy lanes and mud shanties, tossed into a filbert
valley where water tumbled down to the Gulf. It was only about fifty
miles away from here, but it might have been five thousand and fifty.
There was none of the contrast with Europe that is always bothering you
here--though perhaps it really sets things off. The people were all
Turks, and their village was Asia pure and simple. That extraordinary
juxtaposition of care and neglect, of the exquisite and the nauseating,
which begins to strike you in Italy, and which strikes you so much more
here, simply went to the top notch there. It was under your eyes--and
nose--every minute. There were rugs and tiles and brasses that you
couldn't keep your hands off of, in houses plastered with cow-dung. And
the people used the gutters for drains, and their principal business
was making attar of rose. You should have seen what gardens there
were, hidden away behind mud-walls!

What struck me most, though, was a something in it all which I never
could lay my finger on. It seemed incredible that a country inhabited
so long should show so few signs of it. The people might have camped
in a clearing over night, and the woods were just waiting to cover up
their tracks. But the wildness was not the good blank, unconscious
wildness we have at home. There was a melancholy about it. The silence
that hung over the place was really a little uncanny. The mills only
cried it out, in that monotonous minor of theirs. They were picturesque
old wooden things, all green with moss and maidenhair fern, that went
grinding and groaning on forever, and making you wonder what on earth
it was all about. I can't say that I ever found out, either. But I
certainly got grist enough for my own mill.

For that matter, I don't imagine that I was precisely an open book
myself. In this part of the world they haven't got our passion for
poking around where we don't belong: perhaps they've had more time to
find out how little there is in it. And for a mysterious individual
from lands beyond the sea, whose servant can't be prevented from
bragging of the splendor in which he lives at Constantinople, to bury
himself in a wild country village, must mean something queer. Does one
give up a _konak_ on the Bosphorus for a _khan_ in the Marmora? And
are there no teachers of Turkish in Stamboul? I believe it didn't take
long for the _Moutessarif_ of Nicomedia to find out I was there, and
for him to ascertain in ways best known to himself what I was up to. I
have often wondered what his version of it was. At all events it didn't
prevent the great men of the village from smoking cigarettes of peace
with me in a little vine-shaded coffee-house at the top of the hill.
There was the _Mudir_, a plump and harmless _effendi_ of a governor;
and the _Naïb_, who was some kind of country justice; and a charming
old _Imam_ in a green turban and a white beard and a rose-colored
robe; and a _Tchaouche_, an officer of police, all done up in yellow
braid and brass whistles; and various other personages. And I couldn't
imagine where in the world they had all picked up their courtliness and
conversation. The _Mudir_ was from town, and one or two of the others
had been there; but if such things were to be had for a visit to town
they'd be a little more common at home. Of course, I was asked a good
many questions, and some of them were pretty personal. That is a part
of Oriental etiquette, you will find. It was marvelous, though, what a
_savoir faire_ they had, to say nothing of a sense of life and a few
other things. I couldn't make them out--taken with their vile village
and their half-tamed fields. The thing used to bother me half to death,
too. I thought all I had to do was to sit down and look pleasant and
turn them inside out at my leisure. Whereas more than once I had a
vague feeling, after it was over, of having been turned inside out
myself. Altogether it makes me grin when I remember what an idiotic
young ostrich I was. I have been at the business quite a while now, and
to this day I am never sure of my man--how that Asiatic head of his
will work in any given case. I can only console myself by remembering
that I'm not the only one. In the last two generations I presume there
must have been as many as four Anglo-Saxons--and three of those,
Englishmen--who didn't more or less make jackasses of themselves when
they ran up against Asia. And I fancy it took them rather more than a
year to arrive at even that negative degree of comprehension.

However, various things went into my hopper first and last, to the tune
of the mill-wheels in the valley--particularly last.... It was lucky
for me that the wireless telegraphy I sometimes felt about me allowed
the _Mudir_ to cultivate his natural inclinations. He was bored enough
in his exile, and I think he was genuinely glad that his advices from
headquarters made him free of my company. I certainly am. I have never
come into just such relations with any of the officials here. He was a
grave, mild, suave personage who might have made an excellent _Cadi_
of tradition if he had never heard of Paris. As it was, I'm afraid he
took less thought for his peasants' troubles than of the extent to
which they could be made to repay him for his own. He liked to practise
his French on me as much as I liked to practise my Turkish on him,
and on such occasions as I had the honor of squatting at his little
round board, his knowledge of the Occident would manifest itself in an
incredible profusion of spoons. I also discovered that he was by no
means averse to sampling my modest cellar. He didn't care so much about
being found out, though. They are tremendous prohibitionists, you know,
and while the pashas have accepted champagne with their tight trousers,
they're not so public about it. Just watch when you go to your first
court dinner.

A person of whom I thought more than the _Mudir_, and who interested
me more as a type, was the _Imam_. A more kindly, honest, simple,
delightful old man it has seldom been my luck to meet. He was a Turk
of the old school, without an atom of Europe in his composition. I
wish they were not getting so confoundedly rare. They are worth a
million times more than these Johnnies who pick up the Roman alphabet
and a few half-baked ideas about what we are pleased to call progress.
I took daily lessons from him. He was a mighty theologian--made me
read the Koran, and all that, and was much interested in what I had to
tell him of our own beliefs. He used to make me ashamed of knowing so
little about them. Before he got through with me, he taught me rather
more than was in the bond, I fancy. I had always cherished a notion
that because a Turk could have four wives, and didn't think much of
my chances for the world to come, and was somewhat free in the use of
antidotes to human life, his morality wasn't worth talking about. But I
got something of an eye-opener on that point.

Altogether, I managed to have a very decent time of it. My pill of
learning the most of the language in the least possible time was so
ingeniously sugared that the business was one prolonged picnic. In
fact, living in a _khan_, as I did at first, is nothing but camping.
They're all about the same, you know. You can see the model any day
over in Stamboul--a rambling stack of galleries round a court of
cattle and wheels, and big bare rooms where twenty people could live.
They often do, too. You spread your own bedding on the wooden divan
surrounding two or three sides of the room, and your servant cooks for
you in a series of little charcoal pits under the huge chimney. It's
rather amusing for a while, if you're not too fussy about smells and
crawling things. I suppose I must have been, for the _Mudir_ eventually
persuaded me to rent a house from an absentee rose-growing pasha. It
was about the only wooden one in the place--a huge rattlety-bang old
affair that stood on the edge of the bluff, a little apart from the
town. It leaked so villainously that I had to sit under an umbrella
every time there was a shower, but the view and the garden made up for
it. I used to prowl around the country a good deal, though. Everything
was so strange to me--the faces, the costumes, the curious implements,
the hairy black buffaloes, the fat-tailed sheep with their dabs of
red dye, the solid-wheeled carts that lamented more loudly, if less
continuously, than the water-wheels, the piratish-looking caravels
strutting up and down the Gulf under a balloon of a mainsail. I took
them by the day, sometimes, to go fishing or exploring. All of which
must have been highly incomprehensible to my astonished neighbors. I
believe my man had to invent some legend of a doctor and a cure to
account for so eccentric a master. It was only when I came more and
more to spend my days among the cypresses on the edge of the beach
that I became less an object of suspicion; for while a Turk is little
of a sportsman and less of mere aimless sight-seer, he likes nothing
better than sitting philosophically under the greenwood tree.

My greenwood was, as I have said, a cemetery. Heaven knows how long it
had been there. The cypresses were enormously tall and thick and dark.
And the stones under them--with their carved turbans and arabesques,
and their holes and rain-hollows for restless or thirsty ghosts--were
all gray and lichened with time, and pitched every which way between
the coiling roots. You may think it a queer kind of place to sit around
in, but it took my fancy enormously. I don't know--there was something
so still and old about it, and the spring had such a look between the
black trees. It wasn't quite still, either, for that strange, low minor
of the water-wheels was always in your ears. It ran on and on, like the
sound of the quiet and the sunshine and the cypresses and the ancient
stones. And it made all sorts of things go through your head. I presume
that first impression had something to do with it. You wondered whether
the trees would have lived so long if so many dead people had not lain
among their roots. You wondered--I don't know what you didn't wonder.

As hot weather came on, I used to pack a hammock and reading and
writing and cooking things on a donkey nearly every day, and drop down
through the filberts to my cypresses. There was fairly decent bathing
there, over an outrageous bottom of stones and sea-urchins. What I
liked best, though, was simply to lie around and watch the world go
by. Not that much of it does go by the Gulf of Nicomedia. If it hadn't
been for a sail every now and then, you would have supposed that people
had forgotten all about that little blue pocket of a firth leading
nowhere between its antique hills. Then there were two or three trains
a day, whose black you could just make out, crawling through the green
of the opposite shore. And there was a steamer a day each way that it
was as much as your life was worth to put your foot into. You wouldn't
think so, though, to see the people who packed the decks. Sometimes I
used to go down to the landing for the pleasure of the contrast they
made, solemnly huddled up in their picturesque rags, with the noisy
modern steamer. It was a miracle where so many of them came from and
went to. That's the wildest part of the Marmora, you know, for all
their railroad on the north shore. Some day, I suppose, when German
expresses go thundering through to the Persian Gulf, it'll be all
factory chimneys and summer hotels, like the rest of the world. But
now there's nothing worse than vineyards and tobacco plantations. On
the south coast there's hardly that. The hills stand up pretty straight
out of the water, and they're wooded down to the rocks. You might
think it virgin forest if you didn't know the Nicene Creed came out of
it--to say nothing of invisible villages, and eyes looking out at you
without your knowing. It all gave one such an idea of the extraordinary
wreckage that has been left on the shores of that old Greek Sea. Only
you don't get it as you do here, where races and creeds march past you
on the Bridge while you stand by and admire. There's something more
secret and ancient about it--more like Homer and the Bible and the
Arabian Nights.

The caravans gave the most telling touch. You don't often see camels
up here any longer, but they're still common enough in the interior.
I could hardly believe my eyes the first time a procession of them
appeared on my beach. First came a man on horseback, with a couple
of Persian saddle-bags to make your mouth water, and then the long
string of camels roped together like barges in a tow. What an air
they had--the fantastic tawny line of them swinging against the blue
of the Gulf! And how softly they padded along the shingle, with the
picturesque ruffians in charge of them throned high among their
mysterious bales! They passed without so much as a turn of the eye, my
Wise Men of the East, and disappeared behind the point as silently as
they came. It gave me the strangest sensation. I had felt something of
the same before. I could scarcely help it, looking out between those
tragic trees at the white strip of beach and the blue strip of sea and
the green strip of hills that were so much like other hills and seas
and beaches and yet so different. But there had never come to me before
quite such a sense of the strangeness of this world where so many
things had been buried from the time of Jason and the Argo--of this
world of which I knew nothing and to which I was nothing.

You may believe that I was delighted when I went back to the village
that night and found it full of camels. The air was sizzling with
bonfires and _kebabs_--you know those bits of lamb they broil on a long
wooden spit?--and strange faces were at every corner. They filled the
coffee-house, too, when I finally got there. By that time it was too
dark to stare as hard as I would have liked. But perhaps the scene was
all the more picturesque for the shadowy figures scattered under the
vine in the dusk, and the bubble of nargilehs filling the intervals of
talk. A feature would come saliently out here and there in the red of
a cigarette--a shining eye, a hawk nose, a bronzed cheek-bone. And out
on the _meidan_ were groups around fires, with their little pipes that
have all the trouble of the East in them, and their little tomtoms of
such inimitable rhythms.

I found my friends established as usual in the seat of honor--an old
sofa in the corner of the café--and as usual they made place for me
amongst them. When the ceremony of their welcome subsided, the _Mudir_
took occasion to whisper to me that the leader of the caravan, an
excellent fellow who had stopped there before, was telling stories. I
then recognized, in the light of the _cafedij's_ lamp, the man I had
seen that afternoon on horseback. He sat on a stool in front of the
divan of honor, and behind him were crowded all the other stools and
mats in the place. Although he had not deigned, before, to turn his
head toward me, he now testified by the depth of his salaam to the
honor he felt in such an addition to his circle. He was a curiously
handsome chap, burnt and bearded, with the high-hung jaw of his people,
the arched brow, the almost Roman nose. And, shaky as I still was in
the language, he didn't leave me long to wonder why he was the center
of the circle. He was a born _raconteur_--one of those story-tellers
who in the East still carry on the tradition of the troubadours. Not
that he sang to us, or recited poetry--although the _Imam_ told me with
pride that the man was a dictionary of the Persian poets. But he went
on with a story he had begun before my entrance. It was one of those
endless old eastern tales that are such a charming mixture of serpent
wisdom and childish _naïveté_. And he told it with a vividness of
gesture and inflection that you never get from print.

Well, you can imagine! I always had a fancy for that sort of thing,
but it's so deuced hard to get at--at least, for people like us. And
after that queer turn the first sight of the caravan gave me, down
by the water, it made me feel as if I were really beginning to lay
my hand on things at last. So I was disappointed enough when at the
end of the story the party began to break up. Upon my signifying as
much to my neighbor, the _Mudir_, however, he said that nothing would
be easier than to summon the man to a private session. If I would do
him the honor to come to the _konak_--I was tickled enough to take
up with the idea, provided the meeting should take place at my house
instead. I knew there would be bakshish, which I didn't like to put the
_Mudir_ in for, after all he had done. Moreover, I had a whim to get
the camel-driver under my own roof--by way of nailing the East, so to
speak!

So the upshot of the business was that we made a night of it. Oh, I
don't mean any of your wild and woolly ones. To be sure, we did wet
things down a trifle more than is the custom of the country. There
happened to be a decanter on the table, which the camel-driver looked
at as if he wouldn't mind knowing what it contained; and being a bit
awkward at first, I knew no better than to trot it out. The _Mudir_, to
whom of course I offered it first, wouldn't have any. I suppose he had
his reputation to keep up before an inferior. I was rather surprised,
all the same, for it was plain enough that the camel-driver was by
no means the kind of man the name implies, and a little Greek wine
wouldn't hurt a baby. Moreover, I had heard of this _raki_ of theirs,
which is so much fire-water, and I didn't take their temperance very
seriously. As for the camel-driver, he was rather amusing.

"You tempt me to my death!" he laughed, taking the glass I poured
out for him. "Do you know that my men would kill me if they saw me
now? These country people have not the ideas of the _effendi_ and
myself. They follow blindly the Prophet, not realizing how many rooms
there are in the house of a wise man. They found out that I had been
affording opportunity for the forgiveness of God, and they took it
quite seriously. They threatened to kill me if I did not make a public
confession. And I had to do it, to please them. On the next Friday I
made a solemn confession of my sins in mosque, and swore never to smell
another drop."

At this I didn't know just what to do. I looked at the _Mudir_, and the
_Mudir_ looked at the camel-driver. The latter, however, waved his hand
with a smile of goodfellowship.

"There is no harm now," he said. "We break caravan to-morrow at
Nicomedia. Moreover, I do not drink saying it is right. I should
blaspheme God, who has commanded me not to drink. But I acknowledge
that I sin. Great be the name of God!" With which he tipped the glass
into his mouth. "My soul!" he exclaimed, "That is better than a
cucumber in August!"

These people are democratic, you know, to a degree of which we haven't
an idea--for all our declaration of independence. Yet there are certain
invisible lines which are sure to trip a foreigner up and which made
me mighty uncertain what to do with the governor of a _mudirlik_ and
the leader of a caravan. But the latter proceeded to look out for that.
Such a jolly good fellow you never saw in your life, with his stories,
and the way he had with him, and the things he had been up to. It
turned out that he knew western Asia a good deal better than I know
western Europe. Tabriz, Tashkend, Samarkand, Cabul, to say nothing of
Mecca and Cairo and Tripoli--such names dropped from him as Liverpool
and Marseilles might from me. Where camel goes he had been, and for
him Asia Minor was no more than a sort of ironic tongue stuck out at
Europe by the huge continent behind. It gave me my first inkling of how
this empire is tied up. It seems to hang so loosely together, without
the rails and wires that put Sitka and St. Augustine in easier reach
of each other than Constantinople and Bagdad. I began to learn then
that wires and rails are not everything--that there are stronger nets
than those. Altogether it was a momentous occasion. To sit there in
that queer old house, in a wild hill village of the Marmora, and speak
familiarly with that camel-driver who carried the secrets of Asia in
his pocket--it brought me nearer than I had ever dreamed to that life
which was always so tantalizing me by my inability to get at it.

When the man finally withdrew, and the _Mudir_ after him, I was in no
mood to go to bed. They had opened to me their ancient world, with all
its poetry and mystery, and I did not want to lose it again. I could
see it stretching dimly beyond the windows where the water-wheels went
moaning under the moon. I went out into it. The night was--you have no
idea what those nights could be. They had such a way of swallowing up
the squalidness of things, and bringing out all their melancholy magic.
The rose season was at its height, and the air was one perfume from the
hidden gardens. Then the nightingales were at that heart-breaking music
of theirs. And the moon! It wasn't one of those glaring round things,
like a coachman's button or a butcher's boy with the mumps, by which
young ladies are commonly put into spasms; but it was an old wasted
one, with such a light!

It was all the more extraordinary because not a creature was
about--except a man who lay asleep on the ground, not far from the
door. Apparently they dropped off wherever they happened to be, down
there, and I used to envy them for it. I stood still for a while, in
the shadow of the house, taking it all in. Don't you know, it happens
once in a while that you have a mood, and that your surroundings come
up to it? It doesn't happen very often, either--at least, to workaday
people like us. So I stood there, looking and listening and breathing.
And when I saw the edge of the shadow of the house crumble up at one
place, without any visible cause, and creep out into the moonlight,
I--I only looked at it. Nothing had any visible cause in that strange
world of mine, and I watched the slowly lengthening finger of shadow
with the passivity of a man who has seen too many wonders to wonder any
more. But then I made out a darker darkness winding back toward the
house. And--I don't know--I thought of the man on the ground. I looked
at him.

It was my camel-driver, dead as Darius, with the blood running out
of a hole in his back like water out of a spout. For the moment I
was still too far away from every day to be startled, or even very
much surprised. It was only a part of that mysterious world, with its
mysterious people and mysterious ways that I never could understand.
What was he doing there dead, who had been so full of life a little
while before? Was it one of his jokes? The night was the most
enchanting you could imagine, the air was heady with the breath of
rose-gardens, the nightingales were singing in the trees (down in the
valley I heard, low, low, the weary water-wheels), and here was the
prince of story-tellers with his tongue stopped forever, and the blood
of him making a snaky black trail across the moonlight....

* * * * *

What happened next? My dear fellow, you remind me of these kids who
will never let you finish their story! Nothing happened next. That was
the beauty of it. I guess I got one pretty good case of the jim-jams
after a while, and when I got through wondering whether I was going
to be elected next, I began to wonder whether they wouldn't think I'd
done it. Of course, I had done it, as a matter of fact, and that didn't
tend to composure of mind. Neither did my speculations as to what the
_Mudir_ might or might not have noticed when he left me that evening.
But, if you will believe it, nobody ever lifted a finger. The next
morning the caravan was gone and apparently everything was the same as
before. If anything, they were more decent than before. That was the
worst of it. I don't believe I'd have minded so much if they'd stoned
me and ridden me out on a rail and set the Government after me and
raised the devil generally. I should at least have felt less at sea. As
it was--hello, there's Carmignani! Let's take him over to Tokatlian's.

THE UNREMEMBERED

FRAGMENTS OF A LOST MEMORY

BY FLORENCE WILKINSON

Where have they gone, the unremembered things,
The hours, the faces,
The trumpet-call, the wild boughs of white spring?
Would I might pluck you from forbidden spaces,
All ye, the vanished tenants of my places!

Stay but one moment, speak that I may hear,
Swift passer-by!
The wind of your strange garments in my ear
Catches the heart like a belovèd cry
From lips, alas, forgotten utterly.

An odour haunts, a colour in the mesh,
A step that mounts the stair;
Come to me, I would touch your living flesh--
Look how they disappear, ah, where, ah, where?
Because I name them not, deaf to my prayer.

If I could only call them as I used,
Each by his name!
That violin--what ancient voice that mused!
Yon is the hill, I see the beacon flame.
My feet have found the road where once I came.
Quick--but again the dark, darkness and shame.

THE BATTLE AGAINST THE SHERMAN LAW

HOW CAPITAL AND LABOR COMBINE TO SAFEGUARD THE TRUST AND LEGALIZE THE
BOYCOTT

BY BURTON J. HENDRICK

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

Under the existing laws of the United States, it is a crime to
organize a combination of individuals or corporations into a business
aggregation in restraint of trade. It is likewise a crime for labor
men or labor unions in different States to combine for the prosecution
of certain aggressive enterprises popularly described as boycotts. Any
person convicted of engaging in either of these prohibited acts may be
fined not more than $5,000 for each offense, or imprisoned for one year
at hard labor, or both.

According to reliable estimates, there are in the neighborhood of five
hundred large trusts or combinations that daily violate this law.
There are many thousands of smaller corporations and business firms
that indulge in secret practices for which their officers may at any
time be lodged in jail. As for the national prohibition of boycotts,
labor organizations openly exist for the express purpose of conducting
them. The constitution of the most powerful labor organization in this
country, the Federation of Labor, specifically provides for engaging in
this form of industrial warfare.

The statute that outlaws these combinations of both capital and labor
is the famous Sherman Anti-trust Law. It is one of the briefest, most
pointed, and most comprehensive measures ever passed by Congress. It
contains only about seven hundred words and would fill less than a page
of this magazine. In its first three lines, without any modifications
or circumlocutions, it declares illegal "every contract, combination in
the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or
commerce among the several States or with foreign nations." The next
few lines provide the punishment, cited above, for breaking the law.
The Sherman Act does not say that "some combinations" are illegal and
criminal, but that "every" one is. It does not provide that certain
offenders may be punished, but that "every" one "shall be." It leaves
absolutely no discretion to prosecuting officers or to the courts.
Within its comprehensive folds are gathered, on the one hand, the most
commanding captains of industry and the greatest railroad magnates;
and, on the other, the most insignificant puddlers in their furnaces
and stokers on their trains.

The Sherman Act has thus established a community of interest between
labor and capital which has had important practical results. Both
capital and labor are openly evading the law. Both have many times been
haled into court, convicted of infringing this statute, and enjoined
from continuing in their illegal combinations. Both consequently find
it an irksome impediment to their present plans and ambitions. In their
active opposition to the law the two previously warring elements now
meet on common ground.

The platform of the Republican party calls for amendments which, to
all practical purposes, will seriously weaken the law, so far as its
application to corporate combinations is concerned. The Democratic
platform demands such changes as will exempt labor unions from its
operation,--which is virtually the same thing as demanding the
legalization of the boycott. At the last session of Congress the
spectacle was presented of important labor unions and great corporation
lawyers working hand in hand to this common end. Though this agitation
failed for the time being, it may safely be asserted that the repeal
or modification of the Sherman Act will continue to be a fixed article
of the policy both of large aggregations of wealth and of large
aggregations of labor. This fact makes important a study of its history
and of its practical effects upon corporate and labor organizations.

_The Sherman Law Not Rushed Through Congress_

Hardly any important legislation has been so imperfectly understood
or more persistently misrepresented. Although the law was passed only
eighteen years ago, a large number of legends have already grown up
about it. According to popular belief, the Sherman Anti-trust Act is an
imperfect piece of legislation; a measure which was drawn up hastily,
without thorough study or knowledge of the economic and social problems
which it was intended to solve. The corporations declare that it was
never intended to meet industrial conditions as they exist now: labor
leaders have repeatedly asserted that the framers of the measure never
intended that it should affect organizations of labor.

