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Title: Bob Taylor's Magazine, Vol. I, No. 1, April 1905
Author: Various
Language: English
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1, APRIL 1905 ***
Bob Taylor’s Magazine.
Contents for April, 1905.
The Contents of this MAGAZINE are protected by copyright and must not be
used without the consent of the publishers.
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
COVER DESIGN _Mayna Treanor Avent_
FRONTISPIECE—The Late Hon. John H. Reagan 2
THE OLD SOUTH _Robert L. Taylor_ 3
Illustrated with photographs.
POPULAR EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH _Henry N. Snyder, LL.D._ 9
With portrait of the Author.
TO HELEN KELLER 14
MEN OF AFFAIRS 15
Illustrated with photographs.
THE LOST HERD _Joseph A. Altsheler_ 23
With portrait of Author.
THE ISLES OF SCILLY _J. H. Stevenson, Ph.D._ 32
Illustrated with photographs.
LABOR PROBLEMS IN THE SOUTH _Herman Justi_ 39
With portrait of the Author.
TILDY BINFORD’S ADVERTISEMENT _Holland Wright_ 46
Story. Illustrated by the Author.
THE MAN AND THE MATINEE _Sybil Stewart_ 54
Story. Illustrated.
THE OLD ORDER PASSETH _Grace McGowan Cooke_ 61
Poem. Illustrated with photograph.
SOURCES OF SOUTHERN WEALTH _Austin P. Foster_ 62
SOCIETY OF THE FOREST _M. W. Connolly_ 66
Illustrated by Mayna Treanor Avent.
SUNSHINE—Conducted by the Editor in Chief 80
GREETING.
FLY IN YOUR OWN FIRMAMENT.
THE GOVERNOR.
THE LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR.
THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELER.
LYRICAL AND SATIRICAL—Conducted by Vermouth 87
A CUBAN SKETCH _Harvey Hannah_ 90
WITHIN A VALLEY NARROW _Ingram Crockett_ 91
LEISURE HOURS 92
BOOKS AND AUTHORS—Conducted by Mrs. Genella Fitzgerald Nye 95
THE FIDDLE AND THE BOW _Robert L. Taylor_ 103
Illustrated.
THE SOUTHERN PLATFORM 107
POEM _Capt. Jack Crawford._
THE STORY OF JOSEPH _Ida Benfey._
THE MOCKING-BIRD _Mary H. Flanner._
THE YOUTH OF SHAKESPEARE _Frederick Warde._
A CRITIQUE OF THE MASQUERADER _James Hunt Cook._
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
Copyright 1905 by The Taylor Publishing Co. All rights reserved
THE TAYLOR PUBLISHING COMPANY, Publishers,
_Vanderbilt Law Building_, Nashville, Tenn.
STANDARD FURNITURE CO.
MANUFACTURERS OF THE
“STANDARD LINE” OF FURNITURE
[Illustration]
are the largest Furniture Makers in the Metropolis of the South.
* * * * *
We shipped more car loads of furniture last year than any other factory
in this section. This is proof that
Our
Furniture
is
Right
* * * * *
Send for Catalogue
STANDARD FURNITURE COMPANY
OFFICE AND SALESROOM
Russell and First Streets, NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
_In writing to advertisers please mention Bob Taylor’s Magazine._
[Illustration:
THE LATE HON. JOHN H. REAGAN IN HIS STUDY AT PALESTINE, TEXAS.
]
BOB TAYLOR’S MAGAZINE
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
VOL. I APRIL, 1905 NO. 1
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
THE OLD SOUTH.
By Robert L. Taylor.
One of the most brilliant civilizations that ever flourished in the
history of the world staggered and fell with broken sword and shattered
shield on that dark day when the flag of Southern hope and glory went
down in blood and tears. Its decimated armies, too exhausted from loss
of blood to longer pull the trigger, too weak from starvation to charge
the enemy, too footsore and too proud to run, stacked their old, bent
and battered muskets in the anguish of defeat and went limping back to
their ruined homes in Dixie.
There is nothing left of that civilization now but a few remnants of its
gray columns—_themselves_ grown gray as if in honor of the uniforms they
wore—and the thrilling and pathetic story of its vanished prestige and
power lingering among its tombstones and monuments like the fragrance of
roses that are faded and gone. Never again will the white-columned
mansions of the masters glorify the groves of live oak and the orange
and the palm where Southern beauty was wooed and won by Southern
chivalry, and life was an endless chain of pleasure. Never again will
the snowy cotton fields and rice fields, stretching away to the Gulf or
to the river, teem with happy slaves and ring with their old time
plantation melodies. Hushed forever is the music of the Old South!
Closed are the lips of its matchless orators! The dust of its statesmen
mingles with the dust of the heroes who died to save it. Only three are
left in the counsels of the nation: Morgan, the brave and the true, the
able, the eloquent and learned Senator from Alabama; Pettus from the
same state, the peer of Morgan in all the exalted traits of character
that distinguish the unswerving and incorruptible representative and
defender of Southern ideals and Southern traditions; and Bate, that
grand old man of dauntless courage, that fearless soldier with many
scars, the hero of Shiloh, the strong and faithful Senator who in
private life is as pure and gentle as the mother of his children, and in
war as bold and daring a cavalier as ever drew a sword![1] It is true
there are other splendid men from the land of cotton and cane in
Congress, whose heads are silvered o’er, and who have nobly led Southern
thought and sentiment. They are superb exponents of the old ante-bellum
civilization, but they were too young to taste the sweets of its glory.
Some of them were born soon enough to listen to the lullaby of the old
black mammy and to sit in the negro cabin and listen to the
blood-curdling tales of uncle ’Rastus about ghosts and goblins; some,
like Daniel of Virginia, Berry of Arkansas, and Blackburn of Kentucky,
were old enough to follow Lee and Jackson and to fight to the finish;
but their youth forbade them from sitting on the throne of living ebony
with these older men, who, in reality, are all that is left of the Old
South in the national legislature; and in whose presence all men,
whether of the North or of the South, delight to lift their hats with
that profound reverence which true nobility of character always
commands. What a shame there are not four!
Footnote 1:
Senator Bate has died since this was penned.
[Illustration:
SENATOR WILLIAM B. BATE.
]
[Illustration:
GOVERNOR JAMES B. FRAZIER, OF TENNESSEE.
]
A sigh of deep regret came from the Southern heart when Missouri
registered the decree that Cockrell, the soul of honor, the
impersonation of truth and integrity, the soldier and the statesman,
must cease to reflect honor upon that great commonwealth as one of its
representatives in the United States Senate. But it must be a sweet
consolation to him to go back among the people whom he has served so
faithfully and so well, with the consciousness of a clean life behind
him, both private and public, and with the prestige of a glorious record
in the service of his country.
[Illustration:
GOVERNOR JOHN C. W. BECKHAM, OF KENTUCKY
]
To those who have marked the passing of men in recent years, how solemn
the thought that there are so few left to tell the tale of the manhood,
the wealth and the influence of that chivalrous race who staked all and
lost all save honor in the struggle to preserve its institutions. There
is only one remaining who served in the cabinet of Jefferson Davis, in
the person of the venerable and beloved John H. Reagan of the Lone Star
State. The dews of life’s evening are condensing on his brow and its
shadows are lengthening around him, but the burden of his fourscore
years and five still rests lightly upon him. The snows that never melt
have fallen upon his head, but there’s no snow upon his heart; ’tis
always summer there! He has been distinguished through life for his
rigid honesty and the fearless discharge of duty, and he will die, as he
has lived, the idol of his people. May God lengthen the twilight of his
declining years far into the twentieth century![2]
Footnote 2:
Since this article was set up, Judge Reagan, too, has passed away.
One by one the great majority of the star actors in the thrilling drama
of the past have made their exit behind the sable curtain of death, and
in all probability another decade will clear the stage.
[Illustration:
GOVERNOR ANDREW J. MONTAGUE, OF VIRGINIA.
]
[Illustration:
GOVERNOR EDWIN WARFIELD, OF MARYLAND.
]
[Illustration:
GOVERNOR J. M. TERRELL, OF GEORGIA.
]
It is one of the purposes of this magazine to aid in keeping ever fresh
and green the history and traditions of the Old South; to keep alive its
chivalrous spirit, and to tell the pathetic story of the lion-hearted
men around whose names are woven some of the greatest events of history.
It has been beautifully said that “literature loves a lost cause.” If
this be true, the South will yet be a flower garden of the most
enchanting literature that ever blossomed in any age or in any land.
Some Homer will rise, greater than the Greek, and dream among the
cemeteries where its heroes sleep and sing the sweetest Iliad ever sung!
The spirit of another Hugo will brood over its battle fields and gather
tales of valor and reckless courage; of grim visaged men scorning shot
and shell and riding to the cannon’s mouth; of bayonets mixed and
crossed; of angry armies clinching and rolling together in the bloody
mire of the awful strife; of Death on the pale horse, beckoning the
flower of the Old South to the opening grave! He will gather up the
tears and prayers and the withered hopes of a dying nation; the piteous
wails of pale and haggard maidens for lovers slain in battle; the
shrieks of brides for grooms of a day brought back with pallid lips
sealed forever and jackets all stained with blood; and the swoons of
mothers with the kisses of fallen sons still warm upon their wrinkled
brows. He will gather them up and weave them all into volumes of
romantic love more vivid and terrible than the story of Waterloo! He
will paint in burning words a picture, not of all the horrors that
followed the blunder of Grouchy in that battle upon which hung the fate
of empires, but of Stonewall Jackson falling in the noontide of his
brilliant career and passing over the river to rest under the shade of
the trees; a picture, not of Wellington seizing the fallen Napoleon and
banishing him to solitude and death on a rock in the sea, but of the
great and generous Grant receiving our own immortal Lee like a king at
Appomattox, declining to accept his sword and bidding him return to the
peaceful walks of private life among the green hills of old Virginia; a
picture, not of Ney, who had fought so long and so bravely for the
triumph of his beloved France, shot through the heart by cowards within
the very walls of Paris, but of Gordon, with golden tongue portraying
the last days of the Confederacy amid the shouts and tears of the brave
men who had faced him with booming cannon and rattling musketry on a
hundred fields of glory; a picture, not of the English Channel as the
dividing line between the drawn swords of France and Britain, but of
Mason and Dixon’s line healing into a red scar of honor across the
breast of the great Republic and marking the unity of a once divided
country!
[Illustration:
GOVERNOR NEWTON C. BLANCHARD, OF LOUISIANA.
]
[Illustration:
GOVERNOR N. B. BROWARD, OF FLORIDA.
]
[Illustration:
GOVERNOR JAMES K. VARDEMAN, OF MISSISSIPPI.
]
[Illustration:
SENATOR JOHN T. MORGAN.
]
Not very long ago, during the Spanish-American War, there was commotion
in a far Southern town, caused by a coterie of young men bitterly
protesting against the sons of Confederate veterans wearing the blue and
fighting under the old flag. An elderly man with “crow’s feet” at the
comers of his eyes and silver in his hair, listened for a while in
silence, but finally arose from his chair and said: “Young men, you are
wrong. I followed the stars and bars for four long, weary years! I saw
its colors go down at last and I straggled back to my native state,
barefooted and in rags, only to find my home in ashes. I swore eternal
enmity to the stars and stripes and to the blue. But one day, after the
battle of Manila Bay had been fought, a Mississippi regiment went
marching up the main street of my town and lo! my boy was in the ranks
dressed in the Federal uniform. In my rage I rushed to the Colonel and
shouted, “Take that blue uniform off these young men and let them put on
the gray and show the world how the sons of Confederate veterans can
fight!” but the Colonel smiled and shook his head and the regiment
marched on eager for the fray. I went home in my fury more bitter
against the North than ever before. But when one day they brought my boy
home in his coffin and I looked down upon him pale and motionless, in
his blue uniform and wrapped in the old flag, my animosity vanished in a
moment and in my tears I said: ‘Henceforth that uniform is my uniform,
that flag is my flag and this whole country is my country.’” This
sentiment is not incompatible with loyalty to the gray nor to the folded
stars and bars, but it is the expression of the only feeling that will
ever unite all the sections of the Union.
[Illustration:
SENATOR B. F. PETTUS.
]
We must recognize the fact that a new civilization has arisen in the
South from the ashes of the old, and while her people cherish the past
for its precious memories, their faces are turned toward the morning.
They are not only producing more cotton than ever before, but building
gigantic plants among its snow-white fields, and with the magic of
modern machinery are transforming the raw material into finished
fabrics; they are pulling down the hills and dragging forth their
treasures of coal and iron, of marble, zinc and lead, and are converting
them into all the finished implements of peace; they are harnessing
their beautiful rivers to the thunder-clad steeds of the storm and
turning the myriad wheels of industry with electric power; and they will
some day out-herod Herod in the marts of the world.
The representatives and governors of the South, confronted with new and
perilous problems, have had the courage to grapple with them, the brain
to control them and the heart to turn many of them into blessings. They
have brought wealth out of poverty and prosperity out of desolation; and
Hope stands on the horizon with a new crown in her hand, beckoning this
new civilization to a throne of power never dreamed of by the old. And
yet, while the Southern people rejoice in the resurrection of their
country from the dead and in the bright prospects spread out before
them, let them never forget to worship at the shrine of memory nor to
permit the glory of the blessed past to be dimmed by the splendor of the
future.
POPULAR EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH.
By Henry N. Snyder, LL.D.
[Illustration:
HENRY NELSON SNYDER, M.A., LITT.D., LL.D.
]
President Henry N. Snyder, of Wofford College, speaks to our readers
in a thoughtful and commanding way on a question, that with the rapid
and general development of the South is becoming more and more
recognized as a vital popular problem.
As the executive head of one of the South’s most representative
denominational colleges and as a lecturer on the subject before
representative summer schools for teachers, President Snyder has had
occasion to bestow upon his theme serious and special study and his
intelligent and earnest treatment of his topic tends to present it in
a practical and popular form and to eliminate from it those
speculative and academic qualities that have so generally
characterized its discussion.
A native of Macon, Ga., where he was born during the final year of the
Civil War, President Snyder was reared and educated in Nashville
where, after completing the course of the city high schools he entered
Vanderbilt University in 1883, and from which he graduated in arts,
with both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
He was until 1890 connected with his alma mater, the last three years
of which time he was instructor in Latin and student of graduate
subjects. He subsequently pursued advanced special work in German and
English universities, since which time, until 1902, he was professor
of the English Language and Literature in Wofford College. He has been
president of this institution since 1902.
President Snyder’s contribution to the actual promotion and solution
of his subject has been considerable, as he has served as lecturer on
English Literature at the South Carolina State Summer School and the
Summer School of the South, at Knoxville, Tenn.
He is a frequent contributor to magazines on literary and educational
subjects and is a member of the Modern Language Association of
America, and the Religious Education Association.
The American democracy is not so much an achievement as a prophecy. Its
chief glory cannot be in what it is, but in what it is to be. It has not
attained the measure of its growth till every man in it has a fair
chance and an open field to make the most of himself, and has done so
with reasonable completeness. It is therefore essentially idealistic,
and, however deeply concerned with the present hour’s duty and work, its
face is ever set toward a larger future for itself. But this larger
future can only be realized in a finer and more efficient quality of the
men and women who are to do the work and continue the unfolding life of
this free democracy of equal opportunity,—equal opportunity not for the
few favored by fortune or circumstance, but for every child born in it.
No democracy dare have any other mind with reference to itself.
The most necessary, as the most inspiring, work therefore which a
democracy assumes to do is that of seeing to it that all its children
are rightly trained for intelligent service and skilled efficiency. This
task it undertakes not only that it may live as a collective body but
also that each citizen may in the best and fullest manner express his
own individual life. In this two-fold view of the matter popular
education, the putting of all the children of all the people into the
best possible schools, under the best possible teachers, for the longest
possible time, becomes the sacred and imperative duty of a democracy
that cares for to-morrow as well as for to-day. And the to-morrow of a
democracy, in all the manifold activities of its complex life, is
determined by what it does for the child of to-day.
From this viewpoint no democracy ever had a better opportunity to test
itself and its ability to control the future than that phase of
democratic life working out its destiny here at the South. For the
conditions are such as to make the task of training the citizenship of
the future almost the one thing to be done. The figures representing
those conditions have been so often used of late that one is really
inclined to resent the very mention of them. Nevertheless, a proper
understanding of the conditions entering into this, as into any problem,
is the first step toward the solution. Moreover, in this struggle now on
for popular education at the South, it is no part of courage to blink a
fact because it is ugly, nor of sane judgment to let anything or anybody
beguile us into fighting our battle in the dark. We should keep steadily
before us the facts as they are, the stupendous nature of the work that
lies ahead and how it is to be done, and withal the eternally vital need
of doing it now and in the right way.
Now as far as figures can give one anything like an adequate conception,
the situation is about this: In 1900 there were 8,683,762 persons of
school age in what we are used to call the Southern states,—5,594,284
white persons and 3,089,478 black. It should be said in passing, yet
with all emphasis, that the South may as well get used to reckoning the
children of its former slaves in both its educational assets and
educational liabilities. Justice and expediency are both vitally
involved in this view of the situation. Now, of this future citizenship
only sixty out of every hundred were actually in process of school
training, and of this enrollment only forty-two were, on the average, in
daily attendance. The only comfort that one can get in this situation is
by looking back and seeing that conditions have been worse and forward
to see that they are bound to be better.
These figures, then, represent the mass of material that popular
education has to deal with and the actual portion upon which it is
really working. Now when one considers the machinery of instruction, the
teachers, the school-property, the length of terms, and the capital
invested, one sees even more vividly that the democracy of the immediate
future must be limited in its development, not alone because its
children are not in process of training but because the means themselves
are inadequate and inefficient. The entire country pays, on the average,
for its men teachers a salary of $49.00 per month, for its women $40.00.
The South gets its men for $35.63 and its women for $30.47. Leaving out
of consideration the quality of service to be had at such a pitifully
low price, one can be perfectly sure that no high professional ideals
and standards can be maintained at such rates. But let us look at the
matter from another standpoint; upon every child in its schools the
South spends $6.95 as against $10.57 for the entire country; while some
states of the West spend $31.49, some Southern states are spending only
$4.50. It is not surprising therefore to see what this means as to the
average length of school term among us: in the entire country every
child has a chance to be in school at least 145 days, while the child of
the South has open to him only 99 days. Clear enough is it, then, that
democracy in this section is, in comparison with the rest of the Union,
handicapped in the very beginning of its race. Moreover, the relation of
popular education to its best life, in the light of the situation
revealed by these figures, is a deep and fundamental one.
How deep and fundamental this is, can be best realized by the
comparative density of illiteracy already prevailing at the South. Fifty
out of every hundred negroes ten years old and over can neither read nor
write, and nearly thirteen out of every hundred whites are in the same
condition of darkness. In the United States as many as 231 counties
report a proportion of twenty per cent of illiterate white men of voting
age, and of the total, 210 of these counties are in the South. Now the
conditions represented by all these figures—and at best they can only
bring the matter vaguely to our conception—in one sense, on account of
the magnitude of the work to be done and the difficulties in the way,
are of a nature almost to take hope and courage from us. On the other
hand, the absolute need of doing the work, the fruits that must follow,
and the progress already made are a clarion call to patience,
patriotism, faith, and unresting effort.
But before taking up the progress already made, it would be well to
remind ourselves once more of some of the causes which have brought
about the present state of affairs and render the Southern situation as
to popular education a peculiar one. In the first place, there was the
all but disheartening poverty due to the collapse of the entire social
and industrial system of the South. War, followed by Reconstruction, did
the work with ruthless thoroughness. From 1860 to 1880 taxable property
at the South suffered a decrease in value of $2,167,000,100, that is, to
less than one-half its value at the breaking out of the War. Indeed, in
1870 the one little state of Massachusetts paid considerably over
one-half the amount of taxes paid by the entire South. It is clear,
then, that for nearly twenty years the South was under the simple yet
stern and inexorable compulsion of how to live. In this light,
therefore, what it did accomplish in the matter of training its children
is to be regarded as a really heroic achievement, and is no occasion of
blame because, by comparison, it seems so little. Absolutely, it is
worthy of all praise.
It should be remembered, too, that in spite of its poverty, in spite of
the fact that its energies have been given to a pressing struggle for
its very existence, the South has had to maintain a two-fold system of
popular education. It has had to care for the children of its former
slaves in separate schools, and bear virtually all the expense. This has
both complicated its problem and necessarily limited its educational
advancement. But at this time it can be asserted with emphasis, that the
South, in spite of certain reactionary eddies in the current of its
thinking, will still continue to support Negro schools. Our best thought
is fast fixing itself in the unalterable conviction that to keep the
black man in ignorance is an injustice to ourselves as well as to him;
and, moreover, that expediency itself dictates that he shall neither
remain sunken in the night of illiteracy nor mistrained for the sphere
of life for which he is, in his present stage of advancement, fitted.
Therefore popular education has meant, will continue to mean, with the
South a two-fold system of education. And the Southern white man, with
his own taxes, is largely to maintain it,—at least for many years to
come.
But above everything else, the chief consideration with reference to the
whole question of popular education in the South, both as to its needs
and difficulties, is that we are dealing with a rural folk and rural
conditions. More than eighty-three per cent of the Southern people live
in the country,—a pure, wholesome Anglo-Saxon stock of unwasted, if
untrained, physical, intellectual and moral qualities. The problem of
popular education in villages, towns, and cities is virtually solved.
The task therefore is concerned wholly with what we shall do for and
with the saving, and in this case, the larger remnant which draws its
support from the fields. No democracy ever had better or richer assets
from which to recuperate itself, or a more inspiring duty to perform in
giving this class opportunity for training and development. But from the
very nature of the case the proper performance of this duty is a task of
stupendous magnitude, and even an approximate accomplishment of it must
wait upon necessarily slow processes. The deep-seated conservatism of
the people, the extent to which illiteracy prevails and the narrow
poverty in many sections, remote and widely-sundered homes, roads almost
impassable at certain seasons of the year, the immediate need of the
children in the fields, even if the best of schools were at their
doors,—here are conditions which would discourage any but a brave and
patient people who believe in the divine right of all to whatever power
there is in knowledge and the bounden duty of the state to offer to all
its opportunities.
However, neither the pressure of poverty, nor the double burden of
caring for two races in separate schools, nor the special difficulty
growing out of the peculiar nature of conditions, nor the huge magnitude
of the task, has daunted courage or enfeebled effort. On every hand
there are inspiring marks of progress, and results prophetic of greater
advances yet to follow. In the first place, the last six or eight years
have been a period of quite remarkable educational agitation throughout
the entire South. Every kind of leadership has been systematically at
work to quicken the conscience and stir the sentiment of the people on
this subject. Pulpit, press, organized philanthropy, and civil authority
have combined with professional educators in a campaign whose
rallying-cry has been the uplifting of democracy through the power of
the schoolhouse. The general result is an interest both wide and
intelligent, an awakened conscience, and an aroused sentiment throughout
all this Southern land, all of which tends to put behind special and
definite efforts of improvement an irresistible public opinion. The
South is therefore keenly realizing its sense of civic obligation and
its duty to its own future, and when the South once sees its duty and
that rich vein of sentimentality, which lies at the basis of its
temperament, is once touched, there will be no turning back. And surely
it has now seen its duty and its sentimentality is thoroughly alive to
all that popular education means to the child of to-day and the state of
to-morrow.
For this condition we have to thank, not only the church, the press, and
organized philanthropy, but a strikingly courageous and far-sighted
political leadership, which the situation has called forth,—men, for
example, like Governor Frazier of Tennessee, Governor Aycock of North
Carolina, Governor Heyward of South Carolina, and Governor Montague of
Virginia, men who have convincingly fought for the inalienable right of
every child to be trained by the state at public expense. To their
influence must also be added the skilled patriotic service of such State
Superintendents of Public Instruction as Mynders, Martin, MacMahan,
Merritt, Whitefield and Joyner,—men who seemed to regard their office as
peculiarly the most sacred of all trusts committed by a people to public
servants. The people have listened to such as these when they might have
turned deaf ears to voices from any other source.
Too much importance cannot be attached to the sentiment which has been
thus created in the last half-dozen years. It was the necessary step in
the preparation for more definite things. Its immediate value has been
in the awakening of people to such an extent that they will not only put
their children in school but will also tax themselves for educational
purposes. General and local taxation, as a result, has been increasing
at a significant rate. Indeed, some of the Southern states are now
giving a larger proportion of their income from taxes to the use of
education than the states of the North and West. They are everywhere
building better schoolhouses, furnishing better equipment, and demanding
better trained teachers. Consolidation of schools, free transportation,
longer terms, expert supervision, the removal of educational matters
from the blight of political influence, are the things which now make
the educational atmosphere fairly electric with reform, and the next few
years will show a growth that will please even the most ardent optimist.
This general agitation has thus connected with it certain definite aims
and methods of educational policy, which have already taken shape and
are bearing fruit. Not the least important among them has been the
effort to secure, above everything, trained teachers. Many of the states
have either established Normal Schools for this purpose or have added to
their Universities departments of Education. But it has been felt that
even these were not sufficient to meet the demands for a trained
teaching force. Hence in some of the states, in Georgia, Mississippi,
and South Carolina, for example, summer schools with an attendance of
from four to six hundred have been running for a number of years, and at
Knoxville the great Summer School has been drawing from all over the
South a choice body of teachers to the number of two thousand, and
offering them the best instruction to be had, North or South. To the
influence of these general schools is to be added that of the County
Institutes, which of themselves have been an inestimable source of
power. All have stood for an intelligent knowledge of the situation, for
the missionary spirit of propaganda, for a broader and more accurate
scholarship on the part of the teacher, for the application of expert,
up-to-date methods of instruction and organization, and for the raising
of the teacher’s work to the dignity of a great profession. The
significance of all this is that this movement for popular education is
laying its foundations in wisdom in that it sees that the teacher
himself must first be taught.
And the work has already begun to tell to a degree that can even now be
measured. In the last score of years Virginia has reduced its ratio of
white illiteracy by 7 per cent, Georgia and Mississippi by 8, Kentucky
by 10, Alabama by 11, North Carolina and Florida, by 12, Tennessee by
13, and Arkansas by 14 per cent. These figures are eloquent of present
progress and inspiringly suggestive of the future. Democracy is really
caring for its own. It is told that a famous German teacher of the
Reformation once stepped into his schoolroom and greeted his pupils with
these words: “Hail, reverend pastors, doctors, superintendents, judges,
chancellors, magistrates, professors.” Some there were who laughed at
him as a joker and mocker. But he was wiser than they, and in his wisdom
was the prophet of that true democracy which sees not merely the child
in the school, but the future man in the state. The South therefore
views in this way the progress already made and realizes that what it
now does and will do with its children in the schools of the people is
the true measure of its own life in the coming years.
TO HELEN KELLER.
BY JAMES TAYLOR.
Forever veiled thy piteous eyes,
Forever sealed thine ear;
How dark and still creation lies,
How distant, yet how near!
Thy sightless orbs to heaven upturn
To crave the blessed light;
Nor sun, nor stars, above thee burn—
Alas, what hopeless night.
The jeweled arch that bends above,
The earth, the air, the sea,
O’erspanned by wings of Boundless Love,
How vainly smile for thee!
The blush of morn, the sunset glow,
The dew-gemmed paradise
Where Summer’s roses blow,
Are not for thy dim eyes.
Hushed is the sound of Music’s voice,
Hushed is the murmuring sea;
No trembling harp bids thee rejoice,—
’Tis silence _all_ to thee.
On Beauty’s loom which Nature wields
With deft, mysterious skill,
To deck with tapestries her fields,
Her every vale and hill,
She weaves with gorgeous threads of light
In mist, and cloud and rain,
Her irised gossamers so bright—
But weaves for thee in vain.
But God will make thee doubly whole,
And give thy spirit sight,—
His glory shall illume thy soul,
For God is love and light!
[Illustration]
MEN OF AFFAIRS
With the commercial awakening of the South and the increased
importance of the section as a factor in the national life, has
developed a new citizenship—a sub-structure of the Old South with a
modernized superstructure—in which with the sterling and standard
traits of the old regime is strongly blended the nervous activity of
the new. As a means of paying special tribute to the work being
accomplished in the local and general fields by new generation of the
South it is the intention of this magazine to devote a department
toward setting forth their achievements as well for public information
as for acknowledgment of their services, and in offering the initial
installment of this special column it is desired to direct attention
to the highly representative types herein noticed with the significant
intimation that all are yet in the prime of life with greater
opportunities ahead of them.
Richard M. Edmonds.
_The Manufacturers’ Record_, the South’s, if not the country’s, most
representative trades journal, had a modest origin less than a quarter
of a century ago in a small desk in an obscure business office in
Baltimore. Its founder and guiding spirit was Richard M. Edmonds, who
from nothing in the way of working capital save sagacity, energy and
determination, has developed a magnificent journalistic property,
occupying its own seven-story building and has himself become a man of
large affairs and wide influence.
In the development of the now admittedly fertile field of trades
journalism, no one point may be more emphasized as having been
significantly demonstrated than that it holds peculiar and pronounced
opportunities for those desirous of actively participating in the vital
activities of commerce.
In no less than three distinct phases of Southern development have Mr.
Edmonds and his paper conspicuously figured—in the encouragement of
industrial and technical education, in the promotion of the cause of
immigration from among the most desirable domestic elements and the
diverting of the cotton manufacturing business from New England to the
cotton fields. It was Mr. Edmonds’ editorial columns that first started
the now irresistible southward migration of the mills by pointing out
the many and conclusive reasons why the advantages for cotton
manufacturing were all in favor of the South.
As a commercial and financial figure it may be noted that Mr. Edmonds is
now a member of the executive committee of the International Trust
Company, a three million dollar Baltimore corporation, and is chairman
of the executive committee of the Alabama Consolidated Coal and Iron
Company, with a capitalization twice that of the former. He is a member
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, the Southern History
Association, the Maryland Historical Society, the Southern Society of
New York, and other organizations.
Mr. Edmonds was born in Norfolk, Va., in 1857, receiving a common school
education in Baltimore, where he started life as a clerk in the office
of the old _Journal of Commerce_.
[Illustration:
RICHARD M. EDMONDS.
]
Jacob McGavock Dickinson.
Successively a teacher, a practitioner of law, a railroad attorney, a
teacher of law, Assistant Attorney General of the United States, general
counsel for one of the country’s large railroad systems and a leading
legal representative of the nation’s interests before the Alaskan
boundary tribunal,—this is the record of this distinguished Southerner,
yet in his physical and mental prime.
A native of Mississippi and a product of ultra Southern environment,
himself a soldier of the gray at the very early age of fourteen, Mr.
Dickinson’s evolution into a representative type of national citizenship
comprises an interesting study in contemporary American life.
Educated at the old University of Nashville and at the Columbia Law
School, New York, with a capstone of extensive travel abroad and special
work in law and economics at the universities of Leipsic and Paris, Mr.
Dickinson has combined an ideal working equipment with a tremendous
energy and a capacity for laborious and sustained mental effort.
As a practitioner his unusual ability was several times recognized by
gubernatorial appointments as special judge on the Tennessee Supreme
Bench, to which he declined a permanent appointment, shortly thereafter
being called to the very high duties of the position of Assistant
Attorney General of the United States. After his retirement from this
position he became District Attorney for Tennessee and northern Alabama
for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company, from which he was
promoted to his present position as Chief Counsel for the Illinois
Central, with headquarters at Chicago.
His greatest public service, as is well known, was his representation of
the government in the Alaskan boundary dispute, wherein his presentation
of the nation’s claims is admitted to have had a material influence in
the successful outcome of that famous piece of international litigation.
[Illustration:
JAMES McGAVOCK DICKINSON.
]
Judge Dickinson maintains a close identity with Southern matters by
keeping up his connection with various societies and organizations,
among the number being the Isham Harris Confederate Bivouac, at his
native town, Columbus, Miss.
Samuel Spencer.
In the executive feature of railroad operation Samuel Spencer is a
prominent national figure. From an humble position in the ranks, a
combination of native ability, splendid equipment and consistent
application has resulted in his promotion to the presidency of six large
roads, while he is in addition a member of the board of directors of
nearly a score of others and of nearly a dozen of the country’s most
representative banking and other corporations.
[Illustration:
SAMUEL SPENCER.
]
A native of Georgia, where he was born at Columbus, in 1847, Mr. Spencer
entered the Confederate army, serving the last two years and with much
credit, after which he graduated from the University of Georgia with
A.B., and subsequently from the University of Virginia with his
engineering degree.
Since leaving college in 1869 Mr. Spencer has devoted his energies
uniformly to his ambition to rise to the highest round of the railroad
ladder, with the result that he is now president of the Southern, the
Mobile and Ohio, the Alabama and Great Southern, the Cincinnati, New
Orleans and Texas Pacific, the Georgia Southern and Florida, and the
Northern Alabama, aggregating a mileage of over nine thousand miles and
employing more than forty thousand men.
Besides innumerable other roads, in the management of which Mr. Spencer
is director, he is also a director of the Western Union Telegraph
Company, the Old Dominion Steamship Company, three large New York Trust
companies, the Hanover National Bank of New York, and one of Boston’s
large street railway systems.
Mr. Spencer is identified with the American Society of Civil Engineers
and other representative political, scientific and forestry
associations, and is socially very much of a cosmopolite, being a member
of New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, Atlanta and Macon clubs, besides that
wealthy sportsman’s paradise, the Jekyl Island Club.
One of the very few Southerners who have advanced into the circles of
millionairedom, Mr. Spencer resides principally in New York and
Washington, but is much in the South and is still in feeling and
sentiment very much a Southerner.
James Clarke McReynolds.
[Illustration:
JAMES C. McREYNOLDS
]
In the appointment of James C. McReynolds to be Assistant Attorney
General of the United States the President followed his revolutionary
precedent in the selection of Judge Thomas G. Jones, of Alabama, as
occupant of the Federal Bench. In this instance conventional custom was
further ignored in the elevation of a man considerably younger than the
age generally considered requisite.
Born at Elkton, Ky., a little over forty years ago, Mr. McReynolds was
graduated from Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia with
his academic and law degrees, respectively, in both of which
institutions he ranked high in scholarship and character.
His initial experience in public life was gained as the private
secretary of Judge Howell E. Jackson of the United States Supreme Bench,
which, with his already ample legal equipment, served him in good stead
in the general practice in Nashville where his career at the bar was
characterized by ability, integrity and a high order of fidelity to the
many large interests that he represented.
In civic and political movements Mr. McReynolds’ record was signalized
by a notably courageous, independent and unselfish interest.
Since his promotion to the duties of Assistant Attorney General of the
United States he has established principles of large governmental
significance and his able presentation of the government’s litigation
before the Supreme Court has elicited the unanimous commendation of that
impartial and august body.
Mr. McReynolds’ appreciation by the President would have been further
displayed by his appointment as United States District Judge to succeed
Judge Hammond, had not a technicality involving residence interfered.
[Illustration:
THOMAS DIXON, JR.
]
Thomas Dixon, Jr.
One of the most picturesque and dramatic figures in the limelight of
to-day is the Rev. Thomas Dixon, Jr., a man who has at his age probably
succeeded in as many different lines of endeavor as any other man of the
times.
An intense product of the new South, Mr. Dixon speaks his opinions on
his section’s great and peculiar problems with an incisive virility and
a fearless conviction, and with his novels, “The Leopard’s Spots” and
“The Clansman” has gained a popular audience for the Southern point of
view, before unreached. He has also illumined the divorce evil and the
subject of socialism in his dramatic story, “The One Woman.”
Born in North Carolina just forty years ago, and educated at Wake
Forest, a Baptist denominational school, Mr. Dixon has in rapid
succession essayed the fields of law, the ministry, lecturing and
authorship, and has been prominently identified with each. He was a
member of the North Carolina legislature at one time and is said to have
essayed the histrionic for a brief spell.
First attaining more than casual prominence as a Baptist minister in New
York, Mr. Dixon felt the opportunity of a non-sectarian evangelist
fraught with higher possibilities in the metropolis and more in keeping
with his temperament and convictions, founding a popular church wherein
as a religious and civic free lance he attracted a large and influential
hearing.
On the lecture platform he found a broader and more congenial labor
still, and from lecturing he took to literature, to which he is now
devoting his time exclusively. He has planned a trilogy of novels in
exposition of the negro question, the second of which, “The Clansman,”
takes its text from the vital role played by the Ku Klux in the
redemption of the South from the triple scourge of the carpet bagger,
the scalawag and their irresponsible tool, the ignorant African.