A study of the congressional debates which preceded the passage of the
Sherman Act dissipates these misconceptions. The law was not rushed
through Congress. It was seriously proposed as a carefully thought-out
attempt to check great and clearly comprehended evils. In essence those
evils did not differ from the ones which confront the American people
today. In 1890 the trust, or the industrial combination, had almost
reached its present state of development. Large aggregations of capital
had already secured a monopoly of many of the necessaries of life. The
Standard Oil Trust was then, as it is now, the most conspicuous of
these combinations, and had already attained an unpopularity almost
as great as it enjoys today; the Sugar Trust controlled practically
the whole output of refined sugar. The Steel Trust, it is true, did
not exist; but many combinations in steel products had already been
formed. Combinations on steel rails dictated prices; nails, barbed
fence wire, copper, lead, nickel, zinc, cordage, cottonseed oil,--all
these products had already been brought largely under trust control.
The Salt Trust and the Whiskey Trust had been organized. Combinations
of railroads, for the purpose of fixing charges for transportation,
had existed for twenty-five years. In 1875 Commodore Vanderbilt
called the first great meeting of railroad trunk lines at Saratoga;
and this conference adopted a "pooling" arrangement. The accumulated
railroad abuses of a generation, especially this practice of "pooling"
earnings, had led to the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act in
1887--three years before the enactment of the Sherman Law.

Other combinations, which disdained the name of trusts, but which had
already developed certain points in common with them, also flourished.
The labor union, for example, was in full flower. The Knights of
Labor, under Powderly, had passed through many triumphant years; the
Federation of Labor was firmly entrenched, and Samuel Gompers was its
President then as he is today. The unions existed then, as they do
now, to secure higher wages and greater advantages of employment for
their members; and one of their weapons then, as it is at present, was
the boycott. Organizations of farmers, which existed for a similar
purpose--the Farmers' Alliance, the National League--had also reached a
high state of development.

_Statesmen who Framed the Sherman Law_

Nor were the framers of this law inexperienced legislators who hastily
scrambled together a measure to meet certain political exigencies. The
men chiefly responsible for the anti-trust law were John Sherman of
Ohio, George F. Edmunds of Vermont, George F. Hoar of Massachusetts,
George Gray of Delaware, and James Z. George of Mississippi. Senator
Spooner recently declared that no greater body of lawyers ever sat in
Congress; no one would venture to contend that there is any similar
group of five men in Washington today. John Sherman had served almost
continuously in Congress since 1854; he had represented Ohio in
the Senate throughout the Civil War and the reconstruction period,
displaying especial talent in dealing with questions of national
finance; and, as Secretary of the Treasury in President Hayes' cabinet,
had carried through with masterly success the resumption of specie
payments. George F. Edmunds was generally regarded as the greatest
lawyer then in the Senate. Starting his career in that body in 1866,
when Congress had to handle the intricate constitutional problems
involved in the readmission of the Southern States, he immediately
became one of an influential group of which the other members were
Sumner, Fessenden, Trumbull, and Wade, and took an important part in
framing the legislation of the reconstruction period. George F. Hoar
had, by 1890, represented Massachusetts in the Senate for thirteen
years; his great learning, his comprehensive knowledge of public
questions, his independence, his genuine devotion to the best public
interests had made him one of the most commanding figures in that body.
George Gray of Delaware, at present a judge of the United States
Circuit Court, and for many years one of the most conservative forces
in the Democratic party--the same George Gray upon whom many of Mr.
Bryan's opponents hoped to unite a few months ago as the Democratic
presidential nominee--was also recognized as one of the Senate's
greatest authorities on the Constitution. Senator George had served for
many years as chief justice of the Supreme Court of Mississippi, and
was the author and compiler of many works on law which are still widely
used.

Over the question of federal control of large combinations these five
men and their colleagues debated for nearly two years. Senator Sherman
introduced his first anti-trust act August 14, 1888; the present
statute finally became a law on July 21, 1890. During this period six
separate trust bills, all modifications of that originally introduced
by Mr. Sherman, were laid before the Senate. They were considered by
two committees--the Finance and the Judiciary--and debated at great
length in the committee of the whole. The discussions occupy one
hundred and fifty pages of the Congressional Record.

A striking illustration of the general ignorance of the circumstances
under which the Sherman Act was passed is furnished by the present
Republican platform. This declares that "the Republican party passed
the Sherman Anti-Trust Act over Democratic opposition." The records
of Congress, however, show no indications of any opposition at all,
Democratic or other. Of the five men most conspicuous in framing the
law, three were Republicans and two were Democrats. In the Senate only
one senator voted against the passage; in the House two hundred and
forty-two votes were cast in favor of the act, and not a single one was
cast against it. The whole debate was notable for its seriousness and
its dignity; one or two Democrats did suggest that a revision of the
tariff might help to curb the trusts; but that was the only partisan
note struck. Congress keenly appreciated the issues raised by the trust
problem and the necessity of taking action that would be beneficial and
permanent. Everybody realized, also, the inherent difficulties of the
situation. The debates in the Senate on this issue, far from indicating
a scrappy investigation, furnish material for a liberal education in
the constitutional questions involved in dealing with monopolies.
Senator Hoar, in preparation for the work, studied the history of
legislation concerning monopolies from the time of Zeno. One of the
sections in the bill--that providing that a successful litigant against
a trust can recover three times the damages suffered from it--Mr. Hoar
incorporated from a statute on monopolies passed in the reign of James
I.

[Illustration: SAMUEL GOMPERS, FOR TWENTY-FIVE YEARS PRESIDENT OF THE
FEDERATION OF LABOR. MR. GOMPERS DEMANDS AN AMENDMENT OF THE SHERMAN
ANTI-TRUST ACT THAT WOULD MAKE LEGAL THE INTERSTATE BOYCOTT]

_Sherman Act Intended to Apply to Labor Unions_

Of all the legends which have grown up about this law, perhaps the
most absurd is that it was never intended to apply to workingmen. "As
a matter of fact," said Samuel Gompers before the Judiciary Committee
of the House last winter, "every man who now lives and is familiar
with the legislation of the day knows that the Sherman Anti-trust Law
was never intended to include organizations of labor," Chief Justice
Fuller, in a recent decision of the United States Supreme Court, flatly
contradicts Mr. Gompers' statement. "The records of Congress show,"
says Justice Fuller, "that several efforts were made to exempt, by
legislation, organizations of farmers and laborers from the operation
of the act and that all these efforts failed," In fact, the question
of the relation of labor unions and the law occupied a conspicuous
place in the debates; it was almost as constantly in the minds of the
Senators as the question of capitalistic combinations themselves.
To meet this situation, Senator Sherman introduced an amendment
specifically excepting labor unions and agricultural associations from
the operation of his statute. Mr. Gompers, according to his remarks
before the Judiciary Committee last winter, was partly responsible for
the introduction of this amendment. Senator Edmunds opposed it on the
ground that it granted rights to labor which it withheld from capital,
and he insisted that both sides should be treated upon an exact
equality. In the following words he disposed for all time of Senator
Sherman's plea for preferential treatment of laboring men:

The fact is that this matter of capital, as it is called, of
business, and of labor, is an equation, and you cannot disturb one
side of the equation without disturbing the other. If it costs
for labor 50 per cent. more to produce a ton of iron, that 50 per
cent. more goes into what that iron must sell for, or some part of
it. I take it everybody will agree to that.

Very well. Now, if you say to one side of that equation, "You may
make the value or the price of this iron by your combination for
wages in the whole Republic or on the continent, but the man for
whom you have made the iron shall not arrange with his neighbors
as to the price they will sell it for, so as not to destroy each
other," the whole business will certainly break, because the
connection between the plant, as I will call it for short, and
the labor that works that plant, is one that no legislation and
no force in the world--and there is only one outside of the world
that can do it--can possibly separate. They cannot be divorced.
Neither speeches nor laws nor judgments of courts nor anything
else can change it, and therefore I say that to provide on one
side of that equation that there may be combination and on the
other side that there shall not, is contrary to the very inherent
principle upon which such business must depend. If we are to have
equality, as we ought to have, if the combination on the one side
is to be prohibited, the combination on the other side must be
prohibited, or there will be certain destruction in the end....

On the one side you say that it is a crime and on the other side
you say it is a valuable and proper under-taking. That will
not do, Mr. President. You can not get on in that way. It is
impossible to separate them; and the principle of it therefore is
that if one side, no matter which it is, is authorized to combine,
the other side must be authorized to combine, or the thing will
break and there will be universal bankruptcy. That is what it will
come to.

[Illustration: SENATOR GEORGE F. EDMUNDS, GENERALLY REGARDED AS ONE OF
THE GREATEST CONSTITUTIONAL LAWYERS OF HIS TIME. THE SHERMAN ACT, AS
IT STANDS AT PRESENT, IS VERY LARGELY HIS WORK]

Senator Edmunds' logic absolutely killed any attempt to place capital
and labor upon different footings, Instead of adopting this proposed
amendment, the Senate referred the whole question of trust legislation
to the Judiciary Committee, of which Senator Edmunds was chairman. Mr.
Edmunds and his colleagues threw into the waste basket all the pending
trust bills and their amendments and struck out on new lines. As a
consequence, Senator Edmunds became the chief author of the Sherman
Anti-Trust Law. His most active associates, were Senator Hoar and
Senator George. The one man who had practically nothing to do with the
statute as it stands to-day was Senator Sherman himself. He played
an important part in the preliminary discussion and in framing the
measures which served as a basis for this discussion; but the bill as
it was finally adopted by Congress bore little resemblance to his.
The amendment upon which he laid especial stress--that of exempting
laboring and agricultural organizations from the operation of the
Anti-trust Law--was absolutely ignored.

As finally adopted, the act did not prohibit labor unions per se or
combinations of labor unions formed to accomplish lawful ends; it
did, however, strike at certain labor union practices. That this was
the clear intention of the Senate is evident from a statement made by
Senator Edmunds in a newspaper interview as far back as 1892. "The
Sherman Law," said Mr. Edmunds, "is intended to cover and I think will
cover every form of combination that seeks in any way to interfere with
or restrain free competition, whether it be capital in the form of
trusts, combinations, railroad pools, or agreements, or labor through
the form of boycotting organizations that say a man shall not earn his
bread unless he joins this or that society. Both are wrong; both are
crimes and indictable under the Anti-trust Law."

_Unsuccessful Efforts to Destroy the Law_

For eighteen years the anti-trust statute has represented American
policy and American law in federal regulation of combinations in
restraint of trade. In that period the act has been repeatedly
assailed from many legal standpoints. It has been passed upon more
than two hundred and fifty times by the federal courts, and has been
considered fifty-five times by the United States Supreme Court. The
greatest constitutional lawyers of this generation--such men as
Edward J. Phelps, James C. Carter, John F. Dillon, and Francis Lynde
Stetson--have attempted to destroy it and have not succeeded. The
greatest railroads and corporations, on the one hand, and the largest
and most influential labor unions, on the other, have both failed in
their attempts to secure exemption from its operation.

[Illustration: JUDGE GEORGE GRAY OF DELAWARE, WHO, AS UNITED STATES
SENATOR, IN 1890, TOOK AN IMPORTANT PART IN FRAMING THE SHERMAN LAW]

The history of the Sherman Act has absolutely justified the wisdom
and integrity of the Supreme Court. Scores of times the lower courts
have decided against the government; and the most important decisions
have been those in which the Supreme Court has reversed the inferior
tribunals. The record of federal prosecutions under this law affords an
interesting insight into the attitude of the several administrations
toward trust regulation. President Harrison, under whose administration
the law was passed, accomplished little. His attorney-general brought
seven actions--four bills in equity and three criminal indictments.
Under the equity proceedings, he obtained three injunctions; the
criminal proceedings all ended in failure. One of the cases instituted
by President Harrison, however,--that against the Trans-Missouri
Freight Association,--was afterward taken to the Supreme Court by
President Cleveland's attorney-general, and resulted in securing one of
the most important decisions in the history of the law.

President Cleveland showed considerably more activity than his
predecessor. Though only eight proceedings stand to his credit,
several of them were of the greatest importance. He used the Sherman
Law in fighting the Debs cases growing out of the Pullman strike; and
in the well-known Addyston Pipe & Steel Company case he dissolved a
combination, formed by several manufacturers of gas and sewer pipe, to
monopolize the trade of most large American municipalities. President
McKinley apparently had little interest in the Sherman Law; throughout
his four and a half years only three cases were prosecuted, none of
which were of much consequence. With the administration of President
Roosevelt, however, the situation changed. Against the seven cases
instituted by Harrison, the eight by Cleveland, the three by McKinley,
stand thirty-seven started by Roosevelt. That is, he has instituted
twice as many cases as all his predecessors combined, and many of
the Roosevelt prosecutions have proved successful. Nineteen of these
thirty-seven cases have already been decided; the government has won
seventeen and lost only two.

As a result of these many proceedings and interpretations, the Sherman
Anti-trust Law is now fairly well understood. There has recently been
much complaint that the law is not sufficiently "specific"; that
business men and labor leaders are groping very much in the dark;
that it is impossible to say what this statute prohibits and what it
permits. From the judicial literature which has accumulated in the
last eighteen years, however, a fairly clear idea of its bearings
upon large enterprises, both of labor and capital, can be obtained.
Senator Hoar declared, when the bill came up for final passage, that
it enunciated no new principle of law. It made illegal "restraints of
trade" and "monopolies," but these had been for centuries unlawful in
all Anglo-Saxon countries. As far back as the reign of Henry VI. in
England, in 1436, a law was passed declaring that "all agreements in
restraint of trade are illegal and voide." This principle has ever
since been part of the law of England, and is at present part of the
common law of many States in the Union.

[Illustration: FRANCIS LYNDE STETSON, CHIEF COUNSEL FOR THE UNITED
STATES STEEL CORPORATION AND OTHER MORGAN ORGANIZATIONS. MR. STETSON
WAS ONE OF THE DRAFTERS OF LAST WINTER'S TRUST BILL. IF IT HAD BECOME
A LAW, THIS MEASURE WOULD HAVE MADE THE UNITED STATES STEEL COMPANY
PRACTICALLY IMMUNE FROM FEDERAL PROSECUTION]

In the United States itself, however,--that is, in the federal
courts--there is no common law; everything must be fixed and regulated
by statute. What the Sherman Act did was to make this common law on the
subjects of restraints and monopolies the statute law of the United
States. Under the common law of practically every State, monopolies
and restraining combinations were illegal; Congress made these illegal
when they involved inter-State trade. Under the common law boycotts
were illegal also; Congress made illegal the inter-State boycott.
Congressional action on this subject was demanded, because the larger
number of these unlawful combinations could be reached only by federal
action, inasmuch as they usually involved more than one State.

Under the rulings of the Supreme Court, combinations and conspiracies
which restrain trade and develop monopolies are those which, broadly
speaking, deprive the public of the benefits of free competition. This
act recognizes the competitive system as the one industrial ideal,
and outlaws anything that interferes with a free, unobstructed flow of
trade. A trust that gets control of the larger part of a particular
product and manipulates the output so as to prevent trade from flowing
in its natural course--that is an illegal restraint. Labor unions that
combine to divert artificially this same course of trade--as they
unquestionably do when they persuade the public not to have business
relations with particular persons or corporations against which
they have declared a boycott--also engage in an illegal restraint.
The Sherman Law aims only to protect the public against these
unnatural influences; to restore business to normal conditions. With
corporations, the final test as to whether they restrain trade or not
is whether their effect is to increase prices. If they do not increase
prices, then they do not restrain trade and consequently do not violate
the Sherman Act. The Supreme Court has insisted upon one important
modification of this principle. The effect upon prices must be
immediate and not remote. An arbitrary agreement that definitely fixes
the prices of a product is clearly illegal; an agreement which, in the
last analysis, might tend to influence prices, would not necessarily be
so.

[Illustration: SETH LOW, EX-MAYOR OF NEW YORK, WHO, AS PRESIDENT OF
THE NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION, ADVOCATES THE AMENDMENT OF THE SHERMAN
LAW]

_Railroads Stopped from Making Rate Agreements_

In the first ten years after the passing of the Sherman Act, the
government attacked most successfully, not the great solidified
aggregations of capital popularly known as trusts, but the more or
less loosely organized federations of corporations, formed chiefly for
the purpose of regulating and establishing prices. Trade agreements,
not monopolistic corporations, became its chief quarry. In proscribing
these agreements as illegal, the Sherman Act was found to be extremely
effective. The very first case under this law was directed against a
combination of coal-mining companies in Kentucky and Tennessee, which
existed for the express purpose of regulating output and fixing prices.
The courts promptly decided that this agreement violated the Sherman
Act. In 1892 eighteen railroads, nearly all operating west of the
Missouri River, organized what they called the Trans-Missouri Freight
Association. This association included many of the great Western roads,
companies of the magnitude of the Santa Fé, the Missouri Pacific, and
the Rock Island. Its object, as clearly stated in the articles of
association, was "mutual protection by establishing and maintaining
reasonable rates, rules, and regulations, in all freight traffic, both
through and local." In other words, it proposed to fix arbitrarily
the price of transportation throughout the enormous territory covered
by the eighteen railroads in question. The old "pooling" agreements,
which had existed for many years, had been prohibited by the Interstate
Commerce Law passed in 1887; and this Traffic Association was an
attempt to accomplish the same end--that is, stop competition among the
railroads and maintain rates--in a different way. The Supreme Court,
by a vote of five to four, decided that this agreement was prohibited
by the Sherman Anti-trust Act, because, as an attempt to fix prices,
it restrained trade. The famous Trans-Missouri decision, which settled
this case, made the Sherman Law an insurmountable bulwark against all
railroad combinations of this kind. Until this decision was finally
given in 1897, this act had not been seriously regarded; after the
Supreme Court had spoken, however, capitalists suddenly awoke to its
significance. The decision settled many important points, which will be
referred to subsequently in this article, and it changed as well the
whole policy of railroad management.

The Sherman Act has stopped, not only railroad combinations, but
similar agreements existing among manufacturers for the regulation
of prices. The case of the Addyston Pipe & Steel Company is the most
celebrated of this kind. In 1894 a large number of manufacturers
of sewer and gas pipe, the Addyston Company being one, formed a
combination to monopolize business and fix prices in thirty-six States
and Territories. All companies which were parties to the agreement
reserved the right to compete with each other outside of these
thirty-six States as fiercely as before. They significantly called the
section in which there was to be no competition "pay territory"; and
the States outside of this section were known as "free territory."
These manufacturers dealt chiefly with municipalities, which usually
let contracts for sewer and gas pipe by public bidding. Whenever such
a contract was offered, the Addyston combination would meet secretly,
decide upon the price they would charge, and then arrange a program
of fictitious bids. They then divided the profits among themselves.
In this way they forced practically all purchasers in the sections in
which they traded to pay exorbitant prices. Indeed, the subsequent
history of this combination beautifully illustrates the practical
effect upon the public of agreements of this kind. The Addyston and
its associate members sold certain pipe in "pay territory," where
the combination was enforced, at twenty-four dollars a ton; in "free
territory," where they competed with each other, they frequently sold
identically the same product at fourteen dollars. The Supreme Court
decided that this agreement violated the Sherman Act--that it was a
combination or a conspiracy in restraint of trade. William H. Taft,
then United States Circuit Judge, wrote an opinion discussing the
merits of this dispute which has since become a legal classic. Mr. Taft
spent six months in studying the questions involved.

Nearly all such cases, however, involved merely what may be called
trade agreements. In each case there were actual attempts to fix
prices by compact, and these agreements were the only things in
common among the different corporations that became parties to them.
The several corporations preserved their independent existence; they
were not trusts in the sense in which the Standard Oil Company, the
American Sugar Refining Company, the United States Steel Company, are
trusts--that is, single corporations, producing and distributing the
greater part of some particular product. Until President Roosevelt's
administration, these trusts had, for the larger part, escaped
prosecution under the Sherman Law, the few attempts that had been made
to assail them; having ingloriously failed.

[Illustration: JOHN SHERMAN, A STATESMAN WHO SERVED THE GOVERNMENT
FOR MORE THAN FORTY YEARS, AS SENATOR, SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY, AND
SECRETARY OF STATE. BETWEEN 1888 AND 1890 HE INTRODUCED SIX SEPARATE
BILLS FOR THE REGULATION OF TRUSTS, AND OUT OF THESE GREW THE MEASURE
WHICH NOW BEARS HIS NAME]

Meanwhile, in the first twelve years after the passage of the
Anti-trust Act, and in the teeth of it, some of the largest
monopolistic corporations were formed. Many persons have maintained
that the Sherman Law, far from forestalling these corporations, has
actually precipitated them. Their point is that, since this act
clearly outlawed trade agreements among independent corporations, these
corporations, in order to get control of the situation, have been
compelled to amalgamate themselves under one ownership. The Sherman
Act made illegal, for example, rate agreements among railroads; as a
consequence, in order to control railroad policy, the owners of the
great trunk lines have purchased large blocks of stock in each other's
property--on what is popularly known as the "community of interest"
idea.

President Roosevelt, however, has succeeded in applying the Sherman
Act to the trusts, as that word is popularly understood. The famous
Northern Securities case is his greatest victory along that line. In
this instance, Mr. J. J. Hill and J. Pierpont Morgan formed a new
corporation, the Northern Securities Company, which acquired the actual
stock ownership of nine-tenths of the stock of the Northern Pacific
Railroad and three-fourths of that of the Great Northern. The Northern
Securities Company thus obtained a virtual monopoly of railroad
transportation from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean in the
northern section of the United States. The Roosevelt administration,
relying solely upon the Sherman Act, destroyed this corporation. The
administration has followed up this victory by instituting suits
against the Standard Oil Company, the American Tobacco Company, and
other powerful monopolies.

[Illustration: GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR, UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM 1877 TO
1904, AND ONE OF THE AUTHORS OF THE SHERMAN ANTI-TRUST ACT]

_Labor Unions, as Such, Not Prohibited_

Meanwhile, the same law has proved an effective weapon in opposing
that other form of combination and restraint against which it was
framed,--the labor trust. Under it a new code of federal laws affecting
labor unions has developed; and to a large extent it has strengthened
the cause of legitimate labor organization. No intelligent person now
disputes the right of workingmen to organize. A few labor leaders have
publicly declared their apprehension that the Sherman Law prohibits
peaceable labor organizations; no man, however, has thus far had the
hardihood to raise this question legally; and, in the present state
of public opinion as to the rights of labor, no one is likely to.
The United States Courts, in decisions defining the scope of the
Sherman Act, have specifically stated that it does not prohibit the
ordinary peaceful activities of labor unions. Justice White, in a
decision of the Supreme Court, has declared that an agreement among
"locomotive engineers, firemen, or trainmen engaged in the service
of an inter-State railroad not to work for less than a certain named
compensation" would not be illegal. William H. Taft, in one of the most
important decisions affecting the rights of workmen under the Sherman
Act, has defined the situation in words which are now widely accepted
as a clear statement of what is not only good law but sound public
policy:

The employees of the receiver had the right to organize into or
join a labor union which would take action as to the terms of
their employment. It is a benefit to them and to the public
that laborers should unite for their common interest and for
lawful purposes. They have labor to sell. If they stand together,
they are often able, all of them, to obtain better prices for
their labor than dealing singly with rich employers, because
the necessities of the single employee may compel him to accept
any price that is offered. The accumulation of a fund for those
who feel that the wages offered are below the legitimate market
value of such labor is desirable. They have the right to appoint
officers, who shall advise them as to the course to be taken in
relations with their employers. They may unite with other unions.
The officers they appoint, or any other person they choose to
listen to, may advise them as to the proper course to be taken in
regard to their common employment; or if they choose to appoint
any one, he may order them on pain of expulsion from the union
peaceably to leave the employ of their employer because any of the
terms of the employment are unsatisfactory.

It is clearly indicated, therefore, what labor leaders, under the
Sherman Act, can do. They have the right to organize, to combine--that
is, to form unions; they have the right to refuse to work for wages or
terms of employment unsatisfactory to themselves--that is, to strike.
Under the Sherman Act, indeed, mere organizations of laboring men are
regarded as no more outlawed than ordinary social clubs or college
fraternities.

_How the Chicago Strike of 1894 Restrained Trade_

On the other hand, labor leaders know what, under the Sherman Act,
they can not do. They cannot enter into combinations that restrain
trade. This vital point has been settled in several important
proceedings--those involving the Chicago disturbances in 1894, and,
more recently the decision just handed down in the matter of the
Danbury Hatters. These cases so clearly show the bearing of the Sherman
Act upon illegal labor practices, that they may profitably be reviewed
here.

[Illustration: _Copyrighted by C. R. Buck_

CONGRESSMAN CHARLES E. LITTLEFIELD OF MAINE, WHOSE KEEN ANALYSIS OF
LAST WINTER'S CIVIC FEDERATION TRUST BILL WAS LARGELY RESPONSIBLE FOR
ITS DEFEAT]

In 1894 the employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company of Chicago
struck for higher wages. These employees were not railway men; they
were workmen engaged in the manufacture of railway cars. In spite
of this, about four thousand had been admitted to membership in the
American Railway Union, an organization of railroad operatives,
which, under the vigorous management of Eugene V. Debs, had acquired
a membership of 250,000, and a correspondingly great power in the
field of railroad labor. In order to help the Pullman workmen in their
struggle with the Pullman Company, the American Railway Union declared
what was in effect a boycott upon all railroads using Pullman cars.
Nearly all the larger American railroads had entered into contracts
with the Pullman Company, by which parlor and sleeping cars were to be
used on their trains. Debs now demanded that these railroads should
break their contracts, and thereby, of course, become responsible for
heavy damages to the Pullman Company. In other words, he demanded that
all American railroads cease patronizing the Pullman Company because of
its "unfair" attitude toward union labor; that is, he started a boycott
against the Pullman Company. When the railroad companies refused to
meet his demand, he ordered out all American Railway Union men employed
on these lines. He even declared war upon several of the Vanderbilt
roads, which had no Pullman sleepers, operating instead the Wagner
cars. In effect, in order that several thousand workmen in Chicago
might profitably settle their private grievances with their employers,
Debs proposed, practically to end railroad communication in the larger
part of the United States.

"The gigantic character of the conspiracy," said William H. Taft in
a well-known decision resulting from these proceedings, "staggers
the imagination. The railroads have become as necessary to the life
and health and comfort of the people of this country as are the
arteries to the human body." The larger part of our food supply,
for example, is furnished by means of the railway; the interruption
of railroad transportation for any considerable period would, among
other calamities, bring famine upon large sections of the country. In
Chicago, in Cincinnati, and in other large cities, Debs despatched his
lieutenants with orders to tie up all railroads using Pullman cars.
He gave particular instructions to interfere with freight trains,
since freight was the main source of railroad revenue. In many places
riots followed; in Chicago, strikers began wrecking trains, blowing up
bridges, burning freight yards, tearing up tracks--indeed, nearly all
the twenty-three railroads centering in that city ceased operations.
The fundamental principles of the constitution, guaranteeing the
safety of life and property, had apparently given way to lawlessness
and anarchy. In the opinion of Grover Cleveland, then President of
the United States, these proceedings constituted a "conspiracy in
restraint of trade" among the States, and as such were prohibited by
the Sherman Act. That the purpose and effect of Debs' proceedings was
to restrain trade is sufficiently clear; indeed, no more complete
restraint than the cessation of railroad communication could be
imagined. Trade in this case was not only restrained; it was entirely
stopped. That the means by which this was to be accomplished had all
the essential elements of the inter-State boycott has also been shown.
In several cities, acting under the President's instructions, United
States district attorneys obtained injunctions on the ground that the
strike leaders were violating the Sherman Act, and also interfering
with the carriage of United States mails. In Chicago Eugene V. Debs
was enjoined, and, when he disobeyed the injunction, was arrested
and afterward sentenced to six months' imprisonment. In Cincinnati
his associate, Frank W. Phelan, was likewise enjoined and likewise
imprisoned for contempt. It was his act as judge in sending Phelan to
prison for violating the Sherman Law that first made William H. Taft
a national figure. The circuit courts[J] decided, in several cases,
that the combination formed by Debs against nearly all the trunk lines
was a boycott, "a conspiracy in restraint of trade," and punished the
leaders, under the Sherman Act. William H. Taft declared that "the
combination is in the teeth of the act of July 2, 1890."

_The Danbury Hatters Attempt to "Restrain Trade"_

This boycott involved violence as an incident; the Supreme Court,
however, has recently taken still more advanced ground, and decided
that a peaceable boycott also violates the Sherman Act. In the last
fifteen years a terrific warfare has raged between the American
Federation of Labor and nearly all American manufacturers of hats.
The American Federation has a membership variously estimated at from
1,500,000 to 2,000,000, including workmen in practically every State
and Territory. It is, as its name implies, a central association
organized for the purpose of bringing into one effective machine all
the local labor organizations scattered throughout the country. It
is an association of associations, and, as indicating its national
scope, has its headquarters in Washington. It keeps constantly in touch
with its membership through its monthly publication, the American
Federationist, as well as through the many journals of the unions
with which it is affiliated. It regularly employs nearly one thousand
agents who continually push the interests of its members in the larger
part of the United States and Canada. Mr. Samuel Gompers constantly
uses this organization for the prosecution of inter-State boycotts.
In his petition to intervene in the Danbury Hatters case, Mr. Gompers
stated, over his own signature, that "the constitution of said American
Federation of Labor makes special provision for the prosecution of
boycotts, so-called, when instituted by a constituent or affiliated
organization." In a public speech on May 1, 1908, Mr. Gompers declared
that the Supreme Court might "as well dissolve and destroy the
organization of labor as to enforce these decisions"--that is, the
decisions against boycotts. Obviously, the Federation of Labor has an
advantageous organization for work of this kind. A local union, with
membership extending not beyond the limits of a town or State, could
make little headway against a manufacturer against whose goods it had
declared a boycott, inasmuch as his trade usually extends over a large
area. The American Federation of Labor, however, by embracing the local
unions' cause can make the boycott effective in practically every part
of the country. In the last twelve years, Mr. Gompers' organization has
declared four hundred and eight boycotts.

In particular, it has prosecuted with considerable success boycotts
against the manufacturers of fur hats. About ten years ago, Mr.
Gompers, working with the United Hatters of North America, inaugurated
an elaborate program to compel all such manufacturers to unionize their
shops. By using their well-known methods, they have brought to terms
seventy out of the eighty-two manufacturers in this country. The firm
of D. L. Loewe & Co. of Danbury, Connecticut, however, had persistently
refused to comply with these demands. Mr. Loewe was not a large
manufacturer; he had, however, built up a prosperous business, and,
though he had never shown any hostility to union labor, had insisted on
maintaining an open shop. In 1901 the United Hatters' Union practically
ordered him to discharge his non-union men and unionize his factory.
Mr. Loewe again refused to do this, and a strike immediately followed.
Mr. Loewe, however, promptly engaged new non-union men, and soon his
factory was running as busily and as profitably as before.

Mr. Gompers then brought the whole machinery of his organization to
bear upon this recalcitrant hatter. On July 25, 1902, the Federation of
Labor and the United Hatters declared a boycott against his products.
They denounced this concern in their several publications as "unfair,"
and notified nearly all the wholesale and retail hat dealers throughout
the United States that they must not handle the Loewe goods, under
pain of being boycotted themselves. It is said that their agents kept
espionage, in Danbury, over all freight consignments from the Loewe
factory, and thus obtained a fairly complete list of their customers;
committees of labor men in many cities waited upon these customers,
and, in several instances, persuaded them to drop the Loewe hats. Some
firms who refused to obey this dictation were themselves boycotted;
and, in San Francisco, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Richmond, the
boycott was pursued with particular virulence. The Federation went so
far as to grant a special dispensation to its members to purchase hats
made by other non-union labor, rather than patronize the Loewe brand.
Mr. Loewe, though he suffered enormous loss as a result of these
proceedings, pluckily kept up the fight. Under the Sherman Law, an
aggrieved citizen is authorized to bring private suit against persons
engaged in a conspiracy to restrain his trade, and, if he successfully
maintains his case, may recover three-fold damages. Mr. Loewe quietly
went to work and had made an inventory of all property-holders actively
engaged in boycotting his goods. He then brought suits for $340,000
damages against a large number of labor men, filing in the District
Court 240 separate attachments. The Supreme Court of the United States
made short work of this case. Chief Justice Fuller, who wrote the
decision, declared that "the combination described in the declaration
is a combination 'in restraint of trade or commerce among the several
States' in the sense in which these words are used in the act, and the
action can be maintained accordingly." An interesting feature of the
case is that the decision of the Supreme Court was unanimous. In nearly
all the other proceedings involving the Sherman Law--the Trans-Missouri
case, the Northern Securities--the government has won by a bare
majority; every member of the Supreme bench, however, at once concluded
that Mr. Gompers' activities against the firm of D. L. Loewe & Co.
restrained inter-State trade, and thus violated the Sherman Law.

Thus, in eighteen years, the Sherman Act has proved an effective weapon
against the two forms of trust and conspiracy with which the public
is most familiar--combinations of capitalists to restrain inter-State
trade and arbitrarily fix prices, and combinations of labor unions
organized for the prosecution of inter-State boycotts. It strikes
impartially the Northern Securities Company and the American Federation
of Labor; it does not discriminate between the activities of Mr. J.
Pierpont Morgan and of Mr. Samuel Gompers. At the last session of
Congress, the two forces which it opposes bent all their energies to
destroy this law; in all probability they will renew and redouble their
efforts this winter.

_National Civic Federation Attempts to Amend the Law_

For many years the National Civic Federation has been collecting data
bearing upon the trust and labor problem. In 1899 it held a trust
conference; and again, in October, 1907, it called a large meeting
at Chicago for the consideration of the trust situation. Delegates
appointed by the governors of forty-two States and representatives of
more than ninety commercial, agricultural, and labor organizations
contributed to these discussions. Referring to these Chicago
proceedings, Mr. Theodore Marburg, one of the participants, said
before the Judiciary Committee in Washington last winter: "Mr. Nicholas
Murray Butler sounded the note of attack upon the Sherman Anti-trust
Law.... I take it that the gentlemen will agree with me that it was
a dominant note of that conference." As a result, a bill radically
amending the Sherman Anti-trust Act was introduced in Congress at the
last session. Its most active sponsors in Washington were Seth Low,
president of the National Civic Federation, Professor Jeremiah W. Jenks
of Cornell, and Samuel Gompers, president of the Federation of Labor.
Well-known men who had participated in the conference that preceded
the framing of the bill were E. H. Gary, chairman of the Board of the
United States Steel Corporation, Henry L. Higginson, Isaac N. Seligman,
and James Speyer and August Belmont, bankers. Francis Lynde Stetson,
chief counsel for the United States Steel Corporation and other Morgan
corporations, and Victor Morawetz, counsel for the Santa Fé Railroad,
wrote the drafts. This latter fact was publicly stated by Mr. Low and
Mr. Jenks in the course of the hearings before the Judiciary Committee.
The authorship of the bill was early brought out in the following
colloquy between Congressman Charles E. Littlefield and Mr. Low:

MR. LITTLEFIELD: Right there, Mr. Low, if there is no objection,
who are the people that actually participated in the preparation
of the bill? Who are the men who actually drew it?

MR. LOW: We conferred with Judge Gary, of the United States Steel
Corporation.

MR. LITTLEFIELD: E. H. Gary, president of their board of directors?

MR. LOW: E. H. Gary. The lawyers actually engaged in the drafting
of the bill were Mr. Stetson----

MR. LITTLEFIELD: That is, Francis Lynde Stetson?

MR. LOW: Francis Lynde Stetson; and Mr. Morawetz.

MR. LITTLEFIELD: Victor Morawetz?

MR. LOW: Victor Morawetz.

At another time, Mr. Low described Mr. Stetson and Mr. Morawetz as
"the drafters" of the bill. Herbert Knox Smith, commissioner of
corporations, also had a hand in framing the measure. President
Roosevelt openly indorsed it and sent in an emergency message urging,
among other things, its passage. Extensive hearings, extending through
several months, were held before the Judiciary Committee. Many
representatives of capital and labor appeared in favor of the measure.
Although Congressman Littlefield, who presided over these hearings,
many times expressed his wish to examine Mr. Stetson and Mr. Morawetz,
these gentlemen never appeared. Although Mr. Low promised that they
would submit a brief, explaining several disputed legal points, they
never did so. The burden of discussing the many intricate legal points
that constantly arose rested entirely upon the shoulders of Mr. Low and
Professor Jenks, neither of whom had had any legal training. Through
the efforts of Congressman Littlefield, James A. Emery, counsel for
the National Association for Industrial Defense, and Daniel Davenport,
counsel for the Anti-Boycott Association, the proposed law was
defeated, but the proceedings are of great interest and importance
as illustrating the changes desired by both labor and capital in the
present anti-trust law.

_Gompers Asks that the Boycott be Legalized_

Mr. Gompers' demands were entirely simple and direct. He wished labor
unions entirely exempted from the operations of the Sherman Act. That
law, if properly respected and enforced, would practically put an end
to Mr. Gompers' occupation. Referring lately in a public speech to
the effect of a recent court decision against inter-State boycotts,
Mr. Gompers quoted, as applicable to his own organization, Shylock's
speech in "The Merchant of Venice," "You might as well take from
me my life as take from me the means whereby I live." Mr. Gompers'
chief interest in the Civic Federation bill, therefore, was a clause
which specifically declared that the Anti-trust Act should not be so
interpreted "as to interfere with or restrict any right of employees
to strike for any cause or to combine or to contract with each
other or with employers for the purpose of peaceably obtaining from
employers satisfactory terms of their labor or satisfactory conditions
of employment." Mr. Low and Mr. Jenks denied that this language
legalized the boycott; Congressman Littlefield, however, and many other
opponents of the measure, emphatically asserted that it did. Such
sweeping concessions as "_to strike for any cause_" and "_to combine
or to contract with each other or with employers for the purpose
of peaceably obtaining from employers satisfactory terms_," it was
maintained, clearly authorized such boycotts as that prosecuted against
the Danbury Hatters. That proceeding, it was pointed out, was entirely
peaceable--there was no law-breaking, no rioting, no bloodshed. It
would also legalize, it was said, many of those arrangements between
labor unions and employers--by which employers' associations contract
to employ only members of certain labor unions, the latter, on their
part, contracting to work only for certain employers--which were
brought to such perfection by the late Sam Parks. Mr. Gompers demanded
that, if the clause in question did not authorize boycotts, another
should be substituted which did; to make the case sure, therefore, he
proposed an amendment which did so in no uncertain tone. The following
extract from the record clearly defines Mr. Gompers' position:

MR. LITTLEFIELD: Now, Mr. Gompers, a word. Would this amendment
you suggest, if it became a law, authorize the prosecution of such
a boycott as was attempted in the Danbury Hatters' case, which was
in violation of the Sherman Anti-trust Law? Is that the purpose?

MR. GOMPERS: One of the purposes; yes, sir. That case was brought
under the Sherman Anti-trust Law.

MR. LITTLEFIELD: Yes. And the purpose of the amendment you have
offered is to relieve you from the operation of the Sherman
Anti-trust Law as construed by the court in that case?

MR. GOMPERS: Yes, sir.

MR. LITTLEFIELD: And to authorize that kind of an inter-State
boycott?

MR. GOMPERS: Yes, sir.

MR. LITTLEFIELD: Do you, as the representative of organized labor,
favor the boycott, both as an inter-State and a local proposition?

MR. GOMPERS: I do, sir.

MR. LITTLEFIELD: And your organization stands for that?

MR. GOMPERS: It does, sir.[K]

_Government to Discriminate Between Good and Bad Trusts_

As to monopolistic corporations, the proposed act placed them entirely
under the supervision of the executive branch of the government. If
you wished to form a trust, or enter into a restraining contract,
and, at the same time, to escape the prohibition of the Sherman
Act, you would first, under the provision of this bill, submit the
proposed arrangement to the Commissioner of Corporations and answer
such questions as he saw fit to ask. If he gave approval, you could
go ahead and carry out the deal, practically secure against further
interference. If he disapproved, you would be liable to attack under
the Sherman Act. In fact, the administration was to be given arbitrary
power to discriminate between good and bad trusts, to separate the
corporation sheep from the corporation goats. "You are all right," it
could say to one combination; "you are all wrong," it could say to
another. The federal government, in other words, was to rule absolutely
the business activities of nearly 80,000,000 of people; merely by a
word it could authorize a gigantic combination like the United States
Steel Company, and prohibit another like the Standard Oil.

_"Reasonable" and "Unreasonable" Combinations_

The above statement gives the effect and not precisely the form
of the proposed legislation. What its authors really hoped to
accomplish was executive discrimination between those combinations
and those restraints of trade which were reasonable and those which
were unreasonable. They based their measure upon the theory that
certain combinations, even many whose tendency is to restrain trade
and increase prices to the consumer, may still work for the public
interest. The word "reasonable" has played an important part in the
history of the Sherman Act. In several cases the corporations, in
contesting the law, have made the claim that this act did not prohibit
all combinations in restraint of trade, but only those which were
"unreasonable." They set up this defense most strongly in the famous
Trans-Missouri case, already described. Eighteen railroads, it may be
repeated, had formed an association for the purpose of fixing freight
rates. James C. Carter, who argued the case, strongly asserted that
such an agreement was beneficial both to the railroads and to the
public; the history of railroads having conclusively proved that
cut-throat competition inevitably led to bankruptcy and demoralization
in railroad service. He therefore claimed that the proposed restraint
in trade was "reasonable" and consequently not prohibited by the
Sherman Act. The Supreme Court, by a majority of five to four, rejected
this theory. The Sherman Act, it pointed out, in express language
made illegal "_every_ contract, combination in the form of trust or
otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade"; and made "_every_
person" who was a party to such contract a criminal. It left absolutely
no leeway--it did not discriminate in the remotest degree between those
which were reasonable and those which were not. Since then all demands
for the modification of the act have hinged upon this one point.

_Andrew Carnegie on Combinations_

This demand, of course, has precipitated a very nice problem in
definition. What is a reasonable combination? What is an unreasonable
one? What is a good trust? What is a bad one? Upon this all-important
question the many weary hearings extending through four months before
the Judiciary Committee last winter shed practically no light. The
Civic Federation bill was based upon this fundamental distinction;
and a large number of distinguished citizens appeared in favor of
it. Congressman Littlefield, as each speaker appeared before the
Committee, asked him to give a concrete illustration of a combination,
forbidden by the Sherman Act, which really promoted the public interest
and was therefore "reasonable." Mr. Seth Low frankly admitted that he
could name no concrete case of the kind. He caused some amusement,
however, when he read a letter from Andrew Carnegie touching upon this
very subject. "One point seems to me essential," wrote Mr. Carnegie,
"without it, little general progress can be made; namely, when new
combinations are proposed, the first question must always be 'what is
the object sought?' _In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it will
undoubtedly be to rob the community of its right to the benefits of
free competition, disguise it as one may_; therefore the Commissioner's
duty is to obtain satisfactory proof that the application is to
cover an exceptional case. The conditions must be peculiar, as those
of common carriers and steel-rail agreements are." Mr. Carnegie's
statement that ninety-nine per cent of trade agreements are made for
the purpose of "robbing the community" and his implication that the
exceptional one per cent are the agreements involving the manufacturers
of steel rails, naturally provoked much hilarity.

Only two other illustrations were furnished of benevolent combinations.
Mr. Herbert Knox Smith, commissioner of corporations, instanced a
proposed agreement among lumber men to cut only a certain amount
of timber each year, the ostensible purpose being to prevent the
wanton destruction of the forests. It appeared, however, that the
real purpose of such an agreement was not to preserve the forests,
but to restrict the output, and increase prices, and consequently
the profits of the lumber men. Another illustration offered was the
combination of patent medicine dealers to fix prices and prohibit
price cutting--the object, it was said, being to prevent the unfair
competition of large department stores with retail druggists. But this,
in the last analysis, was generally believed to be a concerted attempt
to destroy competition and enhance the profits of patent medicine
makers. Congressman Littlefield insisted, throughout the entire
proceedings, that the fundamental purpose of forbidden combinations was
to control the product and thereby increase the price to the consumer.
If there were any combinations that did not have that purpose or
result, then the Sherman Act, according to Mr. Littlefield's analysis,
did not prohibit them. Thus in all attempts to define practically
reasonableness and unreasonableness, as applied to trade agreements,
the statement was repeatedly made that the large part of the business
of this country was done in violation of law; that business men lived
constantly in a state of terror from the fear of its enforcement; that
its presence on the statute books largely explained existing business
depression. When it came to defining precisely what they wished to do,
however, none of those who favored the bill became specific. The thing
finally simmered down to a statement by Mr. Low that the law was "a
very important element in the psychological condition of business men
to-day."

_Indulgences to be Granted to Corporations_

This particular power of defining reasonableness and unreasonableness,
however, the proposed law centered in the President, acting through
the Commissioner of Corporations. It provided a limited system of
federal registration for corporations, and, in a modified form, for
federal license and publicity--the two circumstances which probably
led President Roosevelt to support the measure. In effect it granted
indulgences to corporations to combine, provided they would do certain
things. The Sherman Law, as it stands to-day, was not specifically to
be repealed; it was simply to be waived in favor of those combinations
and trusts which paid the price of these indulgences. In order to
obtain absolution, the offending corporation must do two things:
register with the Bureau of Corporations and answer such questions
as might be propounded to it. The bill authorized the President to
determine precisely what information should be exacted, and also to
change from time to time the requirements regarding data. That is, for
registered corporations, it gave the executive branch of the government
absolute inquisitorial power. Registered corporations had the right
to file with the Bureau any agreement or contract or combination to
which it became a party--the precise kind of transactions made illegal
by the Sherman Act. The Commissioner had thirty days in which to
examine such contracts; if, within that period, he declared them in
reasonable restraint of trade, then they became practically legal.[L]
If not, then they could be proceeded against under the Sherman Law.
The chief point of criticism in this arrangement was the stipulation
for a thirty-day period during which the Commissioner must pass upon
these contracts. This, it was asserted, was the loop-hole by which the
corporations were to secure immunity. The Commissioner must declare
these contracts reasonable or unreasonable within thirty days; if
he failed to act upon them in that time, they became reasonable,
precisely as if he had declared them to be so. How, it has been
asked, could the Bureau possibly act intelligently within that period
upon many of the exceedingly intricate questions which would come up
for judgment? Whether a contract is reasonable, of course, largely
depends upon the way it affects prices. An examination would therefore
frequently involve an economic study of the particular trade, as well
as the organization of the particular corporation involved. It would
be necessary to go deeply into capitalization, values behind this
capitalization, cost of production, wages, transportation charges
and so on. There are said to be more than 200,000 corporations in
existence. Supposing half or a quarter should register,--how could
the Bureau possible examine them within thirty days? Would it be
possible to investigate the United States Steel Corporation within
that period? Under the suggested law, however, unless the Commissioner
passed judgment within this time, all these contracts and combinations
would automatically receive a certificate of good character. In their
interest, the Sherman Act would practically be repealed.