Mr. Dixon’s late successes have constituted him a man of affairs and he
now resides upon his extensive Virginia plantation, where he does much
of his literary work and incidentally lives the life of the Virginia
planter and gentleman of the olden day.
He is proud to admit the valuable assistance rendered him by his wife,
not only as literary critic but as a ready helper in the physical
construction of his productions.
[Illustration:
JOHN TEMPLE GRAVES.
]
John Temple Graves.
As lecturer, orator and editor, John Temple Graves, of Atlanta, is well
known to the country at large. As a lecturer he is classed by George R.
Wendling as being in a class with Governor Taylor at the head of the
Southern field; as an orator he has had the distinction of presenting
his section’s sentiments and peculiar problems to the national ear as
has no other man since Henry W. Grady; and as an editor he has by the
forcefulness of his personality developed in a brief period of time an
extensive business enterprise and a material public influence in his
section.
Mr. Graves’ most telling work on the platform has doubtless been his
contribution to the enlightenment of the Northern mind on the negro
question, while on this and various other subjects he has appeared three
times as the orator of the New England Society of Boston, twice of the
Merchants’ Club of Boston, once of the New England Society of
Philadelphia and twice of the Southern Society of New York. In the
capacity of journalist he has officially represented the South as
spokesman before the World’s Congress of Journalists at Chicago, in
1893, and also before the World’s Press Parliament at St. Louis, last
summer.
As a memorial orator Mr. Graves is entitled to distinguished rank, it
having devolved upon him to deliver the funeral orations over the
remains of his state’s most eminent sons—Grady and Gordon.
Mr. Graves is still a young man and is a native of Rome, Ga., and a
graduate of his state institution at Athens, of which he is a devoted
alumnus. He now devotes his time chiefly to his journalistic interests
and resides in Atlanta.
Though not a politician Mr. Graves has been twice elector at large in
two consecutive presidential campaigns in different states, and has led
the Democratic ticket in both instances.
IN VENICE.
BY ISABELLA HOWE FISKE.
All seems a dream of art—upon the arch
Of the grey bridge, the dim canal that spans,
A child steps, hand-raised, and my eye that scans,
Can scarce believe that here too, centuries march,
For Titian might have painted her just so,
Slow-foot Venetian centuries ago.
[Illustration]
JOSEPH A. ALTSHELER.
Joseph A. Altsheler, whose story, “The Lost Herd,” follows, is a
representative type of the new generation of Southerners in
contemporary literature.
Born, reared and educated in the South, he has won successive and
substantial laurels in both journalism and literature, and is at
present the unusual combination of a successful figure in both fields.
Born in Kentucky, that commonwealth that has contributed so many
distinguished workers to the literary history of the day, he attended
the local schools of his native heath in the southern part of the
state until entering Vanderbilt University, where he ranked high in
class work, being a Latin scholarship man.
After leaving college, he immediately took up journalistic work in
Louisville with _The Evening Post_, subsequently going with the
_Courier-Journal_, with which paper he remained several years, gaining
wide journalistic experience as legislative correspondent, dramatic
critic, city editor and editorial writer.
In 1892 Mr. Altsheler followed the almost inevitable ambition of the
American with pronounced literary attainments, migrating to the broad
and inviting field of the metropolis, since which time he has
successively filled responsible positions with the _New York World_,
being at present in charge of its tri-weekly edition.
About nine years ago Mr. Altsheler turned his attention seriously to
fiction, since which time he has produced no less than ten novels, in
many of which he has drawn largely upon his own extensive personal
experiences as a journalist.
His first book was “The Sun of Saratoga,” while his latest is “Guthrie
of the Times,” a contemporary romance with a strong political flavor.
He has now in press “The Candidate,” also a novel of the day, and
likewise treating of political life, this time in the West instead of
in Kentucky.
THE LOST HERD.
By Joseph A. Altsheler.
Redfield parted the twining bushes with both hands, and pushed his body
through the cleft, while I stood by to see the issue. He took but a
single step and then threw himself back like a soldier who would escape
a bullet, his face, now turned toward me, showing a yellowish hue in the
moonlight. He raised his hand and wiped his damp forehead, while I gazed
at him in silence, seeing fear, sudden and absolute, in his gaze, as if
death had faced him, with no warning.
We stood so, for a few moments, until the terror died slowly in his
eyes, when he took another step back, and laughing a little, in a
nervous way, pointed before him with a long forefinger.
I advanced, but he put a restraining hand upon my shoulder, and bade me
take only a single step. I obeyed and, with his hand still on my
shoulder, looked down a drop of a thousand feet, steep like the side of
a house, the hard stone of the wall showing gray and bronze, where the
light of the moon fell upon it.
I saw at the bottom masses of foliage like the tops of trees, and
running through them a thread of silver, which I felt sure was the
stream of a brook or creek. We were looking into a green valley, and now
I understood Redfield’s terror, when instinct or quickness of eye, or
both, saved him from the next step, which would have taken him to sure
death.
The valley looked pleasant, with green trees and running water, and I
suggested that it would furnish a good camp to us who were weary of
mountains and ravines and stony paths.
Redfield pointed straight before us, and three miles away rose the
mountain wall again, steep and bare, the hard stone gleaming in the
moonlight. I followed his finger as he moved it around in a circle, and
the wall was there, everywhere. The valley seemed to be enclosed by
steep mountains as completely as the sea rings around a coral island.
I said that I had never heard of such a place in these mountains, and
Redfield reminded me that there were many things of which neither he nor
I had ever heard, and perhaps never would hear.
His retort did not dim my curiosity, in which he shared fully, and,
lying down for greater security, we stared over the brink into the
valley, which looked like a huge bowl, sunk there by nature. The sky was
clear, the moon was rising, and we could see the boughs of the trees
below waving in the gentle wind. The silver thread of the brook widened,
cutting across the valley like a sword blade, and we almost believed
that we saw soft green turf by its banks. But on all sides of the bowl
towered the stone walls, carved into fantastic figures by the action of
time and mountain torrents.
The green valley below could not remove the sense of desolation which
the walls, grim and hard, inspired. My eyes turned from the foliage to
the sweep of stone rising above, black where the light could not reach
it, then gray and bronze and purple and green as if the moon’s rays had
been tinted by some hidden alchemy. I assisted nature with my own
imagination and carved definite shapes—impish faces and threatening
armies in the solid stone of the walls. I felt the shiver of Redfield’s
hand, which was still upon my shoulder, and he complained that he was
chilled. I knew it to be the stony desolation of the walls, and not the
cold of the night, that made him shiver, for I, too, felt it in my
bones, and I proposed that we look no more, at least not then, but build
a fire, and rest and sleep.
We did as I proposed, but while we gathered the fallen brushwood, each
knew what was in the other’s mind; the mystery of the valley was upon
us, and we would wait only until daylight to enter it and see what it
held.
Redfield lighted the fire, and the blaze, rising above the heaps of dry
sticks and boughs, was twisted into coils of red ribbon by the wind; a
thin cloud of smoke gathered and floated off over the valley, where it
hung like a mist, while the wind moaned in the great cleft.
Redfield complained that he was still cold, and wrapping his blanket
tightly around him, sat close to the fire, where I noticed that he did
not cease to shiver. I spread out my own blanket, and by and by both of
us lay down on the grass seeking sleep.
When I awoke far in the night, the fire had burned down, the moon was
gone, and Redfield’s figure, beyond the bed of coals, was almost hidden
by the darkness. Damp mists had gathered on the mountain, and my hand,
as I drew the corners of the blanket around my throat, shook with cold.
Not being able to sleep again just then, I rose and put more wood on the
heap of coals. But the fire burned with a languid, drooping blaze,
giving out little warmth and offering no resistance to the encroaching
darkness. Redfield slept heavily and was so still that he lay like one
dead. The flickering light of the fire fell over his face sometimes and
tinted it with a pale red.
I sat by the coals a little while, looking around at the dim forest, and
then the attraction of the great pit, or valley, drew me toward it.
I knelt down at the brink, holding to the scrubby bushes with each hand,
and looked over, but I could no longer see the trees and brook below.
The valley was filled with mists and vapors, and from some point beneath
came the loud moan of the wind.
I stayed there a long time, gazing down at the clouds and vapors, which
heaped upon each other and dissolved, showing denser vapors below, and
then heaped up in terraces again. The stone walls, when I caught
glimpses of them, seemed wholly black in the darkness of the night, and
the queer shapes which took whatever form my fancy wished were
exaggerated and distorted by the faintness of the light. The place put a
spell upon me; if Redfield would not go with me in the morning to
explore it, though knowing well he would, I resolved to go alone, and
see what, if anything, was there besides grass and trees and water. I
felt the strange desire to throw myself from a height which sometimes
lays hold of people, and instantly pulling myself back from the brink I
returned to the fire. Redfield was yet sleeping heavily and the flames
had sunk again, flickering and nodding as they burned low. I lay down
and slept until morning, when I awoke to find that Redfield was already
cooking our breakfast. He proposed that we begin the descent in an hour,
and like myself he seemed to have accepted the conclusion that we had
agreed upon the attempt, though neither had said a word about it.
The valley assumed a double aspect in the bright light of the morning,
green and pleasant far down where the grass grew and the brook flowed,
but grim and gaunt as ever in its wide expanse of rocky wall. The rising
sun broke in a thousand colored lights upon the cliffs, and the stony
angles and corners threw off tiny spear points of flame. The majesty of
the place which had taken hold of us by night held its sway by day.
We had no doubt that we should find a slope suitable for descent if we
sought long enough, and we pushed our way through the bushes and over
the masses of sharp and broken stone along the brink until our bones
ached and our spirit was weak. Yet we encouraged each other with the
hope that we would soon reach such a place, though the circle of the
valley was soon proved to be much greater than we had expected.
Noon came and we were forced to rest and eat some of the cold food that
we had wisely brought with us. The sun was hot on the mountains and the
stone walls of the valley threw the light back in our eyes until,
dazzled, we were forced to look away. But we had no thought of ceasing
the quest; such a discovery was not made merely to leave the valley
unexplored, and rising again after food and rest we resumed our task.
About the middle of the afternoon I saw a break in the wall which we
thought to be a ravine or gully of sufficient slope to permit of our
descent into the valley, but it was nearly night when we reached the
place and found our opinion was correct.
The ravine was well lined with short bushes which seemed to ensure a
safe descent, even in twilight, and we began the downward climb, seeking
a secure resting place among the rocks for each footstep and holding
with both hands to the bushes and vines.
The sun, setting in a sky of unbroken blue, poured a flood of red and
golden light into the valley. The walls blazed with vivid colors, and
the green of the trees and grass was deepened. Redfield stopped, and
touching me on the shoulder pointed with his finger to the little plain
in the center of the valley where a buffalo herd was grazing. Such they
were we knew at the first glance, for one could not mistake the great
forms, the humped shoulders and shaggy necks.
Neither of us sought to conceal his surprise, and perhaps neither would
have believed what his eyes told him had it not been for the presence
and confirmation of the other. We knew, as everybody else knew, that the
wild buffalo had been exterminated in this region years ago, and that
even now the only herd left in the whole United States was somewhere in
the tangled mountains of Colorado, and yet here we were gazing upon
another herd of these great animals, at least fifty of them, for we
could count them as they moved placidly about and cropped the short
turf.
We remained a quarter of an hour in that notch in the wall exulting over
our second discovery, for we considered the tenants of the valley of as
great importance as the valley itself, and exchanged with each other
sentences of surprise and wonder. The sun hovered directly over the
further brink, and poised there, a huge globe of red, shot through with
orange light, it seemed to pour all its rays upon the valley.
Every object was illumined and enlarged. The buffaloes rose to a
gigantic height, the trees were tipped with fire, and the brook gleamed
red and yellow where the rays of the sun struck directly upon it. Again
we said to each other what a wonderful discovery was ours and looked to
the rifles that we had strapped across our backs, for seeing the great
game of the valley we had it in mind to enjoy unequalled sport. I
lamented the speedy departure of the day, but Redfield thought the night
would give us a better chance to stalk the big game, and thus talking we
resumed the descent. The sun sank behind the mountains, the red and
golden lights faded, and the valley lay below us in darkness. The
buffalo herd had disappeared from our sight, but feeling sure that we
should find it we continued our descent, clinging to the bushes and
vines, and wary with our footing.
The twilight was not so deep that the gray mountain walls did not show
through it, and as we painfully continued our descent the trees and the
brook rose again out of the dusk. Nearing the last steps of the slope we
could see that the valley was much larger than it had looked from above,
and our wonder at the presence of the herd was equalled by our wonder at
the manner in which it had ever reached such a place, as there seemed to
be no entrance save the perilous path by which we had come.
At last we left the bushes and stones of the ravine and, standing with
feet half buried in the soft turf of the valley, looked up at the sky as
if from the bottom of a pit.
The twilight was as clear around us as it had been on the mountain
above, and we could see a pleasant stretch of sward, the land rolling
gently, with clumps of bushes and large trees clustering here and there.
We did not pause to look about, both being filled with the ardor of the
chase, and we walked quickly toward the little bit of prairie in which
we had seen the buffaloes, examining our rifles to be sure that they
were loaded properly. I felt that sense of unreality which strange
surroundings always give.
The night, now fully come, was not dark, the stars were appearing and a
pale light glimmered along the edges of the cliffs, which seemed, as I
looked up, to overhang and threaten us.
We reached the brook that we had seen from above, a fine stream of clear
water, a foot deep and a dozen or more across. We paused there to drink
and refresh ourselves, and found it cool and natural to the taste. I
supposed that it flowed into some cave through the mountain, since I
could not imagine any other outlet; but the matter remained for only a
few seconds in my mind, as Redfield began to tug at my sleeve and urge
me on to the chase, to which I was nothing loth.
Yet I noticed that there were no other signs of animal life in the
valley. Not a rabbit popped up in the grass; the trees were fresh with
foliage, but no birds flew among the boughs. All around us was silence,
save for the soft crush of our own footsteps and our breathing, now
quickened by our exertions. I called Redfield’s attention to this
silence and absence of life, and we stopped again and listened but heard
nothing. The night was without wind; I could not see a leaf on the trees
stir, the air felt close and heavy, and Redfield told me that my face
was without color; I had noticed that fact already in his.
Fifty yards farther and we came to the open space in which we had seen
the herd, and we felt sure that it was not far beyond us, for the heads
of the animals had been turned south and we believed they had continued
to move in that direction as they nibbled the grass. We paused to take
another look at our rifles, our ardor for the chase rising to the
highest, leaving us no thought of anything but to kill.
I had never before hunted such big game and I felt now the thrill which
leads men to risk their own lives that they may take those of the most
dangerous wild beasts. The twilight had deepened somewhat, and though of
a grayer tone in the valley, where mists seemed to be collected and
hemmed, it was not dense enough to hinder our pursuit.
Redfield paused suddenly and put his hand upon my shoulder though I had
seen them as soon as he. The herd was grazing in the edge of a little
grove a few hundred yards ahead of us, but within plain sight. This
closer view confirmed our count from the mountain-side that they were
about fifty in number, and admiration mingled with our wonder, for they
were magnificent in size, true monarchs of the wilderness, grazing,
unseen by man, while the rush of civilization passed around their
mountains and pressed on, hundreds of miles into the Farther West. Their
figures stood out in the gray twilight, huge and somber, surpassing in
size anything that I had imagined. I felt a joy that I was one of the
two whose fortune it was to find such game, a proud anticipation of the
trophies that I would show. I saw the same exhilaration in Redfield’s
eyes, and again we spoke to each other of our fortune.
I held up a wet finger, and finding that the wind was blowing from the
herd toward us we resumed our advance, sure that we could approach near
enough for rifle shot. The herd was noiseless, like ourselves, the huge
beasts seeming to step lightly as they cropped the grass, the scraping
of the bushes as they pushed through them not reaching our ears. Again
the sense of silence, of desolation oppressed me. The grayness over
everything, the trees, the grass, the mountains, Redfield, myself even,
the unreality of the place and our situation seized me and clung to me,
though I strengthened my will and went on, the zeal of the chase
directing all else.
Our stalking proceeded with a success that was encouraging to novices
like ourselves, and a few more cautious steps would take us within good
rifle shot. We marked two of the animals, the largest two of the herd,
standing near a clump of bushes, and we agreed that we should fire first
upon these, Redfield taking the one on the right. If we failed to slay
at the first shot, which was very likely, the chase would be sure to
lead us directly down the valley, and we could easily slip fresh
cartridges into our rifles as we ran. Nor could the game escape us
within such restricted limits; and thus, feeling secure of our triumph,
we slipped forward with the greatest caution until we were within the
fair range that we wished. Then we stood motionless until we could
secure the best aim, each selecting the target upon which we had agreed.
The herd seemed to have no suspicion of our presence. However acute
might be the buffalo’s sense of smell, it had brought to them no warning
of our presence. Their heads were half buried in the long grass, and as
I looked along the barrel of my rifle, I felt again the stillness of the
valley, the utter sense of loneliness which made me creep a little
closer to Redfield, even as I sought the vital spot in the animal at
which I aimed my rifle.
Redfield whispered that we could hardly miss at such good range, and
then we pulled trigger so close together that our two rifles made one
report.
We were good marksmen, but both the buffaloes whirled about, untouched
as far as we could see, and looked at us. The entire herd followed these
two leaders, and in an instant fifty pairs of red eyes confronted
Redfield and myself. Then they charged us like a troop of cavalry, heads
down, their great shoulders heaving up. We slipped hasty cartridges into
our rifles and fired again, but the shots, like the first, seemed to
have no effect, and, in frightened fancy, feeling the breath of the
angry beasts already in our faces, we turned and ran with all speed up
the valley, in fear of our lives and praying silently for refuge. I hung
to my rifle with a kind of instinct, and I noticed that Redfield, too,
carried his. I looked once over my shoulder and saw the herd pursuing,
not fifty feet away, in solid line like the front of an attacking
square. I shouted to Redfield to dart to one side among some trees,
hoping that the heavy brutes would rush past us as we could not hope to
outrun them in a straight course, and he obeyed with promptness. We
gained a little by the trick, but the buffaloes turned again presently,
and then we seized the hanging boughs of two convenient trees, and,
managing to retain our rifles, climbed hastily up and out of present
danger.
The buffaloes stopped about a hundred feet away, still in unbroken
phalanx, and stared at us with red eyes. I was filled with fear; I will
not deny it, I felt it in every fiber. I had heard always that these
beasts, however huge, were harmless, their first rush over, but they
were looking at us now with eyes of human intelligence and even more
than human rage; a steady, tenacious anger that threatened us, and
seemed to demand our lives as the price of our attempt upon theirs. I
felt cold to the bone, and the angry gaze of the besieging beasts held
my own eyes until I turned them away, with an effort, and looked at
Redfield. Then I saw that he was as white and afraid as I knew myself to
be. I told him that we were besieged, and he rejoined that the attitude,
the look of our besiegers, betokened persistency.
While we talked, the buffaloes began to move and we hoped that we had
been mistaken in our belief, and that they would abandon us, but the
hope was idle. They formed a complete circle around us, a ring of
sentinels, each motionless after he had assumed his proper position, the
red eyes shining out of the massive, lowered heads, and fixed on us.
Redfield laughed, but it was not the laugh of mirth. He asked me what we
had to fear from the buffalo, which was not a beast of prey; they would
turn away presently and begin to crop the grass again, but his tone did
not express a belief in his own words.
The night had not darkened, but the curious grayness which was the
prevailing quality of the atmosphere in the valley had deepened, and the
forms of the beasts on guard became less distinct. Yet it seemed only to
increase the penetrating gaze of their eyes, which flamed at us like a
circle of watch fires. The sentinels were noiseless as well as
motionless. The wind whimpered gently through the leaves of the trees,
but there was nothing else to be heard in the valley, and saving
ourselves and the buffaloes, nothing of human or animal life to be seen.
Redfield said to me that he wished our guards would move, that while
they stayed in such fixed attitudes he felt as if we were watched by so
many human beings. His voice was at a higher pitch than usual, and I
felt a strange pleasure in noticing it, for I knew then that he had been
affected as I by our peculiar position. He burst suddenly into a laugh,
and when I asked him where he found amusement, he reminded me that both
of us yet carried our rifles, though we seemed to have forgotten the use
for which they were made. He added that the sentinels were within easy
range, and since our object was now self-preservation and not sport, we
could sit on the boughs in perfect safety and shoot as many of them as
we chose, unless they retired.
It was the power of surprise and fear that had prevented us from
thinking of this before, though the weapons were in our hands, and I
felt a sense of shame that we had permitted ourselves to be overwhelmed
in such a manner. I waited before raising my own rifle, to see the
effect of Redfield’s shot. I saw him select his target and look down the
barrel of his rifle as he sought to make his aim true. The eyes of the
buffalo had seemed so human in their intelligence and anger that I
expected to see the animal, knowing his danger, retreat when the rifle
was raised. But he made no motion, looking straight into the muzzle of
the weapon which was threatening him. Redfield pulled the trigger and
fired, and then both of us cried out in surprise and displeasure.
The buffalo did not move, and if the bullet had touched him there was no
mark upon him that we could see to tell of its passage. Redfield said it
was the bad light that had made him miss, but I believed it was a
trembling hand—that the chill, though the night was warm, which affected
me had seized him, too. Yet I steadied myself now that my own time to
fire had come, and took good aim at the buffalo nearest to my tree. It
may have been the strength of my imagination, and in reality the eyes of
the brute may not have been visible at all at such a distance and in the
night, but I was sure that they were staring at me with human malice,
and another expression, too, that I interpreted as defiance. I was
seized with a sudden and fierce anger—anger because I had been afraid,
anger because there was a taunt in the eyes of the beast.
I pulled the trigger and looked eagerly at the result of my shot; then I
cried aloud in disappointment, as Redfield had done. The buffalo,
untouched, was staring at me with the same malicious eyes, not even
moving his head when I fired.
Redfield laughed once more in a mirthless way, and I told him angrily to
hush; that he was afraid but I was not, and I would fire again. I put in
a second cartridge but the shot was as futile as the first, and
Redfield, who tried once more, had a similar lack of success. But we
told each other, and with all the greater emphasis because we were not
sure of it, that it was the imperfect light and our nerves strained by
the descent of the rough cliff. I noticed that Redfield’s voice was
growing louder and more uneven as we talked, and his eyes were gleaming.
At last we exhausted our cartridges without touching the silent ring of
sentinels, or making any of them move, and Redfield, throwing his rifle
to the ground, laughed in the curious, unnatural way that makes one
shiver. I bade him stop and I spoke with anger, but he paid no attention
either to my words or my manner. His laughter ended shrilly, and then he
said that he understood it all: that these animals had been hunted from
the face of the earth except this lone herd, which was left here to hunt
any man who came against it. Behold the present as the proof of what he
said!
I laughed at him, yet my laughter, like his, sounded strange even in my
own ears, and looking at the silent ring of sentinels, I believed his
words to be true. When or how we should escape I could not foresee, and
I did not feel the fear of death; and yet there was nothing that I had
in the world which I would not have given to be out of the valley. The
rifle which I had used to such little purpose burned my hands, and I let
it drop to the ground.
Redfield laughed again in a shrill, acrid way, and when I asked him to
stop, jeered at me and bade me notice how faithful our besiegers were to
their duty.
Not one of them had moved from the circle, their forms becoming duskier
as the night deepened, but growing larger in the thick atmosphere. The
sky above was cloudless, and we seemed to see it from interminable
depths; the huge cliffs rose out of the mists, shapeless walls, and the
trees became gray and shadowy. Redfield began to talk, volubly and about
nothing, varying his chatter with the same shrill, unpleasant laughter,
and I, finding it useless to bid him hush, said nothing. Yet I wished
that he would cease, and I might hear other sounds, the leap of a rabbit
or the scamper of a deer, anything to disturb that horrible chatter, and
the equally horrible silence, otherwise. Securing myself in the crook of
a bough and the tree I tried to sleep, and I think that at last I fell
into a kind of stupor, in which I heard only Redfield’s shrill laugh.
But I awoke from it to find a clear moon, and our silent line of
sentinels still there. The wind, risen somewhat, was moaning up the
valley and the night was cold.
Redfield was silent then, but when I called to him he answered in a
natural tone for the first time in hours and asked me if I had anything
to suggest, as we must change our present position very soon. I told him
that we must descend from the trees, find the path out of the valley and
leave by it, at once. He pointed to the sentinels and said nothing would
induce him to face them, but I told him we must do it since it was the
only thing left for us, though I will admit that my own sense of fear
was of such strength that my words were braver than myself.
The moon came out again and the forms of our guards grew more distinct,
ceasing to have the shadowy quality which at times in the last hour had
made them waver before me. Nevertheless, the light still served to
distort them and enlarge them to gigantic size, and my imagination gave
further aid in the task.
Redfield became silent again, and I thought he might be asleep, but when
I looked at him I saw his eyes shining with the same unnatural light
that I had marked there before, and I felt with greater force than ever
that we must not long delay our attempt to leave the valley. But I
remained for a while without movement or without thought of what we
should do. The belief that we had come there to be hunted by the
survivors of the millions whom we had hunted out of existence became a
conviction, and I felt a reluctance to meet the eyes of the avenging
beasts, eyes that I could always see with my imagination if not with my
own gaze. The light of the moon struck fairly on the sides of the great
cliffs and the grotesque and threatening faces which my fancy had carved
there in the rock lowered at us again. I could even distort the trees
into gigantic half-human shapes, leaning toward us and taunting us, but
I shut my eyes and drove them away. I had not forgotten the curious
light gleaming in Redfield’s eyes.
An hour later I told Redfield that we must descend, that we could not
stay forever where we were and it was foolish for us to delay, wearing
out our strength and weakening our wills with so long and heavy a vigil.
He said no, that he would not stir while those beasts were there
watching; he could see a million red eyes all turned upon him and he
knew that as soon as he touched the earth the owners of those eyes would
rush upon him and trample him to death. I felt some of his own
reluctance, but knowing that it was no time to waste words I told him
that he could stay where he was, if he chose, but I was going; I had
seen enough of the valley and certainly I would never come near it
again. So speaking I began to descend the tree, and Redfield instantly
began to tremble and beg me, like a child, not to go. He said he could
not be left there alone and he would not be for all the world.
Strengthened in my purpose by his pleadings and believing that my method
would compel him to come I again bade him stay if he wished, it was
nothing to me; but while I said these things I continued to descend.
When he saw that I was in truth going he began to lower himself from his
tree, though still begging me not to make the attempt.
My foot struck the ground and I stood there afraid, but resolute. Our
guards still gazed at us but made no movement to attack, and I drew
courage from the fact.
Redfield was shivering, and perhaps my own courage was not of the best,
but I pointed to a dark line in the face of a distant cliff where the
moonlight fell clearly, and asked if it were not the ravine by which we
had come. He said yes, and not giving him time to think and to hesitate
about it I seized him by the arm and pulled him on, telling him that we
must reach the ravine as quickly as we could and leave the valley. Then
we advanced directly toward that segment of the watchful circle which
stood between us and the point we desired to reach.
I retained my firm grasp upon Redfield’s arm and I felt the flesh
trembling under my fingers. We did not recall until long afterward that
we had forgotten our rifles. As we advanced, the line of buffaloes
parted and we passed through it. Redfield cried out in childish delight
and said they were afraid of us, but I shook him, more in anger than
from any wiser motive, and hastened our steps. Fear rolled away from me
and I felt an exhilaration that made me walk with buoyant step. I
dropped my hand from Redfield’s arm and we walked on at a swift pace, my
eyes fixed on the dark line in the cliff which marked the ravine, our
avenue of escape from the valley. Redfield suddenly put his hand upon my
shoulder and motioned me to look back. When I obeyed I saw the buffaloes
following us in a long line, as regular and even as a company of
soldiers. Redfield laughed in the mirthless way which marked him that
night and said we had an escort who would see that we did not linger in
the valley. I could not say that he was wrong, but I grew impatient with
him when he tried to make a jest of it and talked of our bodyguard. I
knew that he was trembling, and I asked angrily, though not in words,
why they could not let us alone. We were leaving as fast as we could,
and as for coming back, nothing could drag me to that valley again; no,
nothing, and I said the “nothing” aloud with angry emphasis.
Our guard did not desert us, but followed at fifty or sixty yards with
noiseless step. And again I noticed that there was no other animal life
in the valley, though the grass was green and the woods abundant, a
place that the birds and rabbits should love.
The outlines of the pass grew more distinct, the tracery of bushes and
vines that lined it was revealed, and in a few minutes we would arrive
at the first slope. I felt like a criminal, a murderer, taken in
disgrace from the place of his crime, and this feeling once having
seized me would not leave, but grew in strength and held me. Redfield
was my brother in crime, and certainly his face, his nerveless manner,
showed his guilt.
I hastened my footsteps, eager to leave the place. Redfield kept pace
with me, and in silence we reached the first slope. It was a rugged and
toilsome ascent, but I thought little of such things, the joy of escape
from the valley mastering all other emotions. A third of the way we
paused, and, looking back, saw the silent line of sentinels watching at
the foot of the cliff, their eyes turned up at us.
Then we resumed our ascent, and, reaching the top of the cliff, left the
lost herd, forever.
THE ISLES OF SCILLY.
By James Henry Stevenson.
Do not visit The Scillies. Go to Penzance—a charming spot that has not
received the attention from the tourist that it deserves—and see the
hopeful passengers take ship in the morning for the “blessed isles;”
inspect them again on their return in the evening; if you are still
curious go to Land’s End—a drive of eight or ten miles—and look across
the sea that lies between you and The Scillies; buy a guide book and a
few pictures when you come home, and bless your stars that you did not
tempt the deep.
This is the advice which I vowed I would give, when, one day last
summer, for three awful hours I “hove” with the heaving deep. I am not
usually a poor sailor. Indeed I have generally crossed the Atlantic
without making my offering to the gods of the Abyss. Anything in reason
I am prepared to do, but the demands of the little steamer that plies
between the Islands and Penzance are altogether unreasonable.
It was a beautiful morning and Mount’s Bay, on which Penzance is so
picturesquely situated, was as placid as a swimming tank, but I noticed
that the wind was blowing fresh from the southeast, and I mentally
observed that there was likely to be trouble when we rounded Land’s End.
I am proud of that prophecy now, though trouble came sooner than I had
anticipated.
Long before we had lost the shelter of the rocky and fascinating coast
that girts the shores of Cornwall towards Land’s End, many a swain, who
had started off that morning with a light heart and “Arriet,” sadly
admitted that “all was vanity.”
When we reached Land’s End I lost interest in the scenery and gave
up—among other things—the unequal struggle. The “Lyonesse” was crowded
and there was no place to lie down. Indeed one was fortunate to find a
seat. I secured a camp stool and a vacant place in the gang-way, and as
I watched, or rather was conscious of, the movements of our vessel, she
seemed like a fabled sea monster sporting in the deep. Poised for a
moment jauntily on the wave’s crest, or plunging her nose beneath a huge
billow, she was equally happy. I called to mind the legend of the
Lyonesse, the continent that once stretched between Cornwall and the
Isles of Scilly, and which in the days of “good king Arthur” sunk below
the deep at the command of Merlin, engulfing Mordred and his host as
they thundered hard after the remnant of the slain Arthur’s army. I
thought of this and then I knew that our ship was trying to justify her
high sounding title. Just at this moment she made a plunge towards the
sunken continent and a huge wave swept in over the bow, most thoroughly
drenching a party of ambitious sightseers who were tempting Providence
on the ship’s nose. The wave rolled on towards me but I was too busy
just at that moment to successfully evade it.
As we passed close by Land’s End I roused up for a moment to look at the
celebrated point and again as we came in sight of Woolf lighthouse, a
solitary sentinel in the waste of waters, midway between the mainland
and the islands, and an eloquent witness for the Lyonesse legend.
As for the rest, I can say I was conscious of existence, but not taking
much interest in life, when a sudden cessation of the turmoil within and
without re-awakened somewhat my torpid senses, and as we made fast to
the dock, I dragged myself ashore and followed the haggard and
bedraggled passengers through a narrow street into the town. A short
walk brought me beyond the city to a grassy hillside, where, with my
camera for a pillow, having cast aside all literary and artistic
aspirations as worthless, I was soon blissfully unconscious of the
beauty and romance I had come so far and braved so much to see. In the
course of an hour or so, I was awakened by a grazing horse on the alert
for something green, and, recollecting my mission, started forth to make
the tour of the island.
[Illustration:
ST. MARY’S AND OLD TOWN.
]
We landed, as a matter of course, at Hugh Town, St. Mary’s, the largest
and most important island of the group, with Star Fort situated on its
eastern promontory, and Hugh Town on a narrow isthmus connecting this
promontory with the main body of the island.
As I have already intimated, the first thing of interest to me, on
coming ashore, was a vacant bit of real estate wherein to lie down and
forget my past. So, after shaking myself awake, I walked up a hill and
came in sight of the historic little church which is situated at the
head of the bay of Old Town, formerly the chief town of the island. The
church, a very quaint old structure, stands in an enclosure which rises
in successive terraces on the hillside and is filled with a striking
mixture of English and tropical vegetation.
Among the many interesting monuments in the churchyard, I noticed a
granite obelisk, erected by Mr. Holtzmaister of New York, to the memory
of his wife, who perished in the wreck of the ill-fated S. S.
_Schiller_, May 7, 1875. The inscription reads: “In memory of Louise
Holtzmaister, born at New York, May 15th, 1851, who lost her life in the
wreck of the S. S. _Schiller_ off the Scilly Isles, May the 7th, 1875.
Her body rests in the deep. This monument has been erected to her memory
as a mark of affection by her surviving husband.”
The memory fain would linger round some spot where the beloved take
their last long sleep. Tennyson’s beautiful lines awaken a heartfelt
response in every human breast:
“Oh to us
The fools of habit, sweeter seems
To rest beneath the clover sod,
That takes the sunshine and the rains,
Or where the kneeling hamlet drains
The chalice of the grapes of God,
Than if with thee the roaring wells
Should gulf him deep in fathom brine;
And hands so often clasped in mine
Should toss with tangle and with shells.”
[Illustration:
THE CHURCH AND THE TOMBS.
]
The people of these islands have witnessed many a tragedy of the sea in
their day, but perhaps none more awful than that which this monument
recalls. The _Schiller_, a staunch boat, built on the Clyde in 1873, was
in command of Captain Thomas, an Englishman by birth, but then a
naturalized German. She left New York on the 27th of April with
fifty-nine saloon, seventy-five second, and one hundred and twenty
steerage passengers. She was due at Plymouth on the 8th of May, but for
three days previous to the disaster no observations were obtained on
account of the weather. Early on Friday, the 7th, a heavy fog came down.
Captain Thompson, thinking he was near the islands, ordered the engines
at half speed, but about 10 P.M. she ran on the Retarrier Ledges, near
the Island of St. Agnes. Few were in bed at the time of the accident;
the boats were quickly launched, the sailors behaved splendidly, but the
sea was running high, and as the women and children crowded together
into the pavilion a heavy sea swept over it and carried all away. About
forty-five out of three hundred and forty-five were saved. Mrs. Jones
was the only lady survivor. By Saturday evening seventy-eight bodies,
nearly all with life-preservers on, had drifted ashore.
The old church, which is now restored and used only as a mortuary
chapel, was originally built in the form of a cross. In 1662 it was
enlarged. On each side of the communion table ran a long seat, the one
for the members of the Council and the other for their wives or the
widows of dead councilmen. In 1732 it was decreed that if a councilman
died, his wife was entitled to a seat among the wives of living
councilmen during her widowhood, but if she married she was deprived of
that privilege, unless she married a councilman. This high esteem in
which they held their women, and the fact that they used the church as a
council chamber, throw an instructive sidelight on the character of
these old representatives of the right of the people to govern
themselves.
[Illustration:
THE LOGAN ROCK.
]
We leave the quiet churchyard and its tragic story to continue our walk
around the island. A tramp on the promontory Peninnis, which stretches
out southward into the sea, brings to view many fantastic rock
formations. Great boulders are left curiously poised upon each other by
the action of wind and wave in ages past. Pulpit Rock, composed of huge
flat blocks of stone resting on each other and leaning out to sea, is
perhaps the most famous, though why it should be called “Pulpit Rock” is
more than one can well guess. It looks more like an hundred other things
than it does like a pulpit. Most of all it resembles a great gun mounted
on the rock to command the sea at this point. We next encounter the
Logan Rock (pronounce _loggan_). Everyone who has read Baedaker’s “Great
Britain” knows of the existence of Logan Rock in Cornwall, a rock of
sixty-five tons weight so delicately poised that it can be set in motion
quite easily. I was not aware before that the phenomenon had repeated
itself, but I learned last summer that there was quite a number of these
“_loggan_,” or rolling rocks to be found at different places.