In the main, this provision referred to contracts made and combinations
to be formed in the future; another section practically extended
immunity to all contracts and combinations now in existence. Nearly
all trusts organized in the last forty years, and all restraining
agreements, were to become valid. The government was to have a year in
which to institute proceedings against such corporations as declined
to register. If it failed to do so within this time, then these
combinations could never be attacked on any ground whatever, and
became regularly fixed institutions. As there are about five hundred
corporations popularly known as trusts and myriads of trade agreements
now forbidden, the law department, it was suggested, would have its
hands full if it attempted to bring suit against them all within twelve
months. Moreover, after the passage of the proposed act, the government
could not proceed against any combination except on one ground--that
it was an unreasonable restraint of trade. Under the Sherman Act, it
will be remembered, it can prosecute without any reference to the
question as to whether the restraint is reasonable or not. If the act
had passed, in other words, the position of the government would have
been this: within a year it could have assailed the trusts only on
the grounds of unreasonableness; after the expiration of a year it
could assail them on no ground whatever. A saving clause, however,
provided that the government could prosecute all actions already
begun. That is, it could follow up to the end the pending cases against
the Standard Oil, the American Tobacco Company and other corporations
against which it has already started suit. It could not prosecute,
however, the United States Steel Corporation, for it has instituted no
proceeding in that direction. It was the Attorney of the United States
Steel Corporation, Mr. Francis Lynde Stetson, who had a large hand in
framing the bill.

These facts have led many observers to believe that the bill in
question represented an underhanded attempt, by large corporations,
especially the United States Steel, practically to remove the
Sherman Anti-trust Law from the statute book. Mr. E. H. Gary and
Mr. George W. Perkins spent many days in Congress while the bill
was under discussion, though they did not once openly appear before
the committee. No criticism affecting the good faith of Mr. Low and
Professor Jenks, the most active open advocates of the bill, was
put forth. The discussion disclosed the fact, however, that the
Sherman Act, as it stands at present, has many friends. Organizations
interested in curbing the unlawful activities of labor unions insisted
that that law, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, is practically
the only protection American industry has against the boycott. Repeal
or seriously modify it, they declared, and a régime of labor union
terrorism far surpassing any hitherto known in any country, would
at once begin. The plan of Mr. Gompers and his associates to shelve
this law, they insisted, was merely part of their general scheme to
remove all legal restraints from the operations of labor unions.
Opinions did not seem quite so unanimous as to the wisdom of the
Sherman Act in its bearings upon corporations. Though many declared
that this measure is too sweeping and drastic, and should be amended,
no one has yet suggested any practical way of framing a new law. No
one who has studied the problem of trust regulation, it is believed,
has thus far hit upon a plan that, while it gives greater leeway to
the corporations, protects the public from arbitrarily high prices
and other exactions. There is thus a growing conviction that the act
passed by the great constitutional lawyers of 1890 represents the best
attainable result in this direction. It has not stopped the growth of
trusts, it is true; but whether that is because it does not furnish the
means or because it has not been sufficiently enforced, is the disputed
question. "What is needed," recently said ex-Senator Edmunds, the
man who was the real author of the Sherman Act, "is not so much more
legislation as competent and earnest administration of the laws that
exist."

[J] In the Debs case the Circuit Court based its decision almost
entirely upon the Sherman Law. The Supreme Court of the United
States, in affirming this decision, rested mainly on the broader
question of the interference with the United States mails. Justice
Brewer, however, who wrote the decision, specifically said that
this fact did not mean that the Supreme Court dissented from the
grounds on which the lower tribunal had decided the case.

[K] In Justice to Mr. Low and Mr Jenks it should be said that they
disclaimed any intention of indorsing a bill which authorized
the boycott. They afterward amended the clause in question by
authorizing employees "to strike for any cause not unlawful at
common law," which modification leads into many legal fogs which
it is hardly worth while to enter in this place.

[L] The bill provided, it is true, that the contracts might still
be assailed on the ground of unreasonableness. The practical
effect, however, it was generally conceded--virtually admitted by
Herbert Knox Smith--would be to give them immunity for all time.

THE ETERNAL FEMININE

BY TEMPLE BAILEY

If it had been any one but Anne Beaumont!

"I don't like turning conventionalities topsy-turvy, Sophie," she said,
as we went downstairs; "I don't believe I can ever ask a man to dance
with me."

"Other women do," I murmured.

"My husband would never have agreed to such a thing," Anne stated.

That is where Anne always had the advantage of me. Although she had
been a widow for five years, she still quoted the authoritative
masculine point of view, while I, having in my teens chosen a career
instead of a husband, and never having rectified my mistake, was forced
to fall back on the unsupported feminine.

"Perhaps you'd rather sit out the dances," was my somewhat malicious
way of putting it.

Anne, poised like a white butterfly on the landing, turned on me a
reproachful glance.

"No woman would rather be a wallflower," she affirmed.

"Of course not," I returned promptly, "and I don't believe it is going
to be very bad after the first plunge."

Anne leaned over the stair rail and surveyed the formidable group of
men in the lower hall. "It's dreadful," she said. Then, gathering about
her a scarf of silver tissue, she commanded, "You go first, Sophie,"
and we descended together.

At the foot of the stairs, Charlemagne Dabney met us.

"Charlie, boy," Anne said plaintively, "ask me to dance with you. I
simply can't get used to the leap-year idea----"

And I, having prepared to blunder into a formal, "May I have the
pleasure?" was so illumined by her method that I employed it with
success--for though I lacked Anne's appealing coquetry, I challenged
old friends, and my card was soon filled.

But Anne did not depend on old friends. She danced with the count
from Hungary, the multi-millionaire from the West, the Senator from
Kentucky, and to fill up spaces she fell back on Charlemagne Dabney.

"I think it was lovely of you," she told him at supper, "to open the
house for the week-end and the dance. Only, it's too bad that you
insist on the leap-year idea for the whole time."

Across the table Elizabeth Ames sparkled radiantly. "I like it. I
didn't dance with a single bore, and before I go home I am going to ask
all of the men to marry me!"

Anne's face wore its most gracious expression, but I knew how she felt.
Elizabeth is eighteen and pretty. Anne is twice eighteen and pretty.
And there's a difference.

Anne opened her eyes very wide and said to Charlemagne, "You see what
you've done? Elizabeth is going to ask you to marry her."

Charlemagne smiled at Elizabeth. "No such good luck. There are too many
young fellows who will accept her before she gives me the chance."

Elizabeth laughed back, "Don't be too sure that you'll escape."

Anne's delicate eyebrows were raised. "Of course she is joking; no
woman would really ask a man----"

Charlemagne sighed. "I wish one woman would."

Anne's lashes fluttered. "Why don't you ask her?" she challenged.

He shrugged his shoulders. "I feel weak in the knees when I think of
it," he said, "for fear she might say 'no'."

"Faint heart," I murmured, but no one paid any attention to me.

It seemed to me, after that, as if some of the brightness had gone
out of Elizabeth's face. But Anne fairly scintillated. And she was
exceedingly amiable to Elizabeth.

"Ask the count first," I heard her say, "he's simply charming."

Elizabeth flung up her head in a quick way. She was all in sheer pale
yellow, bordered with daffodils, and there was a twist of gold ribbon
in her fair hair. Only extreme youth could have worn it, and, as she
flashed her answer back to Anne, I had never seen her more beautiful.

"The count wouldn't have me as a precious gift," she said. "I'm too
crude. He likes a more finished product--like you, dear Mrs. Beaumont."

"Now, what do you suppose she meant by that?" said Anne that night,
when we were in our kimonos and were comforting our complexions with
cold cream. "Do you think she meant it for a compliment, or was it a
reflection on my age?"

"No one can reflect on your age," I told her. "Nobody knows it but
Charlemagne and me, and we won't tell."

"That's the advantage of living on the other side and coming back to
meet the younger generation," said Anne; "they haven't kept tab on the
years."

She got up and moved restlessly about the room. With the cream on her
face and with her hair down, she looked old, and I had a vision of
Elizabeth in the yellow gown.

Perhaps something of my thought showed, for Anne stopped suddenly and
gazed into a long mirror set in the door. "Oh, youth, youth, Sophie,"
she cried.

"Anne," I said, "come away from that mirror. No one can be beautiful
with her face full of cold cream."

She laughed and dropped down on the rug in front of me, and after a
while she said, "Did you hear what he said to-night?"

"About wishing a certain woman would ask him?"

"Yes. He will never ask me, Sophie. He thinks I am still mourning my
husband--he thinks I don't care----"

There wasn't much to be said after that. But before I left her, I
whispered, "Why don't you tell him, Anne?"

Anne's shocked eyes condemned me. "Oh, Sophie, as if a woman _could_!"

I passed Elizabeth Ames' room on my way to my own, and she called to
me, "Come in, Miss Sophie."

"It's so late," I protested, standing on the threshold.

But she was insistent. "Please come," she begged.

"You ought to be in bed," I scolded, "getting your beauty sleep."

But even as I said it, I knew she didn't need it, for she was as
daintily fresh as a rose. Her fair hair hung down in two heavy braids
over her white gown. She looked like a lovely child.

"Miss Sophie," she said abruptly, when she had put me into a big chair
in front of the fire, "tell me about Anne Beaumont and Mr. Dabney----"

"What about them?" I asked innocently.

"Were they in love with each other--years ago--before she married Mr.
Beaumont?"

I nodded. "They were engaged, and Anne was very young. She had never
seen much of other men, and when Mr. Beaumont came along, with his
air of foreign distinction, she was fascinated and broke off her
engagement. But she never really cared for Mr. Beaumont----"

"And you think Mr. Dabney has--has stayed single for her sake?"

"I think so. Yes."

"And you think he loves her still----?"

"You heard what he said to-night?"

"I don't call that love," she cried. "If he cared, he'd tell her. He
couldn't help it. It would just come--if he really loved her----"

"He thinks that she has never cared--and he isn't an impetuous boy----"

"I know--but he's a _man_." She was all aglow. "And if he cared, his
heart would say, 'I love you, I love you, I love you,' and then his
lips would say it----"

"You believe, then, that he doesn't care for her?"

"His allegiance is a memory--an old dream--of the girl she was, not of
the woman she is. Isn't she older than he, Miss Sophie?"

"She is younger," I said gravely.

"She seems older--and--it's spoiling his life. He--he won't look at
another woman--because in a way he feels bound to her. Some day I'm
going to tell him."

I stared at her. "Tell him what, Elizabeth?"

"That he is throwing away his happiness--that there are other women."

She had risen and stood in front of me with her hand on her heart. Her
eyes were like stars, and the radiance of youth shone from within and
round about her. If Charlemagne should see her in such a mood----

I thought of Anne, dear Anne.

"Elizabeth," I said sharply, "if you should tell him that, he would
think--that you--cared."

She swept out her arms in a charming gesture of surrender.

"Well, if he did," she cried, defiantly, "what then?"

* * * * *

All that night Elizabeth and Anne contended in my dreams, and in the
morning, worn to a frazzle, I went down to breakfast, to find that
Elizabeth had gone for a ride with Charlemagne, and that Anne was still
in bed.

I drifted into the library and found there a circle of somewhat
fagged-out feminines. The men were riding or on the links.

From the light bits of conversation that were wafted to me as I sat
and read in the window-seat, I gathered that most of the women took
Charlemagne's leap-year idea as a joke, but I knew that to Elizabeth
and Anne the question presented itself seriously, and that each would
settle it in her own way, and according to the tradition of her own
time.

For that education and environment had made the difference, I did not
doubt. Had Elizabeth been born eighteen years earlier, when women were
taught the mysteries of advance and retreat, that coquetry was their
best weapon, and that man must always be the wooer, she might have felt
all of Anne's shrinking from a revelation of herself; whereas had Anne
been brought up in the later days when boys and girls mingle in close
comradeship, when plays and books subtly analyze the state of woman as
the pursuer and man as the pursued, she might have been as frank about
her feelings as Elizabeth.

Hence, I argued, they were both of them what their generation had made
them, and I, who loved Anne, and adored her for her womanliness, was
yet forced to admit the potency of Elizabeth's youth, and the charm of
her complete surrender.

After a time the men began to drift in, and I heard the
multi-millionaire from the West inquiring for Elizabeth. He was a big,
broad-shouldered fellow, sure of himself, but not unpleasantly so, and
when he couldn't find the girl he wanted, he came over and talked to me.

"Say," he began at once, "it's all tommyrot about this leap-year
business. When I want a girl to do anything, I want to ask her. It
makes me feel foolish to have to wait for her to come to me. I wish
Dabney would cut it out."

"But think what an opportunity for a girl to get what _she_ wants," I
said.

"They don't know what they want," he stated dogmatically. "The way to
win a woman is to pick her up and put her on a horse and run away with
her----"

"Suppose she doesn't care to be run away with?" I asked.

"Oh, she'd settle down to it," he said securely; "and besides that, I
can't really imagine a nice girl asking a man to marry her."

I thought of Elizabeth as she had stood with her hand on her heart and
had hurled defiance at conventions.

"Girls are hard to understand," I murmured.

"Oh, I don't know," he contended. "If a man gets right down to
primitive principles and keeps after her, he'll get her--and it makes
me hot to think I am wasting valuable time trying to stick to Dabney's
old rules, when I have to go back West again on Monday."

I wanted to be sure, so I murmured, "Of course it's Elizabeth Ames?"

"Who else?" he demanded. "Oh, I'm going to jump over the traces, Miss
Sophie, and let her know I mean business. This thing of sitting around
and letting her go off with another man--you know she's riding with
Dabney this morning?"

I nodded.

"He's twice her age, and she _thinks_ she likes him. Girls get romantic
streaks, and Dabney's the kind they put up on a pedestal, but he isn't
any more suited to her than--a bunch of beets----"

"I suppose not," was all the response I dared venture in the face of
such an outpouring of eloquence.

"They are coming now," he said, and through the window I saw
them--Elizabeth, looking like a little girl in her three-cornered hat,
with her hair tied with a broad black ribbon, and Charlemagne sitting
his horse like a centaur.

The Westerner deserted me at once, and, the rest of the guests
following, I was left alone in the library.

I curled up in the window-seat, drew the curtains to shield me from the
gaze of those who might step within, and tried to take forty winks to
make up for the four hundred I had missed the night before.

But I couldn't sleep. Elizabeth and Anne--Anne and Elizabeth! I
couldn't get their affairs out of my mind. Would Elizabeth propose,
would Anne, would Charlemagne, would the multi-millionaire? Again and
again I tried to fit together their widely different theories, until in
despair I wished that Charlemagne and his leap-year week-end had not
tempted me from my maidenly apartment in town, where the worries of
lovers were confined to my manuscripts.

And even as I pondered, I heard Elizabeth's voice saying, as she came
in from the porch, "I suppose you think I am awfully forward to make
you spend all your morning with me----"

As he followed her into the library, Charlemagne laughed. "I might
feel flattered," he said, "if I didn't know you were doing it to make
McChesney furious."

McChesney was the multi-millionaire.

"McChesney?" Elizabeth's tone was startled.

"Don't hedge," Charlemagne teased. "He's bound to win out, Elizabeth.
No woman can escape a man when he goes for her like that. You might as
well give in."

"I shall never give in."

"He's a nice fellow."

"He's not my ideal----" there was a pathetic note of appeal in her
young voice.

"Ah--ideals----" Charlemagne had dropped his banter. "Don't spoil your
happiness looking for the ideal man--he's like the pot of gold at the
end of the rainbow--something we hear of, but have never seen."

There was a heavy silence. Then Elizabeth said, catching her breath,
"But--but I have found my ideal, Mr. Dabney."

"You have? And it's not McChesney?"

I peeped at them through the curtain. They were in big wicker chairs
in front of the door that led to the porch. Elizabeth had taken off
her coat, showing her thin white blouse with its crisp frills. Her
cheeks were as pink as the rose which she picked to pieces with nervous
fingers.

"No," she said tremulously, "it's--it's not Mr. McChesney."

I held my breath. Would she dare?

"It's--it's a man much older than I am," she went on, "and--and I don't
know that he has ever thought of me--in that way--perhaps if he had, he
might like me--a little----"

I am sure that Charlemagne felt the charm of her youth, as she made
her little confession, and I am just as sure that he was absolutely
innocent that he was the object of it.

"He would undoubtedly love you more than a little," he said heartily.
"Look here, Elizabeth, you won't mind telling me who he is--will
you----?"

Here was an opportunity holding out open arms, and did Elizabeth
embrace it as beseemed an advocate of woman's right to woo?

Not she! She simply gasped in a panic-stricken way and stood up.

"Oh, _no_," she whispered, with her cheeks flaming, "I couldn't--I
couldn't tell any one."

Before Charlemagne could answer, McChesney blundered in.

"Say----" he stopped dead still on the threshold, "I think this is a
case of monopoly. I'm tired of hanging around waiting for the girl I
want. I am going to break the rules, Dabney, and ask Miss Ames to take
me for a walk in the rose garden."

And Elizabeth actually turned to him with an air of relief.

"Oh, yes," she said breathlessly, "I'd love it!"

And away they went. And Charlemagne, turning back into the library, met
Anne Beaumont coming in at the other door.

She wore a thin, trailing white gown, and there were dark shadows under
her eyes. She looked tired and fragile and every day of her thirty-six
years.

"Anne!" Charlemagne said, as if for him all the morning stars sang
together.

Anne dropped into the chair where Elizabeth had been.

"I'm afraid I'm awfully late getting down," she faltered, "but--but my
head ached."

Charlemagne stood behind her chair, and there was a look on his face
that, for the first time, made me ashamed of my eavesdropping. The
other had been comedy, but this was real.

"Poor little Anne," he said.

Anne propped her chin on her hand and gazed out through the open door
with wide eyes.

"Yes," she said slowly, "poor little Anne."

He came around and took the other chair. "I wish--I knew how I might
comfort you," he said.

For a moment Anne looked at him with that wide stare, then, like a
flash, it came. "Oh, Charlie, Charlie boy," she cried, "why don't you
ask me to marry you--I can't ask you, you know----"

Before she had finished, he was on his knees beside her, and then I
shut my eyes and put my fingers in my ears, for the time had come when
I had no right to hear or see.

But as for theories--Oh, who knows _what_ a woman will do? There was
Elizabeth and there was Anne----

But I never would have believed it of Anne!

[Illustration]

THE MOTHER OF ANGELA ANN

BY CLARA E. LAUGHLIN

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALICE BARBER STEPHENS

Henry Street, drowned in November murk, was black as Tartarus and
a shade more dreadful, as a heavily built man stumbled along its
unfamiliar bumps and intermittent stretches of sidewalk, stopping now
and then to peer vainly at doors for a number. Presently he encountered
a wisp of a girl with a jacket thrown about her head and shoulders.

"Where's twenty-one?" he asked.

She pointed. "Who d'ye want?"

"Casey."

"In the rear--I'll show ye," and she led the way to a precipitous
flight of steps. "Ye go down, an' 'long 's far 's ye kin, thin turn t'
th' right an' knock," she said, and disappeared in the mist.

Groping his way, the man reached the end of a long passage between two
tenements and knocked at a rear door. A woman opened it.

"Th' ditictive," she murmured, and let him in.

The kitchen was stifling close; a fire raged to the brim of the big,
heavily nickeled stove which had cost the Caseys so dear in instalments
and in worry. Casey had been working for two weeks, and the bin outside
the kitchen door had a ton of soft coal in it. In a bracket above the
sink was a lamp whose tin reflector, instead of diffusing the light
rays, seemed to concentrate them, like a feeble searchlight, so that
the corners of the kitchen were all in gloom, and half-lost in gloom
were the forms of the Caseys, whose pallid faces showed sharply against
the dusk.

"Had any word?" said the detective, addressing Mrs. Casey. To the
relief of the parents and the bitter disappointment of the children, he
was a plain-clothes man.

"Niver a worrd."

The detective consulted a memorandum.

"You say she left home Monday morning, just as usual, to go to work?"

"Yissir; she wint down th' alley here hummin' a chune an' as gay as a
burrd."

"And you don't think she intended to stay away?"

Mary Casey's eyes flashed. "If I t'ought a gyurl o' mine could walk out
an' l'ave me, intintional, wid a chune on her lyin' lips, I'd not ask
ye t' be findin' her," she said.

"Did she have a beau?"

"None thot I iver see. She used t' be after talkin', sometoimes, 'bout
gran' fellies she'd see downtown, an' I always sez to her, 'You mark
me worrds an' l'ave gran' fellies be. They don't mane no good t' th'
loikes o' you,' I sez. 'Thim fellies spinds ivry cint they git on their
gold watches an' swallie-tails, an' whin they marry they got t' marry
a gyurl wid money t' support thim. Whin yer old enough t' take up wid
anny wan,' I sez, 'yer pa or yer Uncle Tim'll introjuce ye t' some nice
young lab'rin' man wid a good trade an' ambition t' git on, an' you
work fer him whoile he works fer you.' 'Ah, ye don' know nothin' 'bout
it,' she'd say t' me, an' 'Don't you belave thot,' I'd say t' her, 'I'm
nothin' t' look at, an' I ain't got mooch style about me, but I got
some knowlidge o' min,' I sez, 'an' they're a bad lot, aven th' bist o'
thim. An' you git it out o' yer hid,' I sez, 'thot anny gran' felly's
goin' t' marry you, or th' loikes o' you. Ye may rade such foolishness
in yer story paapers er see it at yer theayters, but ye kin mark me
worrds thot love is fer tony folks thot kin afford it, an' not fer th'
loikes o' you an' me.'"

Up to this time Casey had been conspicuously quiet. He had had his own
experiences with the Chicago police, who more than once had ordered
him to keep away from his abused family or go to the Bridewell. This
was buried deep in the voluminous records of the desk sergeant; but
Casey had not the comfort of knowing that there were a thousand kindred
cases piled a-top of his, so he kept discreetly in the shadow until
the detective asked, "Was she gay at all?" and Mrs. Casey replied:

"She be a little granehorn, wid no sinse yet. I'm after taalkin' t' her
th' whole, blissed toime 'bout kapin' straight, an' not l'avin' her go
by dances er stay out nights, but I dunno--ye can't kape thim in yer
pocket, an' whin a gyurl have her livin' t' earn anny place she kin
foind it, 't ain't her mother thot know fer sure wheer she is or what
she be."

At this Casey sat suddenly forward in his chair, and the streak of
light fell full across his face, swollen with tears and streaked with
the grime of three awful days. Despite the grime, however, despite the
stubble of reddish beard, the unkempt hair and untidy clothes, there
was something singularly pathetic about him, with his great, Irish-blue
eyes and youthful, innocent-looking face. He had not been drinking for
some weeks, and he wore no air of sottishness, nor of vagrancy, nor of
any of his other crimes against self and family and society.

"I dunno what I ever done," he had moaned for three days, rocking back
and forth in his misery, the tears raining down his unwashed cheeks and
splashing from his stubbly chin, "I dunno what I ever done that this
thing should 'a' happened t' me! My gyurl! My Ang'la Ann!"

"She were a good gyurl," he said to the detective, sitting suddenly
forward.

"So far 's we know, she were," his wife amended, "but she had no sinse
yet, bein' so young, an' th' young niver belaves th' old. I don' see
how a gyurl o' mine could go wrong, an' me hatin' it th' way I do. But
she have more o' him in her nor o' me, down t' thim same shifty blue
eyes thot kin look so swate, an' God knows what divilment's behint
thim!"

Casey smiled in wan coquetry at this charge against his fascinations,
but reiterated in defense of his daughter:

"She were a good gyurl. I seen a piece o' this world, of'cer, an' I kin
till--min like us, we kin till gyurls that's merely flightsome from
thim that's gon' t' th' bad. If she's bad, I don' want ye t' find her.
Jes' show me th' felly thot lied t' her, an' I'll kill him--but I don'
want ye t' find her; I don' niver want t' set eyes on her ag'in, if
she've brought disgrace on me."

"Ye won't lit it git in th' paapers, will ye?" Mary Casey pleaded
for the twentieth time in her brief communications with the police.
"Yell kape thim aff av her, won't ye--fer th' love o' Hiven? I'm after
tellin' th' childern I'll kill th' first wan o' thim thot breathes t'
a soul we don' know wheer Ang'la Ann is. Ag'in' she be all right an'
come home some day, it'd go hard wid her if these Sheenies 'round here
knew she was gon'--people do belave th' worst of a gyurl, always. I
dunno what t' think o' my Ang'la Ann, but I don' want it to go haard
wid her if she don' desarve it."

The detective promised about the papers and went his way. A missing
girl, with no probable complications of a horrible murder, excited
only the feeblest interest at Maxwell Street, and this visit would
comprehend the whole of the police activity expended in the case unless
Angela Ann should happen to turn up under their incurious noses.

The facts of the case were these: Angela Ann Casey, a slim,
under-sized, pretty young thing just under eighteen, had left home
on Monday morning, November 7th, apparently to go to work, and had
not been seen since by her family or any one they knew. She was an
unskilled worker, a bit of flotsam in the industrial whirlpool so cruel
to her kind. In the summer she had worked for a few weeks in a cannery,
pasting labels on fruit cans. When the cannery shut down, she answered
an "ad" for extra help in the rush season of a cap factory, which laid
her off when work slackened. And after a fortnight's idleness she was
taken on as a bundle-wrapper in a cheap department store, where she met
a girl who told her of a place needing more girls for the manufacture
of cheap finery for the "levee" trade. Angela Ann applied, and was
given work at a knife-pleating machine, at four dollars and a half a
week. She was in this job, to the best of her mother's belief, when
she disappeared; but a visit to the place on Tuesday laid bare the
startling fact that she had "give notice" on Saturday night.

Angela Ann had few intimates; her associates changed with her changes
of occupation, and these were so many that she took root nowhere. A
girl on Blue Island Avenue, to whose house Angela Ann sometimes went,
called at Henry Street Tuesday evening and was told that Angela was out.

"She's tellin' me she have a gran' fella," said the girl questioningly.

"She have," lied Mary promptly, "did she iver tell ye his name?"

No, she hadn't; so Mary said maybe Angela Ann wouldn't want her to tell
it either.

Mary's sister, Maggie O'Connor, who was married to a "will-t'-do"
blacksmith and lived but a few blocks away, had also heard of a stylish
young man who could not be asked to the back cellar on Henry Street, or
even allowed to suspect it. In family council Mrs. O'Connor testified
that she had offered her own "parlie" for the courting.

"'Bring him here an' l'ave us have a look at him,' I sez to her. 'Ye
kin have th' parlie anny toime ye want it,' I sez, 'an' if yer 'shamed
o' yer Uncle Tim's brogue, he kin stay in th' shop, an' I'll talk t'
him mesilf,' I sez."

But Angela Ann had not accepted this handsome offer, nor had she
confided the name of the young man to Mrs. O'Connor, who only knew that
Angela Ann had assured her he was a gentleman beyond a doubt, for he
had a gold watch and chain.

Fired by this information, which he considered an important clue,
Casey was for carrying it at once to the police so that they might
investigate all young men wearing gold watches and thereby in due
process find the one who knew Angela Ann. But before he could get
away to furnish the detectives with this important information, Mrs.
O'Connor had made some further suggestions. The chief of these was
touching the advisability of consulting a fortune-teller.

"Thim coppers," she opined, "is no good. Tim's after radin' a lot about
thim in th' paapers, an' he sez they niver ketch nothin' 't all. He
sint ye a dollar wid me and sez he, 'You till thim t' stop foolin' wid
coppers an' go t' th' forchune-teller,' sez he."

"I belave it have more t' do wid what th' forchune-teller know than
wid what thim coppers kin foind out," reflected Mary Casey. It was the
morning after the detective's visit, and Mrs. O'Connor had come over
to ask the news. "Theer's somet'ing I didn't till th' ditictive," Mary
confessed, "not knowin' how he'd take it--but the day befoore Ang'la
Ann wint, a quare, wan-eyed cat kem here. Ivrywheer I wint thot day she
traipsed at me heels, an' all Monday noight whin I was up watchin' fer
Ang'la, th' cat was on th' windie-sill, howlin' what sounded joost like
Aan-gla, Aan-gla, Aan-gla. Now what d'ye make o' thot?"

Mrs. O'Connor had been fumbling in her plush wrist-bag during this
recital. "Say," she said presently, holding out a very dirty card, "th'
las' noight Ang'la Ann was t' our house she was after l'avin' th' baby
play wid her purse, an' th' baby spilt all th' t'ings out av it. We
picked thim up, an' I t'ought we got thim all, but whin I was clanein'
yiste'day, I foun' this card. It mus' be hers, fer Tim say he niver see
it, an' no more did I."

The card read:

[Illustration: O. HALBERG,

_Dramatic Agent--West Madison Street_.]

"That's him, I bet ye!" cried Casey excitedly, "that's th' felly wid
th' gol' watch an' chain!"

"Wait a minute!" commanded Mrs. O'Connor impatiently, "Tim sez thot
have somet'ing t' do wid a theayter."

"Sure," said Mary Casey, "Ang'la Ann wouldn't be so grane as t' ixpict
no theayter guy t' marry her! She'd ought t' know thim niver marries;
or if they do, they have a woife in ivery town, loike soldiers an'
travelin'-min! I niver bin to no theayter in my loife, but I know that
mooch!"

Casey, who had lost his job by default, and had sat apathetically by
the stove ever since gray morning dawned after the frantic vigil of
Monday night, was struggling with the lacings of his shoes preparatory
to setting forth to demolish O. Halberg if he proved his guilt by
wearing a gold watch and chain.

"Ye kin spend yer dollar on yer wan-eyed cat," he said indulgently,
"but as fer me, I got t' foind thot felly thot lied t' me gyurl."

So the inaction of the past three days was over, temporarily at least.
Casey was bound for O. Halberg's and Mrs. Casey and Mrs. O'Connor were
going to approach some fortune-teller with the dollar and the tale of
the cat. But first of all Mary must go to the school and take Johnny
out to mind Dewey and the baby in her absence.

"Now you be keerful," she adjured Casey as he made ready to go, "an'
don' kill nobody be mistaake. Th' bist way is t' kill nobody at all,"
she continued cautiously.

In spite of this caution, however, there would have been danger in
prospect if Casey had owned a gun or if he had taken a few drinks. As
it was, he was not a formidable figure when he presented himself at the
number on West Madison Street, a few doors from Halsted.

There was a pawnshop on the first floor, and beside it a narrow door,
which opened upon a long flight of wooden stairs rising steeply to a
dark hall, where, by the light of a two-foot gas burner, Casey could
make out the name "O. Halberg" on one of the dozen doors. The name was
painted on a black tin plate tacked to a rear door. Casey knocked.

"Come in," said a guttural voice.

Entering, Casey saw a man sitting with his feet on a battered desk;
he was reading the morning paper and smoking a vile cigar. The
walls, calcimined a kind of ultramarine blue, but grimed and fouled
unspeakably, were hung with theatrical lithographs depicting thrilling
scenes from plays on the blood-and-thunder circuit. For the rest, the
furnishings were two wooden chairs, a giant cuspidor, and the desk,
which looked as if it had never been new.

"Have I," said Casey in his grandest manner, "th' honor t' addriss Mr.
O. Halberg?"

O. Halberg grunted that he had. Then Casey advanced a step further
into the room and looked about for a sight or trace of Angela Ann.
Nothing could have been more damning than O. Halberg's gold chain, but
in no likelihood would Angela Ann, by any stretch of courtesy, have
called him young; he was probably fifty, and not prepossessing from any
possible point of view.

"Me name is Casey," ventured the visitor, "me gyurl is lost, an' I'm
lookin' fer her. We found this," proffering the dirty card, "an' we
t'ought mebbe you'd know wheer she is."

Casey was proud of the neatness and despatch of his "ditictive"
methods, but more than a little disappointed to find so soon that he
was on the wrong trail entirely. Mr. Halberg was truly surprised to be
approached with any such query. A great many little silly, stage-struck
girls flocked to see him, of course, and no doubt some of them got
hold of his cards "in the hope of using them to impress managers," but
he had no recollection of any girl named Casey--none whatever. And he
resumed the reading of his paper.

"I got th' coppers after her," murmured Casey apologetically, as he
took his leave, "but thim coppers is no good. Ag'in' ye want ditictive
work done, ye better do it yersilf."

O. Halberg did not deign to reply, but when Casey was safely outside he
stepped to the door and locked it. In case the "coppers" came around,
it would be just as well to be "out"--it would save the coppers some
troublesome pretense.

In his descent of the steep stairs Casey met two girls coming up. They
were about Angela Ann's age and were giggling nervously. One of them
held between thumb and finger a quarter-inch "ad" from a morning paper,
offering:

"High-salaried positions in good road companies to young ladies of
pleasing appearance. O. Halberg, Dramatic Agent--West Madison Street."

"Ask him if this is the place," said the girl who appeared to be
following the other's lead. Casey directed them to O. Halberg's door,
then went on his way. A moment later, while he stood on the corner of
Halsted Street waiting for a south-bound car, he saw the girls emerge
from the door by the pawnshop. They passed him as they went to take an
east-bound Madison Street car on the opposite corner.

"Did ye foind him?" Casey asked.

"No, he wasn't in."

"That's quare," he said, startled, "he was there wan minute before."

On his way home Casey dropped in at the Maxwell Street Station in a
free-and-easy manner he would not have dreamed possible two days ago.
He was so full of his "ditictive" experience that he felt he must have
some one, if only a copper, to talk it over with. The detective who had
called the night before wasn't in, so Casey related his recent daring
exploit to no less a personage than the desk sergeant himself.

It was well poor Casey could not hear the desk sergeant's account of
the call after the self-appointed sleuth had gone on his way.

Mrs. Casey was at home when her husband got there. Relating her
adventures, after she had listened to his, she said that the
fortune-teller, after accepting the dollar, had asked several searching
questions about the one-eyed cat.

"'Ag'in' th' cat come back, yer gyurl 'll come home,' she sez t' me."

The days dragged by. There seemed to be a complete lapse of the
stone-cutting industry, so Casey had nothing to take his mind from
his "ditictive" operations, which were interesting and unexhausting,
though expensive in car-fare and unproductive of results. Angela Ann's
weekly wage, for many years the main dependence of the family, being
lost to them, they were closer even than was their wont to starvation
and eviction; and winter was beginning to snarl around their warped,
ill-fitting doors.

As time wore on, the poignant horror of Angela Ann's absence grew
mercifully less for all but Mary Casey. Night after night she wept the
long hours through, until Casey complained of the depressing effect of
her grief, and she felt constrained to hide it.

"If I could on'y know she were dacintly dead," was her heart's cry, as
better hopes died in her, "Ag'in' a bye l'ave home, he kin knock around
an' pick up a bite here an' a lodgin' theer, an' be none th' worse fer
it. But a gyurl bees diff'runt! Theer's always thim watchin' 'round
thot's riddy t' do her harm."

Meanwhile she lied bravely to the neighbors. "Angela Ann bees livin'
out an' have th' graandes' plaace," she told them impressively; "th'
lady she live wid 's after takin' her to Floridy fer to mind her little
bye."

Mary's hope was strong that Christmas would see the wanderer's return,
but the holidays passed in unrewarded waiting. Casey had perforce
abandoned his search, and worked a day or two now and then. Though the
traces of really terrible suffering were still in his weak, winsome
face, he had long since forsaken all hope of Angela Ann's "safety with
honor," and, when it had come to seem unlikely that she ever would do
so, took comfort in vowing that she should never again darken the door
of his outraged home.

Mary gave over pleading for her girl, in the interests of family peace,
but, more and more like a specter as the weeks wore away, she haunted
localities where Angela Ann had been or might be. Sometimes she had
the baby in her arms, but oftener she left it with Dewey at their Aunt
Maggie's, and roamed the streets unhampered in her never-ending quest.

Evenings she would say, "I'll be goin' t' yer aunt's a bit," and
slip away into the engulfing dark, to reappear in the glare of light
marking the entrance to some cheap West Side theater or dance hall.
Gradually her excursions extended downtown, where she would take up her
station at the door of some place of amusement and stand watching the
pleasure-seekers pour in, then turn away and wander aimlessly up and
down the streets for an hour or so before facing homeward. In some way
she heard about stage doors, and took to haunting them. She saw many
girls of Angela's type, and wondered sadly if their mothers knew where
they were, but her own girl was not among them. In those nights on the
flaming streets she learned more about vice than she had ever dreamed
of in all her life, and the world came to seem to her a vast trap set
by the bestial for the unwary.

Not hunger, nor cold, nor abuse, nor sickness, nor death, as it came
to five of her children, had driven Mary Casey to anything like the
poignancy of feeling that was hers now. Heretofore she had been
patiently dumb under affliction; now her spirit cried out in a passion
of pain that called straight upon Almighty God for an answer to its
anguished questionings.

With the aid of Casey, who was a "scollard," and could "r'ade 'n'
write joost as aisy," she pored over the sensational papers in search
of stories about girls in trouble, and never a horror happened to an
unidentified girl anywhere but Mary was sure it was Angela Ann.

Once there was an account of an unknown young woman found dead on
the prairies near Dunning, the county institution. It was Johnnie
who laboriously spelled out this story for her--Casey having gone to
that club of congenial spirits, O'Shaughannessy's saloon--and at ten
o'clock, when the children were all abed, her anxieties could brook
no more delay. Throwing a shawl about her head and shoulders, she
stole along the pitchy passageway, up the long flight of steps to the
sidewalk, clutching the torn fragment of newspaper in the hand that
held the shawl together beneath her chin.

It was Saturday night, and the avenue was still brightly lighted. One
or two acquaintances greeted her, but she hurried by with only a nod
and a word. At Harrison and Halsted and Blue Island Avenue, where three
streams of ceaseless activity converge, there is always a whirlpool
rapids of traffic and humanity, and here, in a brilliant drug store,
Mary felt far enough from her own haunts and all who knew her and
Angela Ann to venture on her errand.

"I want t' tillyphome," she whispered to the clerk, who pointed
impatiently to the booth.

"I dunno how," said Mary imploringly. "I want ye t' do it fer me. R'ade
that." She thrust the dirty, crumpled fragment of the evening's yellow
journal into his hand.

The young man glanced at it, and then curiously at her. "I've read it,"
he said.

"Down here, somewheers," said Mary, pointing vaguely towards the last
paragraph, "it till wheer she be, an' I want ye t' tillyphome that
place an' ask thim have she a laarge brown mole on her lift side. If
she have, I'm goin' out theer this night, fer 'tis my gyurl I t'ink she
be."

This was not as startling an episode to the young man addressed as it
might have been to one in a quieter locality. Nevertheless, it smacked
of the dramatic sufficiently to interest him, and when Mary proffered
her nickel he called up the Dunning morgue.

After what seemed an interminable wait, while the sleepy morgue
attendant at the county poor-house was being summoned by repeated
rings, and the brief colloquy was in progress, the clerk emerged from
the booth.

"The girl has been identified this evening," he said.

Disappointment mingled with relief in Mary's countenance: she had
reached that stage where it would have been not altogether unendurable
to look at Angela Ann's dead face, even in a morgue.

As she retraced her way home, the chill of the sharp February night
struck into her mercilessly. When she set forth, she had scarcely
noticed in it her preoccupation; but now that another expectation,
however tragic, had proved false, and the situation stretched ahead
of her indefinitely dull and despairing again, the abrupt relaxation
left her physically as well as mentally "let down," and she shivered
violently as she hurried along.

"Mother o' God," she cried, the tears rolling swiftly down her shrunken
cheeks, "wheer is my gyurl this noight? If I could on'y know she had a
roof over her head an' a fire t' kape her warrm!"

Casey was still out when she got back, and she was thankful, for the
sight of her tears made him ugly these days. "She've disgraaced us,"
he said of Angela Ann, "an' she be dead t' me, an' ought t' be t' you,
if ye had proper shame."

Mary could give herself up to the luxury of grief, therefore, and
she did, until she fell asleep. The next morning she was up betimes,
meaning to go to early mass in the basement of the church before
"drissy folks" were abroad in their Sunday finery. For more than one
reason Mary avoided the later masses; her rags were small shame to her
compared with the more than half-suspicious inquiries of acquaintances
as to the whereabouts of Angela Ann.

"'Tis more lies I'm after tellin'," thought poor Mary, "than th' praste
kin iver take aft o' me. 'N' ag'in' I do pinance enough t' kape me
busy half me time, an' go t' git me holy c'munion, I'm not out o' th'
prisence o' th' blissed Sacrament befoore I'm havin' t' lie ag'in t'
save that poor, silly gyurl's name!"

This morning, however, in spite of her early rising and her efforts to
get to seven o'clock mass, events conspired to thwart her intentions.
Mollie woke up with a headache, and Johnnie had to be despatched on a
vinegar-borrowing expedition, so that the time-honored application of
brown paper soaked in vinegar might be made to the poor little head.
The baby cried lustily, with a colicky cry, and Mary had to hasten the
boiling of tea, that wee Annie might have a good, hot cup to soothe
her. Casey, complaining profanely of broken slumbers, was in no mood to
be left home with fretting children while Mary went to mass.

It was nine o'clock before she could get away; the last mass in the
basement was at nine o'clock. But the Elevation of the Host had been
celebrated before she got there, and she turned disappointedly to
the stairs; she would have to wait for half-past nine mass in the
main church. It seemed as if Providence were balking her, but on the
stairway she learned the reason why.

"Ye mus' be sure t' say a spicial prayer on this mass," said one woman
who passed her to another, "'tis the first mass this young praste have
iver said, an' a blissin' go wid it t' thim thot prays wid him."

Saul on the Damascus road had no more overwhelming sense of arrest and
redirection than Mary Casey had, as, trembling with excitement, she
reached the top of the stairway.

"Think o' that now," she told herself, "an' if I had come t' th' airly
mass I'd niver 'a' known it!"

Hardly would her knees uphold her until she could sink into an obscure
pew, far back under the gallery. And there, at the tense moment when
the silver-toned bell proclaimed commemoration of the great lifting-up
in suffering, Mary raised her faith-full prayer: "A'mighty God, sind
me gyurl back t' me! But if it don' be in yer heart t' do thot mooch,
maake her a good gyurl wheeriver she be. Fer th' love av Christ, Amin."

Not often in any lifetime, perhaps, does it come to pass that one prays
with such sublime assurance of crying straight into the listening
ear of Omnipotence that will inevitably keep faith with poor flesh.
For nigh on to forty years Mary Casey had listened to reiterations
of the old and new Covenants, but they had fallen on sterile ground
in her soul. It was the little chance remark about the new priest's
first mass, dropping into harrowed and watered soil, that flowered in
immediate faith.

* * * * *

The mass ended and the throngs of worshipers passed out, but Mary sat
unheeded and unheeding in her dim corner, her simple mind grappling
with the stupendous idea of its Covenant with Heaven.

Before she had any realizing sense of time, the church had filled again
for high mass. Then the lighting of the great white altar fascinated
her, and she felt an intense desire to live again through such a moment
of assurance as she had lately experienced--to hear that bell ring
again, to smell the incense, and to believe that in some wonderful,
wonderful way it was all a part of that prayer of hers that Heaven was
bound to answer.

So she stayed on, in her far-away pew, to the remotest corner of which
she was crowded as the enormous church filled to its capacity. With the
entrance of the preacher into the pulpit, though, she was conscious of
a distinct "let-down." She had never liked sermons; they dealt with
things so formally. Even when the priests made their greatest efforts
to be plain-spoken and understandable, she seldom got any personal help
from their discourse. They were prone to denunciations of adultery and
drunkenness and other sins of which she was innocent, and to vague
exhortations looking toward a hereafter on which her imagination had
never taken any but the feeblest hold. But what was this priest saying?
Something about a little household that the Lord had loved, and one of
its two sisters had gone astray!

The woman sitting next to Mary nudged her other neighbor and glanced in
the direction of Mary's face, thrust forward as if so as not to lose a
syllable, the tears chasing each other unheeded down its furrows. In
her lap Mary's gnarled hands were clasped in painful intensity.

Over and over, since she was a tiny child in Ireland, she had heard
this Catholic rendering, of Mary of Bethany's story, but it had never
meant anything to her. To-day it meant everything.

[Illustration: "MARY SAT UNHEEDED AND UNHEEDING IN HER DIM CORNER, HER
MIND GRAPPLING WITH THE STUPENDOUS IDEA"]

"An' I said I niver wanted t' see her ag'in if she'd disgraaced me,"
she told herself, and was appalled at the remembrance.

That afternoon, toward the early dusk, she sat in the dark kitchen
holding Annie in her lap; all the other children were out. Casey,
who had not left the house all day, was huddled up to the stove,
smoking his rank pipe; he was unshaven and unwashed, and wore a
coarse undershirt of a peculiar mustard color which lent his pallid,
grime-streaked face a ghastly hue. He had been talking about a "gran'
job" of which a man had told him, and building large castles about
moving to a better street and a better house and buying a "parlie suit
be aisy paymints."

Mary listened believingly; twenty years of listening to these dreams
which never came true had not killed her hopefulness. As she listened,
though, her hopes outran Casey's, for she could conceive no possible
felicity without Angela Ann. How to introduce the now-forbidden subject
of Angela was a problem, but clearly the only way was to plunge in.

"Yis," she assented, "I t'ink we should have a parlie. It have always
been my belafe thot if we'd had a parlie Ang'la wouldn't niver 'a' wint
away. Ag'in' she come home, I'm goin' t' kape th' parlie noice fer her
an' lave her have her beau ivry noight, an' no wan t' bother thim. An'
I ain't goin' t' lave her go downtown t' work no more--theer's too
manny bad min. She kin stay home an' moind th' house, an' I'll git
scrubbin' t' do t' th' Imporium. Wid what you earn an' what I earn, we
kin give her mebbe a dollar a wake fer spindin' money."

Mary waxed excited as her dream unfolded, but Casey was ironical.

"Whin d'ye _ixpict_ her?" he inquired, with pride in the sarcasm.

"I dunno," said Mary, undaunted, "but I know she'll come. An' whin she
do, I'll not ask her anny quistions. I don' keer how she come t' me, so
she come. No matter what she've done, theer mus' be dipths she haven't
r'ached yit, an' all I ask now is t' save her from gittin' anny worse
than she be. D'ye know what I prayed t' th' Mother o God befoore I
lift th' church this mornin'? I prayed that our Ang'la Ann'd git in
trouble--in tur'ble trouble 'n' disgraace so thot thim thot's lid her
away'd t'row her out, 'n' no wan but God 'n' her mother'd take her in!"

In speechless astonishment Casey gazed at the vehement woman before
him. Some instinct made him hold his peace while she told about the
priest's first mass, about the sermon, about the answer she confidently
expected to her prayer. While he listened, his easy Irish emotionalism
caught the contagion of her belief, and his tears flowed unchecked as
he alternately cursed the man that had led Angela away, and prophesied
glowingly of the "parlie" that was to be.

It was pitchy dark in the kitchen now, and Mary got up to light the
lamp. As she did so, a sound at the door caused her nearly to drop the
lamp. Hurrying to the door, she threw it open, and with the light in
one hand peered out into the black yard.

"Here, pussy, pussy," she called. Then, as her call was answered, "My
God! what did I tell ye? Tis the wan-eyed cat!"