The Logan Rock at St. Mary’s is quite famous and was discovered somewhat
recently by accident. A resident of the town, overtaken by the storm,
took shelter beneath a huge rock. The wind was blowing fiercely and to
his great surprise, if not terror, he discovered that the rock was
moving gently to and fro. He could scarcely believe his senses at first,
but on further examination, he found it was so poised that it readily
responded to his efforts and could be made to sway back and forth. Its
estimated weight is three hundred and sixty tons, and while it requires
some energetic effort to put it in motion it rocks with ease afterwards.
Hugh Town, the port and principal town of the island of St. Mary’s, and
indeed of the entire group of islands, enjoys a very unique situation.
On the southwest a promontory juts out into the sea. This is the site of
Star Fort, and one can make its circuit in about half an hour. It is
joined to the mainland by a narrow isthmus of sand which separates St.
Mary’s Pool, the harbor on the north, from Porth Cressa Bay, on the
south. On this narrow strip of land, across which a boy can cast a
stone, and over which the high tide threatens to leap, Hugh Town is
built. There is no pretension to architecture, no striking buildings,
none even that have the interest of antiquity to recommend them. The
town is practically contained on the narrowest part of the isthmus,
though westward, where the strip of land widens, the houses scatter
somewhat. Save for its audacious situation, daring, as it does, the rage
of the sea from both sides, it is commonplace and uninteresting.
[Illustration:
HUGH TOWN.
]
Too much cannot be said in favor of the islands as a health resort. They
are so small in area, and lie so low, that living on them is practically
living at sea. One may here take a protracted cruise with no reeling
deck beneath him, and no nightmare of _mal-de-mer_ to threaten his
dreaming hours.
There are no manufactures of any kind on the island, nor is anything
present to vitiate the air. Sea breezes, from the illimitable reaches of
the ocean, sweep at will across these tiny bits of land, from every
point of the compass, in quick succession. In winter the mean
temperature is 45 and in summer it is 58. The rain fall is very moderate
and, with fine consideration for the tourist, the rain generally comes
at night, a phenomenon noticeable in Cornwall also.
Here is a fine resting place for men and women, physically or mentally
weary. The rush of modern business life is wholly unknown; there are no
street cars nor elevated trains to catch; there is no congestion of
traffic in the streets; no roar of vehicles nor hum of business to
disturb the absolute rest that the place suggests or to chide one who is
disposed to take life easy. One lies down at night with the murmur of
distant waters echoing through his dreams and wakens in the morning to
the song of the surf.
The islands are said to be a “haven of refuge for sufferers from chronic
bronchitis, phthisis and consumption in all its terrible forms,
insomnia, and the strain of overwork; and for children one vast
playground with free and open beaches and sands difficult to surpass.”
Certainly it would be hard to find a more ideal place for overworked
humanity seeking rest and recuperation. The climate is all that could be
desired, living is cheap, the whole atmosphere breathes rest, and there
are ever present the constant sunshine and the eternal sea.
On St. Mary’s Sir Walter Besant lived while engaged on his celebrated
romance, “Armorel of Lyonesse,” the home of whose beautiful Armorel Sir
Walter located on the now uninhabited island of Samson. Half a century
ago Samson had a population of fifty souls, with ten houses, among which
“Armorel’s cottage” may still be seen. In 1885, only one family was
left, and now nothing remains save the wreck of the houses and the
traces of former cultivation, rapidly disappearing. The inhabitants were
moved to other islands to insure the better education of their children,
and, incidentally, to curtail a little private and untaxed trade which
they carried on with their French neighbors.
To trace the history of these fragments of a lost continent through
former generations would be most interesting, but it must be here
foregone. They have, however, bulked considerably in English history and
figured frequently in her relations with her continental neighbors. They
remained true to the royal cause after Charles I had been put to death,
having been held by Sir John Grenville for Charles II. The garrison was
reduced to submission by Ascue and Blake in 1651. Prince Charles was
sheltered in Star Castle for a short while after his flight from
Cornwall.
The islands were notorious as the scenes of smuggling operations during
the eighteenth century, but this was so vigorously dealt with that it
proved as unprofitable as the various honest efforts to earn a
livelihood that have been successively experimented with in this little
world.
It is said that Hamilco of Carthage, a colony of Phœnicia, discovered
the islands in 3000 B.C.; at any rate, they have been identified with
the Cassiterides or Hesperides of the Greeks, and the Sillinæ Insulæ of
the Romans. The Phœnicians traded with them for tin, which was most
probably brought from Cornwall, as there is no evidence that tin was
ever found on the islands. An allusion in Diodorus Siculus throws light
on this custom. He says: The tin “was first refined and then carried to
an adjacent island for shipment to Gaul.” The Romans reduced the islands
during their occupation of Great Britain and made them a place of
banishment, a use to which they were put by Great Britain also during
the seventeenth century.
The Danish sea-kings found them a convenient rallying point for raids
upon places in the Bristol Channel, but Athelstan drove the Danes out in
927. Subsequently an order of monks settled there, retaining an
independent government till Henry I subordinated them to the Abbot of
Tavistock. Scilly remained under the jurisdiction of the monks till the
dissolution of the monasteries in the reign of Henry VIII. The ruins of
an old abbey are still visible on the island of Tresco.
During the reign of Elizabeth, Sir Francis Godolphin built a number of
forts and Star Castle near Hugh Town. The latter remains to the present,
on the left of the harbor, at Star Fort.
We have noted that the islands were used by both Romans and Britons as a
place of punishment, and we learn that in 1637 John Bastwick, M.D.,
after having been banished there for writing libelous books against
church and government, was sentenced to pay a fine of £1,000, to stand
in the pillory, to have his ears cut off, and finally to be confined in
St. Mary’s castle. After such a generous assignment the story of the
“ducking chair” sounds like comedy. The offender guilty of some trifling
misdemeanor was tied in the chair at the head of the dock and thrown
into the water. One cannot help feeling that this would be fine
treatment for the American “hobo,” especially if the salt water was
available and it was not necessary to haul him out too soon.
The inhabitants have had a hard fight for existence and have been on the
verge of starvation more than once. Farming proved a failure. So
likewise did smuggling, shipbuilding, fishing, and other experiments,
that for a time seemed to promise success.
Now, however, they are more prosperous than they have ever been. Early
potatoes, asparagus, and other vegetables are raised in large quantities
for the English market. In this respect Scilly is to London what Bermuda
is to New York. Besides the vegetables, flowers are cultivated for the
London market, and grow in such luxuriant profusion as to guarantee a
handsome return to the gardener. Anyone who has seen an acre or two of
lilies abloom in Bermuda knows what a glorious sight a field of flowers
is. We cannot judge from a florist’s window how splendid is a flower
farm.
During Christmas week wallflowers, marguerites, daisies, narcissi,
roses, pinks, marigolds, fuchsias, geraniums and chrysanthemums are
found in bloom.
The fields are divided off into little squares of about a quarter of an
acre, by high hedges. Here the flowers are protected from the winds and
cuddled up to the gracious sun. Under this nurture aloes attain a height
of five or six feet, and in blossoming throw up a bloom-spike as high as
eighteen or twenty feet.
As London is distant from the islands only about eleven hours it follows
that if the inhabitants are prepared to supply the metropolis with its
flowers and vegetables they may rest easy about “the wolf at the door.”
The islands number about forty, and are situated some twenty-seven miles
west of Land’s End. Five of them are inhabited, and the total
population, which increased during the decade by one hundred and four,
is some two thousand.
As we steamed out of the harbor a fleet of British war ships, twenty-two
in number, was lying at anchor in the bay. When one reflects that these
fighting machines are similarly in evidence in almost every harbor round
the world, he is convinced that Great Britain’s arm upon the sea is a
significant factor to be reckoned with in questions relating to the
world’s peace.
I met the captain of our ship as I stepped aboard and besought him,
though unbelief was regnant, to assure us of a smooth passage home. I
explained to him that I had contributed everything I possessed on the
way hither and that since then I had been too busy sleeping and seeing
the island to replenish my larder. He replied with cordial good humor
that the return voyage would be pleasant. Of course I was sceptical, but
to my great surprise, when we rounded the point where Star Fort is
situated, I saw at once that the ocean’s wrath was greatly appeased.
Time heals most wounds, and, while she banishes to a merciful oblivion
what is sad and unpleasant, she graciously leaves with us the undimmed
vision of our happy days. Thus it is that I have forgotten the raging of
the sea and the tossing of the ship, and treasure the picture which that
August morning brought me, “a small sweet world of wave-encompassed
wonder.”
THE LABOR QUESTION.
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO SOUTHERN CONDITIONS.
By Herman Justi.
[Illustration]
The writer of the following pages is one of the recognized authorities
of the country on labor questions. Born in Kentucky about fifty-three
years ago, he has been in his time merchant, manufacturer, banker,
editor, traveler and sociologist. He lived in Tennessee for fifteen
years and since 1898 has been in Chicago. As commissioner of the
Illinois Coal Operators’ Association he has dealt with the perplexing
problems of labor face to face, and thus has been obliged to test
theory in the crucible of practice. Although a representative, in a
sense, of capital, he is the friend of organized labor and is so
recognized by its leaders.
Mr. Justi has contributed to the current discussions of economic
topics many valuable papers which have been printed in the leading
periodicals of the country and it is therefore felt that the following
paper, treating a question new to the South, but none the less, of
prime and growing importance, will be read with deep interest.—ED.
In almost every discussion of the labor problem practically the only
class of labor taken into consideration is that known as common labor—by
which term is meant the labor that is grouped into large bodies. That
labor which is known in the North, East and West as common labor is
similarly known in the South. Mill, mine and factory hands, workers on
streets and highways, employes in railway depots and on wharves are
everywhere, for want of a better term, designated as common labor. In
this discussion no notice need be taken of highly skilled laborers who
can be safely classified among the crafts, and who are seldom found in
considerable groups. The craftsmen can take care of themselves and need
no union to protect them. They are treated, not like a commodity that
can be easily replaced by substitutes from an emigrant ship, but like
intelligent human agents, who must be handled with care and respect.
In considering the general subject of labor with special reference to
the South, the question of labor in itself, while important, is not
complicated with so many difficulties as confront us in the North; and
yet the difficulties are many, and some of them, unless intelligently
dealt with, may become serious.
For instance, the loss of the black man as a laborer at the South might
prove a serious embarrassment, or the loss by the black man of
confidence in and respect for the white man’s authority, might
necessitate an admixture, by immigration, of races and nationalities
which would push the black laborer to the wall, and should be avoided if
it is possible to avoid it. To no one is this a matter of so much
importance as to the black man.
The labor problem at the North would be infinitely simpler if there were
fewer nationalities, all of them speaking and understanding the English
tongue. This statement does not imply that those speaking foreign
tongues are necessarily inferior in character or intellect to the
English speaking laborer, but the troubles arise rather because the
non-English speaking laborers are the victims of deception by
unscrupulous interpreters who purposely misrepresent what is said to
them for their benefit, or what is said by them to their employers.
The fact that the black man speaks a language understood by the white
man is a point in his favor, and that is also a reason why he should
continue to be the most desirable common laborer obtainable. The negro
at the North is discriminated against in all labor organizations as well
as in every relation of life, but in the South he still has a fair
chance to market his labor, if he will avail himself of it and will
realize his opportunity. So far the very abundance of cheap common labor
in the South has hindered the growth of the labor union there and has in
many instances defeated its purposes when established. The want of
ambition, which makes the negro content with low wages and inferior
conditions of living, is sometimes found in common labor at the North,
but it is by no means so general as among the black race in the South.
Particularly is this the case in the cities, to which the negroes have
flocked in great numbers, denuding the plantations of needed help while,
in the cities, holding down the wages of common labor,—the only labor in
which the negro competition has yet been apparent. The employers of
labor in the South should do everything in their power to make of the
black man all that it is possible to make of him as a laborer; but, as
he has his limitations and as the black man will at times leave the
South and so leave an opening for new white labor, the South must use
her energies to educate this newly acquired immigrant labor up to
American standards—and no work that it can do will bring greater returns
than teaching the non-English laborer the language of his newly adopted
home.
The very fact that union or organized labor is not strong in the South,
when compared with the average sections of the North, gives the employer
class in the South an opportunity which they may and should utilize in
preparing for that time when the contests incident to organization are
sure to come. And in this preparation they want to bear in mind the
undeniable truth that the quality of the laborer is generally determined
by the quality of the employer. In considering the capacity of any body
of laborers we are unfailingly considering the capacity and intelligence
of the employers in directing their employes. Employer and employe alike
have splendid opportunities opening to them in the South, opportunities
in many respects unrivalled; and it is of the highest importance that
they make a right beginning and understand each other at the start. The
union will indubitably grow, and the employer should welcome it if it
presents itself as a business body seeking the highest wages compatible
with commercial or competitive conditions in return for the best
services of which the labor offered is capable.
But in the South labor must come with reason in its request. It need not
be servile, but it must be respectful, for it is still, as it has always
been, characteristic of the people of the South that they will brook no
interference with their individual liberty. The North does not, and
never did, understand the strength of this underlying principle of
Southern manhood. It is a principle so strong that it does not disappear
in a single generation.
A notable instance of this was seen in a recent dispute over the mining
scale in Franklin County, Illinois. The southern part of Illinois was
settled by Southerners, mainly by Tennesseans and Kentuckians, who
poured into that rich country for a few years before the war and for a
few years afterwards. There are whole communities now dominated by
Southern thought and principles. When the miners’ union was seeking to
establish itself in Franklin County, these farmers, either of Southern
birth or of Southern ancestry, having heard that the representatives of
the miners, whom they described as agitators, were undertaking to
interfere with the individual rights of their sons to work without
dictation from any one, offered their services to the newly established
companies. The newly established companies, however, politely declined
the proffered assistance, preferring peaceable adjustment. But the
tendered services would have been given just as willingly as they were
tendered.
What is needed in the North is also needed in the South; namely, wise
and well informed teachers who are able to illumine the great problem of
labor to the masses, in order that they may distinguish between anarchy
or socialism on the one hand and the accepted political principles of
our country on the other. But there is one thing to be truly said about
the South that will always commend itself to employers contemplating a
change of base or the establishment of themselves for the first time—and
it will commend itself to labor whether organized or unorganized—and
that is the doctrines of the socialist have found no encouragement
there. Such doctrines cannot thrive in the South any more than tropical
plants can survive in the polar regions. Labor leaders should rejoice—in
fact wise, educated, far-seeing labor leaders do rejoice—that this
spirit prevails in the South, for only so can they hold their own
against the radical, trouble-making element in their own ranks.
Thinking too much of established institutions and guarding them too
zealously may at times be a disadvantage, but as a general thing that
community is most law-abiding and most conservative in maintaining the
rights and privileges of all where due reverence is cherished for old
established institutions; and yet the wisest conservatism is that which
steadily, no matter how slowly, prepares itself for changes that are
inevitable. Labor conditions in the South cannot endure as they now
exist, unless the South is to lose all that she has gained since the
overthrow of slavery, and is to stand and view the triumphal march of
the country without participating in it.
The South should not seek to rest under present conditions for they
cannot continue. If the present labor of the South becomes educated and
then improves, it will organize. And if it does not improve, new labor
will come in either already organized or to organize immediately on its
arrival. I know this view will be contested by many able employers, but,
believing it to be true, I deem it best to say it. It is a great deal
better to make yourself strong so that you may trust in your strength
when the certain change comes than to rely upon the fairness of the
other side—and this is equally true of the employer and the employe.
Experience has taught the South much on the question of labor, but so
far as a thorough understanding of the matter goes, the South is barely
at the threshold. The first and greatest thing that the South has to
realize, which as yet is not realized there at all, is this: In the
South as elsewhere, it will be found that cheap labor is the most
expensive. To secure good results is the desired end of all industry and
the experience of older industrial communities has taught that the best
results are, have been, and will ever be obtained by the employment of
the best labor. The best labor is and will always be that labor which
receives the highest wages and which is most nearly satisfied with
surrounding conditions. We can therefore set ourselves no more important
task, no more sacred duty, than that of finding the most nearly perfect
system under which the highest wages can be paid in return for the most
efficient service. And, aside from the justice of this course, aside
from the material benefit to the employer, there is no investment that
brings its returns so quickly to the community at large, as money paid
for good labor. Money so paid is at once spent for the necessities of
life, for all the comforts that can be afforded by the family receiving
it, and so is circulated almost automatically.
Labor organizations have made small headway in the South for other
reasons than the preponderance of negro cheap labor; the first to be
stated being the advantages of climate and of cheap living possessed by
the Southern worker. The winters are short, the summers long. Outdoor
vocations can be pursued in comparative comfort almost the entire year.
Fuel bills are smaller, the cost of clothing less, and the cheapness of
land opens the way for the workman of even moderate means to possess his
own home, if frugal and industrious. He can be his own landlord on
easier terms than in the North. But on the other hand, while the
climatic and other conditions favor the workman of the South, it must
also be remembered that the housing of workmen in the sparsely settled
communities or in mining camps is not as good as in the North where
legislation and the agitation of the labor leaders have brought about
greatly improved conditions.
In the cities of the North the conditions and surroundings of the
workmen are even more noticeably superior to those of the workmen in
Southern cities. The comforts of such flats as workingmen occupy in the
large cities of the North, notably in Chicago, are practically, if not
altogether, unknown in the South, where conveniences are fewer. This
very custom of living without comforts and conveniences has operated to
keep wages down and consequently to offer a check to the spread of
unionism. The homes of many skilled Northern workmen belonging to the
union would be a revelation to the workman in the South equally skilled
but not a member of any labor organization, and receiving less pay for
his services.
The organization of labor in the South has also proceeded more slowly as
compared with the North because of the more rapid growth and development
of the North. It is a fact at once apparent that cities where the unions
are strong are the cities that are growing most rapidly. Another cause
is the scarcity of manufacturing interests in the South and the
consequent small demand for skilled workmen, who are therefore not in
the South in sufficient number to organize effectively against the mass
of unskilled and partly skilled labor. The lack of numerous large
manufacturing enterprises, and of enormous mercantile interests, also
causes a lack of sharpness in competition and has made employes less
ready or able to exact the utmost that could be paid them in wages.
The difficulties of organizing labor in the South are such as always
mark the initial efforts at organization. The union men are out of the
Alabama mines, just at this time, for instance, and new men have their
places. The new men are being trained to their work, and are receiving
practically, if not exactly, the wages asked for by the union. As the
number of these skilled workmen increases, the necessity of organization
will become more apparent to them all, and the larger the number of men
trained for the work, the more effective the union will become. The
union wins victories for others oftentimes where it is itself nominally
defeated.
The question is asked, and with propriety, of the leaders of organized
labor, why it is, if organized labor offers or promises the best
workmen, that employers constantly resist its encroachment and turn it
out and replace it with unorganized labor if they can. There are several
reasons why this is so. It is not, as the labor leader frequently
answers, because the employer is short-sighted and imagines that when he
can get cheap labor he is making money, although it is at times due to
the want of discernment and enlightenment on the part of the employer.
The objection made to organized labor by its very best friends among the
employers is the short-sighted policy of the organization in winking at
or permitting the well-known tyranny of the unions, and also that air of
proprietorship which petty labor leaders so often assume.
I have never denied the right of labor to organize, nor can I deny the
necessity for labor to organize; and, in the very nature of things, it
seems to me that it is best that capital deal with labor as a unit. But
at the same time I have, in pursuing my duties in adjusting labor
disputes, been brought in contact with labor leaders here and there
whose insolence and arrogance, whose absurd claim of being labor’s
unselfish and only friend,—made me wish the whole world of organized
laborers and their leaders at the bottom of the sea. More than one true
friend of organized labor has been lost to a worthy and noble cause for
no other reason than that they have been grossly offended and outraged
by unworthy representatives of labor organizations.
While the slow growth of the union in the South is no doubt a
discouragement to labor organizations, it is a benefit to labor in the
long run. It is also at the same time an advantage to capital that labor
is being slowly organized. Looking to the future it is an advantage both
to capital and labor that the growth of the labor organization does not
go too far in advance of the education of the laboring classes and that
the employer class may, if it has an eye to its own interest, organize
in order successfully and intelligently to treat with organized labor
when it has become a force to be dealt with in the South.
Experience proves that even the most thoroughly organized labor unions
are not all-powerful when the employers stand together, and the
paramount importance of organization among the employers has been
repeatedly demonstrated. When this organization of the employers shall
have been effected, inquiry into cause and effect, careful study of the
labor problem, will quickly show the great advantage and profitableness
of dealing fairly with labor. It will show that, if the employers are
loyal to each other, and if they have an organization in which all of
its members have confidence, they, whether dealing with organized or
unorganized labor, are certain to obtain their approximate rights. The
many labor tangles in which the country has at times been involved were
due far more to the disorganized condition of the employer class than to
the cohesiveness and power of the labor class. Whenever the labor class
has become needlessly strong and where it practices tyranny and
oppression, there the employer class will be found to have neglected its
duty to itself.
Another result of the study of conditions will be that the employer
class will decide to be fair in dealing with labor, because in the long
run it will bring the largest dividends. This cannot be accomplished by
dealing with unorganized labor, where the employers have the whole
matter practically under their own control, and thinking only of
immediate returns, will, consciously or unconsciously, take advantage of
the worker. Dealing with organized labor is not only more satisfactory,
but it is more profitable in its ultimate results.
The question of individual rights has had a large part in Southern labor
troubles. It was a question of the employer’s right to manage his
property for himself in his own way that defeated an almost universal
strike of the Nashville Street Railway employes two or three years ago.
The union was formed and made its demands. The management declined to
recognize the union or to grant the demands, and successfully resisted
the resulting strike. But the management, I am informed, gave careful
examination to the facts thus brought to their attention and has
voluntarily advanced wages and improved conditions to a point far beyond
what was formulated in the union’s demands. There is no union of the
street railway’s employes now at Nashville, and so long as the present
intelligent and progressive policy is pursued there will be none and
there will be none needed. Indeed, the only excuse for labor to organize
is that the policy of the employer has too often been unintelligent,
unprogressive and not in sympathy with the reasonable rights and needs
of labor.
But the organization of labor and the advancement of wages will do more
than any other one thing to lend confidence to those who are looking to
the South as a field for investment. The Northern capitalist and
investor cannot be made to believe that labor as good and efficient as
Northern labor will remain unorganized and render its service for
one-third or one-half of what the Northern workman receives. Nor does
the Southern worker have the same incentive to the high efficiency
reached by the Northern workman. One of the most serious mistakes made
by many Southern communities in presenting to the Northern investor the
advantages at the South is that they put emphasis on the fact that
skilled and unskilled labor is “cheap.” Cheap labor that is at the same
time efficient is an unknown thing in the North, and Northern men who
are familiar with the labor question will not believe that it exists in
the South. “If it were as efficient, it would be as well paid,” they
say. The proffer of “cheap” labor has done much to retard the industrial
development of the Southern states. It is now the universal cry among
the employers of the North, particularly among those who oppose
organized labor, that they are willing to pay and do pay the highest
wages anywhere obtainable and that they are willing to afford and do
afford to their employees the most favorable working conditions.
The question of child labor is one which must be determined by humane
principles, and yet it is a question on which much fanaticism has been
expended and much maudlin sentiment indulged. The child develops earlier
in the South, where the average boy of fourteen is as mature as the
average boy of sixteen in the North. It is a cause for gratification, a
fact to the credit of the South, that recent child labor laws have
removed from mills and mines and factories a vast army of child laborers
who properly belonged in the nursery or at school. It was the South’s
shame that they were ever permitted there under conditions once
existing, and still existing to a degree.
But, while believing that the question of child labor should be closely
studied and the interest of the child guarded, I know that this is not
always accomplished in the case of boys by making it an offense
punishable by fine and imprisonment to keep boys of thirteen and
fourteen years at work, particularly since in certain classes of society
they have no idea of continuing at school after they reach that age.
Anything is better than idleness. It is a thousand to one better for a
boy of twelve to be at work in mine, factory or mill than to be allowed
to remain unemployed and unoccupied. If he is to be forced out of
employment, then provision must be made to force him into school. The
attention that has been drawn to child labor in the South comes about
not so much by the efforts of philanthropists, not so much by the work
of earnest students, as by that class of employers in New England who
formerly employed children of tender years, but who were forced to
desist as the result of legislation, and who for this reason, and not
from any high motives, directed attention to child labor in the cotton
mills of the South. I do not mean to justify what is injurious to the
children, but in considering this whole question trade or competitive
conditions cannot be wholly ignored. We know that the advocates of child
labor laws are often selfishly influenced and that they aim to reduce
the army of workers in the hope thereby to monopolize labor as far as
possible. It is often for the same selfish reason that the hours of
labor are restricted.
Much of the opposition to child labor has undoubtedly been removed by
the course of mill owners in the South, such as the Eagle and Phœnix
mills at Columbus, Ga., the Unity Cotton Mills at Lagrange, Ga., and
mills in Guilford County, N. C., and Pelzer, S. C. In these the children
are required to spend a certain portion of their time in schools ranging
from kindergartens to industrial training schools, which are supported
mainly,—and in many cases altogether,—by the cotton mills themselves.
The press and pulpit unite in saying that in those mills many of the
children have much better facilities for improvement than they had
before their parents left the farms and brought them to the mills.
The South suffers from poorly paid labor, and continues to suffer
despite the fact that conditions are such as make it possible for her to
pay higher prices without injuriously affecting any of her industries.
As the wealth of the world increases the individual wants more and
greater conveniences, and more and more grows the demand for excellence
rather than cheapness to be the chief consideration. The era of
cheapness is on the decline; the product of mill and factory, of shop
and lathe and hand, must be better to-day to be satisfying than at any
time in the world’s history. While excellence is sought the more,
cheapness is laughed at and passed by.
The Southern states are in an enviable position to-day. The South ought
to produce nearly all it consumes, and those things it can economically
produce for its own consumption it should certainly be able to sell in
Mexican and South American markets in successful competition with the
rest of the world. How successfully this can be done will depend upon
the ability of the South to produce the best goods for the least money,
and it can only do this provided its labor is the best. But its labor
cannot be the best unless it is paid the highest wages and is afforded
the most satisfactory conditions under which the workmen can perform
their services, and under which they and their families can live.
When labor is once organized on business lines and is a fair competitor
of unorganized labor, it will not only be the successful competitor but
will furnish the best labor obtainable. Nowhere has organized labor
under such conditions so fine an opportunity or so fair a chance as in
the South. But as I said before, the South is the stronghold of
individual rights. The workman must respect the individual rights of the
employer and the employer in return will respect the individual rights
of the workman.
It is not only skilled, law-abiding laborers that are necessary to the
South’s industrial success, but it is first of all necessary that
employers be enlightened and abreast of the times in order that they may
see clearly what their rivals are doing and what the markets of the
world require. And chiefly employers must be just, wise and humane in
order that they may enjoy the confidence and respect of their men.
It is indisputable that wherever there are employers who are wise and
humane, working in harmony with laborers who are skilled, frugal and
law-abiding, the community where the combination is found has a sure
guaranty of numerical growth and of substantial material prosperity.
Growth in population is gratifying to most citizens, notably so when
accompanied with industrial growth as well, but substantial and lasting
prosperity has too often been sacrificed in the eager desire of one
community to herald to the world a larger population than its rival
possessed. Increased numbers and wealth—if they bring in their train an
unnatural increase in vice and crime, as we too often find to be the
case,—are infinitely worse than if there were no growth. Southerners
sometimes lament that the South does not grow fast enough, yet that it
makes haste slowly is the South’s good fortune, since the criminal
classes have not increased with the population as at the North. The
Southern people, conservative always, should be in nothing so
conservative as in the determination that this shall still be true; that
while it is increasing in population and wealth the South shall also
accomplish the more difficult and important duty of diminishing the
percentage of vice and crime.
TILDY BINFORD’S ADVERTISEMENT.
By Holland Wright.
The advertising agent had done his worst. He had subsidized the county
paper, crowding out valuable editorials to make room for pictures of the
yawning hippopotamus and the unconventional summer girl. Every barn
within five miles was decorated with big red pictures and big black
letters, all telling of the wonders exhibited by the Grand Combination
of Railroad Circuses.
Hodges was but an advertising agent—a ruthless purveyor of publicity.
Callous to æsthetic emotions, blind to the beauties of nature, his
conscience was dead to the vandalism of highway advertising. Having
bedaubed the smiling face of nature in the vicinity of Johnsonville, he
was ready to advance on Jonesboro.
“Hello!” he said, stepping briskly into Elrod’s livery stable, “have you
got a team that can snatch me into Jonesboro in four hours?”
“That’s just what we have,” said old Bill Elrod—“Truthful Bill,” the
boys called him.
“Well, I mean exactly what I say,” said Hodges. “Exactly four hours. I
know it’s a hard drive, and I’m willing to pay a dollar or two extra if
you can do it.”
“That’s all right, stranger,” said Truthful. “You’ve come to the right
place. I’ve got a pair of plugs that can put you there to the minute.”
“Well, hitch ’em up,” said Hodges. “I’ve got no time to spare.”
Old Elrod called to a stable boy to harness the grays, while he went out
to get old Eli Wetherford to drive. He took Eli off into a corner of the
blacksmith shop, to give him his instructions.
“See here, Eli, that lunatic of a bill-poster wants to be took to
Jonesboro in four hours.”
“Well,” said Eli, “it’ll take ever’ minute of six hours to make the
trip, but if he’s dead set on doin’ it in four, you’d better give him
all kinds of encouragement. If he goes over to see Hopkins & Brown,
they’ll agree to put him through in twenty minutes.”
“I’ll ’tend to that,” said Truthful. “I want you to drive him. If I send
a boy, that feller will hustle him along fast enough to kill my horses,
in spite of all I can do. Now I want you to take him and dash away with
him like you was goin’ for a doctor. When you git to the first
toll-gate, you can be talkin’ so fast he won’t think about the time o’
day no more till he hears the town clock strike in Jonesboro.”
“Jerusalem!” said Eli: “I ain’t no funnygraph, to be talkin’ a man blind
for six hours on a stretch.”
“Oh, you’ll make it easy enough,” said Truthful. “I’ll put a pint of
good liquor under the seat.”
“Well, now,” said Eli, persuasively, “if you could just make it a quart,
so the stranger can take a nip now and then, it would encourage him
powerful.”
“All right,” said Elrod. “I’ll put in a full quart of the best in town.
And say, Eli, try to make up some yarn about advertisin’. The hotel
clerk says this looney ain’t interested in nothin’ else.”
Thus it happened that when they passed the tollgate, old Eli, who is a
bachelor, was telling Hodges of an imaginary wife, who kept him poor by
reading advertisements and buying patent medicines.
“I do believe,” he said, “my old woman would have a fit any day if she
should happen to read a double-column advertisement of a real good fit
medicine.”
“What kind of advertisement does she seem to like best?” asked Hodges.
“Well, you see,” said Eli, “they ain’t a blessed thing the matter with
her, so she likes advertisements that calls for ever’-day symptoms—You
know some advertisements says if it makes you dizzy to stan’ on your
head fifteen minutes, and if you feel warm in the summer time and cold
in winter, you’ve got the very ailment that their bitters’ll cure. Ever’
time she sees a advertisement of that kind it costs old Eli a dollar,”
and the indulgent husband of the extravagant hypochondriac solaced
himself with a dose of his own favorite prescription.
[Illustration:
“Try to make up some yarn about advertisin’.”
]
When they were half way to Jonesboro, they met Hank Binford, and Eli
thought it would add some personal interest to a romance he had in mind
to make Hank its hero. True, the hero must have a wife and a comfortable
fortune, while Hank had neither, but that was immaterial, as the
listener was a stranger in a strange land.
“Notice that feller we jest passed? That’s Hank Binford. He’s one of our
leadin’ citizens. Owns half the houses in town, and a fine
four-hundred-acre farm in the river bottom. Well, sir, when he married,
five years ago, he didn’t own two shirts, and he was drunk half of the
time. It’s a strange thing, but one little four dollar advertisement
changed him into a prosperous citizen, with money in the bank.”
“Must have been a pretty good ad. Tell me about it,” said Hodges,
moistening his lips with a half pint of whiskey, and settling down
comfortably to listen.
Eli took a long pull at the bottle, and began his story. Even with the
bottle of inspiration at his elbow, he could not expect to invent his
story quite as fast as he could talk, so he told it with due
deliberation and great impressiveness.
“When Tildy Maclin married Hank Binford, her folks all said if she
didn’t have no more sense than to tie to such a drinkin’, gamblin’ cuss,
she would deserve all she got, and mighty apt to git all she deserved.
Tildy said Hank would settle down and do all right, and the other
Maclins all predicted, mighty confident, that he’d do all wrong. Well,
sir, I never did perfess to be no prophet, so naturally of course I
couldn’t foresee in advance just what Tildy would make out of Hank. It
appeared to me he might turn out as well as Tildy expected, or full as
bad as her folks hoped, and neither way, it needn’t surprise nobody that
knows what a powerful sight of human nature there is in a average man.
“Well, Tildy she managed to keep Hank tolerable straight for about a
year. He’d go for months without so much as takin’ a dram, and when he
did start in for a spree she always managed to git him straight before
he could manage to git plum heedless drunk, and it begun to look like
she had him safe, and would finally land him in old Rehoboth church.
“But, as I was sayin’, you can’t most always tell for certain just what
a man critter is goin’ to do, so I wasn’t overly surprised to hear, one
day, that Hank had took advantage of Tildy’s visit to her Wilson County
kin, and had filled up with red liquor, and was down to Ike Denman’s
grocery playin’ poker with Eb Wetherford and Eli Scoggins and Devil Bill
Anderson. That is to say, Hank thought he was playin’, though in reality
he was only bein’ played; him bein’ plum drunk and the other boys
tolerable sober. One or two of Hank’s friends had dropped in, kinder
incidentally, and tried to steer him outside, but of course they didn’t
have no luck. ’Long about sundown, next day, I saw Tildy drive up to her
gate and ’light, and in about a pair of minutes Miss Sallie Kate
Slemmons followed her in, lookin’ powerful pleased, and I didn’t feel no
sort of uneasiness but what Tildy would hear the news.
[Illustration:
Bill just went sailin’ down the road with a armful of ’em, a-strowin’
’em to the wind.
]
“Well, early Saturday mornin’ I happened to be goin’ right by the
grocery, and I thought I’d jest step in and pass the time o’ day with
Ike, seein’ as I wasn’t in no particular rush. I found Ike all alone by
hisself, and he invited me to have somethin’, and I excused myself at
first, as men will, and after a while I inquired if the game was still
on, and what was the prospects for Hank to lose out, and go home and see
Tildy, and hear all about his Wilson County kin folks. Ike said he
hadn’t kept the run of the game and didn’t know how Hank stood, but he
seemed to imagine that Hank wasn’t in no swivet to swap news with Tildy.
“Ike said Bunk Wetherford had come in early Friday night and took Eb
home, and for a while it looked like the game was broke up; but Eli had
bantered one of the Edwards boys to take Eb’s place, and he went up and
took a hand, and the game broke out in a fresh place, and at last
accounts, looked like it might last till all the spots was wore off the
cards. I told Ike I’d go up and advise Hank that Tildy had come home.
“‘All right,’ says he, ‘walk right up. I don’t git no takeout from the
game, and I’m more’n willin’ to see it broke up any time. I don’t like
to interfere myself, jest because it would look like the boys wasn’t
welcome here, so I jest lets ’em do mostly as they like, so long as they
pays for what they gits, and don’t break nothin’.’
“So I went up and looked on a while, and tried to ketch Hank’s eye, but
I could see ’twas no use. He was feelin’ his licker, and talkin’
powerful smart, and losin’ good hard-earned money just as cheerful as if
money growed on trees and he owned all the timber land. After a while
Denman come up to the head of the stairs, a-grinnin’ all over his face,
and motioned me to come to the door. I went over and he handed me a
printed poster, about two foot square, and containin’ the followin’
advertisement in big, black type:
‘LOST, STRAYED OR STOLEN:
ONE YOUNG MAN!
About 28 years old, 5 ft. 10 in. High, Weighs about 140 lbs., Tow
Headed, Sandy Complected, Weak-eyed, and When Sober answers to the name
of
HANK BINFORD!
$4 reward will be paid for his return in good order, Securely Tied.
Signed: TILDY BINFORD.’
“‘Gee Whilikins!’ says I; ‘where did you find it?’
“‘Didn’t find it,’ says he. ‘Jest picked it up. Old man _Weekly Clarion_
Johnson’s little boy, Bill, jest went sailin’ down the road with a
armful of ’em, a-strowin’ ’em to the wind. The whole settlement’s full
of ’em. They’re all over the floor downstairs, and all over the road,
fur as you can see in both directions.’
“The boys at the table was so set on the game that they didn’t take no
notice of me and Ike, till I steps over, while Hank was tryin’ to
shuffle the cards, and lays the paper down right plum in the middle of
the table.
“‘Take the blame thing away,’ says Hank, without readin’ a word.
“‘Read it,’ says I.
“‘Read nothin!’ says he. ‘This is no literary society. Take the blasted
thing out of the way so I can deal the kyards.’
“‘I see your name on it,’ says I, ‘and I thought it might interest you.’
“Hank laid down the cards and glanced over the paper. * * First he
looked kinder dazed. Then he picked the thing up and looked at it a long
time. His face got mighty white, and I thought he was goin’ to faint,
but he didn’t. He looked around at the boys; all of ’em a-grinnin’ and
lookin’ tickled to death. I begins to have my suspicions about the
meanin’ of that white look on his face, and I steps back and takes a
stand nigh the door. It was mighty plain to me that Hank had misery to
spare, and he meant to pass it around promiscuous. He come up with his
chair, and before them grinnin’ idiots had time to back off from the
table and climb out of their chairs, Hank had raised a knot on every
head, and started ’round the circuit to repeat the dose. They closed in
on him and mauled him and gouged him till you couldn’t tell who he was,
only by the familiar cut of his clothes and the complexion of his hair
and moustache. The only way we could know for certain it was Hank, was
by takin’ a sort of inventory of them that could be identified. As none
of the whole men was Hank, it stood to reason that this remnant must be
him. It was also observed that the critter had a voice some like Hank’s,
and used his favorite cuss words quite familiar like.
[Illustration:
There ain’t nobody in the settlement that will go out of his way to
have a difficulty with Ike.
]
“Now, endurin’ of the row, Devil Bill Anderson had received a tremenjous
big lump on his head, which he could not recall that he had done any
overt act or said any word to justify any human man to hit him that
vengeful lick, and he was by no means satisfied. The more he thought
over the details and narrated the circumstances, the more rebellious he
felt and the louder he talked; insomuch that it finally became necessary
for Denman to assert hisself and preserve order in his own grocery;
which he finally said, quite emphatic, that if anybody wanted to hurt
anybody, they might try their hand on Ike Denman. Now there ain’t nobody
in the settlement that will go out of the way to have a difficulty with
Ike; so Devil Bill kinder cooled off, the best way he could, and
everything got quiet, and Denman poured a big sluice of raw whiskey into
Hank, and put him to sleep under the big tree at the back of the
grocery.
[Illustration:
Tildy came out to the gate, looking a little pale, but holding her
head up.
]
“I went to dinner, and when I got back Bud Runnels had just come up and
was readin’ Tildy’s advertisement. Bud always did love to joke, and this
one seemed to tickle him all over. After inquirin’ all about the
particulars, he asked where Hank was at.
“‘He’s back there under the big ellum,’ says Denman, ‘sleepin’ sound as
a baby.’
“‘What about the four dollars reward?’ says Bud.
“‘Why, I guess that’s jest a part of the joke,’ says Ike.
“‘Well, I don’t see it that away,’ says Bud. ‘The lady has lost her
husband, and she wants him found and fetched home. Now, I’m goin’ to
take him home, and if she don’t want him, I can easy fetch him back.’
“Ike grinned, and looked ‘round at the boys, and they grinned.
“‘I don’t hear no objection,’ says Ike. ‘You’ll find him back there
under the tree.’
“‘Well,’ says Bud, ‘I can easy load him into my wagon and haul him home
and unload him in his own yard, but it might be better for you boys that
beat him up to jest take holt and come along with me; all a-totin’ of
him home in a friendly way. Then if Tildy wants to know how come his
face all broke up, you can jest show her the knots on your own heads and
it’ll sorter help to explain matters.’
“Nobody didn’t answer right away, and before anybody could think of any
objection, Bud added in his insinuatin’ way: ‘It might save trouble to
keep Tildy pacified, so she’ll explain to Hank that he was to blame for
all that’s been done to him. Now, ever’ body come on and take holt, and
I’ll set ’em up to the crowd soon’s we get back.’
“Bud always seems to state a proposition so fair an’ reasonable that you
jest can’t turn him down, so the boys jest got up without wastin’ any
words, and followed him around to where Hank was. They gathered him up,
one at each corner, and Bud holdin’ up his head. They ketched the step,
‘hayfoot-strawfoot,’ and marched up to Hank’s front gate.
“Tildy was sweepin’ off the front porch, and when she saw the crowd she
come out to the gate, lookin’ a little pale, but holdin’ her head up,
and a stiff upper lip.
“‘What is it?’ says she.
“‘It’s Hank,’ says Bud.
“‘Is he hurt?’ says she.
“‘Oh, no,’ says Bud. ‘That is to say, they ain’t any bones broke. He’s
been a-fightin’ ‘round promiscuous, but he’s got no hurts to call for
anybody to fetch him home. Fact is I saw a advertisement offerin’ a
reward for Hank, and I just discovered him, and rescued him, and fetched
him home.’
“‘Didn’t the advertisement say to return him in good order?’ says Tildy.
“‘I b’leeve it did,’ says Bud, ‘but I couldn’t p’form no miracle for
four dollars, so I jest fetched him as I found him.’
“‘And didn’t it say bring him securely tied?’ says Tildy.
“Bud was set back considerable at that. ‘That’s a fact,’ says he, ‘and I
jest plum overlooked it. It didn’t appear to me to be of no consequence,
nohow.’
“‘Well, it’s mighty important to me,’ says Tildy. ‘If he wakes up in a
tantrum, and untied, he might be troublesome.’
“‘That’s so,’ says Devil Bill, thinking of the lump on his own head.
“‘So it is,’ says Eli Scoggins, solemnly.
“‘I believe you,’ says Buck Edwards.
“‘Well,’ says Bud Runnels, ‘it ain’t none too late to tie him, but if I
was you, Mizzes Binford, I b’leeve I’d jest sew him up, good and snug,
in cotton baggin’ or heavy canvas or somethin’ good and stout like that,
and leave nothin’ stickin’ out but jest his head.’
“‘Oh,’ says she, ‘I’ve got the very thing!’ and she went ‘round to the
shed, and come back with the stoutest, heaviest, widest piece of cotton
duckin’ that I ever see.
“‘I bought it at the auction,’ says she, ‘because it was cheap, and Hank
said I never would have no use for it but you see he was mistaken.’
“Well, we sewed him up good and tight, and put him on the bed in the
spare room and cut a big peachtree limb for Tildy to keep the flies off
of him, and she paid Bud the four dollars.
“When Hank waked up, Sunday mornin’, he could hear Tildy fryin’ meat in
the kitchen, and he knowed she was cookin’ breakfast. He didn’t seem to
want any breakfast, but he thought a cup of strong coffee might be good
for his head. He tried to git up, but the sheet seemed to be rolled
‘round him so he couldn’t rise. Then he tried to roll over, so he could
git untangled, but he couldn’t even turn over. Then he got mad, and
tried to bust the sheet, but he strained at it till he was black in the
face, and couldn’t break a stitch. Then he called Tildy. She come in and
walked ’round in front of him.
“‘Tildy,’ says he, ‘what’s the matter with this sheet?’
“‘I don’t see nothin’ wrong with it,’ says she.
“‘Well, then,’ says Hank, ‘what in the nation is the matter with me?’
“‘Oh!’ says Tildy; ‘that’s different. If I undertake to stan’ here and
tell all that’s wrong with you, my breakfast’ll be burnt to a cinder
before I’m half through.’ And with that, she turned ‘round and marched
away to the kitchen.
“Well, of course Hank was fightin’ mad, but he wasn’t in no shape to do
nothin’ but jest lay still and think, and not in no great shape for
thinkin’, so he jest went to sleep again.
“Next time he opened his eyes, Tildy was standin’ over him with a dish
of meat and bread, and a cup of hot coffee.
“‘Good mornin’,’ says she, mighty polite. ‘Would you like to have some
breakfast?’
“Hank grinned, kinder sheepish, and she propped up his head, and begun
to feed him with a spoon. When he tried to speak, she would pour a
spoonful of coffee in his mouth, right quick, and he’d have to stop to
swaller, and time he’d git that down, she’d have another one ready for
him. He was tryin’ to talk all the time, but she didn’t give him a
chance to say a word. Finally, she got so tickled, seein’ him swaller so
fast, that she spilt a lot of hot coffee down his neck.
“‘Jerusalem!’ he yelled. ‘Woman, do you want to scald me to death?’ And
with that he begun to cuss, and bluster about what he would do when he
got loose. Tildy set the dishes on the table without sayin’ a word. Then
she went to the front door, and called to little Johnnie Martin, in the
next yard.
“‘Johnnie,’ she says, ‘is Brother Collins at home?’
“‘Yessum,’ says Johnnie.
“‘All right,’ says Tildy, and she went in and put on her bonnet and
started out the front door.
“‘Where you goin’, Tildy?’ Hank asked.
“‘I’m goin’ after Brother Collins.’
“‘What for?’
“‘I want him to talk to you.’
“‘Me?’ says Hank. ‘I don’t want to talk to no preacher!’
“‘I don’t want you to talk to him,’ says Tildy. ‘I want him to talk to
you,’ and she walked out the door. When Hank heard her slam the gate
behind her, he hollered like the house was afire.
“‘Oh, Tildy!’ She come back to the door and looked in.
“‘Why, Tildy,’ says Hank, pitiful as a baby, ‘you don’t aim to make me
the laughin’-stock of the settlement, do you?’
“‘I don’t see why you need to bother about that,’ says Tildy. ‘If it’s
no disgrace to git drunk, and gamble, and fight, in a corner grocery,
it’s no disgrace to talk to a minister of the gospel.’ She started out
again, but Hank called her back.
“‘Hold on, Tildy; I’ll agree to anything you say, if you won’t call in
the preacher.’
“‘What you goin’ to do about them circulars I got printed?’ she asked.
“‘Why, I’m goin’ down there and maul the life out of old Goatwhiskers
for printin’ them things,’ says Hank. Tildy started out again, and he
yelled after her to come back. Promised he wouldn’t say a word to him.
“‘What are you goin’ to say to the boys you had the fight with?’
“‘Fight!’ says Hank. ‘It wasn’t no fight. The whole crowd lit into me
and mauled me most to death, and I hadn’t said a word.’
“‘I understand you knocked ’em all down with a cheer, if that’s any
satisfaction to you,’ says Tildy.
“‘All right, then,’ says Hank, ‘I’m willin’ to call it square, if they
are.’
“‘Not goin’ to say a word to nobody about nothin’?’ she asked.
“‘Not a word,’ says he.
“‘Not goin’ to drink any more?’
“‘Not a drop, Tildy. Now, come on and cut this devilish thing off. I
feel like I’ll die if it stays on me another minute.’ Tildy couldn’t
think of nothin’ more he could promise, so finally she cut the bastin’
threads and let him loose. Well, sir, he didn’t say a word out of the
way to them boys that beat ’em up, and he wouldn’t even take a few
drinks to taper off, and it’s my opinion,” said old Eli, solemnly, “that
he wouldn’t drink a drop of liquor, right now, if he was bit by a
snake.”
They were driving into Jonesboro when the old man finished his story,
and the big town clock struck four.
“Great guns!” cried Hodges in amazement, “it’s four o’clock!”
“Egzackly,” said Eli, with an air of innocent triumph. “I’ve drove over
this road so often, I can time the trip to a minute. You said you wanted
to be here egzackly at four o’clock—”
“Four devils!” Hodges yelled. “I said four hours! I’m two hours late.
I’ll have to stay in this jay town a whole day!”
“My, my!” exclaimed old Eli. “Somebody’s made a terrible mistake. I do
hope I wasn’t in no way to blame for it. Now, if you’d just mentioned
that you was behind time, I could easy have put them grays through two
hours earlier.”
“Oh, it’s my fault, I guess,” said Hodges, when his wrath had subsided.
“I told old Elrod, but I ought to have told you, too. Then I rode along
for four mortal hours sucking that bottle of foolkiller, and didn’t have
sense enough to look at my watch once. Well, well! I’ll just charge it
up to Hodges, and see it don’t happen again.”
Though Eli was not to blame, he was inconsolable, till Hodges gave him a
dollar at parting. Tears of gratitude stood in the old man’s eyes.
“Good-bye, Stranger,” he said. “I do hope old man Elrod won’t find out
about you bein’ late. He’d be powerful pestered to know you’d been
disappointed. Good-bye.” And as he drove away, he muttered to himself:
“Darn the feller! I think he might have offered to fill my bottle.”
The modern lecturer is the alarm clock of civilization wound up to go
off with a whiz and a bang at any hour in the evening, according to the
whims of his audience. A Northern audience wants to be aroused at 8 P.M.
sharp, a Southern audience anywhere between 8.30 P.M. and daylight, A.M.
But some time in the night he is sure to wake the natives, for he is a
traveling gesture tied to a bell clapper and
When his hands begin to swing
And his bell begins to ring
His waking listeners laugh and weep
And then, alas! go back to sleep.
But still he screams and fights the air
And stamps his foot and pulls his hair
And growls and roars upon the stage
Like some fierce lion in a rage,
Until at last his clock runs down
And he winds it up for another town.
Selah!
—_Robert L. Taylor._
[Illustration]
THE MAN AND THE MATINEE
BY
SYBIL STEWART
There was a ring at the door, a light tripping of feet up the stairs, a
swish of skirts in the hall, then a quick little tap at Mabel’s door.
Mabel had looked up from her book at the first of these sounds with the
eager interest an invalid must feel in any interruption to the long day.
At each succeeding sound her face grew brighter until she cried a
cordial, “Come in,” and, as the door flew open, added, “There, I knew it
was you and I’m awfully glad. You are as good as a breath of the blessed
out-doors.” And she kissed the newcomer’s glowing cheeks.
There was a general breeziness about Cora that justified Mabel’s words.
She sailed into the room, veils fluttering and skirts rustling, kissed
her friend swiftly and settled upon the arm of her chair like a bird on
a bough.
“But, Angel of Peace, there’s nothing blessed about me. I’m in another
scrape.” She opened her big eyes impressively upon her audience. The
audience sat up in her chair and asked with interest, “What disagreeable
thing has happened now?”
“Oh, I didn’t say it was disagreeable, did I? It wasn’t at all; at least
it _is_ not. Quite otherwise, really.”
“Well, Cora, you are the only person I know who can get into a dreadful
scrape and have a lovely time there.”
“That’s because I feel so much at home. And then, some way, even if the
scrape is personally painful I can enjoy its picturesqueness
objectively, you know. That’s the way with this one. Personally it was
very painful to be placed in such a position, especially with such
people, you know.”
“No, I don’t know, but I’m dying to. I only live to hear your
adventures. I never could have stood this sprained ankle if you had not
come in to refresh me with your hairbreadth escapes. You are a perfect
Sinbad.”
“Now you need not poke fun at me. Queer things do happen to me and I
thought you liked to hear about them.”
“Why, I do, I do. I was just telling you how I liked it.”
“Well, you may thank your poor little ankle for preventing you from
sharing this adventure, because if you had been able to walk I should
have invited you to go to the Valley of Diamonds with me, and then I
wonder what you would have done with that conscience of yours?”
“What are you talking about? I suppose you have been entering Tiffany’s
vaults?”
“Not exactly—and it wasn’t a Valley of Diamonds, but a Valley of Matinee
Tickets, which is quite as remarkable as anything Sinbad saw.”
“Don’t prelude so much. I am harrowed to the last degree.”
“I’ll tell you the whole story.” Cora shook her broad hat back over her
tawny hair, dropped down upon a stool and clasped her hands about her
knees. Mabel settled herself in the Morris chair with a sigh of
satisfaction and anticipation.
“Well, you know this is the 28th of the month. That means I’ve been
absolutely broke for a week.”
Mabel accepted this axiom and told her to go on and not be slangy.
“And doubtless you know too that ‘The Golden Quest’ has been running all
week at Howards?
“I should think I did know it. I’ve been reading the papers every
morning and eating my heart out in bitterness and tears. I’d give my
eyes to see that third act. They do say she has the most gorgeous
costumes in America, and her voice—”
“Oh, yes, her voice, but lots of people have voices. Not many of us have
quarts of diamonds, and I was wild to see those, and I hadn’t a cent
except the quarter Uncle Joe gave me when I had my first tooth pulled.
That always stands between me and starvation and I like to keep it
there; besides, the tickets were two dollars. I could not go to Daddy
after the affair of The Gold Buckles, and I felt a certain delicacy in
approaching the cook on the subject. I was thinking of selling my new
shoes when Laura’s note came saying six of us were to lunch with her
Saturday. I thought that would make me forget myself during the worst
time and keep me from pawning my gold handled umbrella.
“Saturday came and I rode down to Laura’s, trying to avoid the posters.
It was an awfully nice luncheon and Geraldine wore her new green.
Beautiful dress but it makes her look bunchy. Well, any way we had just
gotten to mushroom timbales—don’t you love timbales? I wonder how they
make them—. Well, we were at timbales when the ’phone rang and the maid
said someone wanted me. It was Mary, our cook, and she said a messenger
boy had just brought some theater tickets and should she send them to me
or was I coming back before the matinee. My heart leaped within me, but
I calmed myself by considering that they were probably tickets for
Stereopticon Views of Palestine, for Aunt Myra is always sending me that
kind of thing. So I managed to contain myself sufficiently to ask
details. My dear, can you imagine the tumult and wild joy raised in my
bosom when Mary read over the tickets and found they were for ‘The
Golden Quest’ and there were six of them? I told her to send them to
Laura’s and then I tore back to the dining room. You should have heard
the shrieks of jubilation. We beat the table with our forks and sang the
opening chorus. Six tickets and six girls and all in our happy clothes,
the matinee only an hour off and they had all wanted to see it as much
as I. When the first wild burst was over, it occurred to me to wonder
where the tickets came from. At first they seemed a direct answer to
prayer, but I began to think there must be a more palpable source. It
wasn’t Daddy. He had not forgiven me enough yet to be so horribly
generous. And the only other person was Aunt Myra and she is old
fashioned and Presbyterian.”
“What has that to do with it, Cora?”
“Why, it means she regards me as a raging heathen and never shows me any
consideration as her niece, but a great deal of attention as a soul to
be saved. She sends me little books and a weekly paper, and when a
missionary visits her house she invites me over. She hopes to show me
the beauties of a Higher Life, but it only sets me against
Presbyterianism, because all the missionaries make noises with their
soup and it must be awful to belong to a church like that.”
“Cora, you are a disgrace to a civilized family. And besides, it may
after all have been your aunt that sent the tickets, hoping to win you
through kindness.”
“Mabel, you rave! Aunt Myra regards the theater as the clearest
manifestation of the Evil One on earth, and her saintly little Caddie is
not allowed to look at a poster. A nephew is visiting them now, and I
dare say they are taking him to the midweek lectures on Genesis in the
Light of Arabian Topography. I know Aunt hopes to win him to her church,
as he has heaps of money and they need a new chapel. As he belongs to
her side of the family I suppose he trots along, and perhaps leads the
experience meeting. I should not wonder if he wears a lawn tie in the
morning,—that is a special mark of sanctity, you know.”
“Cora, I refuse to listen to you. You don’t know a thing about real
church life, so leave it alone and go back to your matinee.”
“With gleesome heart, my dear. After I had cut Aunt Myra off my list of
possible donors I was absolutely at a loss, and we girls just decided to
believe in fairy godmothers, when the boy came with the tickets. How we
gloated over that little envelope. I pulled them out, and Mabel—they
were box-seats—six seats, box-seats to “The Golden Quest.” Talk about
your Valley of Diamonds! We were all dazed and felt as if we were
enchanted. It is such a beautiful thing to have your dreams come true in
that miraculous way, though to be sure I had no more dreamed of
box-seats than I had dreamed of the Koh-i-nor in my new hat. We wondered
more than ever, and took turns looking at the tickets for some revealing
clue. They were good bona-fide tickets, but that was all. There was no
card, no name, no hint; even the envelope was the theater one with just
the address scribbled over the ads. on the outside.
“Well, we didn’t care and scrambled into our things and hied us to the
theater, while the girls chanted my praises and sang pæans of rejoicing
and gratitude. The theater was full when we arrived and everybody was in
her most gorgeous things, and we were the haughtiest ever when the usher
showed us to our box. Our box! Why, we acted as if we’d always had it
for the season. There was a little delay, for some reason, that gave me
time to think. The mystery of the tickets puzzled me and was beginning
to worry me a little, too. What if there was some mistake and I had
rushed into all this with my usual mistaken velocity! The responsibility
made me feel a little queer, Mabel, honestly. If it had not been such a
frightfully extravagant thing I wouldn’t have thought so much of it. But
not many people send thirty dollar tickets around promiscuously among
the deserving poor. The girls were as gay as larks, but I couldn’t let
myself go some way. They could afford to be gay. They were simply
guests, but I,—whose guest was I? It was sort of getting on my nerves
when a little diversion came. Six dashing young men came into the
theater and stood talking to the usher. They were quite different from
the men about here and created a sensation. Any one could see they were
strangers and we all wondered where they got their beautiful clothes.
One seemed to be the head of the party and he was having quite a lengthy
consultation with the usher, so we had a good look at them. We were
staring with all our eyes, I dare say, when suddenly that first young
man lifted his head from talking to the usher and looked straight into
our box—looked not casually and accidentally but deliberately and
prolongedly, Mabel, and I began to feel my hat was wrong when he turned
back to the usher and shook his head decidedly. Then the usher looked at
us and my heart jumped right up into my new stock. It was something
about those awful tickets and perhaps there was something the matter and
they would come and turn us out of the box. What would the girls do to
me and what would the people think and who was that man and who was
responsible for the tickets? I was beginning to wish I had never heard
of “The Golden Quest” and was sure I couldn’t stand it till the third
act, when the usher and the man turned around and went out to the box
office. Something was going to happen. What could I do? Here were the
five girls at the heights of bliss and anticipation, and here was I in
the depths of anxious misery, and there were the five young men staring
coolly around, waiting for their friend, and there was the man out at
the box office probably demanding that I be seized and turned with my
friends into the streets. But what could I do? It wasn’t my fault, for
the tickets had been sent to me, surely. Perhaps they had been stolen
and sent to me as a revenge from some inhuman enemy. I thought of
everything, Mabel, and then the man came back, collected his friends and
the whole party with their usher at their head, came down the side aisle
toward our box. I had just time to arrange my sad story and be thankful
I had on my best hat when they reached the curtains of our box. I
started up, but, Mabel, they went right on to the next box and sat down.
I breathed again, but not very freely, for surely that man knew
something about our box, or was my guilty conscience causing me
hallucinations? Yet why guilty? What had I done? Apparently the worst
was over now, but I was not at ease and thought the incident might at
any moment repeat itself with different results. There was a blare of
orchestra and the curtain went up; after one hurried glance at the stage
I glued my eye to the door again. Fifteen minutes passed and nothing
happened and so I turned around—turned to look into the interested eyes
of the man in the other box. Perhaps he was a detective and watching me,
but he didn’t look a bit like that, though he had quite a different look
from the one a man ordinarily gives a girl in a pretty hat. My hat was
very pretty—you remember the big black one—but it didn’t justify, the
inquiring interest with which he regarded me. Yet he did not stare.
Really he did not, Mabel, but was very decent. I looked at the stage now
but sort of felt him there some way, and had a little feeling about the
door, too, so I wasn’t very comfortable. When the curtain went down on
the first act I expected to have a swarm of irate claimants for the box
swoop down upon me, but not a soul appeared, and surely no one would
come after that. I took the little envelope out of my bag and looked at
it again. Nothing but 1229 Second on it—in pencil—. That was our number
all right. Then something struck me. It was just 1229 Second, and ours
is 1229 West Second. But after all that could make little difference, as
heaps of our things come out marked that way and there is rarely a
mistake, as Aunt Myra’s, by some freak of fate, is 1229 East Second, and
everybody knows us both and knows which is which. The only accident that
ever happened was that awful thing about Mme. Durant and the
bridesmaid’s hat—you remember that? That incident made me notice the
address, but I could not explain the mystery that way, for no theater
tickets like these could ever have been sent to Aunt Myra’s respectable
door. These were the things I pondered and puzzled while the play went
merrily on. I didn’t see or hear much of it and I don’t believe that man
in the box saw much more. He seemed to be pondering something, too.
“At last the thing was over and the crowd trooped out—among them the
five young men and _the_ man. You would have called him _the_ man, too,
Mabel, for he was quite different from the rest. Such shoulders and such
a carriage! He held his head as if he were commanding an army or a
yacht. Yet when we passed them in the corridor outside the box he bowed
with such respectful humility. He was awfully impressive, but I was too
much troubled to consider him long.
“The girls were wild with enthusiasm, so I suppose the play was really
good. Anyway the girls were so full of admiration and adjectives that it
was very easy to slip away from them a minute. I stepped to the box
office and inquired about those tickets. The man was very polite, but
didn’t know anything except that they had been ordered by ’phone to be
sent to that address. They had been sent, but the man who said he had
ordered them arrived shortly before the matinee and said they had not
come. The usher assured him they must have been delivered for they had
been presented just a few minutes before, and he showed the man the box.
Whereupon the man paid for the tickets and procured another box. The man
in the box office was very calm about it as he had his money, but I
wasn’t. I told him I had gotten the tickets by mistake and must pay for
them. He said he had been paid. I tried to show him I must pay, but he
seemed to think me very foolish and said if I paid anyone I must pay the
man who bought the tickets. I said that was what I wanted to do, but
couldn’t he do it for me. He said he couldn’t as he had no idea who the
man was or where he could be found. But if I could get the address he
would gladly forward the money through the theater. He had begun to look
as if he thought it a joke, so I had to be satisfied with that and went
back to the girls.”
“But, Cora, what would you have done if he had said, ‘Oh, yes; Mr. Z. is
one of our regular patrons. If you will give me the money I’ll give you
a receipt and reimburse him.’ You didn’t have your chatelaine full of
bills, did you? I suppose you would have passed your gold handled
umbrella through the window and given that to the man as a token of your
grateful esteem.”
“I haven’t the remotest idea what I would have done if he had asked for
the money. As it was, I became from that hour a man-hunter. It has its
fascinations as a pastime but is discouraging in its results. My method
has its limitations. My only hope is that he can’t escape the girls long
and I’ll soon hear of him again. I’m praying I may hear of him before I
meet him face to face. Wouldn’t it be ghastly, Mabel, if at a crush some
time my hostess should suddenly confront me with this man—and he would
cry, ‘This is the young person who defrauded me of thirty dollars worth
of matinee tickets?’ Only I know he would never denounce me openly. He
would just wither me with silent scorn. Yet he didn’t look withering
Saturday. Why on earth didn’t he give me a chance to straighten things
out then and there?”
“Yes, it would have been so much more comfortable if he had demanded an
explanation as the curtain went down and your guests turned to thank
you. No, Cora, I think he did the only thing to do and did it
beautifully. His effacement of himself shows he has a heart of gold.
Most men would have left some chance to be thanked, any way. Still, it
is embarrassing for you. However, I would not look too hard for him till
my next allowance came. Your father would never understand this delicate
situation.”
“Father! Heavens, no! Not a soul knows but you and the box office man,
and I know you understand, don’t you, dear? Isn’t it awful—but isn’t it
interesting? I wish you could have seen the man. And I do wish your
ankle was well enough to permit of your going about with me, for I know
I shall faint when I see him again.”
Cora glanced at her absurd little watch, and jumped to her feet.
“Goodness, nearly five, and I’m due at Aunt Myra’s for dinner at seven.
It is to meet that nephew of hers and a missionary or two, probably. I
hate to waste the time, because if I were somewhere else I might get a
clue to my man.”
“So you haven’t met the nephew yet?”
“No, indeed; Aunt wanted to give Caddie a good chance at him first,
because she wants Caddie to have what is left after he builds the
chapel. As if I would look at the solemn prig.”
“How do you know he is a prig?”
“Because Aunt Myra likes him. Caddie won’t look at him, either, though,
because her eyes are full of that downy little theologue, and all Aunt
Myra’s talk against worldliness is going to rebound upon her own head.
Is that a mixed metaphor? Anyway, Caddie has set her affections on
things above and wouldn’t look twice at a million. Good-bye, dear. This
burst of confidence has eased my nerves wonderfully, and I’ll come again
the instant I find a clue and tell you all about it. You are the only
relative I have that does not think me shocking, and I love
you—good-bye.” An airy kiss and she was gone, leaving a faint suggestion
of violets behind her fluttering veils.
It was half past nine the next morning and Mabel was having coffee and
rolls in bed when in rushed Cora, radiant, glowing, and evidently
bursting with news.
Mabel rose on her elbow.
“Cora, you have found him!”
Cora settled herself in a fluffy pink heap on the foot of the bed.
“Now, it’s not fair unless you let me tell you the whole affair just as
it happened.”
“All right, but do hurry.”
“Well,” began Cora, then paused long enough to remove her hat carefully,
toss it beside her on the bed, and pat her little fingers over the most
obstreperously crinkly waves around her face. “Well,” she said, “when I
got home last night I began right away to dress for Aunt Myra’s. Daddy
sent word to tell her he couldn’t come because a business friend had
just arrived. Daddy’s friends always arrive just about an hour before
Aunt Myra’s dinners. I think he keeps a corps of them just for such
emergencies. Then I was nearly late trying to decide whether I’d wear
that black chiffon that I can’t afford to throw away just yet, or my
sweet new pale green and make the missionaries dream of other worlds
than theirs. I finally decided on the green because the other fastens in
the back and Jane had a terrible toothache. So I wore the green, and of
course that horrid little opal pin Aunt Myra gave me, but it didn’t show
much.
“Aunt received me with her usual sanctimonious frigidity and inquired
after my health. We sat in stony silence for a few minutes. Caddie was
sitting by the window but there were no missionaries about. Finally the
clock struck seven. We had waited only three minutes but I was already
frozen to my chair. When the clock struck Aunt Myra turned to Caddie and
said:
“‘Where is your cousin Robert?’
_I_ should have asked if I were my cousin’s keeper, but Caddie is meek
and said he had been detained down town and was dressing, she thought.
“‘Your cousin seems to have no regard for a regular family life,’ said
Aunt accusingly, and stalked out, evidently to drag the culprit to his
dinner. I knew by the way she shoved the relationship off on Caddie that
she didn’t approve of her nephew, and so I thought he might prove a
possible person, after all.
“The minute Aunt had closed the door after her Caddie rushed over to me
and began to whisper. She is a sweet little thing, but suppressed beyond
belief.
“‘Oh, Cousin Cora,’ she said, ‘I have been dying to tell some one and
you will be just the one to understand. It is the most exciting thing!
Poor Cousin Robert isn’t a bit like us and he has a dreadful time with
Mamma. He hasn’t been brought up in our way, but lives in New York in
such a worldly family, and he doesn’t think anything of dancing and the
theater, and he even plays cards. He seems very nice, though, and as
long as that is the way he was taught I don’t know that he is to blame.
But Mamma preaches at him all the time and he escapes whenever he can
politely, because he is always considerate, even when Mamma is the
worst. He has been lovely to me and I told him all about Clifford and he
is going to help us. Well, he told me his troubles, too. A lot of his
college friends came through here the other day and he couldn’t invite
them to the house, because he knew Mamma wouldn’t approve of them, so he
gave a little lunch down town somewhere and invited them to go to some
play. He ’phoned for the tickets early in the morning and they were to
come here, but they didn’t come, so he said he would get them at the
theater. Well, Cora, he got home just in time for dinner and was so
excited, and afterwards he took me into the library and told me all
about it. There was some mistake about the tickets for they had been
used already and the people were in the box—,’ Mabel, it would sound
awfully silly for me to tell you all she said he said.”
“Go on,” said Mabel, sternly; “I must hear all.”
“Well, Caddie said he said it was the mistake of his life for it showed
him the sweetest girl in the world. And then she told me a lot of stuff
like that and wound up by asking me if I’d help her find the girl for
him, because he had vowed he would spend the rest of his life looking,
if necessary, and if she helped him he would see that Clifford had the
new chapel. She was explaining it all to me when in came her Cousin
Robert. He stopped short, and I was the color of that cushion. Caddie
didn’t notice, but introduced us and told Mr. Page that she was sure I
could help him in his search, as the girl was probably in my set. He
looked hard at me and said he thought I might be able to help him—and,
Mabel, I was awfully glad I had on that green. And Caddie said, ‘Tell
Cousin Cora what the girl was like, Robert,’—and Mabel, that man had the
brazen effrontery to do it. He looked me straight in the eye and told me
what he thought of my hair and eyes and nose and even my clothes. And
Aunt Myra came in and was displeased. Caddie had told her something of
the matinee experience, and Aunt said severely, ‘Are you still
discussing that impudent creature at the theater? I should think it
would have been enough to have seen her at such a place without her
being there on stolen tickets!’ So we dropped the matinee girl, to my
infinite relief. When I rose to go home Mr. Page insisted upon
accompanying me and told Aunt Myra he hoped to interest me in the plans
for the chapel. And on the way home, Mabel, he didn’t allude to the
matinee and I hated to drag it in. He kept talking about that chapel and
said he wanted me to help him with the architect’s plans, as he wished
my opinion on it because I might have to go there some time. He expected
to. I suppose he was just talking to kill time. He said he was nearly
dead from an excess of virtue that came from staying with Aunt Myra a
week, and wouldn’t I please, as one heathen to another, ask him to tea?
So he is coming this afternoon, Mabel. What do you think of it all,
anyway?”
“I think it is beautiful and just what I always expected, Cora, and I
shall order my hat of Mme. Durant.”
“O, you horrid thing!” and Cora buried her rosy face in the counterpane.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE OLD ORDER PASSETH.
BY GRACE McGOWAN COOKE.
I can’t read, yit I knows de Book,
As you won’t never know it.
“You reads a chapter every day?”
Well, honey, you don’t show it.
Now, gal, you lay it by, an’ sing
De hymn I loves de best,
‘Bout de wicked cease dey troublin’,
An’ de weary be at rest.
De wicked—dat’s dese new style folks,
Pleased wid de things dey see,
Wid ruffled caps an’ uppish ways,—
And de weary—dat is me!
SOURCES OF SOUTHERN WEALTH.
By Austin P. Foster.
In the undeveloped resources of the South lie dormant the possibilities
of fortune that “far surpass the wealth of Ormus or of Ind.” For more
than two centuries the incomparable climate and soil of this section
have commanded the admiration of the world; and during this period
fortunes were amassed purely by agriculture, mainly in the last century
by cotton, and were handed down from father to son, until the corner
stone of the industrial system was wrenched loose by a fratricidal war,
and anarchy for a time supervened. As Henry Watterson pithily puts it:
“The whole story of the South may be summed up in a sentence: She was
rich, and she lost her riches; she was poor and in bondage; she was set
free, and she had to go to work; she went to work, and she is richer
than ever before.”
Yet what a change from the happy years of ante-bellum prosperity, when
the South was by far the wealthiest section of the country, to the
desolation, the poverty and the criminal oppression of reconstruction
times! After four years of the most sanguinary strife in the history of
the world the Southern soldier took up the battle of existence and of
maintenance and of rehabilitation. Let Henry W. Grady tell the
situation:
“What does he find when, having followed the battle-stained cross
against overwhelming odds, dreading death not half so much as surrender,
he reaches the home he left prosperous and beautiful? He finds his house
in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves free, his stock killed, his
barn empty, his trade destroyed, his money worthless; his social system,
feudal in its magnificence, swept away; his people without law or legal
status; his comrades slain, and the burdens of others heavy on his
shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very traditions gone; without money,
credit, employment, material training; and besides all this, confronted
with the gravest problem that ever met human intelligence—the
establishing of a status for the vast body of his liberated slaves.
“What does he do—this hero in gray with a heart of gold? Does he sit
down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely God, who had
stripped him of his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity. As ruin
was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter. The
soldier stepped from the trenches into the furrow; horses that had
charged Federal guns marched before the plow, and fields that ran red
with human blood in April were green with the harvest in June; women
reared in luxury cut up their dresses and made breeches for their
husbands, and, with a patience and heroism that fit women always as a
garment, gave their hands to work.”