III

The next morning the postman brought a letter. Mary was not surprised
to get it. Casey had gone to look for the "gran' job," and the older
children were in school, so the letter could not be read, but she could
make out the signature, written in the large, unformed hand where-with
Angela had covered every available space in the days of her brief but
laborious apprenticeship to the art of writing.

With trembling hand Mary tucked the letter in her bosom, hastily got
ready herself and Dewey and the baby, and started for Maggie's. Maggie
was younger and had enjoyed more educational advantages. She could
"r'ade printin'" easily, and "writin"' fairly well if it hadn't too
many flourishes.

"She says," spelled out Mrs. O'Connor, "'Dear Ma, I'm at ---- West
Randolph Street I'm sick I'm afraid to go home count of Pa Your Loving
daughter Angela Ann Casey.' I'll go wid ye," finished Mrs. O'Connor in
the same breath.

Out of her small store of tawdry finery she lent several articles
to make Mary "look more drissy," and while they got ready for their
momentous journey, Mary related the events of the day before, and of
Saturday night.

"Me an' Tim," said Maggie, when the tale had reached the stage of the
"parlie" and Mary's earnings as a scrub-woman, "was figgerin' how we
could help out a bit, ag'in' she come home, an' Tim have promised t'
take me 'n' her to th' theayter quite frayquint of a Sat'day noight,
an' together we're goin' t' give her half a dollar ivry wake t' spind
on her clo'es."

The number they sought on West Randolph Street was not far from the
fateful Haymarket Square. There was a store on the ground floor, with
living rooms behind. And above, a long flight of oilcloth-covered
stairs led to a "hotel."

They inquired first in the store, but no one there had ever heard of
Angela Ann. Then, with fast-beating hearts, the women mounted to the
office of the hotel, an inside room facing the head of the first flight
of stairs. The door stood open, and they looked, before entering, into
a gas-lighted room furnished with yellow-painted wooden arm-chairs
ranged along the walls and flanked by a sparser row of cuspidors; a
big sheet-iron stove on a square zinc plateau filled the middle of
the room, and near the door, behind a small desk like a butcher-store
cashier's, sat the "clerk," chewing vigorously and expectorating
without accuracy.

"Yes, she has a room here," he answered to Mary's question, "hall room,
rear, third floor."

"In a minute!" called Angela Ann's voice when Mary had knocked.

"My God, 'tis hersilf," sobbed Mary, and fell a-weeping violently.

"Ma!" cried Angela Ann, and threw open the door. She had been in bed
when they knocked, and had not waited to put on her clothes when she
heard her mother's voice. At the touch of her, the clinging clasp of
her poor, thin, cold little arms, Mary grew hysterical.

"Don't, Ma, don't," begged Angela.

"She've grieved hersilf sick over ye," said Maggie, unable to forbear
this much of a reprimand now that the sinner was found. "Iver since ye
wint she've been loike wan crazy. Come, Mary; now ye've got her, brace
up!"

"Sure, Ma," echoed the girl, "now ye've got me, brace up, I ain't never
goin' t' lave ye no more, Ma--honest t' God, I ain't."

"Wheer ye been?" Mary raised her head, and drawing back from the girl
peered anxiously into her face. "In God's name, Ang'la Ann, wheer you
been? Tell me ye've kep' dacint, gyurl, tell me ye've kep' dacint!"

Angela sat down on the dingy, disordered bed and began to cry, hiding
her face in her hands. For a long moment the silence, save for her soft
sobbing, was profound. Then a low moan escaped Mary, a moan of anguish
inexpressible, showing how deeply, notwithstanding her resolution of
yesterday, she had cherished the hope of her daughter's safety.

[Illustration: IN GOD'S NAME, ANG'LA ANN, WHEER YOU BEEN?]

Angela raised her head. The pain in her mother's moan was beyond
her comprehension, and she could only understand it as horror and
condemnation.

"Are ye--are ye--goin' t' t'row me off?"' she asked.

"T'row ye off? Ah, me gyurl, if ye'll on'y stick t' me as long as
I'll stick t' you, 'tis all I'll ask o' Hiven! Tis fer yer sake I was
prayin' no harm had come t' ye--not fer mine. Whativer happen t' ye,
ye're me Ang'la Ann thot I nursed from yer first brith. An' ye don'
know all I'm fixin' t' do fer ye--me an' yer pa an' yer Aunt Maggie,
here, and yer Uncle Tim----"

And there followed a glowing account of the feast prepared for the
prodigal's return.

"Th' idare o' you bein' afraid o' yer pa," chided Mary, "an' him fixin'
t' git a stiddy job an' not have ye go downtown no more."

Far shrewder than her mother, Angela Ann did not overestimate
this excellent intention of her pa's, but she said nothing of the
bitterness that was in her heart on account of his past crimes. It was
a long-standing grievance with her that her mother could never, for
more than a fleeting, irritated moment at a time, be made to see Casey
as others saw him. Angela Ann had been working for him since she was
eleven (child-labor laws were lax, then) and giving up her every penny
to pay rent and buy insufficient mites of coal and food--just enough to
keep them alive and no more--and it was starvation of many sorts that
sent her at last into the clutches of them that prey. The girl was full
of self-pity, and impatient with her mother because the older woman had
forgotten how to rebel.

"Yer pa say, though," added Mary, "thot he won't promise not i' kill
the felly thot lid ye away; he've got tur'ble wingeance on him--yer pa
have."

Angela Ann smiled grimly. "I guess theer's quite a few pa's lookin' fer
him," she said, "but they don't ever seem t' find him."

"Did he prom'se t' marry ye?" asked Mary anxiously.

"I should say not! He promised to make me a primmy donny."

"What's that?" fearfully.

"'Tis a kind of actress that wear tights an' sings," explained Angela.
"I'm after r'adin' in books how gran' they be, an' in the papers
it tell how the swell fellies do be runnin' after thim with diming
necklusses, an' marryin' of 'em. 'Tis all a lie!" she cried shrilly.

"Ye see," Mary could not refrain from reminding her. "I tol' ye thim
theayters was all wrong. We kind o' t'ought it might be thim thot got
ye, an' yer pa wint t' see this here Halberg, whin we foun' the caard
out o' yer pocke'-book. But he said he niver hear tell o' ye."

"Did pa go there?" questioned Angela eagerly. She was all interest to
know how the search for her had been carried on, and "did th' p'lice
know?" and "how did ye kape it out o' th' papers?"

Yes, it had been Halberg "all the time," she admitted. She had answered
his advertisement, and after a week's drill he had sent her, true to
his published word, in a "road company" that mitigated the gloom of
coal miners' lives by singing and dancing--and carousing--in a circuit
of saloons in the soft coal regions of Illinois. When she fell sick,
the company abandoned her without the formality of paying her any
salary, and a foul-tongued, soft-hearted landlady, whose own young
daughter was God knew where, had let Angela stay in her wretched hotel
until she was able by dishwashing and lampfilling chores to earn the
few dollars to take her back to Chicago.

"But I couldn' get no stren'th back," the girl went on, "an' that woman
at th' hotel, Mis' Schlogel, she sez t' me, 'You better go home t' yer
ma, that's wheer you better go,' an' she bundled me off Friday mornin'.
But I was scairt t' go home right t' wunst till I seen how youse was
goin' t' be t' me, so I come here wheer I stayed whin I was studyin'
wid O. Halberg, an' Friday night I got awful sick an' laid here all
night awake an' burnin' up an' my head achin' t' beat th' band. An' all
day Sat'day an' Sunday I wasn't able to go out fer nothin' t' eat, an'
th' propri'ter wouldn't order me nothin' sent in fer fear I wouldn't be
able t' pay. A woman in the nex' room light-house-keeps, an' she made
me tea a couple o' times after she heard I was sick an' alone."

"Why in Hivin's name," Maggie broke in, "did ye niver drap yer ma a
line t' say ye were aloive? Ye needn't 'a' tol' wheer ye was, but ye
could 'a' said ye were in the land o' th' livin', surely?"

"I was 'shamed," whimpered Angela; "I fought ye wouldn't keer wheer I
was if I wasn't doin' dacint."

"Think o' that, now!" cried Mary. "That's all a gyurl do know about
her ma. Whin yer a ma yersilf ye'll know better, an' not till thin, I
suppose."

Thus was Angela Ann made sure of her welcome home.

"An' not wan but yer own kin know ye've been missin'" said Mary, as she
helped the girl to get ready for the return, "so ye kin hol' up yer hid
an' look th' world in th' faace. An' may God fergive yer mother the
loies she've tol' t' save yer name!"

[Illustration]

BORDEN

BY GEORGE C. SHEDD

ILLUSTRATIONS BY WALTER BIGGS

One rainy afternoon I was sitting with my friend Carter, in his log
house. Through the open door we could see the road, all cut up by
wagon-tracks, running with water; lumps of mud thrust their black heads
up in it everywhere; the bordering grass was wet and heavy. And down by
the creek the fringe of trees made only a gray blur.

We had talked ourselves pretty near out when a rider splashed up to
the door. His ragged beard stuck out stiff, full of rain-drops, and
his slouch hat had an unpleasant tilt forward. To Carter's invitation
to enter he shook his head, asked if such-and-such a person had passed
within the hour, and, receiving an affirmative reply, pulled his hat
down tighter and galloped away west. "Who is that?" I inquired.

"That! Why, that's Borden. It's easy to see you're new out here. His
hand holds the river from Saint Joe to Omaha, and men think twice
before trying to break his grip." He drew out his pipe and tobacco,
stuffed the bowl thoughtfully, and struck a match. "If you want to hear
about the first time I saw him at work, I'll tell you."

I nodded.

"Eh? Well, this was the way of it":

* * * * *

At the end of the war I settled here--that was five years ago. Borden
lived a mile up the creek, and so, as times went, we were neighbors.
By the people yonder in Kinton he was not liked, being grim, rough,
savage, altogether unsociable and short of word. Besides, they
remembered '57. In that year he appeared from no one knew where, took
his claim, and proceeded to live after his own fashion. Then the
high-handed Claim Club of the village went about it to drive him "in or
over the river"--a bad night for them. They rode back to Kinton with
three dead men laid across saddles. That was in the rough days of the
Territory, the days when men in the Nebraska hills along the Missouri
were a law unto themselves.

[Illustration: "THEY CROWDED HIS HORSE UNTIL IT HUNG BACK FROM THE
OTHERS"]

Once he tied up on his own deck a steamboat captain who was drunk
and bent on murder; single-handed he ran down two horse-thieves; and
another time he choked the money out of a river-gambler who had robbed
a boy. Oh, they knew Borden up and down the river in those days! Then
he went to war as one of Thayer's sharpshooters, returning at the end
of it to be appointed United States marshal. And he had been riding
that saddle six months when I came.

One day he and another pulled rein at my door.

"Come with me," he said abruptly. "I want you to look after this
fellow--you're my deputy till further notice." He did not waste time
over oaths or official nonsense.

"Now, see here--" the man started to say. But Borden cut him off with a
scowl.

"Who is he?" I asked.

"Him?--Fitch. You've heard of him, I guess."

Heard of him, of course, as everyone had; of his sly, petty legal
tricks by which he grabbed land here and land there until his titles
spotted the country about Nebraska City; of his rent-squeezing that
smelled over the whole town; of these, and other things. He was a lean,
dark, uneasy fellow, wearing a rumpled tile and a shiny coat, riding
all crouched up, and pulling his horse away from everybody we met.

After we started, Borden told me that Fitch had brought him notice to
serve on Dempster--old John Dempster, his friend. Now, that made a bad
job for the Marshal. I saw it from the way he answered not a word to
Fitch, who now and then pressed up--intent on the business--to make him
talk. Once Borden pulled out his heavy wrinkled boot from the stirrup
and kicked the other's horse in the belly until it reared on its
haunches. For Borden was the law's officer, but no man's servant.

Our way ran three miles up from Kinton. There was no road, and we
followed along the edge of the bluffs as best we were able, until
finally we dipped down into a ravine and so came to our destination. It
was a wooded flat on the bank of the river, made by a sudden retreat
of the hills--a sort of pocket. The space was not large, a handful of
acres, and it looked smaller than it really was. The bluffs curved
around it on three sides in a yellow, crumbling wall; on the fourth
flowed the muddy waters of the Missouri. The house was in the center
of a small clearing, and when we came in sight of it Fitch pulled up
behind a small thicket of scrub. Borden, as if he never saw the fellow
halt, rode straight up to the door where John Dempster sat shaping an
axe-haft.

"Jack," said Borden, swinging down from his saddle, "I've come to have
a talk with you."

Dempster shaved the haft a minute, laid it aside, and gazed off toward
the clump of scrub. The two men were something alike, though the man
seated on the door-sill was the older, both past the prime, both spare
of words, both come to the West in the same year. They had lain side by
side behind a sleety log before Fort Donelson, and each in his three
years of service had felt the touch of hot lead.

"How d'you come--friend or enemy?"

"The first, and always, I hope. It depends on you. Why did you kick him
off of here yesterday, Jack? He's full of poison over it."

"Let him keep off then," was the gruff response.

Both looked again at the clump where Fitch could be seen through the
thin screen of bushes. After a while Dempster took out his tobacco, cut
off a piece, and passed the rest to us.

"You're in a dirty way of business when you're mixed up with him," he
said slowly. "An' I 'spose you've come to run me out."

"What's at the bottom of this trouble?" returned Borden, evading the
point. "'Tain't the land--what is it he's after?"

Dempster spat. "He's gettin' even. I knocked him down last spring when
I was at Nebraska City, for lyin' about--never mind. That's all. So he
sneaked around an' hunted out where I live an' filed on the land." A
dull fire lighted up under his bushy eyebrows.

"Why didn't you file long ago?"

"Does the gover'ment take away a man's home when he's fought in the
war?"

"You know how I feel about it," replied Borden, and he laid his hand on
the other's shoulder. "But it's too late for you to try to keep it now.
You'd better look up another place."

"No, I'm goin' to stay here, I guess, or nowhere."

Borden knew that the decision was inflexible. As he rose, put his foot
in the stirrup, and raised himself into the saddle, he determined,
however, to have another try.

"Come and settle up along the creek by me. There's an open claim just
beyond mine, better than this piece."

[Illustration: "'YOU GOT THE BEST O' ME, DICK; I'LL GO'"]

Dempster shook his head; maybe he was thinking of the clearing back in
Indiana and the boughs under which he had drawn his first breath,
maybe this poor fringe of woods along the river was dearer to him than
all the treeless prairie.

"We've lived here near ten years now," he said at last, "the old woman
an' Joe--an' me, 'ceptin' when I was at war. I guess if we go, you'll
have to use your gun."

"I'm sorry, Jack, but you've got to go. And I give you a week. It's not
me that says so, it's the law."

"Law!" answered Dempster, with sudden rising fierceness. "Does the law
drive a man off his own?"

It was the law, not justice, that was driving him. Without replying a
word, Borden, and I by his side, rode away. When we reached the lean,
eager face behind the scrub, the Marshal broke out, "You vulture, keep
behind us! If you try to ride even, I'll sink your carcass in the
river." And in that order, with him trailing us, we came back to Kinton.

Well, during the next week the more I turned the thing over on my
tongue the less I liked the taste of it, but Borden was not one to
consider dislikes--neither another man's nor his own--when he was
riding the law's saddle. So I resolved to go through with it, and was
ready Thursday morning. He came out from Nebraska City, accompanied
by six deputies, men he had tried, who would not back off from the
mouth of a gun, for he knew the door he must enter that day. Fitch was
among them; oh, he was yellow over it! Borden had dragged him along to
the whole end of the dirty business. The tale, too, was out among the
deputies, and Fitch saw plainly what rope they would have swung him
by. Grim looks were his every mile; when he pushed up among them, they
crowded his horse to the withers until it hung back from the others;
one cursed him fully and foully. They intended that he should earn that
bit of ground before the day was done.

In the ravine at the edge of the flat we tied our horses. The men
unslung their rifles, hitched their revolvers about, and waited, while
Borden went down the hollow to reconnoiter. Perhaps half an hour had
passed when he climbed down the bank above our heads and dropped into
our midst.

"Quick! The boy's gone for water to the spring. Straight ahead there.
No shooting till I give the word."

The men nodded, we filed down the ravine single-file, and the next
minute were advancing noiselessly through the trees, spreading out
gradually as we crossed the flat toward the clearing where stood the
log house. The deputies went ahead, alert, silent, with an eye on
Borden, who walked a little before them, each keeping a tree in line
with the door.

Perhaps things were no different that morning than they were at any
time; yet the little flat seemed possessed of a very great quiet,
broken only by the slight swish of our boots through the dry grass.
As we neared the cabin, we saw that its windows and door were shut.
Fitch, who clung to me as though he found more comfort in my company,
occasionally wiped drops of sweat from his yellow forehead, and removed
his high hat to let the wind blow through his hair.

The other men went ahead unconcerned enough. One big fellow dropped
his gun into the crook of his arm, pulled out a piece of tobacco, and
carefully picked the lint off it. When he had had a bite, he tossed it
to a comrade, who caught it handily, buried it for a moment under his
mustache, and then held up the remnant to the other's sight, grinning.
He tossed it back; neither had lost his place in the advancing line.

Fifty yards from the house Borden signaled a halt. Rifle-butts slipped
to the ground, and the men leaned with backs against their trees--all
except two, who handed their guns to others and veered off towards
the bluffs, the direction Borden indicated, to the spring. A brown,
grizzled fellow, sheltered behind an elm a few feet from me, turned
his attention to Fitch, whom he examined curiously and at leisure,
concluding his inspection by spitting his way. Then his look strayed
south. After a little he began to sing softly:

The flat-boats 'r in an' the bull-boats 'r a-stoppin'
An' licker runnin' free,--oh, hell is a-poppin'!
Down on the river, down on----

He broke off suddenly, turning his head a little way towards where the
two men had entered the bushes, listening. Directly he finished the
lines:

Down on the river, down on the river,
Down on the Misser-ee when the boats come in.

The man must have had ears like an Indian's. He folded his arms across
the muzzle of his rifle and began watching the bushes that fringed the
base of the hill; the other men also were looking that way. A minute
passed. All at once a young fellow slipped out from nowhere, running
and carrying a full bucket. He was bare-headed, his sleeves rolled
to the elbows. He ran a few steps toward the house, quickly slanted
off, and kept going, while turning his head this way and that. I saw
the cause of his sudden change in direction, for there was one of the
deputies running parallel with him, but between him and the door. The
second came in sight a minute later, farther down, and from behind a
thicket, abreast of the other two. They had the young fellow between
them.

The rest of us were strung about before the house in a half-circle, the
three runners being on the outside of the circle. Everything was quiet,
for Borden's hounds don't hunt with their mouths open. Young Dempster
carried his bucket of water with scarcely a slop or a splash; the inner
deputy gradually moved out and behind him. Two men at the tail of the
line fell away from their trees to meet him--and there he was in a
ring. The man nearest me, still leaning on his rifle, gave a cluck of
his tongue as if it were all over. But it was not. A shot cracked from
the door, and the deputy who was on the outside flipped his hand in
the air as if he had been stung. His fingers were all bloody. That was
a pretty shot, I tell you; old Jack Dempster ticked the button on his
son's shirt to make it, for the men were running breast and breast from
the door.

The boy saw the trap he was in. Just as he came even with me, he
whirled and took his chance through the line. It was quick--oh,
quick as a cat! Three of us met him. But he was in moccasins and
light-footed, jumping this way and that, and though my neighbor flung
his rifle between his legs, he skipped it and was nearly through. He
sprang to one side, leaped at Fitch--the water was splashing now--and
swerved past him. Maybe it was the nasty look on his face that made
Fitch shoot, anyway the fellow fired his revolver. It did not seem as
if he could miss; Joe ran straight for the cabin. Half way there the
bucket slipped from his hand; then he began to stagger a little. Near
the door he went to his knees and, with a look over his shoulder at us
while fumbling for his revolver, crawled behind the chopping-log.

"I got him before he got me," said Fitch, fairly green about the mouth,
"He was going to kill me."

Borden took a step toward him, paused for the time of a single breath,
whirled around, and was behind his tree. As for the other men, I never
want to see such faces as they wore.

After that it seemed to me as if our business had come to a standstill.
It was little shelter we had, just a tree apiece. We might as well have
been tied to them with cords, for the old man was watching from his
lair, and that with his boy's blood red in his eyes, ready to catch us
either advancing or retiring. Nor was the young fellow so badly hurt
but what he could pull a trigger. And Borden never retired that I ever
heard of--that wasn't his way. Any instant I expected to hear a bullet
snip the bark on my tree. I never felt so big before or since, big as
a hill, and I drew myself together mighty small, I can tell you.

While I was wondering what would come next, Borden stepped out into
the open. He walked toward the door, calm and steady, and without
particular haste, his revolver in its holster. It all happened so
quickly it took me by surprise; the Dempsters, man and boy, must have
been struck by it, for not a shot was fired. But to advance that way,
to clasp hands with death! Maybe you've heard soldiers tell about
charging in the face of cannon, how they felt--I know I felt worse just
to see him go straight toward the house. I got dizzy, dizzy sick. Then
it had all fallen so still, the little wind in the trees and the leaves
stirring over the ground. I looked at the other men, thinking they
could somehow change it; the grizzled old chap was chewing his tobacco
as fast as he could, and the man with the bloody fingers had finished
tying them up in his handkerchief. First thing I knew I was half out
from behind my tree, watching him.

"Keep back, Dick Borden," warned the man in the house--I swear his
voice shook as he said it--"keep back, or, by God, I'll shoot!"

"I'm coming into that door, Jack Dempster," was Borden's reply.

He never flinched, never stopped. Then the rifle sounded, and, like an
echo, the boy's revolver echoed it. Borden was hit--how could they fail
at that distance and such a mark? But he managed to win the log where
young Dempster lay. He stood there an instant, then slowly sat down
upon it. A second time the young fellow lifted his weapon, and every
man of us could see the Marshal looking into the muzzle. Orders or no
orders, that was too much for even the deputies; the click of their
rifle hammers ran along the trees. Borden heard it.

"Don't shoot, men!"

His voice was not loud, but harsh, and keyed high, as if his throat was
dry. I think the next sound was a groan from the boy, and his revolver
wavered and slipped in his fingers.

"It's the gun you gave me," he said, "an' I can't kill you with it."

Borden turned his head painfully from side to side, saw a stick, bent
down laboriously, got it at last, and by its aid raised himself to
his feet. That seemed to exhaust him. He stood for a moment, inert
and useless, like an old man. Then he began to hoist himself forward
step by step to the door. Iron will, just iron, it was. And it was
terrible to see him--one shoulder and arm swinging low and limp, his
knees lifting high as if knotted with stiffness, his head protruding in
intense effort. The distance was short, but long, long for him.

"Keep back! keep back!" cried Dempster. He himself was half out of the
door, gripping his gun with one hand, warding the relentless Marshal
off with the other.

Borden answered nothing, another step.

"You've got to stop!" begged Dempster. "Don't make me kill you, an'
I can't let you in. Go back, go back! We fought together, we marched
together, we ate and slept together, Dick--for God's sake, don't come
nearer!"

One step at a time, putting his stick forward bit by bit and dragging
himself to it with his queer uplifting knees, Borden moved himself
ahead. There was something stern and inhuman in this persistence. So it
went to the last bitter inch. Then Borden's breast touched the rifle's
muzzle. The two men stood looking into each other's eyes, measuring
life and death.

That is a minute in my mind forever. The young fellow had dragged
himself a little way from behind his log--half-following, fascinated,
supporting himself by his two hands--and was staring at them. The empty
bucket lay on its side in the sunshine. The wind whined and whined
through the trees. And the wife's haggard face peered over Dempster's
shoulder in the door.