None but people whose civilization has never had its equal in chivalric
power and grace, whose ability of mind and strength of heart were
derived from the purest Anglo-Saxon blood, could have restored their
fortune and excelled the material welfare of its past as have the people
of the South within the short expanse of forty years.
In its struggles for advancement the South has known, and still knows,
two problems:
First, its duty to an inferior, dependent race; and second, its duty to
industrial development.
In its conscious and its unconscious evolution and in its conscious and
its unconscious solutions of these problems the South has been favored
by certain material and climatic advantages:
It possesses by nature the fairest and richest domain on the face of the
earth. Here we find a vast stock of the materials proper for the art and
ingenuity of man to work upon; treasures of immense worth, concealed
from the ignorant aboriginal red man, unknown or neglected by the
planter, and utilized only within the last thirty years. Now the rocks
are disclosing their hidden gems; huge mountains of iron and coal and
limestone, of lead and zinc and marble and phosphate, are pouring forth
vast stores; and more than one-half the timber wealth of the entire
country is found within the Southern states conserved in virgin forests
and reserved for the present and for the coming generations. The South
produces two-thirds of the cotton of the world. The water power is
enormous and perennial, and the commercial situation relative to the
world is unequalled. Of the four essentials to all industries,
therefore, iron, wood, cotton and motive power, the South is abundantly
blessed. Add to these a perfect climate and a fertile soil which yields
every product of the temperate zone, and who shall deny to the South the
primacy in the years to come?
The remarkable results effected in the South since the war between the
States have been attained principally in the last twenty-five years.
Statistics, which are often dry and uninteresting, in this case prove
the argument most conclusively.
The wages paid to factory hands in the South, which in 1880 were
$75,900,000, had risen to $249,413,150 in 1900, and are now $350,000,000
annually.
The capital invested in manufacturing in the South in 1880 was
$257,000,000; in 1900, $1,153,002,368, and now $1,500,000,000, annually,
and rapidly increasing.
The value of its manufactured products in 1880 was $457,400,000; in
1900, $1,463,643,177, and now $2,000,000,000.
In the last twenty-five years the increases of other important products
were:
Pig iron from 397,000 tons to 3,000,000 tons.
Coal from 6,000,000 tons to 45,000,000 tons.
Phosphate (since 1890), from 750,000 tons to 3,000,000 tons.
Railroad mileage, from 20,600 miles to 55,000 miles.
Cotton, from 5,757,397 bales to 12,162,000 bales.
The grain crop (corn, wheat, oats and rye), from 431,000,000 bushels to
791,000,000 bushels.
These facts are impressive, convincing and full of hope for the future.
The value of the staple crops—corn, wheat, oats, Irish potatoes, rye and
hay—in 1904 was $542,121,000; the value of the other farm crops was
$550,000,000; and the value of the cotton not less than $515,000,000,
besides the cotton seed, amounting to $50,000,000 more. All this amounts
to an aggregate sum of $3,657,121,000, earned annually by the South from
the sources indicated, not including the lumber and other raw material,
which, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, leave the South
annually for all the parts of the habitable globe.
No wonder the South is prosperous! And an indubitable proof of its
prosperity lies in its increase in the assessed valuation of its
property. This increase since 1900 amounts to $1,000,000,000 for the
fourteen states of the South. This is partly due to raised assessments,
partly to increased prices for its products, but mainly to an increase
of customary products and to new products. The increase in the wealth of
the South, however, has been steady for the last twenty years, and in
that time has aggregated more than $2,300,000,000.
What now is the magic spell which has wrought this abundant prosperity,
the sesame by the pronouncing of which is opened the secret hiding place
of Southern wealth? _Diversification_ is the word—diversification of
crops and diversification of manufacturing and diversification of all
industries. Cotton, though a puissant monarch, seated upon a throne,
from which for reasons of perfect adaptability of soil and climate he
can never be deposed, is not the only king who conducts a beneficent
sway for the complex needs of an enterprising people.
The forest king rears his august head and stretches out his hands
cornucopia-like from the Potomac to the Rio Grande and from the Gulf to
the Ohio, inviting capital and effort to his virgin domains, which, if
properly protected, will in the future be a source of perpetual and
inestimable wealth; and which even now furnish to the South
approximately $400,000,000 per annum.
Phosphate is another king whose sway within his narrow domain is as
absolute as is that of cotton. The United States furnishes more than
half the phosphate rock of the world, and of this the South supplies all
but an inconsiderable quantity. This product, of vast consequences to
the agriculture of this section, is a comparatively recent discovery.
The active development of phosphate mining commenced in South Carolina
in 1868; it was greatly stimulated by the discovery of large deposits in
Florida in 1888, and has been attaining greater and ever greater
proportions since the exploitation of the immense bodies of rich rock in
Middle Tennessee.
And of like importance to cotton and phosphate is that modern industrial
triumvirate, coal, iron ore and limestone. These essential elements in
the production of pig iron are found in close juxtaposition in thousands
of localities from Birmingham, Ala., to West Virginia. In the latter
named state are twenty thousand square miles of coal; in Tennessee five
thousand; in Alabama still more, besides the smaller fields of Virginia,
North Carolina, Georgia and Texas.
A few years ago Henry Watterson was criticised as visionary for his
assertion that pig iron, which was then selling at Pittsburg at $20 to
$25 per ton, could be profitably produced in the South at $10 per ton.
Yet it has been sold on the market at Birmingham and other points at $7
per ton. This is rendered possible by the fact that two tons of iron
ore, two tons of coal and one ton of limestone can be bought in the
ground for an average of twenty cents a ton, or $1.00 for the whole. And
the consequence is that Southern iron is offered in the English markets
and on the Continent of Europe in competition with the whole world.
Besides the elements of wealth of prime importance, which have
heretofore been mentioned, there are many others, the aggregate of which
contributes materially to the riches of the South, such as cotton-seed,
tobacco, rice, leather, fruits, vegetables, cattle, wool, fine horses
and other live stock. But when all is said it is manufacturing which
produces most wealth; it is manufacturing which the South most needs,
and it is manufacturing which offers in the South a most attractive
avenue for investment. Textiles should accompany and follow the
production of cotton and wool. Steel should be made from pig iron and
machinery from both. Fertilizers should be manufactured in close
proximity to the phosphate rock; and furniture and fine finishing in
contiguity to the forests.
In all these directions the South has done and is doing much.
Twenty-five years ago Judge Kelley of Pennsylvania, “Pig Iron” Kelley,
predicted the coming power of the South in industrial pursuits, and
said, “The development of the South means the enrichment of the nation.”
What though a cotton mill remove from New England to that region of the
South which produces the staple; what though a furniture factory from
Michigan seek the incomparable forests of the South, or a boot and shoe
factory from any other section depart to the localities abounding in
hides and tanning bark; their places will be taken by other industries,
conducted by other men with new capital.
And the South has another source of wealth which has hitherto been
unsuspected, one which means additional annual income by the hundreds of
millions of dollars; one which represents a new industry in the economy
of the world, and a new source of supply for an ever-increasing demand.
It is the _production of sugar from the stalk of the common maize or
Indian corn_. The inherent interest in such a surprising announcement
and the far-reaching effects of the industry primarily upon the fortunes
and the commerce of the South and secondarily upon those of the world,
warrant, if they do not demand, a brief account of a discovery which
means a new departure in several different directions:
Several years ago Prof. F. L. Stewart, the eminent scientist of
Murrysville, Pa., discovered that, if the immature ears of corn be
removed at nearly the roasting ear period, a physiological change then
takes place in the plant. Its life is greatly prolonged and the vigor
which was previously expended toward the maturing of the grain is
thereafter directed toward the production of sugar, as certainly, as
uniformly, and to as great an extent as is the case of the ripening
sugar cane. As a consequence from twelve to fifteen per cent of sugar is
then contained in the stalk, instead of the five or six per cent which
it ordinarily possesses; and the yield is from 140 to 200 pounds of
sugar to the ton, while each acre will produce from twelve to seventeen
tons of trimmed stalks. And the cost of the production of sugar by the
Stewart processes is only one and a half cents per pound, as against two
and one-fourth cents from sugar cane and three cents from sugar beets.
And this is not all; the by-products are as valuable as the sugar. These
are paper pulp, cellulose, fine charcoal, stock feed and preparations of
value in the arts and sciences.
Here is food for thought indeed! How its application to the South
enlarges, for it is the South which is destined to be the main
beneficiary of this astounding discovery. Sugar cane cannot be grown
successfully farther north than thirty degrees of latitude; the sugar
beet cannot be grown successfully farther south than forty degrees of
latitude. This leaves a broad strip of ten degrees of latitude, mainly
in the South, in which sugar from cornstalks can be and will be produced
in enormous quantities. The North cannot share in the profits of this
industry, because its season is too short for the maturing of the sugar
in the juice.
The effect of this industry will be a revolution in the raising of corn
in the Southern states.
And what of the future of the South in its dealings with the countries
of Central America and of South America? But a few miles of railroad are
now needed to unite the two American continents, and but a few miles of
canal will cleave them in twain—union and disunion in commercial
harmony. Then will the South come into its own in the advantages of
foreign commerce which will not be restricted to its trade with the
western hemisphere. The Eastern and the Southern nations need everything
that we produce. We need nearly everything that they produce, and in the
ensuing reciprocity of the new order of things many indirections of the
present laws of commerce shall be straightened.
And yet—shall it be said?—there are those who fear that, in the hurrying
strife for wealth, the sterling qualities which characterized the old
regime may become atrophied, if not entirely lost. Such fears are futile
and unfounded. The present generation is not so immersed in its progress
that it is unmindful of the patriotism and example of its forbears; it
knows that the hope of the nation in former times rested in the South;
that its leaders were the bearers of the ark of the covenant and the
puissant directors of the policies of an entire country; to them and to
their history, biography and traditions do the present leaders turn for
inspiration toward the best achievement. And while industrial conditions
have changed, the South needs her sons to-day as much as when she
summoned them to the forum to maintain her political supremacy and when
she called them to the field to maintain her honor. And they will never
fail her.
SOCIETY OF THE FOREST.
(A STORY FOR CHILDREN.)
By M. W. Connolly.
AT MRS. FROG’S HOUSE.
On the bank of a clear lake that lay near the edge of a great forest
lived a family in a house all its own. This family consisted of Mr. Frog
and Mrs. Frog and a number of Baby Frogs. They lived very happily. The
books say that frogs are tadpoles at first, and the books are right; but
this is another family of frogs, as you shall see.
In the rear of their house stretched a marsh in the shallow waters of
which grew reeds, rushes, willows and water lilies. Here and there a
bulging gnarled and knotty cypress knee raised its head above the water.
Here and there rotted an old log, moss-covered and sodden. Here and
there lay a block of wood left behind by the hewers, a tuft of grass or
a mound of earth.
[Illustration:
Mr. Frog and Mrs. Frog and all the Baby Frogs visited this marsh.
]
Mr. Frog and Mrs. Frog and all the Baby Frogs visited this marsh every
night. They were fond of music and they gave nightly concerts. When the
sun slipped down behind the distant pines and tamarisks, and when the
stars came out to glisten in the heavens, the entire family left their
home and sought the marsh.
Mr. Frog always swam out to a cypress knee that rose a few inches above
the water. It was broad and flat and he seemed to like to lie on it.
Mrs. Frog used to sit on a log near by and all the Baby Frogs crowded
around her and tried to cuddle up to her. There was not room for all,
but the tiniest Baby Frog used to hop up on her back and lie there until
it was time to go home.
One of the Baby Frogs never mingled with the rest but hid himself away
in a tuft of grass. They said he was “odd.” Why he preferred the grass I
cannot say. He was morose and taciturn and probably wanted to be by
himself.
On dark nights the concert did not begin early. Mr. and Mrs. Frog and
all the Baby Frogs remained quiet and watched Will-o’-the-Wisp flash his
lamp about; or they listened to the cry of the witch-dog far out in the
marsh.
But my story deals with the moonlight nights, and on moonlight nights
the singing began early and lasted until midnight. Some people will tell
you that frogs sing all night and they sometimes do; but only sometimes.
These same people tell you that frogs croak, but I say they sing and you
can understand and enjoy their music quite as much as some of the grand
operas.
Mr. Frog usually began. He had a deep bass voice of which he was very
proud and when he flung out a rich tremolo, every one else hushed. You
could hear him ever so far up the lakeside, and Mr. Peckerwood said he
heard him on the other side of the lake.
Mrs. Frog once had a well-trained contralto voice of which she was a
trifle proud; but of late years she had so many babies to croon for that
she got out of practice and could not sing as she once could. She knew
how to sing and she knew she couldn’t sing. And this night she sang
worse than usual—she seemed out of sorts.
The “odd” Frog who went away to himself sang whenever he wanted to and
in the funniest way. He did not try to make music but just rattled like
an alarm clock. They let him alone because he was “odd.”
Another little Frog tried to sing, but he couldn’t. You would have
laughed, I am sure, to have heard him try. His voice sounded like a
piccolo into which someone was blowing who did not know how to play.
Another Baby Frog had a splendid tenor voice, but he was always trying
to sing as his papa sang. The result was that he injured his tenor voice
without ever learning to sing bass. People very often harm themselves by
trying to do what they cannot do and by leaving undone that which they
can do.
The other singer was a Baby Frog with a beautiful soprano voice. And she
sang, and sang her very best, whenever she was called on. Her singing
was the talk of the whole neighborhood and, at night, when all the Baby
Frogs were asleep, Mr. and Mrs. Frog used to talk of putting by
something with which to send her abroad and have her voice cultivated.
Whether they ever did so or not I cannot say.
The night of which I am telling you, Mr. Frog jumped into the water with
a plunk and swam ashore, the rest following him. They returned home and
Mrs. Frog soon had all the little Frogs tucked away in bed. Mrs. Frog
was restless and nervous, for some reason. She would pick something off
the dresser and lay it down again, mechanically. She would move a chair
there, and in a moment set it elsewhere. She would fold her hands and
sit down only to jump up in a few minutes and go hurriedly to do
something quite unimportant.
Meantime Mr. Frog, who had been out, came stumbling in quite angry and
demanded to know why the children had not brought in the kindling for
the morning’s fire, saying that he should not be left everything to do.
He did not notice the pained expression on Mrs. Frog’s face—people fail
to see these things, sometimes—and he busied himself in closing up the
house and fastening the doors and windows, after Mrs. Frog had shown him
the kindling wood in the shadow of the ingle. Mrs. Frog retired, but Mr.
Frog lay with his head in the doorway until daylight, and some say that
he slept with one eye open. How any one found out I cannot tell, because
Mr. Frog’s house was dark as pitch and only Mr. Owl could have seen; and
Mr. Owl is too wise to tell anyone if he did. The reason Mr. Frog
guarded the door is because Mr. Garter-snake lived in the neighborhood
and Mr. Garter-snake is a prowler and likes to feast on Baby Frogs
whenever he can find them. Mr. Garter-snake goes home at daylight and
never ventures out unless it is going to rain, when he crosses the road
in front of people to warn them to seek shelter. At daylight Mr. Frog
turned in and slept until high noon. A bright fire was blazing on the
hearth and Mrs. Frog was fixing breakfast, and the way she handled the
skillets and spiders and sauce-pans, and at the same time urged the
little Frogs to get ready for breakfast, was a caution.
Breakfast over and the things cleared up, Mrs. Frog was still restless.
Sit still she could not. The Baby Frogs irritated her. She would go out
and look about her in front of the door a moment, only to hurry back
again for nothing. Her face was pale and her eyes shone unusually. Once
she thought if she could scream it would do her great good. She was
looking and acting strangely, but Mr. Frog did not notice anything. She
announced her intention of going to visit Mrs. Rabbit who lived in the
briar patch across the lake. Mr. Frog was a little surprised but made no
objection, only observing that he hoped she would be home before sunset
as he could do nothing with the Baby Frogs when they got sleepy; and
that Mr. Moccasin-snake would be on the lookout for his supper as soon
as it was dark.
Mrs. Frog put on her things and powdered her face. She looked at herself
in the mirror a moment and then feverishly rushed to the bank and
plunged in with a ker-plunk that could be heard a long distance. She
kept deep under the water and would first swim this way and then that
way; now to the right and then to the left, and she came to the surface
a good distance from where she entered the water so that Mr.
Moccasin-snake, if he had been on a log in the sun waiting for her,
could not locate her. She looked back and saw Mrs. Turtle and Mr. Turtle
asleep on a half-floating cottonwood stump, and then she struck out
across the lake.
[Illustration:
—put on her things and powdered her face.
]
She had not gone far when she began to feel better. Her nervousness and
fever left her. She enjoyed a sense of freedom and liberty, and the
cool, clear waters were as a health-giving and soothing anodyne to her.
The sense of smothering and confinement which she found so oppressive at
home had left her, and her spirit expanded and reveled in its new-found
independence and she only regretted that Mr. Frog and the Baby Frogs
were not with her to enjoy her raptures.
AT MRS. RABBIT’S HOUSE.
Arriving at the opposite bank, which she clambered up in no time, Mrs.
Frog was feeling refreshed; she came to a road that fringed the lake,
and, crossing this, she came to the briar patch. She went up and down
the road, now entering one opening in the briar patch and then another,
only to find that they were “blind” and that they led nowhere. One after
another she entered these openings and had to come out again. She was
about to give up the task and return home and she was soothing her
disappointed feelings with the reflection that while she had not found
Mrs. Rabbit and returned her call, she had enjoyed the outing immensely
and had been benefited by the trip, when she saw a small opening nearly
covered by hanging leaves. After some hesitation she entered this and
found, to her great joy, that it was an arched pathway, well beaten by
travel, which led to the home of Mrs. Rabbit. She followed this until
she neared the house and saw Mrs. Rabbit standing in her front yard.
Mrs. Frog saluted her cheerily but Mrs. Rabbit pretended that she was
frightened and rushed in her house and hid in a heap in the darkest
corner. Mrs. Frog followed her in, exclaiming: “La! Mrs. Rabbit, you
need not hide. It is only Mrs. Frog that has come to see you and she is
not going to hurt you.”
Mrs. Rabbit came out and said: “Why, Mrs. Frog, I am so glad to see you.
I have been thinking of you and wondering if you never would come or if
you had quite forgotten me. You are looking so well. I really believe,
Mrs. Frog, that you are getting younger every day. I am sure you are
getting better looking. How is Mr. Frog and the children—the dear
things, how I would like to see them—how are they all?”
“The children,” replied Mrs. Frog, “are just as dear and sweet as they
can live; and growing? You never saw the like! Why, they are perfect
Jonah’s gourds, one would think, to see how they grow. And they are just
as bad! Not mean, you know, but just mischievous and into everything.
They run me wild, at times. But with all the trouble they give us, what
would life be without them? Dear me! This would be a sad place without
children. I needn’t ask how you are,” continued Mrs. Frog, “because your
looks speak for themselves and tell the story of your good health and
happiness. How are the dear children and Mr. Rabbit? I suppose he is
like my old man, grumbledy and fussy, but just as good as he can be. I
hope he will come in before I leave because I want to see him.”
There was an undertone of sadness in the forced mirth of Mrs. Rabbit’s
voice as she replied: “The children are all well. Now and then one of
them gets sick but it is only for a little while and it amounts to
nothing. Mr. Rabbit has gone to mill with a turn of corn so that I may
have flour to make bread for Sunday dinner. We usually have a good deal
of company on Sunday.”
Mrs. Rabbit said this with the faintest suggestion of vanity, and then
continued: “I am sure you must be famished after your long trip across
the lake. Dear me, how I wish I could swim.” (Mrs. Rabbit was only too
sincere in this.)
“Spread this mullein leaf over your dress to protect it. What a pretty
dress you have and it is so becoming to you. I always did like green.
Your appetite must provide the relish for what I have to set before you,
as I have only scraps to offer and it would keep you too long waiting to
cook something fresh. Somebody once said something in praise of a dinner
of herbs; but for my part, I would prefer something else.”
Mrs. Frog spread the mullein leaf over her lap and fell to with much
energy, but her thoughts were on her dress, of which she was very proud.
“I am glad you like my dress,” she said. “I like it very much. I got it
at a bargain, too, because I bought the goods by the quantity and made
dresses of the same material for all children and had quite a lot left
for mending. Children are so hard on clothes. This dress like all the
rest does not fit me. I suppose I must have an awful figure”—Mrs. Frog
said this, but did not mean a word of it; she was really proud of her
fine figure—“and the dressmakers never fit me. It is all right around
the neck but, you see, it is much too tight and binding across the bust
and it is not full enough about the hips; while the waist is baggy—it is
so loose, and,—dear me! if I wore corsets it would look like a meal sack
on a hoe handle, on me.”
[Illustration:
Mrs. Frog asked: “What is the news over this way?”
]
Mrs. Rabbit could not see the defects mentioned and concluded they were
imaginary. People frequently differ in opinion.
The conversation turned to general topics and Mrs. Frog asked: “What is
the news over this way?”
Said Mrs. Rabbit: “We never hear anything in this out-of-the-way place.
It is so quiet. The overflow has caused some suffering and one of Mr.
Fox’s sons, who had been stealing a farmer’s chickens in the clearing,
was killed the other night and his skin is going to be worn by the
farmer’s daughter next winter to keep her neck and shoulders warm. Mr.
Bear’s brother, who had been killing and eating the farmer’s calves in
the canebrake, was caught in a trap and shot dead. His skin is stretched
on the door of the farmer’s barn and his body is hung up in the
smokehouse near by. Mr. Woodpecker brought this news to us and warned us
to be on our guard because there are so many hungry animals abroad. I am
afraid to let the children out of my sight.”
“Well, well!” exclaimed Mrs. Frog. “That is too bad! But you know,”
continued Mrs. Frog, glancing furtively at her reflection in the mirror
and comparing her appearance with the appearance of Mrs. Rabbit, the
result of which seemed to please her, “you know the way of the
transgressor is hard. But really I must go as it is getting late.”
Mrs. Frog jumped up and made ready to take her departure, taking at the
same time a mental inventory of everything in the house.
Mrs. Rabbit begged her to stay longer, assured her it was quite early
and that she had plenty of time to reach home, and reproached her for
hurrying off. Mrs. Rabbit accompanied Mrs. Frog to the end of the path
through the briar patch and out into the opening on the bank of the
lake.
“You must come and see me again, soon,” said Mrs. Rabbit. “Come early
and spend the day and bring the children and I will keep mine home from
school and we will have a nice time.”
“I am coming right soon. You cannot keep me away because I enjoy these
visits hugely. I am sorry I did not see Mr. Rabbit and the dear
children. Now, I will not take no. You must come to see me soon; you
must.” Mrs. Frog was very emphatic.
“I’m coming before long,” said Mrs. Rabbit. “I’m coming, sure. I would
have been over before this but I cannot take a short cut across the
lake, like you, but must go around. And, since his son was killed, Mr.
Fox lives up at this end of the lake, which makes me go the long way,
around the lower end. And getting through the switch-cane is a job, I
tell you. When I brought home the coffee I borrowed from you it took me
until evening to make the trip. Mr. Bear has plenty of paths through the
switch-cane, but they run all which ways and you are coming home half
the time when you think you are going; but there is no way out of it
unless you could fly over it as Mr. Jaybird does when he goes over to
the deadening to tote down fire-wood for the devil on Friday mornings,
and the Cotton-tail family cannot fly nor even jump like the Jackrabbit
family. But I’ll manage to get there soon.”
They shook hands and kissed and Mrs. Frog plunged into the lake with a
ker-plunk and swimming gaily out a distance turned around and said:
“You must come soon.”
“I will, and you must come soon.”
Mrs. Rabbit watched her guest depart and when out of hearing almost
hissed: “Horrid thing! I don’t see what brings her here. I wish Mr.
Moccasin-snake or Mr. Hawk would come along and catch her. She just came
here to show that green dress because she knew neither myself nor my
children have a stitch to wear but these old grey gowns trimmed with
fur, and here it is the middle of summer.”
Mrs. Rabbit returned home just as Mr. Rabbit, who had been to mill with
a turn of corn to have ground into flour to make bread for Sunday
dinner, turned the corner.
MRS. FROG RETURNS HOME.
Mrs. Frog swam rapidly over the glassy surface and she noticed that a
golden pathway led from where she was to the sun that hung low in the
west at the other end of the lake. This narrow pathway she could not
cross, which alarmed her, as she fancied she was held fast by it, and
could make no headway. The ripples caused by her efforts broke this
golden mirror into many sparkling fragments; but, farther away, it lay
undisturbed and placid. On looking at the trees the other side of her
she saw that she was making excellent progress and that, instead of the
sun’s pathway detaining her, it was following her. Her alarm gave way to
gladness at being accompanied by such a splendid convoy—people sometimes
fret over the slow progress which they think they are making, when, in
reality, they are traveling very fast. She eluded Mr. Hawk and Mr.
Moccasin-snake by diving when near the shore and then hurrying up the
bank to the door of her house. On looking back she discovered that the
sun’s bright pathway did not follow her but remained below on the
lake—there are places into which things that we prize will not accompany
us.
On entering she found confusion and disorder. The dishes on which the
cold midday meal had been served lay spread on the table. The Baby Frogs
were unkempt and disheveled and some of them were crying. The youngest
one had cried itself to sleep. Mr. Frog was a sight to behold. He was
almost frantic and went about tripping over bits of furniture and
clothing that were strewn on the floor. His face was inflamed and he
greeted Mrs. Frog hoarsely with: “What on earth kept you so late? I
thought you would never come! These children have set me almost crazy
with their mischief and carrying-on. I wouldn’t put in another day like
this for anything. You shouldn’t inflict on me such misery when I told
you to be back before night.”
Mrs. Frog’s cheeriness, gained from her outing, was something abated;
but she set about to right matters and put things in order. She reminded
Mr. Frog that the sun had not yet set; but he did not hear, or feigned
not to hear her. He went out and hopped down the way to Mr. Toad’s
house, where he supped and talked about the coming election of a new
king of the forest, which was growing smaller every year. Mr. Lion and
Mr. Tiger and Mr. Wolf had gone away and it was reported that Mr. Bear
intended moving farther West because his only brother was dead. Mr.
Wildcat would be a candidate and so would Mr. Fox, but neither was
admired.
Meantime Mrs. Frog busied herself about the house. The Baby Frogs came
out from their hiding places where they had been driven, in terror, by
their angry father. She dried their tears and dressed them for supper
which she prepared. Deftly she put everything in place and restored
order and soon smiles and laughter returned to her little ones. She
waited supper until late and then told the Baby Frogs to eat and be
ready to go to the concert in the marsh when Mr. Frog came. She ate
nothing. After supper she waited until far into the night and one by one
the Baby Frogs fell asleep and were put to bed. When all was still and
the fire burned low she sat holding her Baby Frog that was considered
“odd” on her knee. She wondered if it were very wrong in her to go away
and enjoy herself as she had done when so much unhappiness resulted. The
thought came to her that Mr. Frog did not love her else he would have
reflected that the crosses and trials borne by him so impatiently for
one day were her usual portion and that she had to bear them every day
in the year and meet him pleasantly and with smiles in the evening or be
charged with ill-temper and making home unpleasant. She hugged her Baby
Frog that was considered “odd” closer to her. It had taken cold, because
left to sleep without covering while she was away. Then she blamed
herself and resolved never to go away again and fell to crying and
upbraiding herself.
Very late at night or early in the morning Mr. Frog came home in great
spirits. His countenance was beaming. He had tarried late at Mrs. Toad’s
house and halted on the way home to hear the songs of Mr. Whippoorwill
and Mr. Mocking-bird, and to see the fine display given by Mr. Fire-fly.
When he found Mrs. Frog crying he scowled at her and said gruffly:
“What’s the matter now? If gadding about has this effect on you, you had
better stay at home and not tire yourself out traipsing around seeing
people who care nothing for you.” Then he flung himself down to sleep.
Mrs. Frog, with her Baby Frog that was considered “odd” held close in
her arms, also went to bed where her tears flowed in secret. She did not
know the meaning of those tears; they came unbidden. She fancied she had
done something very wrong and she fell asleep only when exhaustion came.
It is most unfortunate that those who make sacrifices for others are
never noticed or given credit for them and that they are cruelly
reproached when those sacrifices halt, temporarily, or wholly cease. It
is most unfortunate that we inflict pain on those we love, in our
thoughtlessness, and that they suffer this pain without always knowing
its source.
EVERYBODY WHO IS ANYBODY.
[Illustration:
Mr. Squirrel and Mrs. Squirrel were invited and were glad to accept.
]
Mr. Peckerwood had been abroad early. Mrs. Rabbit was going to give a
dining and had commissioned him to invite her friends. Mrs. Rabbit had
baked up the entire turn of corn that Mr. Rabbit had taken to mill to
provide for Sunday’s dinner. Mr. Squirrel and Mrs. Squirrel were invited
and were glad to accept and promised to attend. Mr. and Mrs. Toad were
invited but were compelled to decline. In discussing the matter among
themselves Mrs. Toad observed: “We have lived long here in our own
simple way and have never gone in society. It was a hard struggle for a
time and no one thought of us or cared for us. We have always lived at
peace with our neighbors and we now have their good will; but, because
we have prospered, we have not changed our habits of life. We are
old-fashioned and we would be out of place in grand society if it is as
those who have been there picture it. Of course those present would be
very kind to us and do what they could to make us feel at home; but
their efforts would only make us sense the more keenly how unfitted we
are for such company. We are unused to gaiety and fine things and we
would be at a loss to know what to do and always fearful of making
mistakes. We had better remain as we are and where we are. Here we know
what to do and how to extract simple pleasure from our surroundings.
There, everything would be new and strange and untoward.”
Mrs. Toad said these things not without an effort. In spite of her, she
had a curiosity to see the fine sights in the upper and polite world.
Mr. Toad agreed with her and added: “They used to say every Toad,
however ugly, had a precious jewel in its head. Of late years this has
been disputed by the wise who call themselves scientists. You, my dear,
at least, vindicate the truth of the older claim. You have in your head
the precious jewel of sound sense and wise discretion.”
Mrs. Toad smiled and her desire to go vanished. The commendation of
those we love is always conciliating and soothing.
Mr. and Mrs. Frog were invited and Mrs. Frog accepted for the entire
family. She wanted Mr. Frog and the Baby Frogs to have a pleasant outing
and she was flattered by the thought that green dresses and white
stomachers would look uncommonly well. Frogs could not fly, but they
could swim and dive, and that is something the birds of the air cannot
do, she mused. She began at once preparing for the event.
Mr. Jaybird and Mrs. Jaybird were invited by mistake and they accepted
instantly and Mrs. Jaybird flew over to Mrs. Magpie’s home and told her
all about it and how she hated to go to the stupid function and be
bored, as she knew she would be; but, as Everybody who is Anybody is to
be there, she presumed she would have to attend. Mrs. Magpie received no
invitation; neither did Mr. Magpie, but Mrs. Magpie flew about and told
Everybody who is Nobody that _she_ would not attend such a meeting or
mix in with such company, and Everybody who is Nobody commended her
discrimination and solemnly declared that _she_ would not attend such a
meeting or mix in such company.
Mr. Beaver and Mrs. Beaver were invited, and Mrs. Beaver said that she
would attend to the R. S. V. P. later on. As soon as Mr. Peckerwood was
out of sight she came out of her house and slapped the water with her
flat tail, producing a sharp sound that could be heard a long distance.
Mr. Beaver, who was cutting into convenient lengths a tree he had felled
the day previous, so that he could roll it down the bank and use it in
strengthening the dam in front of his house, plunged into the water and
dived down to the door of his stronghold in alarm, thinking serious
danger impended and that the noise was the usual warning given by the
sentinels. He was met by Mrs. Beaver, whose face was lit up and smiling,
and who exclaimed: “What do you think! We have been invited to a dining
at Mrs. Rabbit’s and we are sure to have a good time. Everybody who is
Anybody will be there, and I don’t think we will have to take a back
seat for any of them. It is rather warm for furs, but it is late in the
season, and—furs are always furs.”
Mrs. Beaver was radiant and enthusiastic and she looked proudly at her
sleek coat, from which the water had almost disappeared.
Mr. Beaver looked at her for a while before he spoke, loth to lessen the
pleasure she found in anticipating so great an event, and then he kindly
but firmly said: “I do not like to differ from you. I dislike to.
Nevertheless, I do not think it is wise in us to attend Mr. Rabbit’s
dining. It is flattering to be invited to the tables of the great, but
it is unwise to accept attentions that cannot be returned. To return
such a compliment we are in no way prepared. To accept it would put us
under an obligation that we could not discharge, and we would be
carrying the burden of a debt we could not pay. Mr. Rabbit is wealthy.
He has a broad briar patch in which he is safe, and into which not even
Mr. Rattlesnake can enter. He has an abundance of clover and sweet
grasses and tender buds at his door and his home is spacious. But these
he neither created, produced nor builded. They were given him, and he
has no other interest in them save possession. With us, what we have we
produced by our own efforts. We cut down and hauled trees and fashioned
houses and dams. We are our own architect and builder. Unlike some
animals who claim to be much wiser than we and who design and build
houses for other people, while going homeless themselves, we provided
for ourselves and what we have is our own. So long as we guard it and
continue our custom of healthy, hard work, we will be happy. As soon as
we leave our narrow sphere we will meet trouble. Our bodies are covered
with rich fur that is seasonable enough, but our tails are covered with
scales, and strange company would not know how to take us. They could
not make flesh of one and fish of the other.” As he said this Mr. Beaver
felt much pleased with his own fluent rhetoric.
Mrs. Beaver, who had listened glumly, was silenced but not convinced.
She puffed up and said nothing. Her heart was set on going to the
dining, and no argument could change her. And the misery of it all was
her silence. Had she said something or done something; had she talked
back, or thrown a billet of wood at Mr. Beaver, it would have been a
relief to him. But she merely _looked_ and said nothing, and this was
killing.
Mr. Beaver returned moodily to his work, feeling that his philosophy was
weak and useless, and that there are times when it is better to be
unwisely happy than to be unhappily wise.
Mr. Chipmunk and Mrs. Chipmunk were invited. Mr. Swamp Rabbit and Mrs.
Swamp Rabbit were invited. Mr. Otter and Mrs. Otter were invited. Mr.
Mink and Mrs. Mink were invited. Mr. Groundhog and Mrs. Groundhog were
invited; but Mr. Groundhog excused himself, saying that he was afraid of
losing his shadow and becoming like the unfortunate Peter Schlemihl in
the story. Mr. and Mrs. Kildee, Mr. and Mrs. Redbird, Mr. and Mrs.
Sparrow, Mr. and Mrs. Dove, Mr. and Mrs. Quail were invited and Mr. and
Mrs. Humming-bird promised to look in on the company. Mr. and Mrs.
Thrush were invited, but announced that they could not sing, as they
were under contract, unless paid for it, or unless their manager, Mr.
Wildcat, was bidden as a guest, which, of course, could not be thought
of. All members of the Mocking-bird family were invited, and Mr.
Mocking-bird promised to bring his music, providing Mr. and Mrs. Linnet
were not of the party. Mr. Parrot and Mrs. Parrot and Mr. Goose and Mrs.
Goose were on the list to be invited; but they were later removed for
fear the one would repeat everything that was said and the other would
talk and gabble so much that nothing could be said. Mr. Rabbit suggested
inviting Mr. Stork and Mrs. Stork, old friends of the family, but Mrs.
Rabbit said that while they would be welcome as far as _she_ was
concerned, she knew that many of her friends who go much in society
would object.
On the day appointed all the guests attended and it was a goodly
company.
EVERYBODY WHO IS NOBODY.
As the invited guests arrived, some coming by water, some by land, and
some through the air—Mr. Squirrel and Mrs. Squirrel came through the
tops of the trees, sometimes jumping long distances from the limbs of
one to the limbs of another—Everybody who is Nobody crowded around the
entrance to the briar patch. Everybody who is _No_body had no tickets of
admission, but they surrounded the guests, and would have crowded in,
uninvited, were it not that Mr. ’Possum, with a large detachment of his
kinsmen, acted as policemen and drove them back. In spite of this and in
spite of the harsh means used to keep the crowd back, some of the guests
were jostled, crushed and injured.
[Illustration:
Mr. ’Possum acted as policeman and drove them back.
]
Everybody who is _No_body retired a short distance to a little knoll
that had been flung up by the uprooting of a great tree that had long
since rotted away. Everybody who is _No_body was anxious to appear on
the ground by mere accident; but Mr. Owl, who was looking on from a high
tree, knew they were all impelled by the same motive.
Mr. Muskrat and Mrs. Muskrat concluded early in the day that they had
opened more mussel shells than was really necessary, and that they might
as well take a walk and enjoy a holiday. They were the first to climb to
the top of the knoll, to dry their clothing, they said. Mr. Polecat and
Mrs. Polecat, Mr. Porcupine and Mrs. Porcupine, Mr. Turtle and Mrs.
Turtle, Mr. Weasel and Mrs. Weasel, Mr. Hawk and Mrs. Hawk, Mr. Gopher
and Mrs. Gopher, and, in fact, Everybody who is Nobody was there. Mr.
Buzzard and Mrs. Buzzard started on the way, but they were attracted by
the odor arising from a carrion that lay rotting far out on the
festering marsh. Mr. Rattlesnake and Mrs. Rattlesnake remained a short
distance away—there are exclusive folk in society where Everybody is
Nobody—and Mr. Rattlesnake made the buttons on his tail sound like a
fire of musketry when things did not suit him. Mr. Magpie and Mrs.
Magpie were dressed early and ready to go, but Mrs. Magpie began
gossiping with Mr. Crane, who had just swallowed Mr. Garter-snake and
prevented _him_ from going, and she forgot all about it until too late.
Mr. Fox approached very cautiously to where he could hear and to where
he could not be seen. Mr. Tarantula blundered in, but, discovering his
mistake, retired at once.
When all were assembled, Mrs. Muskrat observed that she was glad that
_she_ was not in the briar patch at the dining. She knew she could have
been invited if she had put herself in the way of it as some other folks
have done; but she had no use for Mrs. Rabbit. Mrs. Rabbit put on a
great many airs. She considered herself better than other people. She
shouldn’t forget that she married Mr. Rabbit, who is old enough to be
her father, for his property, and that, when she married him, she had
nothing but the clothes on her back. And since her marriage she has been
given but one new dress a year in spite of all her wealth. Mrs. Muskrat
averred that she believed in taking people for what they are and not for
what their ancestors were, and for which they should be in no way held
accountable; still, it was commonly known that Mrs. Rabbit’s grandmother
hired out.
Mrs. Porcupine ventured to say that it might be well enough to be an old
man’s darling, if he had money enough; but she did not believe in
becoming the slave of a house full of little ones, and the way Mrs.
Rabbit was surrounding herself with olive branches was positively
scandalous, and the talk of the entire forest.
Mr. Porcupine had been listening to the talk, and knowing that he had to
agree with his wife, laughed immoderately and applauded loudly. Other
animals have found it wise and expedient to do the same thing. In doing
this his quills penetrated the fur coat of Mrs. Polecat, who indignantly
exclaimed:
“Sir! I would have you remember in whose presence you find yourself. You
should select a more willing target for your murderous weapons.”
“Ah, Mrs. Polecat,” said Mr. Porcupine, not knowing the injury he had
done—some people never know the injury they do—“You possess a weapon and
wield it so effectively that it is much more cruel and painful than is
my poor quill. Mine is a sword stab, but there are torments and
sufferings greater than sword stabs.”
As he said this, Mr. Porcupine thought it an uncommonly fine speech with
an obvious meaning.
Mrs. Polecat was placated. Her anger was turned to pleasure. She, too,
thought it an uncommonly fine speech, and fancied that it meant that her
beauty was such as to inspire love and destroy the heart and peace of
mind of those who saw her. There are people in this world who are always
ready to take a veiled censure of a fault which they possess as a
compliment to an assumed virtue which they do not possess.
Mrs. Porcupine frowned and scowled. She knew what Mr. Porcupine meant,
but she frowned and scowled because Mrs. Polecat had misunderstood it
and had taken it as a compliment.
Mrs. Turtle, who had been waiting for a chance to speak, said she didn’t
see how any one could go about without reasonable protection. For her
part, she was not afraid of Mr. Porcupine’s quills, and she invited him
to come as close to her as he desired.
Mrs. Porcupine frowned and scowled again, and no doubt a pitched battle
would have ensued, had not Mr. Rattlesnake sounded an alarm, and slipped
away under a huge rock.
Just then two hunters, with their dogs, rode up, and—bang! bang!—Mr.
Porcupine and Mrs. Muskrat fell over dead. The younger hunter took out
after Mr. Polecat and Mrs. Polecat, but he was warned back by the elder,
who said that, like some people, the Polecats had methods of assault
against which there is no defense excepting distance, and that the part
of wisdom is to keep well away from them.
Mr. Turtle and Mrs. Turtle, in spite of their strong armor, were
captured and hung by whang leather thongs to the horns of the hunters’
saddles. Their heads were battered, but of course they did not die until
put in the soup-pot the next day. Mr. Hawk and Mrs. Hawk flew away and
the rest of the animals escaped with more or less injury, one way and
another, with the exception of Mr. Weasel, who was killed and his skin
converted into a purse.
[Illustration:
Mrs. Rabbit put on a great many airs.
]
It was many and many a long day before Everybody who is Nobody met again
to criticise their neighbors. It sometimes requires a great catastrophe
to teach a valuable lesson; but, once learned, this lesson is not soon
forgotten.
MRS. RABBIT’S DINING.
Mrs. Rabbit’s home was a delight to see when the guests arrived. Mrs.
Rabbit was a trifle tired and apprehensive. It was her first formal
function and she did not know how many “regrets” were in store for her.
(Some she knew would come, but others whom she desired to lionize gave
her concern. Their absence would mean disappointment and humiliation. If
some benign power would remove all the empty chairs from around the
table of a hostess who has made elaborate preparations for the
entertainment of guests who do not come, and who is not wholly certain
of her approaches, some of the bitterest sorrows would be removed from
earth and many a heart-break would be escaped. Such a spectacle,
presented to a hostess, not only stuns and stings, but corrodes.)
Mrs. Rabbit was not long in suspense. Her guests came, every one of
them, came in a crowd, and each one had something to tell about the
escape from Everybody who is Nobody at the entrance to the briar patch,
all of which pleased Mrs. Rabbit greatly.
Mr. Toad and Mrs. Toad were not expected. Mr. Beaver and Mrs. Beaver
were not missed. They were working people, and working people are seldom
much sought after until they cease working and become representatives of
working people.
Mr. Peckerwood was seen coming from far away across the lake. He would
soar high up in the air, remain poised an instant, and then plunge
headlong downward until near the earth, when he would gracefully glide
upward again. He moved as a light vessel moves across high billows
between which there are great troughs or valleys, now on the crest of
the wave, now in the deep chasm. He came on with a freedom and a swing,
describing a series of parabolas that were beautiful to behold.
On arriving he informed the party that an important engagement, he was
sorry to say, prevented him from remaining; but he would beat the drum
on a hollow tree from time to time to let them know where he was in the
forest.
Every one was sorry, and Mr. Otter remarked that he always noticed that
those who take the most active part in movements for good, and who do
most to bring these movements to a splendid result, seldom enjoy the
benefits and pleasures of their efforts. They sow and others garner.
They build and others occupy. They provide and others enjoy.
After a short silence Mr. Mink said that he had observed the same thing,
and, according to his way of thinking, it is small compensation to see
that those who take the most active part in movements for evil, and who
do the most to bring these movements to a climax, always escape before
the explosion comes and leave their followers and dupes to suffer the
penalties.
This is all that Mr. Mink and Mr. Otter said until time to bid their
hosts good-bye, and it is a great deal for either Mr. Mink or Mr. Otter
to say at any time, and especially on this subject, which, perhaps, had
better not be discussed on so joyous an occasion.
The evening was a pleasant one. Everyone present was delighted. Mr.
Mocking-bird sang his sweetest. He had no rival and few capable critics,
and he had the musical program all to himself. Mr. Frog thought and felt
secretly that he could furnish a pleasing variation with one of his
favorite bass solos, and Mrs. Frog was sure that if her Baby Frog of the
soprano voice were given musical advantages she would take the shine out
of any singer in the forest; but they were both too well bred to say
anything. Mr. Frog, indeed, chimed in with his bass once or twice, with
an stave or two, on the last line of the stanza, which he fancied helped
matters along famously; but, as he led the applause by crying out
“Bravo,” he excited no comment.
The dinner was bountiful and of such variety as to furnish each guest
that which he or she most desired—from great fish for Mr. Otter and Mrs.
Otter to blooming hollyhocks for Mr. Humming-bird and Mrs. Humming-bird.
Curious delicacies were served in tiny buttercups and in pale-tinted
morning-glories that had been kept in the dark and had not closed their
eyes. Corn was provided for Mr. Jaybird and Mrs. Jaybird from
“volunteer” stalks that grew in the farmer’s cotton patch near by.
Assorted nuts of excellent flavor were furnished Mr. Squirrel and Mrs.
Squirrel, and those who liked this kind of food.
Mrs. Rabbit laid great store by her bread, of which she was very proud.
It was not sliced and laid within reach of her guests, as is usually
done. Mrs. Rabbit put her left arm around a huge loaf, which she pressed
firmly against her breast and, with a knife in the other hand moved
about from guest to guest, cutting and serving each in turn with a
generous piece. As each guest politely praised her cooking and
housewifery her face beamed with pleasure, and she forgot all about her
old grey gown with its fur trimmings. The pleasure she felt she
communicated to those around her, and all were supremely happy until a
becoming hour for departure.
The guests went their several ways after many good-byes and promises to
meet again, and each was in the best of spirits. The day was long
remembered in the forest.
When the guests had gone and the little ones had cuddled down in bed
Mrs. Rabbit confessed that while she was tired, she had never enjoyed
herself as much in her life and, she added, “I never thought our
neighbors were such charming people. They all seemed delighted and
happy.”
Mr. Rabbit had eaten bountifully and was somewhat drowsy and his
philosophy may not have been wholly sound. Nevertheless, he said with
much gravity and deliberation: “Happiness is what the learned ones call
a personal equation. It rests largely with ourselves. Those who
selfishly seek it never find it. Those who give it to others find their
own store increasing in exact proportion to the amount they dispense.
Happiness is like the purse of Fortunatus that could never be emptied.
You were proud of your bread and with reason. It proved that you could
do one thing well and whoso does one thing well is master of many
things. When you sought to make others happy you found no trouble. In
making others happy lies concealed the secret of our own happiness. Your
neighbors have not changed only as you have changed them. The change is
in yourself. Whenever you feel morose, despondent and unhappy, set about
to do some one some good and joy will return; because doing good to
others is life’s chief luxury, and it never palls.”
By this time Mrs. Rabbit was nodding, but Mr. Rabbit did not notice it,
so interested was he in his own wisdom and so charmed by his own
eloquence. After a slight pause they both retired to enjoy a sweet and
refreshing sleep.
[Illustration]
SUNSHINE
CONDUCTED BY THE EDITOR IN CHIEF.
GREETING.
Hope leads the builders of this magazine to believe that its explosion
can be prevented by filling it with sugar instead of dynamite.
We propose to gather our cane mostly from Southern fields and run it
through Southern cane mills and sweeten as much of the world as possible
from Southern sugar barrels; but of course our doors are open to
Northern bees, Eastern butterflies, and Western humming-birds, and
suckers from everywhere.
We believe that sugar is better for the world than dynamite, and we
propose to barrel it in bulk so that every boy and girl who loves to
read a sweet story may dive into our columns with both hands and shout
as the boy did when he got into the sure enough sugar hogshead, “O, for
a thousand tongues!” so that every old literary bug who sighs for the
sweeter side of life may gambol among our granulated tropes and
pulverized similes and dream that he is the beautifulest ant in the
sugar bowl.
The journalistic market is glutted with explosives, it is overstocked
with poisoned arrows. We believe in the philosophy that “More flies are
caught with sugar than with vinegar.”
But while this magazine shall be a colossal sugar lump, yet its
management has a whole squadron of torpedo boats, and a huge quiver of
arrows for all the enemies of the South and a stupendous tank of vinegar
as large as all the tanks of the Standard Oil Company for the spiteful
spiders and blue-bottle flies of sectional journalism. But these weapons
shall never be used so long as sugar will melt in the mouths of men and
persuade unrighteousness to bridle its tongue.
With these sweet sentiments upon our lips we stand on the tallest tower
of our castle in the air and with our politest bow toss a large sugar
lump of greeting to every one who is wise enough to subscribe for BOB
TAYLOR’S MAGAZINE.
Fly in Your Own Firmament.
When downy-lipped youth first begins to peep through the knothole in the
temple of knowledge, he is the happiest of all mortals because his
vanity is unbridled and free.
He knows it all. When he “orates” on commencement day he robs the
gardens of rhetoric and twines their choicest flowers about the
beautiful, but hollow and flimsy columns of his speech. He misquotes the
classic poets and taxes the old philosophers with things they never
said. He twists the tail of history, strangles science, and spouts
wisdom never dreamed of by Solomon. His impassioned sentences are chains
of gold with blazing diamonds strung, and his tropes and similes cavort
like flaming meteors athwart the intellectual heavens. But after he
leaves the classic halls of college, and after a few hard bumps against
the rock walls of reality, and a few hard falls on the ice pond of
experience, his self-conceit springs a leak, his immense learning oozes
out, and his dream of kinship with the gods vanishes into the limbo of
the forever forgotten like a sweet scent before a high wind.
[Illustration:
His vanity is un’ridled and free.
]
And so runs the endless story of callow youth—a comedy of errors
reenacted by each successive generation, in whose quips and cranks and
boyish antics we see ourselves repeated as in a mirror, and we only
laugh and wish that youth might last forever—we laugh and enjoy its
beautiful vanities.
But our laughter melts into sighs as we recall the Persian poet’s
plaintive lines:
“Ah! that spring should vanish with the rose,
That youth’s sweet scented manuscript should close!”
Time but dissipates each rapturous dream, and the revelation of our
ignorance comes with the experience of riper years. Only once are we the
proud possessors of all knowledge and all wisdom, and this is in the
dreamy days of life’s happy morning. And yet, we never lose our
self-conceit as we advance in years; we only adjust our vanity to the
knowledge we acquire. We learn how to dodge some of the jagged walls of
trouble and to avoid some of the mud holes of calamity; but vanity still
lures us on in myriad paths of folly. Its most dangerous form is that
which conjures in men the delusion that they know _everything_, and that
they can turn from one field of effort to another without disturbing
their equilibrium and gather fruits and flowers with equal success from
all alike. This is the snag upon which so many little kites get hung.
As no single honey-bee can rob all the flowers of the land, so no one
mind can master all branches of knowledge. Nature has endowed humanity
with different aptitudes for different lines of labor. Indeed, she seems
to delight in infinite diversity. Ever true to this wonderful impulse of
variation she confers on mankind intellectual gifts as multiform as her
flowers—flinging them into the hovel as freely as into the palace.
[Illustration:
A hard fall on the ice pond of experience.
]
One individual has the gift of speech, another the gift of thought. One
talks without thinking, another thinks without talking. One man sees,
hears and notes everything; another sees and hears, but notes nothing.
He cannot recall whether he has been alive for the past hour or not; and
if his wife asks him what manner of gown Mrs. So-and-so wore last night
at the reception, he could not tell for the life of him whether she wore
any gown at all. One touches business and it turns to gold; another
touches it, and it turns to rags. One touches the button of politics,
and the doors of office fly open with a national hymn in their hinges;
another presses it, and the doors fly open to his competitor. One youth
whispers a magical word into the listening ear of a laughing girl and
lo! her little head of auburn curls falls upon his shoulder; another
youth whispers the same word to the same girl and lo! his head falls
into the sawdust! One fair maiden sings as gloriously as a lark in June
skies; another thinks she sings, but doesn’t—she only screams, and her
trills are a cross between a fife and a cane-mill as she twists her neck
and walls her eyes like a dying swan.
But there is scarcely a human being under the sun who is not blessed
with some special gift of mind for the achievement of success in some
special field of endeavor.
A good old farmer and his wife had four sons, and they believed that
three of them possessed talent which would some day make them great. But
when they came to poor John, the youngest of the flock, they agreed that
he was a natural born fool. Finally a sudden light beamed in the old
man’s face and with melody in his voice he said: “Nancy, I can say one
thing for John; he’s the best whistler that ever twisted wind into
music—by gum.” Here was nature’s compensation for lack of brains—for
John was endowed with a talent which is esteemed, in these modern days,
as one of the rarest among men—a talent which might some day make John a
sort of Eolian Orpheus whose slightest breath would open to him the door
of fame; for have we not recently read in the public prints of a
whistling artist in the person of a charming young woman who has taken
the music loving world by storm and whistled herself into the choir of a
rich and fashionable church?
How the hearts of the young male worshipers must thrill and palpitate
when she puckers her pouting lips to join in the sacred anthem. It must
be like the nectared melody of the nightingale dripping and tinkling
from the heart of a puckered rose.
Many a dull and sluggish youth, blinded by vanity, is to-day frittering
away the golden hours in some law college or medical school, who is
totally incapable by birth of ever grasping or assimilating the
principles of law or medicine, while under the leaf-fat of his stupid
brain some talent may lie sleeping, which, if aroused and called into
full play, might elevate him to the pedestal of glory as the champion
whistler of the world.
The man of one talent, if he develops and uses it intelligently, is
always the highest example of success, even in the humblest sphere. The
bootblack in the street, who, by his masterful touch, makes your shoes
reflect the sun, is as much an artist in his sphere and entitled to as
much credit as the man who made the shoes. The difficulty is that we
often rebel against Nature’s purpose, which if followed always leads to
success.
It is an old saying that “Fortune is fickle,” but there is not much
truth in the proverb. The trouble lies in the fact that human nature is
fickle and full of vanity; and we dream ourselves into the belief that
we can win applause in roles of life for which we have neither talent
nor adaptation. This is vanity, and the logical result is—limbs of the
law all leafless and briefless and weeping alone; business ventures
dodging the sheriff and sighing for a lodge in some vast wilderness;
medical aspiration hopeless and patientless in the valley of dry bones;
literary spirit with broken wings and tail feathers gone; and political
ambition with black eye and broken nose, sighing and singing wherever he
goes:
“I am nobody’s darling,
Nobody cares for me.”
When a young man comes to choose a vocation in life let him buck-and-gag
vanity and enter the field for which he is best adapted. Let him analyze
and synthesize himself and approximate as nearly as possible the
capacity of his mental powers. Let him study his own talent as he would
study a book and when he has determined upon his calling let him pursue
it without the shadow of turning, and he will surely win.
The Governor.
A good woman is the embodiment of man’s dream of the beautiful; a mean
one is a perpetual nightmare. They are the two extremes of melody and
discord, of wine and vinegar, of violet and volcano in every station in
life. All men stand with uncovered heads in the presence of a good
woman. Her prudence and modesty, her gentleness and purity, are her
shields from the low and vulgar; they are the heralds of her virtue and
innocence; they charm in her voice, they beam in her eyes, they are
eloquent in her actions and mingle and shine in the graces of her life.
She is the governor of every happy home and her throne is built of human
hearts.
A mean woman revels in strife and in the anguish of those around her.
She delights in the abuse of others and in mysterious actions that breed
suspicion. Treason lurks in her very eyes, the tracks of treachery are
in her every smile and her bosom cloaks a dagger.
A good woman often weeps and her soul is sometimes tossed with righteous
indignation; but she knows how to pity and to forgive. Sometimes she is
compelled to combat a wicked and self-willed husband, and to suffer the
stings of his tyranny and injustice; but when her virtues and goodness
assert themselves and the governor stamps her foot and demands her
rights she can always subdue him and lead him like a lamb.
But let a mean woman be installed as governor of the household, and on
the slightest provocation her eyes will flame with fury, an ashy pallor
will mantle her funnel face and she will roar like an approaching
cyclone; forked lightnings will leap from her frenzied tongue and strike
everybody and everything for miles and miles around; her shivering
husband is usually the victim, whether guilty or innocent,
And there’s nothing left, when the heavens clear,
But skin and hair in the atmosphere.
The chasm of calamity into which many an unwary lover falls in the leap
of matrimony is his ignorance of the woman who takes this leap with him.
She conjures him into the belief that she is an angel of light and
worthy to govern the world, when in reality she is a ferocious feline
from away back, a pussy of despair from the night’s Plutonian shore.
[Illustration:
Forked lightnings leap from her frenzied tongue.
]
Many a good woman, on the other hand, is deceived and cajoled by her
suitor into the faith that he is a saint on earth, a sweet spirit of
prayer, and fit only for the companionship of the seraphim and cherubim,
when, in fact, he is a carrion crow from far away, a beautiful buzzard
from Paradise Bay.
Happiness follows in the footsteps of a good woman as the flowers follow
in the footsteps of June; and laughter hand in hand with tears greets
her every day. All the pure and beautiful ideals of the heart, all the
chaste and tender emotions of the soul are her priceless jewels. Her
life is a willing sacrifice, and she passes from the morning to the
evening with blessings upon her lips and the light of peace and joy in
her shining train. She is the star that eclipses every sun and dispels
the darkness of every cloud. But it is hard to foretell results in the
Monte Carlo of love. He who ventures there is playing a hazardous game
and should not bet too high, for it is surely a game of chance.
Sometimes hearts are trumps, alas, sometimes clubs! Infatuation often
stacks the cards, the intoxication of overweening confidence sometimes
dims the player’s eyes, and even what seems to be a winning hand may
quickly lose the game. But blessed is the gambler in the perilous game
of marriage who wins a good woman for she is the richest stake ever won
by man in this world. She is the handmaid of the Lord, establishing his
kingdom in the home and linking earth to heaven every day.
Without her, nations would fall and civilizations crumble; without her,
all the suns and moons of love would darken and all the stars of hope
forget to shine; without her, charity would lose its sweetness, mercy
its tenderness and sentiment its very life; without her, the genius of
Phidias and Praxiteles never would have glorified the marble; Raphael
and Angelo never would have dreamed in immortal colors; Burns never
would have written his sweetest lyrics of love, and the dreams of
Shakespeare never would have blossomed into song; without her, home,
happiness and family ties would be but mockeries and the Christian
religion itself would perish among its worshipers.
The Lieutenant Governor.
The brightest stars in the crown of civilization are its pure and
virtuous homes. They reflect the wealth, the power and the glory of the
state and the nation. They are the culmination of man’s highest ideals
of peace and love and perfect happiness beneath the stars that shine
above him.
Within the hallowed walls of every home where children dwell, there is a
commonwealth of prattling science and toddling art and mewling music in
its mother’s arms. Dimpled genius, with heaven in his eyes, is playing
around many a hearthstone to-day; and under many an humble roof love is
rocking the cradle of a poet or an orator; heroes of the future are
fighting cob battles in the barn yard and statesmen of the years to come
are ruling republics and empires on the play ground of the public school
or in the society hall of the university.
In every well regulated home the governor of each commonwealth wears
dresses and the lieutenant governor wears pantaloons. The wife reigns
supreme. Her scepter is her slipper, under whose swing and sway juvenile
civilization often worms and squirms, firmly held across her lap face
downward; and one shake of the scepter thoroughly subdues the lieutenant
governor. ’Tis well! for what right has he to butt into policies of home
rule and to stick his nose into the prerogatives of petticoat
government?
A good husband’s dominion lies beyond the boundary line of the home. He
is supreme in the office, the shop or at the plow handles. His province
is to provide revenue and to fill the flour barrel. He must receive his
reward in the golden coin of kisses and in the exercise of the high
privilege of paying all bills, obeying all commands, and acknowledging
his eternal loyalty and devotion to the flounced and powdered governor.
It is only in her absence from home that he becomes great and seizes the
opportunity to exercise his veto power. Instantly all dusting and
sweeping cease until he leaves the house for a stroll; all romping and
frolicking and sliding down the banisters come to a standstill; all
practicing on the piano is suspended; and the changing of sheets and
pillowslips and putting rooms in order except once a week, are abolished
as nuisances. The acting governor reforms everything but his appetite.
He taps the exchequer and every meal must be a banquet at the peril of
the cook’s tenure of office. His reign is brief but glorious, and
business is dispatched in a hurry with the view of the early return of
the slippered and skirted governor. His old cronies flock into his
touseled and disordered bedroom every night to share his limitless
liberty and his boundless bonhomie. And often the jubilant uproar is
punctuated with the popping of corks and the clinking of glasses, while
the ceaseless rattle of poker chips emphasizes the ancient proverb that
“When the cat’s away,
The mice will play.”
And so each little domestic commonwealth has its lights and shadows, its
ups and downs, and its seasons of mal-administration. But when the real
governor again assumes the reins of power, a good husband, if he has
been guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors in office during her
absence, repents in sackcloth and ashes, and a good wife, after a
curtain lecture and a cry, always exercises the pardoning power and
restores the lieutenant governor to his former prestige and favor with
the powers that be, and again “all goes merry as a marriage bell.”
[Illustration:
Wandering in strange and unknown pastures of romance.
]
A good husband has his faults and foibles, and sometimes falls from
grace; but he is the salt of the earth when properly managed.
A mean husband is either a Nero or a zero; he either dethrones his wife
in the home and stabs his helpless and innocent little ones with curses
and cruelty, or starves them with cold neglect. He rules with sneers
instead of smiles—with blows instead of blessings, or strangles laughter
and love in his home with drunkenness and debauchery. How many wives
walk the floor every night waiting for footsteps they dread to hear! How
many children shiver in their rags and watch for brutal and improvident
fathers. God pity the home of the man who staggers out of the path of
righteousness.
A good man goes out into the world and bears the burdens of life with a
willing heart. If virtue sanctifies his home and peace and contentment
laugh and sing around his hearthstone, there is no anguish he will not
endure for the happiness of his children, there is no agony he will not
suffer for the sake of his wife, no sin of hers he will not condone save
one, and that is disloyalty.
Many a fortune has been lost in the lottery of love by drawing the wrong
ticket. Many a sweet home has been broken up and many a guiltless man
has been butted to death by the billy goat of Ananias as a penalty for
unwittingly wandering in strange and unknown pastures of Romance.
The Commercial Traveler.
Commercial travelers are the Eden builders of the world; they are the
evangels of human happiness; they carry heavens of pure delight in their
sample cases.
There are heavens of music in the rustle of their silks, heavens of the
beautiful in their laces and lawns, heavens of rapture in their spring
bonnets and jewels.
They are the tidal waves of commerce, the rolling billows of progress,
the trade winds of civilization. They touch all shores and never cease
to blow.
Many a castle builder presses their fragrant havanas to his lips and his
dreams turn to curling castles in the air. Many a dreamer sips their
mellow wines and lo! a thousand fairies with jeweled wings flutter in
his veins and flit among the flowers in the garden of his dreams.
Wherever the commercial travelers swarm there is honey in the gum and
the flowers of prosperity are in bloom. They carry the pollen-dust of
business on their wings and the honey of wealth in their grips. And
whenever they cease to hum about a town it is a sure sign that
prosperity is a withered blossom there and that there are weevils in the
gum.
The garden spider weaves her web among the honeysuckles and spins as she
weaves without distaff or loom. She stretches her radial warp of silvery
filaments and then lays on her woof. From the center outward she glides
in one continuous spiral, and as she crosses each radius of the warp she
touches it deftly with her foot as if to weld the viscid fiber.
And thus her shining net grows until it hangs suspended in the air, half
visible, half vanishing, like some phantom wheel of moonbeams.
The commercial travelers are the spiders of enterprise, spinning and
weaving without distaff or loom, swinging from town to town, from city
to city, from continent to continent; and they are weaving the golden
web of commerce around the world, drawing the nations closer together in
the warp and woof of universal love and the universal brotherhood of
man.
THE GATE IN THE GROUND.
BY ROBERT LOVEMAN.
At the end of the lane of joy and pain,
We come to the little gate,
The king and the clown, and the court go down,
Through its portals soon or late;
The peasant, the peer, the sage and the seer,
Depart when the hour comes round,
With a kiss and a sigh, and a last good-bye,
Through the little lone gate in the ground.
’Tis fixed by fate, we must pass through the gate,
The dear little gate in the ground,
At the end of our ways of nights and days,
It is marked by a grassy mound;
We bend o’er the bier, with a sob and a tear,
From the still lips comes no sound,—
We never can know, where God’s gardens grow,
’Till we pass through the gate in the ground.
[Illustration]
Lyrical and Satirical
CONDUCTED BY VERMOUTH.
THE RURAL SHEET.
The rural paper is a peach without a single doubt,
It is patent on the inside, patent medicine without;
Yet it giveth information both select and wide of reach
From a card of thanks for kindness to a double column preach;
It tells about the infant at the home of Bill and wife,
And it gives a thrilling storiette replete with love and strife;
It says the roads are passable though slightly out of shape,
An obituary notice names survivors wearing crepe;
It has a bristling column full of legislative news,
And when you have the cold or croup it tells you what to use;
Its special news to farmers is both choice and up-to-date
And it recommends the tablets that will keep your liver straight;
It is warmly Democratic and agin the robber class,
And although it hates the railroads it will sometimes use a pass;
The editor’s a pungent cuss and calls a spade a spade,
And he takes subscriptions right along in any kind of trade;
The paper is a weekly, but be careful how you spell,
And “drop around to see us when you’ve anything to sell.”
JIU-JITSU.
If newspaper stories relative to this strange and recently introduced
Japanese science are to be credited, Munchausen is henceforth the
standard Sunday school literature and the Arabian Nights prosy
historical narrative.
A squad or so of New York policemen were recently compelled to rescue a
Bowery mob from extinction at the hands of a burly young Jap, weighing
in the neighborhood of a hundred pounds, while an American, after a few
lessons, has solved the long delayed problem of the domestication of the
hind leg of a mule.
These things being true—and they are conclusively backed by
advertisements in magazines and insinuating approvals from the White
House, whose occupant in chief now never uses more than one finger on
the most strenuous opponent,—how many presumably settled social
institutions are longer secure? What, for instance, of the historic
traditions hovering around the revered institutions of mother-in-law and
cook lady? And what of the cherished monthly anticipation of the
horrific bill collector, the eleemosynary insurance agent and the
sad-faced representative of a worthy charity? Consider the epochal
iconoclasm involved in the passage of these time-honored social,
domestic and civic pests!
On the other hand, however, reflect upon the counter possibilities of
the parties enumerated becoming wise to jiu-jitsu before you!
Authorities state that the initiated can strangle a victim as readily by
a gentle pressure about the waist as by a strangle hold about the throat
and that the lower extremities may be hopelessly disarranged by a finger
gently exerted midway the spine. With casual instruction _sub rosa_, a
man’s wife might economically elect the tender and twining embrace as an
effective substitute for the divorce court, or might at pleasure convert
him into a permanent invalid while affecting to innocently scratch his
back.
That biblical narrative which has disturbed the faith of many of the
credulously reverent, wherein the ant inquires insinuatingly of the
elephant if he fully realizes the thoughtlessness of his disposition to
overcrowd or shove, in this sidelight of modern criticism, receives a
luminous and comforting ray of explanation and reassurance. The erring
faith of many honest but superficial doubters is further bolstered by
the reputed but till now little appreciated attitude of the elephant in
preferring to pass the observation as facetious.
Great is jiu-jitsu but greater still the higher criticism!
LAWSON OF BAWSON.
Who is it that’s yearning the people to save?
Lawson of Bawson.
Who murders the system and then digs its grave?
Lawson of Bawson.
Who is it hates lyin’ and fakin’ and sich?
Who can’t stand the plutocrats ’cause they are rich?
Who leads simple life at a Hetty Green pitch?
Lawson of Bawson.
Who is it that’s sporting the sportiest vest?
Lawson of Bawson.
And also disporting the chestiest chest?
Lawson of Bawson.
And who affects sparklers of forty-horse ray?
And puts up a thousand to buy a bouquet?
And who’d probably talk if he’d something to say?
Lawson of Bawson.
A HEART TO HEART WHISPER TO OTHER MILLIONAIRES.
The crusade of a few iconoclastic and revolutionary vulgarians to endow
libraries, cheap schoolhouses and retreats for cripples, old maids and
other unmentionables, should encounter our organized and unanimous
resistance. The conservatives and respectables among us are called upon
to sweep back the tide of delusion threatening our decent and
time-honored prerogative of making wills and having them broken for the
benefit of unknown collateral relatives, lawyers, chorus girls and other
common law tenements.
It is no less incumbent upon us as Americans and plutocrats to thwart
the disposition of meddlesome and impertinent persons of questioning in
print the wisdom of the Almighty in constituting us trustees without
bond for the great indigent and financial unwashed. Aside from the
blasphemous character of such delusions, expressed misgivings do nobody
good and actually mislead the public into a complete misconception of
the profound contumely of riches.
Those foolishly inclined to consider our lot a bed of roses, hyacinths
and Lawson pinks, will please reflect upon the dread uncertainty of not
knowing at what moment “one” may be precipitated overboard from a yacht
or be hurled to a violent finish from the back of a vicious polo pony or
perchance dislocate the spine on the palace stair or the inlaid floor,
or superinduce apoplexy by overindulgence in golf or bridge! And reflect
for a moment upon the hazard of the auto from infants and common
pedestrians getting tangled in the machinery! And how about being
written up in the putrid press and being called a congenital money maker
with pictures of some exceedingly primitive people called parents! And
how about being compelled to worry along without means to buy new hair,
new lungs and new stomachs? And how about irritating irregularities in
the water supply when the stock is famishing and how about the Sunday
school class coming in late after a peevish week in rebates?
Fellow plutocrats, aristocrats and autocrats, let us
steel—ourselves—yea, to callousness against the crime of being
misunderstood by the molten masses and betrayed from within by the
two-faced Tom Lawson!
HER SPECIALTY.
There’s a prejudice extensive ’gainst the Russian and his ways,
For the ruler or his people there is very little praise;
In the hurried march of progress they are badly out of date
(By the way, they’ve information on this subject just of late);
But with all their backward learning, yea, their sodden ignorance,
In one respect the Russians lead us all a merry dance
In a single branch of knowledge they can put us all to shame,
They can give us every face-card and then skin us at the game.
A high official undertakes a pleasant social drive
And it constitutes the last time he is ever seen alive;
In fact, the mere narration rather fills us with a dread,
For it is his last appearance, whether in the flesh or dead.
There’s a missile thrown, a loud report, and when the smoke is gone
There are not sufficient fragments left to pin a medal on;
There’s a gentle human drizzle, lasting frequently a day,
And they hold a tweedledeum o’er the dissipated spray.
To her style in execution as to neatness or dispatch,
There’s no other Christian nation that can hold a decent match.
HOW LONG?
To the patriotically inclined, the callousness of the public conscience
to reforms freely demanded by the popular welfare is indeed alarming.
Consider for example the supine indifference of the country at large
over the ignominious defeat in Kansas of a great moral measure to enact
the ten commandments into law! And that it was accomplished in the teeth
of a united support of a large, active and pious Methodist,
Congregationalist and Presbyterian lobby!
And who does not recall the humiliating failure of the Georgia patriot
to have passed a bill to protect the long neglected interests of bull
bats, turtles and other game birds hitherto and still entirely ignored
by that presumably enlightened commonwealth?
And while there was a low and sullen popular rumble in Tennessee against
a shameless lobby of centralized bachelors that by bribes, imprecations
and cajoleries smothered a _pro bono publico_ measure to tax their
immunity from the strenuous life, public sentiment is once more callous
and numb.
As a climax in corporate effrontery, however, as well as an extreme
illustration of popular lethargy, a Missouri bill to prohibit the
criminal practice of tipping waiters in hotels, restaurants and cafés
was ingloriously snowed under and that, too, in the face of the
lynx-eyed young governor. A cunning realization by the beef trust of the
impossibility of getting its unrighteous commodity before the eating
public with such a regulation in vogue, is no doubt responsible for this
grave popular misfortune.
Hence the inquiry, what of the times when the public continues
indifferent and when those who alone have the courage to essay the
people’s relief from the thrall of mammon and general unrighteousness
are to be derided as freaks or purchased, and nothing done about it!
[Illustration]
A CUBAN SKETCH
By Harvey H. Hannah.
“Anita, my child, the Alcalde declared last night at the market place
that the Americans would come to-day. I want you to braid fresh flowers
in your hair as your mother used to do, then take my hand, child, and
lead me down by the Plaza de Jesus, close by the fountain, that we may
await the coming of our friends.”
“But, father, my dress is all torn and ragged, and you are old and
blind; they will not expect such as we are to welcome them. They are
soldiers, father, and I am afraid of soldiers since the Spanish guards
beat you down at the Palace gate when you asked for alms.”