"I arrest you!"

The stick dropped from his fingers, he clutched at the man's sleeve and
fell across the door-sill. All I remember is that we were all crowding
about the door, with the boy cursing from the ground behind us for
someone to help him. Even Fitch had come, twisting and pushing among
the rest.

Borden was white and still, but he came around directly and stared at
us a little. We laid him on a blanket outside the door, along with
Joe, who carried his lead just below the knee. The Marshal was pretty
bad, having a bullet through his collar-bone and another through his
side, this one a big ugly hole. There were plenty of us to help, some
to cut and to strip their clothes, some to fetch water, some to wash
the wounds, some to tear bandages. One had already started south for a
doctor. Dempster was on his knees by his old comrade.

"You got the best o' me, Dick; I'll go."

Borden smiled a little. It was good to look at their two faces then.

Fitch, who was rubbing his hands evilly, put in, "Yes, you get off here
within an hour. And I'll have the law on you, too, for the kicking you
gave me."

One of the men struck him across the mouth.

"Tie him," said Borden, "and hang him."

Well, there was a noisy to-do, the fellow screeching that it was
against the law, that he shot the boy for trying to kill him, that it
was on his own land, and the like. He kept it up until his screech fell
into a quaver, and terror came into his eyes. Borden smiled again at
sight of him, this time with lips that made a straight white line.

"The law!" he said, at last. "I am the law."

He let the matter go as far as the rope around the wretch's neck; then
it seemed as if Fitch was dead already. No, Borden didn't hang him;
he had another idea, the claim. He waited until Fitch had his senses
once more and told him he would be taken to Nebraska City and tried for
attempted murder. Fitch began to beg, while Borden listened with grim
satisfaction. He would let the claim go, he would start down the river,
quit the country. The rope was thrown off and Borden ordered him away;
and with a sudden fierce oath that made him gasp from pain, Borden
swore he would shoot him with his own hand if he caught sight of him
again.

Fitch knew that Borden meant what he said, and he wasn't seen again in
Nebraska. Six months or so fetched Borden round, and let him into the
saddle again. It must be lead in the heart or brain to kill men of his
fiber--and Dempster had been shaky with his gun. Things got a little
loose while the Marshal was on his back up there in the cabin, but he
tightened them up again soon. We'll ride up there some day and see the
spot. Yes, the Dempsters have the title to the place now.

[Illustration]

THE GLOUCESTER MOTHER

BY SARAH ORNE JEWETT

DECORATION BY WLADYSLAW T. BENDA

[Illustration]

When Autumn winds are high
They wake and trouble me,
With thoughts of people lost
A-coming on the coast,
And all the ships at sea.

How dark, how dark and cold.
And fearful in the waves,
Are tired folk who lie not still
And quiet in their graves;--
In moving waters deep,
That will not let men sleep
As they may sleep on any hill;
May sleep ashore till time is old,
And all the earth is frosty cold.--
Under the flowers a thousand springs
They sleep and dream of many things.

God bless them all who die at sea!
If they must sleep in restless waves,
God make them dream they are ashore,
With grass above their graves.

ALCOHOL AND THE INDIVIDUAL

BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, M.D., LL.D.

Some very puzzling differences of opinion about the use of alcoholic
beverages find expression. This is natural enough, since alcohol is a
very curious drug, and the human organism a very complex mechanism. The
effects of this drug upon this mechanism are often very mystifying. Not
many persons are competent to analyze these effects in their totality.
Still fewer can examine any of them quite without prejudice. But in
recent years a large number of scientific investigators have attempted
to substitute knowledge for guesswork as to the effects of alcohol,
through the institution of definitive experiments. Some have tested its
effects on the digestive apparatus; others, its power over the heart
and voluntary muscles; still others, its influence upon the brain. On
the whole, the results of these experiments are singularly consistent.
Undoubtedly they tend to upset a good many time-honored preconceptions.
But they give better grounds for judgment as to what is the rational
attitude toward alcohol than have hitherto been available.

The traditional rôle of alcohol is that of a stimulant. It has been
supposed to stimulate digestion and assimilation; to stimulate the
heart's action; to stimulate muscular activity and strength; to
stimulate the mind. The new evidence seems to show that, in the final
analysis, alcohol stimulates none of these activities; that its final
effect is everywhere depressive and inhibitory (at any rate, as regards
higher functions) rather than stimulative; that, in short, it is
properly to be classed with the anesthetics and narcotics. The grounds
for this view should be of interest to every user of alcohol; of
interest, for that matter, to every citizen, considering that more than
one thousand million gallons of alcoholic beverages are consumed in the
United States each year.

I should like to present the new evidence far more fully than space
will permit. I shall attempt, however, to describe some of the more
significant observations and experiments in sufficient detail to enable
the reader to draw his own conclusions. To make room for this, I must
deal with other portions of the testimony in a very summary manner.
As regards digestion, for example, I must be content to note that
the experiments show that alcohol does indeed stimulate the flow of
digestive fluids, but that it also tends to interfere with their normal
action; so that ordinarily one effect neutralizes the other. As regards
the action on the heart, I shall merely state that the ultimate effect
of alcohol is to depress, in large doses to paralyze, that organ.
These, after all, are matters that concern the physician rather than
the general reader.

The effect of alcohol on muscular activity has a larger measure of
popular interest; indeed, it is a question of the utmost practicality.
The experiments show that alcohol does not increase the capacity to do
muscular work, but distinctly decreases it. Doubtless this seems at
variance with many a man's observation of himself; but the explanation
is found in the fact that alcohol blurs the judgment. As Voit remarks,
it gives, not strength, but, at most, the feeling of strength. A man
may think he is working faster and better under the influence of
alcohol than he would otherwise do; but rigidly conducted experiments
do not confirm this opinion. "Both science and the experience of life,"
says Dr. John J. Abel, of Johns Hopkins University, "have exploded
the pernicious theory that alcohol gives any persistent increase of
muscular power. The disappearance of this universal error will greatly
reduce the consumption of alcohol among laboring men. It is well
understood by all who control large bodies of men engaged in physical
labor, that alcohol and effective work are incompatible."

It is even questionable whether the energy derived from the oxidation
of alcohol in the body can be directly used at all as a source of
muscular energy. Such competent observers as Schumberg and Scheffer
independently reached the conclusion that it cannot. Dr. Abel inclines
to the same opinion. He suggests that "alcohol is not a food in the
sense in which fats and carbohydrates are food; it should be defined
as an easily oxidizable drug with numerous untoward effects which
inevitably appear when a certain minimum dose is exceeded," He thinks
that alcohol should be classed "with the more or less dangerous
stimulants and narcotics, such as hasheesh, tobacco, etc., rather
than with truly sustaining foodstuffs," Some of the grounds for this
view will appear presently, as we now turn to examine the alleged
stimulating effects of alcohol upon the mental processes.

_Alcohol as a Brain Stimulant_

The celebrated physicist Von Helmholtz, one of the foremost thinkers
of the nineteenth century, declared that the very smallest quantity
of alcohol served effectively, while its influence lasted, to banish
from his mind all possibility of creative effort; all capacity to
solve an abstruse problem. The result of recent experiments in the
field of physiological psychology convince one that the same thing is
true in some measure of every other mind capable of creative thinking.
Certainly all the evidence goes to show that no mind is capable of
its best efforts when influenced by even small quantities of alcohol.
If any reader of these words is disposed to challenge this statement,
on the strength of his own personal experience, I would ask him to
reflect carefully as to whether what he has been disposed to regard as
a stimulant effect may not be better explained along lines suggested
by these words of Professor James: "The reason for craving alcohol is
that it is an anesthetic even in moderate quantities. It obliterates a
part of the field of consciousness and abolishes collateral trains of
thought."

The experimental evidence that tends to establish the position of
alcohol as an inhibitor and disturber rather than a promoter of mental
activity has been gathered largely by German investigators. Many of
their experiments are of a rather technical character, aiming to test
the basal operations of the mind. Others, however, are eminently
practical, as we shall see. The earliest experiments, made by Exner in
Vienna so long ago as 1873, aimed to determine the effect of alcohol
upon the so-called reaction-time. The subject of the experiment sits at
a table, with his finger upon a telegraph key. At a given signal--say
a flash of light--he releases the key. The time that elapses between
signal and response--measured electrically in fractions of a second--is
called the simple or direct reaction-time. This varies for different
individuals, but is relatively constant, under given conditions, for
the same individual. Exner found, however, that when an individual had
imbibed a small quantity of alcohol, his reaction-time was lengthened,
though the subject believed himself to be responding more promptly
than before.

These highly suggestive experiments attracted no very great amount of
attention at the time. Some years later, however, they were repeated by
several investigators, including Dietl, Vintschgau, and in particular
Kraepelin and his pupils. It was then discovered that, in the case
of a robust young man, if the quantity of alcohol ingested was very
small, and the tests were made immediately, the direct reaction-time
was not lengthened, but appreciably shortened instead. If, however, the
quantity of alcohol was increased, or if the experiments were made at
a considerable interval of time after its ingestion, the reaction-time
fell below the normal, as in Exner's experiments.

Subsequent experiments tested mental processes of a somewhat more
complicated character. For example, the subject would place, each
hand on a telegraph key, at right and left. The signals would then
be varied, it being understood that one key or the other would be
pressed promptly accordingly as a red or a white light, appeared. It
became necessary, therefore, to recognize the color of the light,
and to recall which hand was to be moved at that particular, signal:
in other words, to make a choice not unlike that which a locomotive
engineer is required to make when he encounters an unexpected signal
light. The tests showed that after the ingestion of a small quantity
of alcohol--say a glass of beer--there was a marked disturbance of
the mental processes involved in this reaction. On the average, the
keys were released more rapidly than before the alcohol was taken,
but the wrong key was much more frequently released than under normal
circumstances. Speed was attained at the cost of correct judgment.
Thus, as Dr. Stier remarks, the experiment shows the elements of two
of the most significant and persistent effects of alcohol, namely, the
vitiating of mental processes and the increased tendency to hasty or
incoördinate movements. Stated otherwise, a levelling down process is
involved, whereby the higher function is dulled, the lower function
accentuated.

Equally suggestive are the results of some experiments devised by Ach
and Maljarewski to test the effects of alcohol upon the perception and
comprehension of printed symbols. The subject was required to read
aloud a continuous series of letters or meaningless syllables or short
words, as viewed through a small slit in a revolving cylinder. It was
found that after taking a small quantity of alcohol, the subject was
noticeably less able to read correctly. His capacity to repeat, after
a short interval, a number of letters correctly read, was also much
impaired. He made more omissions than before, and tended to substitute
words and syllables for those actually seen. It is especially
noteworthy that the largest number of mistakes were made in the reading
of meaningless syllables,--that is to say, in the part of the task
calling for the highest or most complicated type of mental activity.

Another striking illustration of the tendency of alcohol to impair the
higher mental processes was given by some experiments instituted by
Kraepelin to test the association of ideas, In these experiments, a
word is pronounced, and the subject is required to pronounce the first
word that suggests itself in response. Some very interesting secrets
of the subconscious personality are revealed thereby, as was shown,
for example, in a series of experiments conducted last year at Zürich
by Dr. Frederick Peterson of New York. But I cannot dwell on these
here. Suffice it for our purpose that the possible responses are of
two general types. The suggested word being, let us say, "book," the
subject may (1) think of some word associated logically with the idea
of a book, such as "read" or "leaves"; or he may (2) think of some
word associated merely through similarity of sound, such as "cook" or
"shook." In a large series of tests, any given individual tends to show
a tolerably uniform proportion between the two types of association;
and this ratio is in a sense explicative of his type of mind. Generally
speaking, the higher the intelligence, the higher will be the ratio of
logical to merely rhymed associations. Moreover, the same individual
will exhibit more associations of the logical type when his mind is
fresh than when it is exhausted, as after a hard day's work.

In Kraepelin's experiments it appeared that even the smallest quantity
of alcohol had virtually the effect of fatiguing the mind of the
subject, so that the number of his rhymed responses rose far above the
normal. That is to say, the lower form of association of ideas was
accentuated, at the expense of the higher. In effect, the particular
mind experimented upon was always brought for the time being to a lower
level by the alcohol.

_The Effect of a Bottle of Wine a Day_

When a single dose of alcohol is administered, its effects gradually
disappear, as a matter of course. But they are far more persistent than
might be supposed. Some experiments conducted by Fürer are illuminative
as to this. He tested a person for several days, at a given hour, as to
reaction-time, the association of ideas, the capacity to memorize, and
facility in adding. The subject was then allowed to drink two litres of
beer in the course of a day. No intoxicating effects whatever were to
be discovered by ordinary methods. The psychological tests, however,
showed marked disturbance of all the reactions, a diminished capacity
to memorize, decreased facility in adding, etc., not merely on the day
when the alcohol was taken, but on succeeding days as well. Not until
the third day was there a gradual restoration to complete normality;
although the subject himself--and this should be particularly
noted--felt absolutely fresh and free from after-effects of alcohol on
the day following that on which the beer was taken.

Similarly Rüdin found the effects of a single dose of alcohol to
persist, as regards some forms of mental disturbance, for twelve hours,
for other forms twenty-four hours, and for yet others thirty-six hours
and more. But Rüdin's experiments bring out another aspect of the
subject, which no one who considers the alcohol question in any of
its phases should overlook: the fact, namely, that individuals differ
greatly in their response to a given quantity of the drug. Thus,
of four healthy young students who formed the subjects of Rüdin's
experiment, two showed very marked disturbance of the mental functions
for more than forty-eight hours, whereas the third was influenced for a
shorter time, and the fourth was scarcely affected at all. The student
who was least affected was not, as might be supposed, one who had been
accustomed to take alcoholics habitually, but, on the contrary, one who
for six years had been a total abstainer.

Noting thus that the effects of a single dose of alcohol may persist
for two or three days, one is led to inquire what the result will
be if the dose is repeated day after day. Will there then be a
cumulative effect, or will the system become tolerant of the drug
and hence unresponsive? Some experiments of Smith, and others of
Kürz and Kraepelin have been directed toward the solution of this
all-important question. The results of the experiments show a piling
up of the disturbing effects of the alcohol. Kürz and Kraepelin
estimate that after giving eighty grams per day to an individual for
twelve successive days, the working capacity of that individual's mind
was lessened by from twenty-five to forty per cent. Smith found an
impairment of the power to add, after twelve days, amounting to forty
per cent.; the power to memorize was reduced by about seventy per cent.

Forty to eighty grams of alcohol, the amounts used in producing these
astounding results, is no more than the quantity contained in one to
two litres of beer or in a half-bottle to a bottle of ordinary wine.
Professor Aschaffenburg, commenting on these experiments, points the
obvious moral that the so-called moderate drinker, who consumes his
bottle of wine as a matter of course each day with his dinner--and
who doubtless would declare that he is never under the influence of
liquor--is in reality never actually sober from one week's end to
another. Neither in bodily nor in mental activity is he ever up to what
should be his normal level.

That this fair inference from laboratory experiments may be
demonstrated in a thoroughly practical field, has been shown by
Professor Aschaffenburg himself, through a series of tests made on
four professional typesetters. The tests were made with all the rigor
of the psychological laboratory (the experimenter is a former pupil
of Kraepelin), but they were conducted in a printing office, where
the subjects worked at their ordinary desks, and in precisely the
ordinary way, except that the copy from which the type was set was
always printed, to secure perfect uniformity. The author summarizes the
results of the experiment as follows:

_A Loss of Ten Per Cent. in Working Efficiency_

"The experiment extended over four days. The first and third days were
observed as normal days, no alcohol being given. On the second and
fourth days each worker received thirty-five grams (a little more than
one ounce) of alcohol, in the form of Greek wine. A comparison of the
results of work on normal and on alcoholic days showed, in the case
of one of the workers, no difference. But the remaining three showed
greater or less retardation of work, amounting in the most pronounced
case to almost fourteen per cent. As typesetting is paid for by
measure, such a worker would actually earn ten per cent. less on days
when he consumed even this small quantity of alcohol."

In the light of such observations, a glass of beer or even the cheapest
bottle of wine is seen to be an expensive luxury. To forfeit ten per
cent. of one's working efficiency is no trifling matter in these days
of strenuous competition. Perhaps it should be noted that the subjects
of the experiment were all men habituated to the use of liquor, one
of them being accustomed to take four glasses of beer each week day,
and eight or ten on Sundays. This heaviest drinker was the one whose
work was most influenced in the experiment just related. The one whose
work was least influenced was the only one of the four who did not
habitually drink beer every day; and he drank regularly on Sundays. It
goes without saying that all abstained from beer during the experiment.
We may note, further, that all the men admitted that they habitually
found it more difficult to work on Mondays, after the over-indulgence
of Sunday, than on other days, and that they made more mistakes on
that day. Aside from that, however, the men were by no means disposed
to admit, before the experiment, that their habitual use of beer
interfered with their work. That it really did so could not well be
doubted after the experiment.

_The Effect of Beer-drinking on German School-children_

Some doubly significant observations as to the practical effects
of beer and wine in dulling the faculties were made by Bayer, who
investigated the habits of 591 children in a public school in Vienna.
These pupils were ranked by their teachers into three groups, denoting
progress as "good," "fair," or "poor" respectively. Bayer found, on
investigation, that 134 of these pupils took no alcoholic drink; that
164 drank alcoholics very seldom; but that 219 drank beer or wine once
daily; 71 drank it twice daily; and three drank it with every meal.
Of the total abstainers, 42 per cent. ranked in the school as "good,"
49 per cent. as "fair," and 9 per cent. as "poor." Of the occasional
drinkers, 34 per cent. ranked as "good," 57 per cent. as "fair," and
9 per cent. as "poor." Of the daily drinkers, 28 per cent. ranked as
"good," 58 per cent. as "fair," and 14 per cent. as "poor." Those
who drank twice daily ranked 25 per cent. "good," 58% "fair," and 18
per cent. "poor," Of the three who drank thrice daily, one ranked
as "fair," and the other two as "poor." Statistics of this sort are
rather tiresome; but these will repay a moment's examination. As
Aschaffenburg, from whom I quote them, remarks, detailed comment is
superfluous: the figures speak for themselves.

Neither in England nor America, fortunately, would it be possible to
gather statistics comparable to these as to the effects of alcohol on
growing children; for the Anglo-Saxon does not believe in alcohol for
the child, whatever his view as to its utility for adults. The effects
of alcohol upon the growing organism have, however, been studied
here with the aid of subjects drawn from lower orders of the animal
kingdom. Professor C. F. Hodge, of Clark University, gave alcohol to
two kittens, with very striking results. "In beginning the experiment,"
he says, "it was remarkable how quickly and completely all the higher
psychic characteristics of both the kittens dropped out. Playfulness,
purring, cleanliness and care of coat, interest in mice, fear of dogs,
while normally developed before the experiment began, all disappeared
so suddenly that it could hardly be explained otherwise than as a
direct influence of the alcohol upon the higher centers of the brain.
The kittens simply ate and slept, and could scarcely have been less
active had the greater part of their cerebral hemisphere been removed
by the knife."

_The Development of Fear in Alcoholized Dogs_

Professor Hodge's experiments extended also to dogs. He found that the
alcoholized dogs in his kennel were lacking in spontaneous activity
and in alertness in retrieving a ball. These defects must be in part
explained by lack of cerebral energy, in part by weakening of the
muscular system. Various other symptoms were presented that showed the
lowered tone of the entire organism under the influence of alcohol;
but perhaps the most interesting phenomenon was the development of
extreme timidity on the part of all the alcoholized dogs. The least
thing out of the ordinary caused them to exhibit fear, while their
kennel companions exhibited only curiosity or interest. "Whistles and
bells, in the distance, never ceased to throw them into a panic in
which they howled and yelped while the normal dogs simply barked." One
of the dogs even had "paroxysms of causeless fear with some evidence of
hallucination. He would apparently start at some imaginary object, and
go into fits of howling."

The characteristic timidity of the alcoholized dogs did not altogether
disappear even when they no longer received alcohol in their diet.
Timidity had become with them a "habit of life." As Professor Hodge
suggests, we are here apparently dealing with "one of the profound
physiological causes of fear, having wide application to its phenomena
in man. Fear is commonly recognized as a characteristic feature in
alcoholic insanity, and delirium tremens is the most terrible form
of fear psychosis known," The development of the same psychosis, in
a modified degree, through the continued use of small quantities of
alcohol, emphasizes the causal relation between the use of alcohol
and the genesis of timidity. It shows how pathetically mistaken is
the popular notion that alcohol inspires courage; and, to anyone who
clearly appreciates the share courage plays in the battle of life, it
suggests yet another lamentable way in which alcohol handicaps its
devotees.

_Is Alcohol A Poison?_

It is perhaps hardly necessary to cite further experiments directly
showing the depressing effects of alcohol, even in small quantities,
upon the mental activities, Whoever examines the evidence in its
entirety will scarcely avoid the conclusion reached by Smith, as
the result of his experiments already referred to, which Dr. Abel
summarizes thus: "One half to one bottle of wine, or two to four
glasses of beer a day, not only counteract the beneficial effects
of 'practice' in any given occupation, but also depress every form
of intellectual activity; therefore every man, who, according to
his own notions, is only a moderate drinker places himself by this
indulgence on a lower intellectual level and opposes the full and
complete utilization of his intellectual powers." I content myself with
repeating that, to the thoughtful man, the beer and the wine must seem
dear at such a price.

To any one who may reply that he is willing to pay this price for
the sake of the pleasurable emotions and passions that are sometimes
permitted to hold sway in the absence of those higher faculties of
reason which alcohol tends to banish, I would suggest that there is
still another aspect of the account which we have not as yet examined.
We have seen that alcohol may be a potent disturber of the functions
of digestion, of muscular activity, and of mental energizing. But we
have spoken all along of function and not of structure. We have not
even raised a question as to what might be the tangible effects of
this disturber of functions upon the physical organism through which
these functions are manifested. We must complete our inquiry by asking
whether alcohol, in disturbing digestion, may not leave its mark upon
the digestive apparatus; whether in disturbing the circulation it may
not put its stamp upon heart and blood vessels; whether in disturbing
the mind it may not leave some indelible record on the tissues of the
brain.

Stated otherwise, the question is this: Is alcohol a poison to the
animal organism? A poison being, in the ordinary acceptance of the
word, an agent that may injuriously affect the tissues of the body, and
tend to shorten life.

Students of pathology answer this question with no uncertain voice.
The matter is presented in a nutshell by the Professor of Pathology at
Johns Hopkins University, Dr. William H. Welch, when he says: "Alcohol
in sufficient quantities is a poison to all living organisms, both
animal and vegetable." To that unequivocal pronouncement there is, I
believe, no dissenting voice, except that a word-quibble was at one
time raised over the claim that alcohol in exceedingly small doses
might be harmless. The obvious answer is that the same thing is true of
any and every poison whatsoever. Arsenic and strychnine, in appropriate
doses, are recognized by all physicians as admirable tonics; but no one
argues in consequence that they are not virulent poisons.

Open any work on the practice of medicine quite at random, and whether
you chance to read of diseased stomach or heart or blood-vessels
or liver or kidneys or muscles or connective tissues or nerves or
brain--it is all one: in any case you will learn that alcohol may be
an active factor in the causation, and a retarding factor in the cure,
of some, at least, of the important diseases of the organ or set of
organs about which you are reading. You will rise with the conviction
that alcohol is not merely a poison, but the most subtle, the most
far-reaching, and, judged by its ultimate effects, incomparably the
most virulent of all poisons.