“Yes, I know, little one, they are soldiers, but they are American
soldiers, American volunteers who have come to liberate Cuba; then let
us hurry, child, and reach the Plaza before it is crowded.”
The old man was a Cuban reconcentrado, lame and blind and homeless, the
miserable creature of Spanish cruelty. The child that led him was his
grandchild, whose father was killed at “Royal Blanco,” defending the
Cuban flag. She was a typical little creole beauty, with face as sweet
as a poet’s dream, yet sorrow and poverty made her beauty pathetic.
Leading the old blind man, she entered the crowded Plaza, and whispering
to him, said: “Father, we are near the fountain, now, and your seat on
the stone bench is vacant.”
“Yes, my Anita,” said the old man, making the sign of the cross, “I hear
the gurgling of the water which the blessed Virgin gives to us poor
people to drink; now let me sit down and we will wait. There seem to be
many people on the Plaza to-day and from their voices they must indeed
be happy.”
“Oh! yes, father,” said the child, “I have never seen so many people
since General Wilder’s army was here; and all the ladies are dressed in
white and carry wreaths of flowers on their arms; and so many, father,
have little flags in their hands. I’ve never seen such flags before;
they are striped with red and white, and one corner is blue like the
sky, all full of silver stars. They are beautiful! and must mean
something good for our poor Cuba.”
“Yes, Anita,” said the old man, as a strange light lit up his face,
“it’s the flag of liberty, the American stars and stripes. Oh! that I
could only see them; but what is the cheering, child? What is the cause
of the people’s huzzas? Are the soldiers coming?”
“No, father, no,” said the little one; “but General Gomez is taking down
the yellow flag of Spain from the City Hall and putting up your liberty
flag—the one of the stars and stripes—in its place.”
“God be praised,” muttered the old man on the stone bench, feebly making
the sign of the Cross. He leaned back as if he had fallen asleep, but it
was a sleep from which no mortal could awake him. The old patriot’s
heart had when he ceased to beat, with happiness, knew that his unhappy
land was free.
Anita, thinking that he had fallen asleep, tried to arouse him, and
cried out to him, “Father, don’t go to sleep—don’t you hear the music?
And listen to the people’s cheer! Let us join in their cry, ‘Viva los
Americanos!’ Oh, father, here they come! Look! look! all dressed in blue
with that beautiful flag waving over them. See the ladies throw their
wreaths of flowers on the ground before them! Wake up, dear father;
please wake up. I will take the roses out of my hair and throw them,
too.” And holding the hand of the old dead man on the rock bench at the
fountain, little Anita threw her only rosebud to our Volunteers in Blue.
One soldier in the ranks saw the child and picked up the flower. It
brought to him memories of one back in Tennessee. The next day the city
officials reported the death and burial of an old pauper, with many
others, but the world never knew that the old man’s heart stopped
beating with happiness over his country’s freedom, and none inquired
what had become of the dark-eyed child who held his hand. Anita was all
alone in the street, but the Tennessean who picked up her rosebud
watched after her, and she soon became the pet of the American camp. New
dresses, new shoes, new friends, made in her a great change, and she was
soon the idol of the boys in blue.
But again Anita stands at the fountain in the Plaza de Jesus all alone.
The Tennessee Volunteers have been ordered home, they have done
everything in their power to leave the child comfortable and in tender
hands, but she follows them to the Plaza. Tears fill the eyes of the
boys as they tell her good-bye; the flowers seem to wither in her hair,
the smiles die on her lips, the old sorrow comes back in her eyes, her
soldier friends are gone, the liberty flag is gone; the old rock bench
by the fountain is empty; she is all alone on the Plaza to-night—poor
little Anita. How much like Anita is Cuba, and how much like Cuba is
Anita.
WITHIN A VALLEY NARROW.
BY INGRAM CROCKETT.
Within a valley narrow
I heard the vireo sing,
And many a white-crowned sparrow,
In silvery whispering.
The blue-eyed grass was gleaming
Upon a bank of green,
And drowsy winds were dreaming
The tulip trees between.
Above a pool unwrinkled,
Their faces fair to see
The sunlight o’er them sprinkled,
Leaned purple fleur-de-lis.
And with a grace entrancing,
Above the avens low,
White butterflies were dancing
In bright adagio.
And while for them a cricket
His silver strings did smite,
From out a wild-grape thicket
Was thrust a hand of white.
And thro’ the leaves uplifted,
I saw, a moment’s space,
Where dogwood blossoms drifted—
A dryad’s laughing face.
[Illustration]
LEISURE HOURS
For Conference Between the Magazine and its Readers.
Let us be mutually helpful. In this, the initial number of BOB TAYLOR’S
MAGAZINE, one of the dominant thoughts in our minds is that of friendly
reciprocity. You would not have subscribed to this periodical, we take
it, were you not friendly to it and to its editor.
We wish not merely to amuse you, but to help you; and we wish you to
help us, that, through us, you may help your own people, your own state
and section and the whole country. To this end we invite, for the use of
this department, communications on all subjects of unusual interest and
importance, such as:
Prose and poetry of sentiment, fact and fancy.
Forgotten or unpublished bits of history and tradition.
Anecdotes of famous men and women, and of quaint and curious
occurrences.
The best short stories and tales you have heard or read, if unusual or
unfamiliar.
Suggestions for the special benefit of BOB TAYLOR’S MAGAZINE, how it may
be improved, what it should contain, what it should omit.
Write us these things that all may profit by something of transcendent
interest to each.
Also ask questions of interest and importance on any subject. If we can
answer them, we will do so; and if we can’t answer them, we will invite
our readers to do so.
Address all such communications to Leisure Hours Department of BOB
TAYLOR’S MAGAZINE.
What a mine of hidden wealth there is in the unrecorded legends of the
South and the Southwest! What tales of the cavaliers of the Old
Dominion, of the mountaineers, of those modern argonauts who braved in
the wilderness more and greater dangers than did the fabled followers of
Jason, and whose descendants are now enjoying the golden fleece which
eluded their grasp! What of Oglethorpe, and Boone and Crockett,
Whitefield and Doak, Jackson and Sam Houston, Lafitte and Bowie and
Burr; of Lost Island, Barrancas and the Everglades; of the Creoles and
Acadians, and the thousand and one thrilling tales of the treacherous
red man! All these, and more, offer to the present and the future story
teller an inexhaustible supply of the purest ore for transmuting, fusing
genius.
And what gems of prose and poetry lie unnoticed in the literature of the
South! While other sections have given wide and constant publicity to
their writers and their writers’ productions (and it was their duty to
do so), the poets and the masters of prose of the South of former days
lie in forgotten graves and the dust of the library gathers thick upon
their unopened volumes.
What does the present generation know of Timrod, the “sweetest singer of
America?” What of Sims, pronounced by Poe to be the greatest writer of
romantic fiction since the time of Cooper? These are but two out of the
galaxy of unnumbered stars in the Southern firmament, and they are
mentioned merely to give point to the fact that suitable homage is not
being rendered to the lights of other days.
For many years has Governor Taylor desired to establish a magazine that
should be not only a medium by which to reach an audience as widespread
as the country itself, but which should also be a vehicle of Southern
expression, for the exploitation and advancement of Southern literature,
for the preservation of old time Southern ideals, and for the
dissemination of knowledge concerning the material resources and
advantages of this section of our country—this primarily. And,
secondarily, to breathe abroad a catholic spirit of patriotism,
uncramped by a scintilla of sectionalism (opprobriously so termed), of
envy, or of ill will to any one; but to carry to every home and to each
individual therein personally a message of peace, of harmony and of
happiness.
BOB TAYLOR’S MAGAZINE, like its editor, stands for the South and for the
sunshine that smiles on its beauty and ripens the fruit of its rich and
fertile soil. Every fair and precious possession of this section will
find representation and appreciation in these pages, and every uplift of
purpose, every outspreading of energy now working toward the development
of the South will receive the encouragement of this publication.
What the past holds in precious memory, great achievement and pure
ideals shall be cherished and held. But in a special sense BOB TAYLOR’S
MAGAZINE is working in the present and for the future. The record of the
last decade in the South has become the wonder of the industrial and
commercial world, but if the spiritual and intellectual development does
not keep pace with this material growth, the figures which record our
wealth and prosperity will be but the handwriting on the wall, warning
us of downfall and ruin.
It is, therefore, the purpose of BOB TAYLOR’S MAGAZINE to offer each
month, stories, poems and articles mined from the rich vein of Southern
sentiment and of Southern life; and these riches will be offered to an
audience as numerous and appreciative as any to which a Southern writer
can appeal.
A momentous change impends in the citizenship of the South, perhaps in
character, certainly in number. For the South is vibrant with energy,
its commercial interests have never before throbbed with such activity;
and never before has the need of intelligent labor been quite so urgent.
The negro, indeed, is here, and for certain kinds of work is the best
toiler in the world, if he be properly handled. For field labor, for
forest work, for outdoor rough work of every description, for numerous
kinds of inside work and for porterage and drayage, he is unequalled,
provided he be not given authority over others, or an official position
of any kind. In such event he becomes spoiled, foolish and useless.
To skilled labor in factories and mills the negro is not adapted, as a
rule, and is inefficient; and the manufacturing industries of the South
are growing apace. Extraordinary efforts are, therefore, being made to
divert to the states south of Mason and Dixon’s line a part of the
enormous flood of immigrants which for many years has been directed
toward the West and the Northwest.
And these aliens are coming South in ever increasing streams. Railroads
transport them; land agents urge them; commercial organizations invite
them, and farms and factories employ them—and what will be the result?
Let us see!
Until this horde of foreigners began to debouch upon the fertile soil of
Dixie, this section possessed the purest Anglo-Saxon blood, not only in
America, but in the world. In the area south of the Ohio and east of the
Mississippi, there were, and still are, fewer foreign-born inhabitants
than are found in the single state of Connecticut.
How will the South be affected by the new trend? Can it preserve its old
ideals and the purity of its blood, while utilizing the new elements in
the building up of its material welfare?
[Illustration]
BOOKS AND AUTHORS
CONDUCTED BY GENELLA FITZGERALD NYE.
THE CLANSMAN: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan. By Thomas
Dixon, Jr. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York. Price, $1.50.
BETHANY: A Story of the Old South. By Thomas E. Watson. D. Appleton &
Co., New York. Price, $1.50.
In considering these two books, it is impossible to avoid comparing and
contrasting them with each other. Both aim at historical study as well
as romantic presentation, and both are conceived from the Southerner’s
view-point of the great Civil War. Both writers are famous platform
figures, and neither, it may be conceded, is equipped by taste,
temperament, or training, for purely literary work. Both Mr. Dixon and
Mr. Watson have interests more absorbing than the production of artistic
fiction, and the novels of neither can fairly be judged by the higher
critical standards. One feels in reading the fiction of Mr. Dixon and
Mr. Watson that it is but the vehicle of a purpose other than literary,
and furthermore, that that purpose must be the presentation of truth.
And here it is that the gap between the two authors begins to widen, for
Mr. Dixon’s self-conscious rhetoric and platform appeal give the lie
even to unimpeachable history, while Mr. Watson’s narration has the very
accent of truth in its homely simplicity and utter absence of pose.
“The Clansman” opens upon the political ferment at Washington just
before Lincoln’s assassination, and Lincoln, Stanton, Thaddeus Stevens,
and other prominent men of that period are depicted in somewhat daring
detail of characterization and narration. With the revolution of the
national policy which followed Lincoln’s death, the scene is shifted to
South Carolina, where the horrors of reconstruction and the heroic work
of the Ku Klux Klan are painted in Mr. Dixon’s most highly colored
rhetoric. We have no disposition to belittle the tragedy of that period
in the South, and there is no doubt that the secret organization known
as the Ku Klux Klan did save the Southern people from much indignity and
degradation, but the manner of Mr. Dixon’s narration has not the dignity
of truth, and, however true his individual instances may be, the effect
of the story is not that of truth. The note of heroic determination and
impressive mystery which dignified the mummery of the Ku Klux Klan into
a power to save Southern civilization and protect Southern womanhood,
Mr. Dixon misses entirely, and his treatment, like a tawdry bit of
gilding, vulgarizes what it touches.
“Mr. Dixon, in literature, has repeated his successes of the pulpit and
platform,” his publishers’ note informs us, and it is so far true that
he has repeated in his novels the methods of his platform and pulpit
successes. But save in the commercial sense, it cannot be said that Mr.
Dixon’s work in fiction is a success, and it stands justified only by a
prevailing bad taste and his own and his publishers’ pocket-book.
“A Story of the Old South”—we may be pardoned for a slightly tired
feeling on reading those words on the title page of “Bethany,” but the
first chapter is reassuring in its sturdy presentation of middle class
Georgia life, simple, unpretentious, plain, and absolutely uncolored
with the grandeur, so familiar in “befo’ the wah” fiction. It is
refreshing to read such passages as these:
“We Hortons were a family of middle class farmers. We had never been
anything else. We never expected to be anything else. Our condition was
good enough for us. We had plenty of land. We had always had it.... Yes;
we had prospered; and had always been independent. We were not rich, you
understand: just comfortable; with good farms, fat stock, and likely
niggers We owed no debts; we had a few hundred of dollars in pocket,
ready for an emergency—such as a request for a loan to some friend who
might have got into a temporary ‘tight’ by betting on the wrong horse,
or by trying to make four queens beat a straight flush....
“So far as we came into touch with the outside world at all, we were
indebted to Bethany—a little, one-horse hamlet, where we worshiped and
got the mail. Bethany had a granite depot on the Georgia railroad.
Bethany had a post office. Bethany had a dry-goods store and two
doggeries. Anyone who wished to run a horse race, fight chickens, play
poker, or throw ‘chuck-a-luck,’ could do so at Bethany.
“The mansion in which we lived was a very modest affair. It did not, in
the least, resemble a Grecian temple which had been sent into exile and
which was striving, unsuccessfully, to look at ease among corn-cribs,
cow-pens, horse-stables, pig-sties, chicken-houses, negro cabins, and
worm-fenced cotton fields. It did not perch upon the top of the highest
hill for miles around, and browbeat the whole community with its
arrogant self-assertion. No; ours was just a plain house and none too
large, not built out of bricks brought over from England, but of timbers
torn from the heart of the long-leaf Georgia pine.”
In this vein Mr. Watson proceeds to give a picture of the plain Georgian
and his environment, which has all the charm of personal reminiscence
and the weight of historic truth. One feels in reading these simple
annals of the Hortons of Georgia that just so they must have lived and
not otherwise, and the last paragraph of the first chapter describes for
us the effect of Mr. Watson’s portrayal:
“It all rises before me complete as a picture, vivid as a flash of
lightning—a plain, unpretentious, comfortable, happy Southern home of
the old regime—and like a castle among the clouds it is gone forever,
even while I gaze; just as the republic of our fathers, of which that
old home was a typical part, is gone, forever gone.”
In Georgia, perhaps, this sturdy middle class exercised a more potent
and pervading influence over social and political life than was the case
in other Southern states, and its flavor and quality are reproduced to
the life by Mr. Watson. As we read his record we see what was perhaps
the most practical realization of the democratic ideal of society which
this democracy has yet produced—a community of Anglo-Saxon blood, rugged
manhood, gentle womanhood, simple habits and neighborly fraternity. Mr.
Watson gives us the picture of this period with no reservation or
exaggeration,—its beauties and its blots, its virtues and its vices, its
development and its limitation, and throughout his work there is a rare
mingling of impartial honesty and the sympathetic touch of close and
intimate knowledge and association.
The political agitation of the two years previous to the war in Georgia
is reproduced carefully and effectively by Mr. Watson, and the Toombs
and Stephens struggle set forth clearly and skilfully. The pen portraits
of these great Georgians are sharply and strongly outlined, and may be
regarded as of historic interest and importance. A spicy and forcible
chapter is that describing a political barbecue at Bethany at which
Toombs and Stephens spoke, and of which the festivities were further
marked by an eye-gouging affair between two drunken patriots. We see in
Mr. Watson’s narrative the various currents of Southern sentiment and
their irresistible convergence into the tide of secession, and the
Southern attitude is strongly justified as a logical result of the
Northern breach of contract in refusing to obey the Fugitive Slave laws.
“As to the right of secession,” says Mr. Watson, “no one denied it....
With Adams, Webster, and Calhoun harmonized in favor of secession, it
did seem that the principle must be sound.”
The second part of Mr. Watson’s book, and not the more interesting,
treats of the war and a rather shadowy love affair, pitched in the key
of the sentimental songs of that period, with their faded flowers,
mocking-birds, and pathetic partings. The story of the war is told
briefly, with no prejudice or passion, from the gallant days of hope and
victory to the last sad struggle against the inevitable. There is no
swagger of tone, no attempt at glamour in these war pictures, but a
faithful and forcible presentation of what that time meant to the common
soldier and the South. Indeed, the whole book has a historic value as a
truthful study of an interesting period of Southern and national life,
and with no pretense of literary art, it has a distinct charm of simple
narration and vivid reminiscence.
THE LAW OF THE LAND. By EMERSON HOUGH, Author of “The Mississippi
Bubble,” etc. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis. Price, $1.50.
There is no lack of excitement in Mr. Hough’s latest novel—intrigue,
mystery, villainy, a negro uprising, a Mississippi overflow—these
succeed each other rapidly and bewilderingly, and there is “something
doing” in every chapter. The scene is the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta,—“the
richest region on the face of the whole earth,” “the heart of the only
American part of America”—and the race question in its intensest and
most picturesque form is the theme of the book. From a dramatic and
artistic standpoint, the theme and the setting are well chosen, and in
the description of the negro gathering in the forest at the call of the
savage drum and the half-hinted horrors of the revenge of the whites,
there is the unmistakable thrill of literary power and skill.
The conventional hero is a railroad claim agent, rather an original role
for a Southern hero of romance, and a thoroughly good fellow he is, but
the masterpiece of characterization is that of Colonel Calvin Blount of
the Big House,—rough, brave, chivalrous, lordly, ruling over his wide
acres with the imperious will and open-handed generosity of a feudal
baron. His trial for murder in a lynching case is the culminating point
of the book, and Eddring’s speech in his defense presents the author’s
solution of the race problem in the South. “The law of the land” must be
transgressed sometimes in the letter that it may be kept in the spirit,
and Colonel Blount is acquitted of the murder which he committed in view
of the horrors which negro rule would bring to Southern civilization.
There is nothing new or profound in Mr. Hough’s treatment of the race
problem, but in presenting it as it exists in the lower South in its
most extreme form, he has availed himself of excellent material for
dramatic romance. To the average American the life to which Mr. Hough
introduces us in “The Law of the Land” will seem as strange and foreign
as a glimpse into the jungles of Africa, but it is real, if exceptional,
and Mr. Hough’s vivid picture may disturb the academic theories of New
England to some extent. Had the author spared us the treatise on the
race problem as embodied in Eddring’s defense of Colonel Blount, the
novel would have been lightened by so much dead weight of argument and
rhetoric. As it is, “The Law of the Land,” leaving out the tinselly plot
on which the heroine’s identity and fortune depend, is a good story of
dramatic power, picturesque description, and strong characterization.
THE MASTER-WORD. A Story of the South To-day. By L. H. HAMMOND. The
Macmillan Company, New York. Price, $1.50.
This, the first novel, of a Southern woman, bears no mark of immaturity,
feminine weakness, or sectional prejudice. The style is notably compact
and finished, the handling strong and restrained, and the grasp of
philosophic breadth and impartiality. Mrs. Hammond is something more
than the clever woman who, in such numbers, is pervading the literature
of the day—she is clearly a woman who can think closely and deeply, and
her literary work has a real solidity of substance and significance. She
has given us in “The Master-Word” a strong and original story, direct
from her own thought, experience and observation, though it does not
prove always humanly convincing or artistically satisfactory.
“The Master-Word” is a problem novel in a double sense, for though the
race question is the theme with which it is chiefly concerned, the sex
question figures also in a subordinate way. Both problems are solved by
the writer with the master-word, Love, not Law—Love that suffers,
sacrifices, and conquers, not Law that judges, condemns and punishes.
This idea is wrought out with psychical insight and vigorous reasoning,
and as a thesis is eminently satisfactory, but the story which is the
medium of its illustration does not always ring true, and moreover is
weakest at the crucial points.
Margaret, the young wife of Philip Lawton, a prosperous and aristocratic
lawyer and farmer of Tennessee, discovers suddenly the fact of her
husband’s criminal relations with a mulatto woman and his fatherhood of
the latter’s child, a girl about the age of Margaret’s own daughter. She
refuses to forgive and their estranged relations continue till he is
stricken with pneumonia. At his deathbed the love she thought dead
revives, and she forgives, as she realizes that the master-word is Love,
not Law. This scene, by the way, is strongly reminiscent of the
concluding chapter of “The Mettle of the Pasture,” where the dying
husband delivers himself of his stagy and unnatural monologue.
After Philip’s death, Margaret, as a sort of reparation in Philip’s
name, conceives the idea of taking his illegitimate negro child,
deserted by its mother, under her protection and care, so the little
quadroon girl is brought to the Lawton home and placed in charge of Aunt
Dilsey, the old mammy, who proclaims it her grandchild. There Viry is
reared, playing with the Lawton children, sharing much of their life,
but recognized as a “nigger” and treated on that basis. She is sent, as
she grows older, to a negro college, where she learns rapidly, and
finally comes back to the Lawtons and Aunt Dilsey, dissatisfied and
embittered, frankly hating the race with which she is classed, but
attached by the strongest affection to Bess Lawton, her half-sister. She
becomes a teacher in a negro school, but holds herself aloof from the
negroes, and grows more bitter and desperate. Bruce Carleton, the lover
of Bess, is the object of her secret passion, and the savage, bestial
strain in her make-up comes out in her plan to attract him and hold him
in what to him would be a purely sensual tie. Finding out that Bess
really loves him, however, she renounces her purpose, and, hopeless of
happiness, tries to commit suicide. Then comes the culminating point of
the book in the disclosure to Viry by Margaret of the secret of the
former’s birth. Margaret lays bare her own suffering and her husband’s
sin and makes a powerful appeal to the girl to accept her maimed and
burdened life and make it in some measure an atonement and a redemption.
Viry’s heart is reached at last, and she, too, bows to the master-word,
Love, which means for her a life of service and loneliness. The race
line must not be obliterated—this is made plain, and Mrs. Hammond’s
argument is notably strong and unhackneyed. Margaret’s reply to Viry,
when the latter, “the red blood burning in her face,” throws up to her
the existence of three million mulattos as a proof that instinct is not
against the union of black and white, is the most convincing and
complete answer to that plea that has yet been presented.
It seems to us unfortunate that Mrs. Hammond should have chosen to base
her story on an incident at once so repulsive and so untrue as that of
Philip Lawton’s criminal connection with the degraded mulatto. For,
under the conditions described and set forth by the author, the case of
Philip is so absolutely untypical and strikingly exceptional that its
use as the foundation stone of so serious a story seems an amazing
blunder of judgment, taste and ethics. Then, again, it is hardly
conceivable that a woman of Margaret’s training and temperament, would
have found her duty in bringing her husband’s negro child into her own
household in constant contact with herself and her children. The step
seems forced and unnatural in the highest degree, and no less so appears
the wife’s disclosure of her husband’s shame after so many years to the
quadroon girl. Nature, womanhood, taste, all revolt against such a
situation. Reality is sacrificed to theory, and Margaret becomes the
author’s creature, not her creation; her spokesman, not a natural woman.
Viry, too, is not quite genuine to our perceptions, and can certainly
not be regarded as a typical product of her blood and environment. At
best her story is an extreme case, put in its most extreme terms.
The phosphate region of Middle Tennessee is the scene of the story, and
its peculiar conditions of labor and the twists and turns of local
politics are presented with a keen and trenchant touch. The young people
of the book are an extremely natural and agreeable set, and the love
affair of Bess and Bruce is as fresh and wholesome as the fine country
air that pervades the book. Bruce is really a wonder for a woman’s hero,
being neither cad nor prig, but merely a straight and likable young
fellow with human faults and failings. Aunt Dilsey is at once a
photograph, a phonograph, and a sympathetic sketch of the old-time negro
mammy.
There is a looseness of construction, a prolixity of trifling incident,
at certain portions of the book which at times weaken its interest, and
it is evident that purely artistic ideals were not its chief
inspiration. Still, when all is said, its merits far outweigh its
faults, and it is well worth the serious criticism it will receive. It
testifies strongly to the writer’s brain and skill and arouses interest
in her future work.
THE SECRET WOMAN. By EDEN PHILLPOTTS. The Macmillan Company, New York.
Price, $1.50.
The comparison to Hardy has become a commonplace of any criticism of Mr.
Phillpotts’ literary output, and the comparison carries an inevitable
distinction and disparagement. The distinction is that Mr. Phillpotts is
the one writer worthy to be called a disciple of the Wessex chronicler,
and the disparagement is in the differentiation at once apparent in the
similarity. Primitive nature, physical and human, is Mr. Phillpotts’
theme as it is Mr. Hardy’s, and the primal passions in rustic life are
the elements of both novelists’ tragedy and comedy. But though one man
may want and try to make from the same material the same things as
wrought by another, it is out of his power to do so, and Mr. Phillpotts’
work lacks the strength and seriousness of Mr. Hardy’s. In the first
place, the colorless irony of the older writer, epitomized so perfectly
in his title, “Far from the Madding Crowd,” is lacking entirely in Mr.
Phillpotts, and the latter’s florid descriptions and psychologic
analyses fail of the Hardy effect because of this lack. The personal
note of Mr. Hardy, ironic, accentless, incisive, is the salt to his
magnificent dish of natural elements, without which their strength and
freshness would pall upon the taste. And as a literary artist, too, Mr.
Phillpotts falls below his master. Despite the wealth of natural
description with which he burdens so heavily his narratives, there is
nothing that touches the Hardy landscapes in power and artistic truth.
The wonderful and haunting picture of the moor in “The Return of the
Native” is Hardy at highwater mark, it is true, but there is nothing in
the Phillpotts gallery that can even be compared to it.
“The Secret Woman” is a story of human frailty, passion, crime, and soul
struggle, set in the rocks and glades of Dartmoor. An illicit love
between a married man and a beautiful and pagan-hearted girl is the
basis of the plot, and the murder of the man by his wife in a fit of
jealous rage is the first act of the tragedy. A touch worthy of Hardy
occurs in the interview between husband and wife just after the latter’s
discovery of the man’s unfaithfulness, when a sudden gust of wind and
rain drowns the wife’s voice as she offers pardon, thus through the blow
of blind fate sealing the husband’s doom. The murder is witnessed by the
two sons, but is kept secret, though it divides the brothers and fills
the mother’s life with a never-dying repentance. The figure of the
murderess, Anne Redvers, and the study of her character and soul
development, are the most elaborate and striking work of the book, but
it is Salome, “the secret woman,” and her intrigue with the dead man,
unknown and unsuspected, that furnish the motive for the drama. In
striking contrast are the two women, one dark, stern, conscientious,
softening and mellowing through sorrow and repentance into sympathy and
forgiveness, the other fair, conscienceless, self-indulgent, swayed but
by emotion and passion.
Jesse, one of the sons of the murdered man, loves this girl, his
father’s paramour, and she becomes his betrothed, driven to this step by
poverty, though she never intends to marry him. This intolerable
situation is finally ended by his confession to Salome of his mother’s
crime which has darkened his soul, and this is followed by Salome’s
reckless disclosure of her love and sin to Anne Redvers, whom she
denounces as a murderess. Anne goes to prison gladly, Jesse kills
himself, and Salome lives on, constant to her dead lover and incapable
of repentance. Truly Mr. Phillpotts has not spared us a possible horror.
We have, of course, the rustic comedy beneath the tragedy—the artless
peasants, their quaint talk and ancient superstitions; and the figure of
Joseph Westaway, the shiftless, tender-hearted incompetent, bravely and
unreasonably optimistic amid crowding misfortunes, is very nearly a
masterpiece of portraiture.
In this terrible drama, Mr. Phillpotts offers us in succession the
various theories of materialism, Old Testament theology, pagan
indifference, and simple, unquestioning faith in a divine power. Each is
presented with admirable impartiality, its play upon the story being
merely an aid to the desired dramatic effect. At the last, the struggle
is between Anne and Salome, and the former who has found peace in
Christian faith and atonement, makes her appeal to Salome to seek
comfort and salvation by the same road. Finally Salome promises to take
the sacrament, but as she kneels at the sacred table, her heart is
unchanged—
“A man’s voice suddenly ended the silence and—echoes from a far past—his
words fell upon her ear strangely. All solemnity has perished from them.
The Commandments tinkled like a child’s little prayer at bedtime....
Light rained down and quenched the candles and touched the petals of
exotic flowers. The air of the sanctuary was sweet with them; but
Salome’s thoughts harboured in the dust.”
AMERICA, ASIA AND THE PACIFIC. By WOLF VON SCHIERBRAND, PH.D. Henry
Holt & Co., New York.
The interest of the ancient and of the mediæval world centered around
the Mediterranean. Recall the names of the states that fought for and
obtained the trade of that sea and you have the history of civilization.
Egypt, Phœnicia, Greece, Carthage, Rome, Venice, Spain, one after
another, played the leading role. With the discovery of the new world
the scene shifted to the Atlantic and England shouldered her way to the
limelight. Now, it seems, another new world and a richer has been
discovered. It happens also to be the oldest world and the last act of
the drama is to be played on the Pacific, the widest stage of all.
Before the whole world as audience, the nations are contending for the
prize—the trade of China. Which one is to get it?
Mr. von Schierbrand contributes to the solution of this question a very
entertaining and instructive volume. From his standpoint, which is a
most interesting one, the importance of the trade of the Far East to
ourselves is not to be overestimated. The wonderful productive energy of
the United States makes the need of new markets imperative. Four hundred
millions of Chinese can furnish us such markets. Basing our figures on
the precedent of Japan, China, if she would, could buy of the world
$35,000,000,000 more. Her mineral wealth, still undeveloped, is greater
than that of North America.
The author’s masterly marshaling of the means and the methods necessary
to increase our commercial opportunities is the feature of his book. The
political school to which he belongs and to which an immense majority of
Americans belong, if the recent election meant anything, studies, at the
same moment, the tonnage of the battleships and the quality of the
cotton blouse on the Chinese coolie’s back. It carries us around the
immense circle of the Pacific and calls the roll of the powers and
principalities of the future—Canada, America, Java, Sumatra, Celebes,
Borneo, Australia, the Philippines, Japan, China, Siberia,—and asks
which of the nations shall share with us these riches. England’s claim
the writer dismisses with few words. England is conservative and
decadent. Russia is more dangerous. She aims to absorb all Asia and
close the door in the face of the world. The writer has an interesting
discussion of the Russo-Japanese war in the course of which he prods the
English again for not choking the Russians while they can.
Germany he pronounces our most formidable rival. German industry,
frugality, patience and skill have brought her up since 1870, when she
was purely an agricultural state, to the front rank in manufactures and
in foreign trade. It may be added, parenthetically, that she is making
persistent efforts to free herself from the American cotton monopoly.
Turning to the Japanese, the writer mentions a fact whose significance
is little appreciated in America. Japan practically monopolizes now the
trade in manufactured cotton with China, and, what is still more
significant, she gets nearly all her raw cotton from India.
What is the secret purpose of Japan? Nobody knows. Does she see herself
supplanting the wornout Manchu dynasty and leading the millions of the
East to the mastery of Asia by the strength of her military genius? Will
she then shut the doors to the outside world, as, in the sixteenth
century, she shut her own? The writer makes light of the so-called
Yellow Peril, arguing that Japan does not wish to exploit the latent
military strength of China, but aspires to lead her in the path of
industrial progress after the Western models upon which Japan has
fashioned herself.
Mr von Schierbrand ignores the underlying spiritual differences that
separate the Oriental from the European, differences that will always be
the cause of hostility, open or veiled, between them. After all it is
not so important who is to get the trade of the East but what are the
ideals that are finally to prevail there—the Christian ideals or
Oriental fatalism. It could be wished that the author felt more interest
in such discussions. One is tempted to quote against him his own words
in another connection: “Beside the mad passion for gain there is no
charm in rest, lettered ease, travel, still less in labor for the
general good—charity, education, the state; the ruling passion must rage
on, business must be expanded regardless of profit and with eyes closed
to impending loss. Instead of making ourselves more homes and more
beautiful things and cultured people in them, we cherish the tenement
house and the narrow life, and go on piling up and shoving out what we
are pleased to call goods, goods, goods.” It is well enough to chasten
ourselves with such reflections as we go on with the author to weigh the
claim of the United States to the lion’s share in the trade of the
Pacific.
The author bases our claim on the strategic advantage which the Panama
Canal is to give us, and this part of the book is unquestionably most
interesting to the South. The relation of the richest granary in the
world, the Mississippi Valley, to the Canal will rid it of the need of
railways. The canal will bring New York closer to the west coast of
South America than San Francisco, and New Orleans will be seven hundred
miles nearer still. The commercial availability of Southern coal and
iron will be immensely increased and the harbors of the South will
assume an importance long withheld from them as ports of call.
The book as a whole is well written, and the last chapters, which
summarize the author’s conclusions, especially so. What he has to say
about public opinion and of the force, more universal still, the primary
need of the human race of food, which together share the sovereignty of
the modern world, is well said and more philosophical by far than is
usual with the books of the imperialists.
L.
THE COLOR LINE. By WILLIAM BENJAMIN SMITH. McClure, Phillips and Co.,
New York.
It is always a satisfaction when what has been dumbly felt is put at
last into a clear-cut scientific concept. This is what William Benjamin
Smith has done for us with his book on the negro problem. The South has
always felt that the problem was not one involving philanthropy or the
rights of man or any sort of altruism. Those are considerations that
have to do with individuals. The negro problem is purely a question of
race. As Mr. Bagehot pointed out in his clever book, “Physics and
Politics,” the differences existing to-day between the Aryan races and
the negro are greater than any causes now acting are capable of creating
in present-day men. The laws of heredity are not fully known, but it is
certain that the descendants of cultivated parents have an inborn
aptitude for civilization due to the structure of their nervous systems.
The uncivilized races do not improve; they have not the basis on which
to build, but instead have inherited natures twisted into a thousand
curious habits, a thousand strange prejudices and a thousand grotesque
superstitions. The moment it is admitted that the difference between
white and black is the product of evolution the hope of bridging the
difference by education is gone. That it must be admitted is the thesis
of Mr. Smith’s book, which ought to be read by every man and woman in
the country who is open to reason. Once admitted, the conclusion follows
swiftly and irresistibly. The duty of the white man to maintain in its
purity the germ plasm of the white race justifies the denial of social
equality to the black man. This is a duty which no sentimentality can
excuse for it is a duty to civilization, to posterity, to the country.
Neglect it, and mongrelization follows inevitably. We quote from the
book: “It is this immediate jewel of her soul that the South watches
with such a dragon eye, that she guards with more than vestal vigilance,
with a circle of perpetual fire. The blood thereof is the life thereof;
he who would defile it would stab her in her heart of hearts, and she
springs to repulse him with the fiercest instinct of self-preservation.”
Mr. Smith has brought to his argument a wealth of learning and research
which places his book in the rank of an authority on a much
misunderstood question.
L.
THE PURSUIT OF PHYLLIS. By JOHN HARWORD BACON. Henry Holt, New York.
Price, $1.25.
Tom Mott, a clever literateur of New York, is ordered to take a rest by
his physician, and goes abroad to seek recreation and relaxation. At his
London hotel, he finds in his dresser drawer some letters addressed to
Miss Phyllis Huntingdon in the handwriting of an old chum, and impelled
by a Quixotic impulse, he determines to restore them to their owner in
person. From London he proceeds to Paris, thence to Marseilles, through
the Mediterranean to Port Said and the Orient, very much in the style of
an up-to-date Gabriel and Evangeline affair, always finding at each port
that Miss Huntingdon’s departure had antedated his arrival by a few
hours. Finally his quest is rewarded at Colombo on the island of Ceylon,
where he meets Phyllis, a ruddy-haired, winsome young woman, who is
likened successively by the imaginative Mr. Mott to a dish of pink ice
cream, a rosy-tipped peony, and the summer girl on a magazine cover.
They come back together across the world, ending the trip, after the
excitement of a misunderstanding and a quarrel, in orthodox fashion. A
lively trifle of globe-trotting and philandering is “The Pursuit of
Phyllis,” easy to read, and disarming criticism by its utter lack of
seriousness and significance.