_Alcohol and Disease_

Here are a few corroborative facts, stated baldly, almost at random:
Rauber found that a ten per cent. solution of alcohol "acted as a
definite protoplasmic poison to all forms of cell life with which he
experimented--including the hydra, tapeworms, earthworms, leeches,
crayfish, various species of fish, Mexican axolotl, and mammals,
including the human subject." Berkely found, in four rabbits out
of five in which he had induced chronic alcohol poisoning, fatty
degeneration of the heart muscle. This condition, he says, "seems to be
present in all animals subject to a continual administration of alcohol
in which sufficient time between the doses is not allowed for complete
elimination." Cowan finds that alcoholic cases "bear acute diseases
badly, failure of the heart always ensuing at an earlier period than
one would anticipate." Bollinger found the beer-drinkers of Munich
so subject to hypertrophied or dilated hearts as to justify Liebe in
declaring that "one man in sixteen in Munich drinks himself to death."

Dr. Sims Woodhead, Professor of Pathology in the University of
Cambridge, says of the effect of alcohol on the heart: "In addition
to the fatty degeneration of the heart that is so frequently met with
in chronic alcoholics, there appears in some cases to be an increase
of fibrous tissue between the muscle fibers, accompanied by wasting
of these tissues.... Heart failure, one of the most frequent causes
of death in people of adult and advanced years, is often due to fatty
degeneration, and a patient who suffers from alcoholic degeneration
necessarily runs a much greater risk of heart failure during the
course of acute fevers or from overwork, exhaustion, and an overloaded
stomach, and the like, than does the man with a strong, healthy heart
unaffected by alcohol or similar poisons."

It must be obvious that these words give a clue to the agency of
alcohol in shortening the lives of tens of thousands of persons with
whose decease the name of alcohol is never associated in the minds of
their friends or in the death certificates.

Dr. Woodhead has this to say about the blood-vessels: "In chronic
alcoholism in which the poison is acting continuously, over a long
period, a peculiar fibrous condition of the vessels is met with; this,
apparently, is the result of a slight irritation of the connective
tissue of the walls of these vessels. The wall of the vessel may become
thickened throughout its whole extent or irregularly, and the muscular
coat may waste away as a new fibrous or scar-like tissue is formed. The
wasting muscles may undergo fatty degeneration, and, in these, lime
salts may be deposited; the rigid, brittle, so-called pipestem vessels
are the result." Referring to these degenerated arteries, Dr. Welch
says: "In this way alcoholic excess may stand in a causative relation
to cerebral disorders, such as apoplexy and paralysis, and also the
diseases of the heart and kidneys."

From our present standpoint it is particularly worthy of remark that
Professor Woodhead states that this calcification of the blood-vessels
is likely to occur in persons who have never been either habitual
or occasional drunkards, but who have taken only "what they are
pleased to call 'moderate' quantities of alcohol." Similarly, Dr.
Welch declares that "alcoholic diseases are certainly not limited
to persons recognized as drunkards. Instances have been recorded in
increasing number in recent years of the occurrence of diseases of
the circulatory, renal, and nervous systems, reasonably or positively
attributable to the use of alcoholic liquors, in persons who never
became really intoxicated and were regarded by themselves and by others
as 'moderate drinkers.'"

"It is well established," adds Dr. Welch, "that the general mortality
from diseases of the liver, kidney, heart, blood-vessels, and nervous
system is much higher in those following occupations which expose them
to the temptation of drinking than in others." Strumpell declares that
chronic inflammation of the stomach and bowels is almost exclusively
of alcoholic origin; and that when a man in the prime of life dies of
certain chronic kidney affections, one may safely infer that he has
been a lover of beer and other alcoholic drinks. Similarly, cirrhosis
of the liver is universally recognized as being, nine times in ten, of
alcoholic origin. The nervous affections of like origin are numerous
and important, implicating both brain cells and peripheral fibres.

_How the Poison Works_

Without going into further details as to the precise changes that
alcohol may effect in the various organs of the body, we may note
that these pathological changes are everywhere of the same general
type. There is an ever-present tendency to destroy the higher form of
cells--those that are directly concerned with the vital processes--and
to replace them with useless or harmful connective tissue. "Whether
this scar tissue formation goes on in the heart, in the kidneys, in
the liver, in the blood-vessels, or in the nerves," says Woodhead,
"the process is essentially the same, and it must be associated with
the accumulation of poisonous or waste products in the lymph spaces
through which the nutrient fluids pass to the tissues. The contracting
scar tissue of a wound has its exact homologue in the contracting scar
tissue that is met with in the liver, in the kidney, and in the brain."

It is not altogether pleasant to think that one's bodily tissues--from
the brain to the remotest nerve fibril, from the heart to the minutest
arteriole--may perhaps be undergoing day by day such changes as these.
Yet that is the possibility which every habitual drinker of alcoholic
beverages--"moderate drinker" though he be--must face. This is an added
toll that does not appear in the first price of the glass of beer or
bottle of wine, but it is a toll that may refuse to be overlooked in
the final accounting.

_Alcohol and Acute Infections_

In connection with experiments in rendering animals and men immune
from certain contagious diseases through inoculation with specific
serums, Deléarde, working in Calmette's laboratory in Lille, showed
that alcoholized rabbits are not protected by inoculation, as normal
ones are, against hydrophobia. Moreover, he reports the case of
an intemperate man, bitten by a mad dog, who died notwithstanding
anti-rabic treatment, whereas a boy of thirteen, much more severely
bitten by the same dog on the same day, recovered under treatment.
Deléarde strongly advises any one bitten by a mad dog to abstain from
alcohol, not only during the anti-rabic treatment but for some months
thereafter, lest the alcohol counteract the effects of the protective
serum.

Similar laboratory experiments have been made by Laitenan, who became
fully convinced that alcohol increases the susceptibility of animals to
splenic fever, tuberculosis, and diphtheria. Dr. A. C. Abbott, of the
University of Pennsylvania, made an elaborate series of experiments to
test the susceptibility of rabbits to various micro-organisms causing
pus-formation and blood poisoning. He found that the normal resistance
of rabbits to infection from this source was in most cases "markedly
diminished through the influence of alcohol when given daily to a stage
of acute intoxication." "It is interesting to note," Dr. Abbott adds,
"that the results of inoculation of the alcoholized rabbits with the
erysipelas coccus correspond in a way with clinical observations on
human beings addicted to the excessive use of alcohol when infected by
this organism."

Additional confirmation of the deleterious effects of alcohol in this
connection was furnished by the cats and dogs of Professor Hodge's
experiments, already referred to. All of these showed peculiar
susceptibility to infectious diseases, not only being attacked earlier
than their normal companions, but also suffering more severely, This
accords with numerous observations on the human subject; for example,
with the claim made some years ago by McCleod and Milles that Europeans
in Shanghai who used alcohol showed increased susceptibility to Asiatic
cholera, and suffered from a more virulent type of the disease.
Professor Woodhead points out that many of the foremost authorities now
concede the justice of this view, and unreservedly condemn the giving
of alcohol, even in medicinal doses, to patients suffering from cholera
or from various other acute diseases and intoxications, including
diphtheria, tetanus, snake-bite, and pneumonia, as being not merely
useless but positively harmful. Even when the patient has advanced far
toward recovery from an acute infectious disease, it is held still
to be highly unwise to administer alcohol, since this may interfere
with the beneficent action of the anti-toxins that have developed in
the tissues of the body, and in virtue of which the disease has been
overcome.

_The Ally of Tuberculosis_

Not many physicians, perhaps, will go so far as Dr. Muirhead of
Edinburgh, who at one time claimed that he had scarcely known of a
death in a case of pneumonia uncomplicated by alcoholism; but almost
every physician will admit that he contemplates with increased
solicitude every case of pneumonia thus complicated. Equally potent,
seemingly, is alcohol in complicating that other ever-menacing lung
disease, tuberculosis. Dr. Crothers long ago asserted that inebriety
and tuberculosis are practically interconvertible conditions; a view
that may be interpreted in the words of Dr. Dickinson's Baillie
Lecture: "We may conclude, and that confidently, that alcohol
promotes tubercle, not because it begets the bacilli, but because it
impairs the tissues, and makes them ready to yield to the attacks
of the parasites." Dr. Brouardel, at the Congress for the Study of
Tuberculosis, in London, was equally emphatic as to the influence of
alcohol in preparing the way for tuberculosis, and increasing its
virulence; and this view has now become general--curiously reversing
the popular impression, once held by the medical profession as well,
that alcohol is antagonistic to consumption.

Corroborative evidence of the baleful alliance between alcohol and
tuberculosis is furnished by the fact that in France the regions
where tuberculosis is most prevalent correspond with those in which
the consumption of alcohol is greatest. Where the average annual
consumption was 12.5 litres per person, the death rate from consumption
was found by Baudron to be 32.8 per thousand. Where alcoholic
consumption rose to 35.4 litres, the death rate from consumption
increased to 107.8 per thousand. Equally suggestive are facts put
forward by Guttstadt in regard to the causes of death in the various
callings in Prussia. He found that tuberculosis claimed 160 victims
in every thousand deaths of persons over twenty-five years of age.
But the number of deaths from this disease per thousand deaths among
gymnasium teachers, physicians, and Protestant clergymen, for example,
amounted respectively to 126, 113, and 76 only; whereas the numbers
rose, for hotelkeepers, to 237, for brewers, to 344, and for waiters,
to 556. No doubt several factors complicate the problem here, but one
hazards little in suggesting that a difference of habit as to the use
of alcohol was the chief determinant in running up the death rate due
to tuberculosis from 76 per thousand at one end of the scale to 556 at
the other.

Pneumonia and tuberculosis combined account for one-fifth of all deaths
in the United States, year by year. In the light of what has just been
shown, it would appear that alcohol here has a hand in the carrying
off of other untold thousands with whose untimely demise its name is
not officially associated. I may add that certain German authorities,
including, for example, Dr. Liebe, present evidence--not as yet
demonstrative--to show that cancer must also be added to the list of
diseases to which alcohol predisposes the organism.

_Hereditary Effects of Alcohol_

If additional evidence of the all-pervading influence of alcohol is
required, it may be found in the thought-compelling fact that the
effects are not limited to the individual who imbibes the alcohol, but
may be passed on to his descendants. The offspring of alcoholics show
impaired vitality of the most deep-seated character. Sometimes this
impaired vitality is manifested in the non-viability of the offspring;
sometimes in deformity; very frequently in neuroses, which may take the
severe forms of chorea, infantile convulsions, epilepsy, or idiocy. In
examining into the history of 2554 idiotic, epileptic, hysterical, or
weak-minded children in the institution at Bicêtre, France, Bourneville
found that over 41 per cent. had alcoholic parents. In more than 9 per
cent. of the cases, it was ascertained that one or both parents were
under the influence of alcohol at the time of procreation,--a fact
of positively terrifying significance, when we reflect how alcohol
inflames the passions while subordinating the judgment and the ethical
scruples by which these passions are normally held in check. Of
similar import are the observations of Bezzola and of Hartmann that
a large proportion of the idiots and the criminals in Switzerland
were conceived during the season of the year when the customs of the
country--"May-fests," etc.--lead to the disproportionate consumption of
alcohol.

Experimental evidence of very striking character is furnished by the
reproductive histories of Professor Hodge's alcoholized dogs. Of 23
whelps born in four litters to a pair of tipplers, 9 were born dead, 8
were deformed, and only 4 were viable and seemingly normal. Meantime, a
pair of normal kennel-companions produced 45 whelps, of which 41 were
viable and normal--a percentage of 90.2 against the 17.4 per cent. of
viable alcoholics. Professor Hodge points out that these results are
strikingly similar to the observations of Demme on the progeny of ten
alcoholic as compared with ten normal families of human beings. The ten
alcoholic families produced 57 children, of whom 10 were deformed, 6
idiotic, 6 choreic or epileptic, 25 non-viable, and only 10, or 17 per
cent, of the whole were normal. The ten normal families produced 61
children, two of whom were deformed, 2 pronounced "backward," though
not suffering from disease, and 3 non-viable, leaving 54, or 88.5 per
cent., normal.

As I am writing this article, the latest report of the Craig Colony for
Epileptics, at Sonyea, New York, chances to come to my desk. Glancing
at the tables of statistics, I find that the superintendent, Dr.
Spratling, reports a history of alcoholism in the parents of 313 out
of 950 recent cases. More than 22 per cent. of these unfortunates are
thus suffering from the mistakes of their parents. Nor does this by any
means tell the whole story, for the report shows that 577 additional
cases--more than 60 per cent, of the whole--suffer from "neuropathic
heredity"; which means that their parents were themselves the victims
of one or another of those neuroses that are peculiarly heritable, and
that unquestionably tell, in a large number of cases, of alcoholic
indulgence on the part of their progenitors. "Even to the third and
fourth generation," said the wise Hebrew of old; and the laws of
heredity have not changed since then.

I cite the data from this report of the Epileptic Colony, not because
its record is in any way exceptional, but because it is absolutely
typical. The mental image that it brings up is precisely comparable
to that which would arise were we to examine the life histories of
the inmates of any institution whatever where dependent or delinquent
children are cared for, be it idiot asylum, orphanage, hospital, or
reformatory. The same picture, with the same insistent moral, would be
before us could we visit a clinic where nervous diseases are treated;
or--turning to the other end of the social scale--could we sit in the
office of a fashionable specialist in nervous diseases and behold the
succession of neurotics, epileptics, paralytics, and degenerates that
come day by day under his observation. It is this picture, along with
others which the preceding pages may in some measure have suggested,
that comes to mind and will not readily be banished when one hears
advocated "on physiological grounds" the regular use of alcoholic
drinks, "in moderation." A vast number of the misguided individuals
who were responsible for all this misery never did use alcohol except
in what they believed to be strict "moderation"; and of those that did
use it to excess, there were few indeed who could not have restricted
their use of alcohol to moderate quantities, or have abandoned its use
altogether, had not the drug itself made them its slaves by depriving
them of all power of choice. Few men indeed are voluntary inebriates.

_Alcohol and the "Moderate" Drinker_

It does not fall within the scope of my present purpose to dwell upon
the familiar aspect of the effects of alcohol suggested by the last
sentence. It requires no scientific experiments to prove that one of
the subtlest effects of this many-sided drug is to produce a craving
for itself, while weakening the will that could resist that craving.
But beyond noting that this is precisely in line with what we have
everywhere seen to be the typical effect of alcohol--the weakening of
higher functions and faculties, with corresponding exaggeration of
lower ones--I shall not comment here upon this all too familiar phase
of the alcohol problem. Throughout this paper I have had in mind the
hidden cumulative effects of relatively small quantities of alcohol
rather than the patent effects of excessive indulgence, I have had in
mind the voluntary "social" drinker, rather than the drunkard. I have
wished to raise a question in the mind of each and every habitual user
of alcohol in "moderation" who chances to read this article, as to
whether he is acting wisely in using alcohol habitually in any quantity
whatever.

If in reply the reader shall say: "There is some quantity of alcohol
that constitutes actual moderation; some quantity that will give me
pleasure and yet not menace me with these evils," I answer thus:

Conceivably that is true, though it is not proved. But in any event,
no man can tell you what the safe quantity is--if safe quantity there
be--in any individual case. We have seen how widely individuals
differ in susceptibility. In the laboratory some animals are killed
by doses that seem harmless to their companions. These are matters of
temperament that as yet elude explanation. But this much I can predict
with confidence: whatever the "safe" quantity of alcohol for you to
take, you will unquestionably at times exceed it. In a tolerably wide
experience of men of many nations, I have never known an habitual
drinker who did not sometimes take more alcohol than even the most
liberal scientific estimate could claim as harmless. Therefore I
believe that you must do the same.

So I am bound to believe, on the evidence, that if you take alcohol
habitually, in any quantity whatever, it is to some extent a menace to
you. I am bound to believe, in the light of what science has revealed:
(1) that you are tangibly threatening the physical structures of your
stomach, your liver, your kidneys, your heart, your blood-vessels,
your nerves, your brain; (2) that you are unequivocally decreasing
your capacity for work in any field, be it physical, intellectual, or
artistic; (3) that you are in some measure lowering the grade of your
mind, dulling your higher esthetic sense, and taking the finer edge
off your morals; (4) that you are distinctly lessening your chances
of maintaining health and attaining longevity; and (5) that you may
be entailing upon your descendants yet unborn a bond of incalculable
misery.

Such, I am bound to believe, is the probable cost of your "moderate"
indulgence in alcoholic beverages. Part of that cost you must pay in
person; the balance will be the heritage of future generations. As a
mere business proposition: Is your glass of beer, your bottle of wine,
your high-ball, or your cocktail worth such a price?

[Illustration]

EDITORIALS

THE PEASANT SALOON-KEEPER--RULER OF AMERICAN CITIES

[Illustration]

The great wave of temperance which is now sweeping Europe and America
has its chief impulse, no doubt, in ethical and religious sentiment.
But a new force is operative--the force of an exact knowledge of the
evil physical effects of alcohol. It would be impossible to exaggerate
the importance of this new element in temperance reform.

The story of the modern series of scientific experiments with alcohol,
begun about twenty-five years ago and still in progress, is given by
Dr. Henry Smith Williams in this number of MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE.
These investigations, largely conducted in Continental Europe, include
experiments on the senses, upon the muscles, and upon the different
human intellectual activities, from the simplest to the most complex.
Without exception they show that every function of the normal human
body is injured by the use of alcohol--even the moderate use; and that
the injury is both serious and permanent.

This knowledge is of concern to all the world. But there is in America
a particular and special concern over a condition which may be believed
to be unparalleled in human history--certainly in modern civilization:
the power of the saloon in American government, especially the
government of cities.

The fact is notorious; yet the condition is not clearly understood.
Sixty years ago, with the first flood of European immigration, the
character of American city governments changed suddenly and entirely.
A great proportion of the peasantry who arrived here from the farms of
Europe stopped in our cities. They were isolated from the rest of the
population; their one great social center was the saloon. And out of
this social center came their political leaders and the manipulators of
their votes. The European peasant saloon-keeper, for more than half a
century, has been the ruler of a great proportion of American cities.

The case of Tammany Hall, for so many years the real governing body of
New York, is most familiar. Its politicians for half a century have
graduated into public affairs through the common school of the saloon.
Its leaders at the present time are perfect examples of the European
peasant saloon-keeper type, which has come to govern us. The same
condition exists to a large extent in nearly every one of the larger
cities in the country. An analysis of the member-ship of the boards of
aldermen in these cities for the past few decades shows a percentage of
saloon-keepers with foreign names which is astonishing.

A government necessarily takes the character of those conducting it.
The business of saloon-keeping, which produced the present management
of our cities, involves, from the conditions which surround it, a
disregard for both law and proper moral ideals. Ordinary commercial
motives urge the proprietors, as a class, to increase the sale of a
commodity which the State everywhere endeavors to restrict; and a
savage condition of competition drives them still further--till a
great proportion break the provisions of the law in some way; while
a considerable number ally themselves with the most degraded and
dangerous forms of vice.

The government by this class has been exactly what might have been
expected. A body of men--drawn from an ancestry which has never
possessed any knowledge or traditions of free government; educated in
a business whose financial successes are made through the disregard of
law--are elevated to the control of the machinery of law and order in
the great cities. Another type of citizen--men of force and enterprise
unsurpassed in the history of the world--by adapting the discoveries of
the most inventive century of the world to the uses of commerce, have
massed together in the past half century a chain of great cities upon
the face of a half savage continent, and left them to the government
of such people as these. The commercial enterprise of these cities has
been the marvel of the world; their government has reached a point of
moral degradation and inefficiency scarcely less than Oriental.

The debauching of our city life by this kind of government has been
frequently pictured in this magazine. A government by saloon-keepers,
and by dealers in flagrant immorality, finds both its power and profit
in the establishment of vice by its official position. The progress of
such a government is shown in George Kennan's description of the former
régime in San Francisco, published in MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE of
September, 1907:

"Instead of protecting the public by enforcing the laws, it devoted
itself mainly to making money by allowing gamblers, policy-sellers,
brothel keepers, and prostitutes to break the laws. Its honest
officers and men tried, at first, to do their duty; but the police
commissioners, under the influence or direction of Ruef, interfered
with their efforts to close illegal and immoral resorts; the police
court judges, allowing themselves to be swayed by selfish political
considerations, released the prisoners whom they arrested."

Conditions similar to this have been shown in this magazine to exist
in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburg, and other great cities
of America. The results have been a general disintegration in the
moral fiber of cities. Life itself is much more unsafe than under the
well-ordered governments of European cities. The murder rate in Chicago
and New York is six or eight times as great as in London and Berlin.
Even such a primary necessity of civilization as the safety of women is
lost sight of. A leading Chicago newspaper said in 1906:

"It has ever been our proudest boast as a people that in this country
woman is respected and protected as she is in no other. That boast is
becoming an empty one in Chicago. Women have not only been annoyed and
insulted in great numbers on the street within a very short time, but
not a few have been murdered. In the year before the Hollister tragedy,
there were seventeen murders of women in Chicago, which attracted the
attention of the city."

The system of government which produces this result was well described
some years ago by the late Bishop Potter, speaking of conditions in New
York.

"A corrupt system," he said, "whose infamous details have been steadily
uncovered, to our increasing horror and humiliation, was brazenly
ignored by those who were fattening on its spoils, and the world was
presented with the astounding spectacle of a great municipality, whose
civic mechanism was largely employed in trading in the bodies and
souls of the defenseless."

Aside from giving direct encouragement and propagation to the more
terrible forms of vice, the European peasant saloon-keeper government
of our cities furnishes a fitting field for so-called respectable
men--but really criminals of the worst type--who help organize and
perpetuate saloon government for the purpose of securing, by bribery,
franchises for public utilities without paying therefor. Thus American
cities have been robbed as well as badly governed.

There are signs of amelioration of these conditions in most of the
great cities of the country. But every advance is made against the
fierce antagonism of just such systems as Bishop Potter described;
and those systems exist in every large American city to-day--either
in direct control or ready to take control at the slightest sign of
relaxation by the forces which are opposing them. And the foundation of
this evil structure is the European peasant saloon-keeper.

MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, in the next year, will consider the
horrible influence of the saloon on American life. Dr. Williams will
follow his article in the present number by studies of the influence of
alcohol upon society at large, upon racial development, and upon the
State. The author is especially equipped for his work. He is in the
first place perhaps the greatest living popularizer of national science
and history in America; and he has himself made life-long observations
upon the influence of alcohol--both physical and social--first as
a medical practitioner in the treatment of the insane at the great
asylums at Bloomingdale and Randalls Island, and later by study and
observation in the chief capitals of Europe, where he has lived the
greater part of the last ten years. The sound judgment and impartial
temper which have characterized his work in other fields will be found
in his treatment of this great subject.

THE ELDER STATESMEN

Senators Sherman, Hoar, Edmunds, George, and Gray; these were the men
who made the present Sherman Anti-trust Law. They were the men who
made largely the financial and constitutional history of the United
States for the three decades following the Civil War. They brought
to the consideration of the trust problem an intimate knowledge of
constitutional law, an open, unbiased attitude toward property rights,
and a thorough devotion to the public interest. They gave long and
careful attention to the question, spending two years on this bill.
There was nothing hasty or ill-considered about their action. They
sought to end special privilege and put all citizens on the same basis
of free competition. Of all their great services to the nation none
probably equals in importance this bill, which may be called the Magna
Charta of industrial and commercial liberty.

The amendment of the Sherman Act may be an important public issue for
some time to come. If it were possible to assemble for this work a body
of men as able and as disinterested as the Elder Statesmen who framed
the original act, the interests of the public would be safe.

Transcriber's Note

Hyphenated words have been retained as in the original text.

Typographical errors have been silently corrected.

OE ligatures have been expanded.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 6, October, 1908" ***

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