DAPHNE AND HER LAD. By M. J. LAGEN and CALLY RYLAND. Henry Holt, New
York. Price, $1.25.
A story told in letters—the brilliant and showy correspondence so much
affected in fiction and so rarely indulged in in real life. The writers,
too, are newspaper folk, a man and a woman, each editor of a woman’s
page, and we mildly wonder how they ever found time to sacrifice so much
good “copy” to private correspondence. At first, the exchange of letters
is but a journalistic flirtation between two unknown personalities, and
it is maintained and continued to the point of intimate self-revelation
and ardent lovemaking before the writers meet in the last chapter. The
disclosure and denouement of the conclusion come with somewhat of a
shock to the unsuspecting reader who has followed the airy persiflage
and sentimental outpourings of these industrious letter writers with no
thought of such a tragic ending as that on which the curtain falls. It
was Stevenson who said that to give a bad ending to a story meant to end
happily, or vice versa, was an unpardonable literary crime, and we must
hold the authors of “Daphne and Her Lad” guilty of this offense. The
story was not framed along the tragic lines which logically or
artistically lead to hopeless misery, and the final impression is
disturbing and ineffective.
THE MILLIONAIRE BABY. By ANNA KATHERINE GREEN. The Bobbs-Merrill
Company, Indianapolis. Price, $1.50.
A startling crime, innumerable clues, the gradual elimination of every
reasonable and plausible theory, and the construction of the wildest,
most improbable explanation to fit the problem—these are the lines on
which the detective stories of Anna Katherine Green are invariably
framed, and “The Millionaire Baby” is no exception to the rule. A little
girl, heiress to an immense fortune, is kidnapped during a garden fete
at her parents’ palatial home on the Hudson, under most unusual
circumstances, and the reader is at once lost in a labyrinth of
mysterious old men, magnetic ladies, amazing coincidences, and secret
chambers. The way out is pointed ultimately by a young detective, and
the reader emerges feeling rather “sold.” Despite the writer’s
unspeakable rhetoric and crude methods, her stories have a way of
getting themselves read, and a large constituency will welcome “The
Millionaire Baby.”
TENNESSEE HISTORY STORIES. By T. C. KARNS. B. F. Johnson Publishing
Co., Richmond, Va.
The writer belongs to that loyal band of missionaries who are spreading
abroad among the children of the nation the knowledge of the importance
of the western chain of settlements on the Tennessee and Kentucky
frontiers in the history of the United States. The stories he tells of
John Sevier, of James Robertson and Daniel Boone, while written for the
children, are well worth reading and the book is sure to earn a place in
the curriculum of the primary schools.
THE FIDDLE AND THE BOW.
By Robert L. Taylor.
We dream of a heaven beyond the stars, but there are heavens all around
us with beautiful gates ajar to those who have eyes to see and ears to
hear. I have seen heavens of delight where the meadows flashed with dew
and the crows were on the wing. I have seen heavens of music where the
linnet swept her lute and the thrush rang his silver bells in the dusky
chambers of the forest.
I once sat on the grassy brink of a southern stream in the gathering
twilight of evening and listened to a concert of Nature’s musicians who
sang as God hath taught them to sing. The katydid led off with a
trombone solo; the cricket chimed in with his E flat cornet; the
bumble-bee played on his violincello, and the jaybird laughed with his
piccolo. The music rose to grandeur with the deep bass horn of the big
black beetle; the mocking-bird’s flute brought me to tears of rapture,
and the screech-owl’s fife made me want to fight; the tree-frog blew his
alto horn; the jar-fly clashed his tinkling cymbals; the woodpecker
rattled his kettledrum and the locust jingled his tambourine. The music
rolled along like a sparkling river in sweet accompaniment with the
oriole’s leading violin; but it suddenly hushed when I heard a ripple of
laughter among the hollyhocks before the door of a happy country home. I
saw a youth standing there in the shadows holding his sweetheart’s hand
in his. There were a few whispers, tender and low—the lassie vanished in
the cottage—the lad vanished over the hill, and as he vanished he swung
his hat in the shadows and sang back to her his happy love song:
“My thoughts will fly to thee, my own,
Swift as a dove,
To cheer thee when alone,
My own true love.”
And the birds inclined their heads to listen to his song as it died away
on the drowsy evening air.
[Illustration:
I saw a youth holding his sweetheart’s hand.
]
That night I slept in a mansion
“I closed my eyes on garnished rooms
To dream of meadows and clover blooms,”
but while I dreamed, I was serenaded by a band of mosquitoes and this is
the song they sang above my pillow:
“Buz-z-z! buz-z-z! no bars around this bed,
Buz-z-z! buz-z-z! no hair upon this head, mosquitoes,
Buz-z-z! buz-z-z! we’ll paint old baldy red,
There’ll be a hot time in the old town to-night!”
There are heavens all around us with beautiful gates ajar. I have seen a
June morning unbar a gate of roses and come forth from her palace in the
sky bearing in her girdle of light the keys to a thousand heavens. I
have seen her kindle a sun in every dewdrop and touch the waking hills
with glory. I caught the odor of honeysuckles and the note of a lark as
it rose exultant from the meadow. There were the glimmer of painted
wings among the clover blossoms and the hum of teeming bees rich with
the spoils of plundered beauty. There were the green trail of a winding
river and the low music of its joyous waters dashing among the rocks of
distant rapids. I heard the shouts and splashes of noisy boys down at
the old swimming hole under the spreading elms. An old time darky went
shambling by, with his cup of bait and his fishing pole. The wine of
June was in his veins and he tangled his song with the honey song of the
bees:
“O, my Hannah, lady,
I do a-love-a you!
They ain’t no baby
So good and true!
In Louisiana I could die,
If you wuz only nigh!
O, tell me, Hannah, lady,
Whose black-a-baby is a-you?”
And he cut the pigeon wing in the clover and then sat down on a
bumble-bee. It invited him to rise, and he rose; and it was difficult
for the old man to tell which was the warmer—the June in his heart or
the June in the bumble-bee.
[Illustration:
He cut the pigeon wing in the clover.
]
[Illustration:
The convict’s plea for pardon.
]
A lovesick lad met his sweetheart down in the shady lane and poured out
his soul to her under the locust bloom. I saw him push his boat from the
shore and dip his oars in the clear heaven of the crystal waters. She
was his only companion. And as the painted keel darted away like a bird
beneath the bending boughs and went skimming round the bend of the river
I heard their voices blending up among the cliffs and shadows singing a
sweet love song. To him, she was a full blow’n rose of beauty; to her,
he was a daisy. To him her ribbons were streaks of light; to her his
fuzzy upper lip was a poem. They floated and fished and fished and
floated away the golden hours; and while they fished and floated, he
wooed her—he wooed and he wooed and he wooed—until, at length, he won
her; and, as they floated homeward in the evening, dreaming of wedding
bells and orange blossoms,
He held her soft little hand in his,
Smoothing her hair so brown;
The boat struck a rock and they both fell in,
Just as the sun went down!
I looked upon these scenes of light and love and I walked in the heaven
of the beautiful, the somnambulist of a rapturous dream.
O, matchless dream maker, voluptuous June! Enchantress of the sun, Eden
builder of the world! There is a magic in thy touch which melts the
icicles in the veins of age and makes the tropic blood of youth run
roses.
There are heavens all around us with beautiful gates ajar: I have seen
October open a gate of opal and I walked in the heaven of autumnal
glory. I have seen her splash the forest with the tints of a thousand
shattered rainbows, and then draw the misty veil of Indian summer—that
mysterious phantom of the air that conjures the sunlight into yellow
amber and turns the world into a dream.
I joined the farmers in the jubilee of the county fair, and walked
through streets of pumpkins, purple avenues of turnips, and fragrant
boulevards of onions, enough to bring the world to tears.
There was the sound of the hunter’s horn at the break of day. I mounted
my gallant steed and galloped away to the rendezvous, and every breath
of the cool, crisp October air was like a draught of exhilarating wine.
The hunters assembled at the appointed place, the eager hounds were
unleashed and they scurried away like ghosts in the gloomy woods. They
coursed and circled like flying shadows—now and then giving tongue as
they took up the scent of some cold and doubtful trail. Faster and
faster they circled, until they jumped the fox from his covert and
opened in full cry, and it was like a sudden burst of music from a band.
Away they bounded, bellowing their deep-mouthed serenade to the wily
knight of the red plume, who showed them a clean pair of heels. They
pushed him up the rocky steeps and pressed him down the dusky hollows,
they swung him through the highland gaps and whirled him round the
ridges. Over the hills and round the knob Sir Reynard led the band until
the waking echoes caught up the flying melody and sent it pulsing from
cliff to cliff and from crag to crag! On fled the fox with tireless
leap! on followed the hounds with smoking mouths! On and on, over hill
and dale, through forest and field until finally the music died away
like the chime of distant bells!
How sweet are the lips of morning that kiss the waking world; how sweet
is the bosom of night that pillows the world to rest; but sweeter than
the lips of morning and sweeter than the bosom of night is the voice of
music that wakes a world of joys and soothes a world of sorrows. It is
like some unseen ethereal ocean whose silver surf forever breaks in
song. All nature is full of music. There is a melody in every sunbeam, a
sunbeam in every melody. There is a love song in every flower, a sonnet
in every gurgling fountain, a hymn in every rolling billow. Music is the
twin angel of light, the first born of heaven, and mortal ear and mortal
eye have caught only the echo and the shadow of their celestial glories.
[Illustration:
He wooed and he wooed and he wooed.
]
The violin is the poet laureate of music—violin of the virtuoso and
master, fiddle of the untutored in the ideal art. It is the aristocrat
of the palace and the hall; it is the democrat of the unpretentious home
and humble cabin. As violin, it weaves its garlands of roses and
camellias; as fiddle it scatters its modest violets. It is admired by
the cultured for its magnificent powers and wonderful creations. It is
loved by the millions for its simple melodies.
One bright morning just before Christmas Day, an official stood in the
executive chamber in my presence as governor of Tennessee, and said:
“Governor, I have been implored by a poor, miserable wretch in the
penitentiary to bring you this rude fiddle. It was made by his own hands
with a penknife during the hours allotted to him for rest. It is
entirely without value, as you can see, but it is his petition to you
for mercy. He begged me to say that he has neither influential friends
nor attorneys to plead for him; and all that he asks is that, when the
governor shall sit at his own happy fireside on Christmas eve with his
own happy children around him, he will play one tune to them on this
rough fiddle and think of a cabin far away in the mountains whose
hearthstone is cold and desolate and surrounded by a family of poor
little helpless ragged children, crying for bread and waiting and
listening for the footsteps of their father.”
Who would not have been touched by such an appeal? The record was
examined. Christmas eve came. The governor sat that night at his own
happy fireside, with his own happy children around him and he played one
tune to them on that rough fiddle. The fireside of the cabin in the
mountains was bright and warm. A pardoned prisoner sat with his baby on
his knee, surrounded by his happy children and in the presence of his
rejoicing wife. And, although there was naught but rags and squalid
poverty around him his heart sang,
“Be it ever so humble,
There’s no place like home.”
When I used to play the role of governor of the old Volunteer State, I
often felt the stings of criticism for the liberal use of the pardoning
power. But I saw old mothers with their white locks and wrinkled brows
swoon at the governor’s feet every day. I saw old fathers with broken
hearts and tear-stained faces and heard them plead by the hour for their
wayward boys. I saw a wife and seven children clad in tatters and rags
and barefooted in midwinter fall down upon their knees around him who
held the pardoning power. I saw a little girl climb upon the governor’s
knee and put her little arms around his neck and I heard her ask him if
he had little girls; and then I saw her sob upon his bosom as though her
little heart would break and heard her plead for mercy for her poor,
miserable, wretched convict father. I saw want and woe and agony and
anguish unutterable pass before the gubernatorial door. And I said: “Let
this heartless world condemn! let the critics frown and rail, but he who
hath power and doth not temper justice with mercy will cry in vain
himself for mercy on that great day when God shall judge the merciful
and the unmerciful!”
SOUTHERN
PLATFORM
DEPARTMENT
CONDUCTED IN
THE INTEREST
of THE LYCEUMS
of THE SOUTH
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Southern Platform]
The aim of this department is to present to the readers of BOB TAYLOR’S
MAGAZINE, and particularly to those who are directly interested in the
Lyceum, all obtainable information with reference to the bright lights
of the platform—the men and women of real genius, whose work has
contributed to the establishing and development of an interest in that
higher and more wholesome entertainment to which all enlightened
communities are rapidly turning, from the coarser and more purposeless
forms of amusement. This being a department devoted to the particular
interests of the platform of the South, it is our desire to give special
attention to all worthy attractions which include the South in their
field of operation. We shall not “puff” the unworthy for a price, but
among those who come to the Southland with the genius and the power to
instruct, entertain and uplift us, there shall be none too poor in
pocket to command our columns and our full energies for the exploitation
of their merits for the benefit of the public. Our people are wide
awake, and the South is no field for the marketing of gold bricks and
wooden nutmegs, whether they be moulded in Dixie or manufactured in the
land of Yankee Doodle. While the Southern tongue is the quickest to
condemn a fraud or a fake, the Southern hand is the readiest to place
the laurel wreath on the brow which deserves it. As in everything else,
the jewels of the platform are very rare. There are too many paste
diamonds mixed with the real—too many so-called stars which neither
shine nor sparkle. Let us seek out the real and genuine sparklers, and
throw the light of our approval upon them, that they may glint and
glance on the platform for our pleasure and edification.
[Illustration:
THE ROYAL ITALIAN BAND OF TWENTY-ONE MUSICIANS.
This Band is to come South next fall for the first time, and it will
undoubtedly be one of the popular hits of the season, and one of the
strongest attractions offered.
]
[Illustration:
OPIE READ
Who will tour the South the coming season under the direction of The
Rice Bureau, of Nashville.
]
Opie Read, author, humorist, playwright and philosopher, known and
beloved by Americans, rich and poor alike, not only in his own
Southland, but all over the great West, and the East as well—his is
indeed a name to conjure with. As an entertainer, Mr. Read has been a
surprise even to his most sanguine friends. Very few who write clever
stories can read them in a way to evoke either tears or laughter, and
when an author who has gained his reputation mainly through humorous
work appears in a varied program, his path is beset by so many
difficulties that failure almost invariably lies in wait for him. Opie
Read is the exception that proves the rule. We laugh with him when he
“shoots out the moon,” and we weep over the pathetic story of “The
Bronsons,” and the “moonlight parting to let her pass.” We are thrilled
with the tales of simple heroism and we marvel at the rich mine of
romance which lies hidden among the Tennessee mountains whence he draws
the quaint characters that figure in his stories and plays.
[Illustration:
MME. JOHANNA GADSKI,
One of the great artists of Grand Opera, to be presented by The Rice
Bureau of Nashville for a tour of the South next fall.
]
March 1, 1895, Mme. Gadski made her debut at the New York Metropolitan
Opera House in the role of Elsa in “Lohengrin,” and during two more
seasons with the Damrosch-Ellis Company, of which Mme. Melba was also a
prominent member, she constantly increased her repertoire, progressing
from merely lyric to heavier dramatic parts and thereby growing in
public favor.
In 1898 Mme. Gadski became a member of the Grau Opera Company, at New
York. When Grau retired, in the spring of 1903, Mme. Gadski received and
accepted a flattering offer from Heinrich Conried, the successor to Mr.
Grau at the Metropolitan Opera House.
Besides her American engagements Mme. Gadski found time to appear at
Covent Garden, London, during the seasons 1899, 1900 and 1901. She also
sang Eva in the “Meistersinger” performances at Bayreuth in the summer
of 1899.
[Illustration:
MME. CHARLOTTE MACONDA.
The greatest of American born and American educated singers, who will
make a limited tour in the South next fall and winter under the
exclusive direction of The Rice Bureau, of Nashville.
]
Mme. Maconda has received her musical training almost wholly in the
United States, and by every right she stands the coloratura soprano par
excellence of to-day on this continent. With a vocal organ of richest
quality and remarkable range, a charming personality, and that
undefinable something called magnetism, this great artist charms her
hearers, and has won her way to the very front rank of great artists.
Moreover, she sings to the heart and the soul as well as to the ear, and
in the clearness and tender pathos of her notes she perhaps more nearly
approaches the divine music of the great Patti than any singer of the
present generation.
[Illustration:
LELAND T. POWERS,
The foremost Impersonator of America, who will make a limited tour in
the South next season.
]
[Illustration:
KATHERINE RIDGEWAY,
Who, assisted by her splendid company of artists, will be a strong
feature on many of the leading courses of the South, the coming
season. She has for several years been the most popular lady
entertainer in the North and East.
]
[Illustration:
CAPT. JACK CRAWFORD.
The Poet-Scout.
]
Capt. Jack Crawford, who has long been prominent as soldier, poet and
entertainer, has achieved a new success in his article in the _Munsey
Magazine_ of February, entitled “The Last of the Indian Chiefs.” This
article is intensely interesting and discloses some astonishing facts
with reference to certain supposedly great Indian warriors, who were in
reality the creations of sensationalists and dime novel writers. It is
so seldom we meet a man with courage enough to deliver facts which turn
a hero into a fake, that we are refreshed with the very presence of such
a man.
We are glad to have the privilege to present to our readers this tender
and beautiful little poem from the pen of the Poet-Scout.
WAITING IN THE ANTE-ROOM.
I saw her face in the pansy,
I caught her breath in the rose,
And my heart went out on a fine love scout
To the land where the daisy grows.
In the brook I heard her laughter
Like an anthem from afar,
Or the echoing where the angels sing
And the gates are just ajar.
Then I closed my eyes in dreamland
And joined my heart on the scout;
And I wandered away to a mound of clay
Where she sleeps since the light went out.
And there in the Southwest sun land
I knelt by my darling’s tomb,
And I whispered low: “My dear child, you know,
I am here in the ante-room.”
—_Capt. Jack Crawford._
[Illustration:
FRED EMERSON BROOKS.
]
Fred Emerson Brooks, the poet-humorist of the West, who loves the South
and is one of the favorites of Southern people. No more beautiful
tribute has ever been paid to the valor of the Southern soldier than is
paid in Mr. Brooks’ great poem, “Pickett’s Charge.”
UP AND KISSED HER.
Cupid knew a maiden fair—
Flying round about he met her—
Told her of a youth’s despair,
Who was dying just to get her.
Every time the youth would pass
By some strange mischance he missed her
Till at length he met the lass,
Then he straightway up and kissed her.
Kissed her
Missed her
Then he straightway up and kissed her!
When she seemed a trifle mad
At the liberty, he told her;
’Gainst his heart so very sad
For her pardon he would hold her.
Thought he needn’t hold so tight!
Said she’d be to him a sister.
Claiming quick a brother’s right,
Many, many times he kissed her!
Kissed her!
Sister!
Many, many times he kissed her.
“You don’t leave me any chance,”
Said the maiden, “to deny you;
You may see, sir, at a glance,
I’ve no power to defy you!”
Loved her more each time they met—
Strange that lips don’t sometimes blister—
Stranger still, they sweeter get—
Did to him each time he kissed her!
Kissed her!
Blister!
Did to him each time he kissed her.
—_Fred Emerson Brooks._
[Illustration:
SAM JONES.
]
Rev. Sam P. Jones, the great evangelist and Southern lecturer, who
possesses a style of oratory unique and powerful, and a wonderful
magnetism.
[Illustration:
IDA BENFEY,
Who makes a short tour in the South each season, and who is always
welcomed for her high art.
]
THE STORY OF JOSEPH.
By Ida Benfey.
“Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh,” and just now I
find myself almost completely absorbed by the Story of Joseph, which
Tolstoi calls the greatest short story ever written. And he adds,
significantly, that it would make no difference in telling it to the
people of China what the customs were—that the human interest in the
story is so powerful it sweeps all minor details to one side.
Joseph is not at all a perfect man. He hasn’t the kind of faults that
David possessed, that show clearly to the person that isn’t even looking
for them; but he has what seem to be more terrible faults because they
are gilded over with success. And I can think of no character in history
more magnanimous than was Joseph, for when his father was dead and his
brethren came to him and were afraid that he would be avenging, he wept
at their doubting him, and then said these significant words: “Fear not:
for am I in the place of God?” It seems to me that these are the words
that best show the high ideal that ruled Joseph. As far as I can see it
is the same spirit which was in Luther, only in another form—that is,
that each one of us must settle all our doubts with God alone. Human
help is unavailing here. Such a high ideal as this of Joseph fills me
with awe and reverent admiration, and when I realize that he was at the
head of, and the former and the creator of the most stupendous trust
that the world has ever known, I find myself bewildered in trying to
reconcile such different elements in one man,—Joseph’s tenderness and
magnanimity to his brethren, and Joseph’s creating a trust which forced
the Egyptians to sell their land to him and finally their bodies as
slaves to ward off starvation. Think of one man combining such opposite
qualities. Is it because the golden rule that Christ gave us had not yet
come into the world? Of course Joseph did what John D. Rockefeller is
trying to do, and has in no small degree accomplished, though perhaps we
do not see the slave-chains that he has put upon us. But John D.
Rockefeller hasn’t, as far as we know, the godlike nature that Joseph
had. He and Joseph are alike in each possessing the inhuman quality of
being able to crush out the life of their fellowmen.
I wonder if Joseph created this trust and carried it out merely because
he was a man of business, or because he enjoyed the game he was at, as
does Russell Sage. Until I began to study this story, I never knew what
the parable of the wise and foolish virgins meant, but it seems plain to
me now. Joseph was like the wise virgin. The thirteen years which he
spent as a slave and in prison he gave entirely to living each moment to
the glory of God. He wasted no time in bearing hatred towards his
brethren, or thinking how much better he was than the position he
occupied, or wishing God wouldn’t forget him quite so long, but would
try and be a little more attentive to him personally. No, he simply did
each act in the best and sunniest way, and the day when Pharaoh sent
hastily for him and they brought him hurriedly out of the prison, he
stopped and shaved himself and changed his raiment. Why? Because he was
a gentleman and he had been in the habit of daily shaving and of daily
caring for his body in the best possible way. And when we read that he
came in to Pharaoh we know exactly how he walked, with the calm
quietness that belongs to a person that has sufficient self-respect to
last through the night and lap over into the next morning.
Gibbon, in his “History of Rome,” says that the hatred between the
religions began about the fourth century; that people before that had
been willing that people should worship as they thought best, the idea
being that all were striving for the same noble end. I wonder if there
was something of this beautiful spirit in Egypt. It has made a
tremendous impression upon me that Moses, a Hebrew, in telling the story
says that the Egyptians would not eat with the Hebrews because it is an
abomination for Egyptians to eat with Hebrews. One would have thought
that Moses would have put the Hebrew first, naturally caring most for
his own. And I keep wondering whether he put them in the inferior
position of making them second because of that same exquisite courtesy
which Lincoln exercised when he always mentioned the North first, as
though they were the more guilty in everything connected with the War;
or was it because the Egyptians were the most powerful nation, and, as a
matter of fact, should be mentioned first? This, however, is but a side
issue to the wonderful fact that though the Egyptians would not eat with
the Hebrews, yet Pharaoh and Potiphar immediately saw, and Pharaoh
publicly announced, that the Spirit of God was in Joseph. Why, I hardly
know anyone who is an enthusiastic church worker that feels that the
spirit of God is really and surely in a church worker of another
denomination.
[Illustration:
MRS. MARY H. FLANNER,
Poet and Entertainer.
]
THE MOCKING-BIRD.
O, naught to me the nightingale,
Save as its exquisite harmony
Sings from Keats’ incomparable ode,
A hint—a dream-dipped memory.
But thou, sweet Mock-bird, art my own—
My very own.
And every tender, tinted tone
A-tilt from out thy tune-tipped throat,
To weave faint melodies, afloat,
Or trail low, liquid lengths of song
The dawn along—
Into the roseate, fresh-waked morn—
This song, dew-drenched and lilting borne,
This song, that timid as a dove,
Creeps in my heart—this song I love.
How does my soul of song within me burn
For speech to stay the falt’ring, lute-like turn
That trips the silence of the silver moon
Into a halting, dreamy, lingering tune;
For words to catch thy glorious roundelay
And coin the music of thy ecstasy.
Clear, crystal-beaded melodies, unstrung—
Long threaded pearls of song, triumphant flung—
Song-storms, symphonic, silvered, sifting showers,—
And through it all, the breathing orange flowers—
... O, let me softly sink to sleep
’Neath Southern skies where all the senses steep
In languorous joys. Let pure, soft, balmy air
Trail soothing fingers o’er my brow and hair.
And let the rustle of the pine and palm
Sway rhythmic measure to the peaceful calm—
While floats the perfume of the orange bloom
In all its richness through my moonlit room.
Then, when I join the twilight, slumber throng,
Come thou, sweet Mock-Bird, fill my dreams with song!
—_Mary H. Flanner._
[Illustration:
FREDERICK WARDE,
the eminent Shakespearian tragedian, who leaves the stage,
laurel-crowned, to take up the higher work of the platform.
]
THE YOUTH OF SHAKESPEARE.
By Frederick Warde.
“By indirection, find direction out.”
—_Hamlet._
The mistaken impression that prevails in the minds of many as to the
social position and general conditions of the parents of Shakespeare is
in a great measure responsible for the doubts that are so frequently
expressed as to the authenticity of the works ascribed to that great
master. It is erroneously supposed that they were in very humble
circumstances, in fact, little more than peasants, and the question is
frequently asked: “Is it possible that a man of such humble origin and
with such limited opportunities of mental development, could have
written a series of plays that indicate such universal knowledge of men
and manners and display such transcendent genius?”
Hazlett, in one of his essays, truly says: “No really great man ever
thought himself to be one,” and I doubt if Shakespeare in his wildest
dreams ever imagined that the world would credit him with the sublime
genius that it now justly acknowledges. We find no memoirs or
autobiographic notes to enlighten us as to his hopes, his fears, his
ambitions, the thoughts that occupy his mind, or the details of his
daily life.
It is greatly to be deplored that we have so little authentic
information as to the life of Shakespeare. The facts, however, that have
been gleaned from the meagre records of the period, conflicting though
they be, enable us to arrive, with some degree of accuracy, at the
probabilities, if not the actual facts of his history. Supplementing
these facts with some imagination, intelligently directed, I think we
are justified in the conclusion that there is nothing inconsistent with
the conditions of his birth, parentage, education, the environment of
his youth, and the universality of the genius subsequently displayed.
The father of Shakespeare was legally a gentleman, by a license from
King Henry VII, granting him a crest and a coat of arms, and the
privilege of bearing arms for substantial services rendered his
sovereign; and it is recorded that this honor was not only bestowed for
his own individual services, but was renewed by inheritance from his
father and grandfather; so that, engaged in peaceful pursuits himself,
he was honorably descended from warriors and fighting men, almost the
sole means of obtaining distinction in those days.
We have no means of discovering if John Shakespeare was a man of any
education. The fact that he made his mark instead of signing his name to
public documents being no evidence to the contrary, for at the period in
which he lived, the art of pencraft was almost entirely limited to
clerks and scholars; even gentlemen and men of quality holding it “a
baseness to write fair.” Yet Sidney Lee assures us there is evidence in
the Stratford archives that he (John Shakespeare) could write with
facility. The offices held by him in the Borough of Stratford indicate
that he was a man of more than average intelligence among his fellows,
and of considerable executive ability. After holding several minor
offices he was elected successively one of the Chamberlains (1561),
Alderman (1565), Borough Bailiff (1569), and Chief Alderman (1571), and
by the county records was possessed at various times of considerable
property, principally real estate. In the deeds relating to the transfer
of this property he is sometimes described as “yeoman,” at others as a
“glover,” and it is known that he dealt in cattle, corn and country
produce generally.
If asked what was the strongest influence for good in their lives, I
think most men of any worth or eminence would reply, “My mother.” In
this respect Shakespeare was most fortunate. His mother was Mary Arden,
the youngest of seven daughters of Robert Arden of Wilmecote, whose
tenant Richard Shakespeare, the father of John, had been; and who, on
her marriage to John Shakespeare, brought him a good estate in money and
property. The Ardens were an old family of good standing and consequence
in the midland counties of England, tracing a long line of honorable
ancestry, and worthily representing that substantial and independent
class, “the yeoman squires of England.” Rowe asserts that this worthy
couple (John and Mary Shakespeare) had ten children, but the parish
register of Stratford makes the number only eight. However, William was
the eldest son, though not the first child.
There is no evidence that Mary Arden was a woman of any great
accomplishments, but it is reasonable to suppose from the position and
wealth of her family she was not without education. It is also
reasonable to suppose that in spite of the onerous duties of such a
large family Shakespeare’s mother should have found time to guide and
form the youthful mind of her eldest son, and impart to him the first
rudiments of knowledge. His father at that period was well-to-do and
abundantly able to provide his family with comfortable surroundings and
adequate service.
Thus the first seven years of Shakespeare’s life were passed in comfort
and comparative affluence, under the care of a father who was honored
and respected for his ability and integrity by his fellow-townsmen, and
a mother whose family and connections would indicate a woman of worth
and refinement.
In the town of Stratford was a Free School, founded in the reign of
Edward IV and subsequently chartered by Edward VI—one of those
foundation schools of which a number exist in England to-day, notably,
Christ’s (the blue-coat school), made familiar to us by Thackeray, in
The Newcombs; the City of London School, St. Paul’s, and The
Charterhouse. To the Free School was Shakespeare sent, and it is said
attended it until he was fourteen years old.
There are no records of Shakespeare’s life at school to indicate if he
were an apt scholar. We have no account of the course of study pursued
by him, but from Ben Jonson’s statement that Shakespeare “knew a little
Latin and less Greek,” the inference is that it was (in part, at least)
a classical one, and the quotations in his plays, imperfect as they are,
indicate that he must have studied with some diligence.
At the age of fourteen Shakespeare left school to assist his father, who
at this time had met with some business reverses, and we have little or
no record of his life until his nineteenth year when, in the autumn of
1582 he married Anne Hathaway, the daughter of a substantial yeoman of
Shottery, the village adjoining Stratford. The baptism of his daughter
Susanna is next recorded on May 26, 1583; and that of a son Hamnet and a
daughter, Judith (twins), on Feb. 2, 1585. His departure for London
followed, probably in 1586.
Of Shakespeare’s migration to London and his life in that city I do not
propose to speak here, but from the foregoing facts, it will be seen
that Shakespeare came of a good family, enjoyed in his infancy tender
parental care, and received the rudiments of a sound and substantial
education at a period of his life when the youthful mind is most
receptive.
To an intelligent observer the influences and experiences of his youth
are clearly reflected in the work of his later years.
A mere cursory reading of the plays will show his intimate knowledge of
the Holy Scriptures, probably begun at his mother’s knee and continued
in his leisure hours—the Bible being one of the few books within his
reach at that time.
In the pastoral scenes we cannot but marvel at the knowledge he displays
of forestry, botany, the flora of the fields and woods, and the nature
and habits of the animals, birds and insects.
It requires but a slight stretch of imagination to see young Shakespeare
as a sturdy country lad strolling with his youthful companions by the
side of the gentle Avon. Noting the flight of the swallow over its
glassy surface, the nodding reeds and grasses on its sedgy banks, and
dart of the startled pickerel from its weedy lair, unconsciously
absorbing by his yet undeveloped genius of observation the minute
knowledge of nature that is so perfectly displayed in “As You Like It”
and other silvan plays.
We see him wandering through the meadows listening to the lark rising
with its morning song on high; by the little gardens where the primrose,
the cowslip and the yellow daffodil grow round the cottage door, and the
ivy and the honeysuckle climb the rustic porch; in the green lanes
between the quickset hedges where the modest violets lift their purple
heads upon the mossy banks. May not the youthful Shakespeare himself
have seen in the woods of Charlecote or Shottery “the poor sequestered
stag that from the hunter’s aim had ta’en a hurt” augment with his tears
the already swollen stream, and himself startled the timid hare and the
antlered deer from their leafy coverts, and in those majestic solitudes
found “tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones,
and good in everything?”
Picture young Shakespeare hand in hand with gentle Anne Hathaway, in
their walks in the unfrequented paths of Shottery and Stratford,
charming her mind with the poetry of his nature, the glow of admiration
deepening into love for her youthful suitor; the bridegroom standing at
the altar assuming the responsibilities of marriage before nineteen
years had passed over his head, and the pride of paternity when his
first child was born; and realize the sense of importance of the
departure of the youthful husband and father for London. Whether to
better his fortunes or to escape from the anger of Sir Thomas Lucy after
his unlucky escapade on that worthy gentleman’s estate at Charlecote,
matters not.
These I conceive to be some of the factors in the formation of the mind
and character of William Shakespeare: a mother’s gentle influence, a
fair mental development at school, an early appreciation of the
vicissitudes of fortune and the necessities of labor, a love of nature
developed by the surroundings of his youth, a remarkable capacity of
observation, and an experience of the sacred mystery of love, marriage
and paternity ere he had arrived at years of mature manhood; and they do
not appear to be at all incompatible with the life, the knowledge, the
friendships, the accomplishments and the genius which the world has
conceded to this great and glorious man.
THE MASQUERADER.
By Katherine Cecil Thurston.
Grasp and constructive ability are the two attributes of genius or of
talent absolutely necessary to a novelist. When Katherine Cecil Thurston
grasped the results that bound together those two incidents of January
twenty-third, incidents so widely different in character, she created
novelistic material. To this material she applied the same constructive
ability, but maturer, that she evidenced in “The Circle.” And from the
first statement in her book, that these incidents were bound by results,
the reader’s interest does not flag till the last phase of the
complicated result is clearly given, as it is in the final statement of
the final chapter. Nor then, for it is a book to hold after it is
closed, while the mind reverts to its scenes and its interest in
pleasant retrospect.
Self-accusation may follow analysis of the book, for, after all, nothing
is actually acquired in the reading. The aggressive, acquisitive
attitude of Russia, which is the one historical episode of the novel,
has been made so much clearer and so much more forcible in the last
twelve months than a mere statement or even a masterful speech can make
it that the book is not worth reading for this episode.
To repeat, it is the situation that grew out of the chance meeting in
the fog, the interchanging of identities, that holds the interest so
absorbingly. This contrast of similarity, if the paradoxical phrase is
pardonable, is dramatic in intensity that grows, and when Eve, the
alienated wife of Chilcote tentatively accepts Loder, the substitute,
the masquerader, this intensity presents a new aspect that quite absorbs
all others—political, social, even practical. From that moment the
interest centers in the final outcome when she will discover or be told
of the substitution. And because of this interest, which lasts even
after the book is read, the inconsistency of the situation is forgiven
and the impossible accepted as possible.
Reason rejects the position but charm is a matter of the emotions and
the charm of “The Masquerader” is such as to put the emotions in the
ascendency. It is sufficient to have carried the book to almost twice
the popularity of any other recent book and to have kept it there for
two months—quite a period in the life of an ephemeral novel. It is
sufficient to have kept men at the library lamp late at night and to
force itself in upon business through the next and succeeding days. And
it has made women break the silence of bridge and whist, even where it
has not kept them from the classes altogether.
The inconsistency of the situation is the only inconsistency of the
book. The characters are convincing and stand out in flesh and blood.
The palest of these is Lillian, Lady Astrupp, but the paleness is not
one of portrayal. It is the paleness of individuality shown in terms to
suit the character, just as Fraide’s power and ruggedness is shown in
blunt, abrupt allusions and dismissals.
For Chilcote there is only sympathy that deepens into pity mixed with
disgust, the sympathy and pity begotten by the spectacle of a man under
the power of a habit that has come to be his master.
There is resentment towards Loder for assuming another man’s name rather
than for doing another man’s work, which was his only opportunity. To
create is to prove one’s kinship to God, and the instinctive feeling is
that no strong man would create for another man’s credit. Respect for
Loder would have been aroused had he finally made public the masquerade,
at all costs; but had he done this the climax of the situation would
have been ruined.
Neither is Eve’s attitude in the climax inconsistent. Pride is the
dominating characteristic of this woman, who excites admiration in every
situation where circumstances place her. If it governed her through
years of unhappiness it would be inconsistent to expect her to yield it
and happiness together for a convention, though it were the divinest
convention of life.
JAMES HUNT COOK.
[Illustration:
GOV. BOB TAYLOR
Who has long been identified with the platform of the South and whose
tours have recently been extended throughout the United States.
Governor Taylor’s new lecture for the coming season will be “The Funny
Side of Politics.”
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Bob Taylor's Magazine, Vol. I, No. 1, April 1905" ***
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