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Produced by David Widger
AT SUNWICH PORT
BY
W. W. JACOBS
Part 5.
ILLUSTRATIONS
From Drawings by Will Owen
CHAPTER XXI
Gossip from one or two quarters, which reached Captain Nugent's ears
through the medium of his sister, concerning the preparations for his
son's marriage, prevented him from altering his mind with regard to the
visits of Jem Hardy and showing that painstaking young man the door.
Indeed, the nearness of the approaching nuptials bade fair to eclipse,
for the time being, all other grievances, and when Hardy paid his third
visit he made a determined but ineffectual attempt to obtain from him
some information as | 2,378.382155 |
2023-11-16 18:56:42.4896580 | 2,617 | 46 |
Produced by Giovanni Fini, David Edwards and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
[Illustration: SLEDDING UP THE CHILKAT VALLEY]
GOLD-SEEKING
ON THE DALTON TRAIL
_BEING THE ADVENTURES OF TWO
NEW ENGLAND BOYS IN ALASKA
AND THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY_
BY
ARTHUR R. THOMPSON
Illustrated
BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1900
_Copyright, 1900_,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
UNIVERSITY PRESS. JOHN WILSON AND SON. CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
TO
My Comrade of Many Camp-Fires
DEXTER WADLEIGH LEWIS
PREFACE
Among my first passions was that for exploration. The Unknown--that
region of mysteries lying upon the outskirts of commonplace
environment--drew me with a mighty attraction. My earliest
recollections are of wanderings into the domains of the neighbors, and
of excursions--not infrequently in direct contravention to parental
warnings--over fences, stone-walls, and roofs, and into cobwebbed
attics, fragrant hay-lofts, and swaying tree-tops. Of my favorite tree,
a sugar maple, I remember that, so thoroughly did I come to know every
one of its branches, I could climb up or down unhesitatingly with eyes
shut. At that advanced stage of acquaintance, however, it followed
naturally that the mysteriousness, and hence the subtle attractiveness,
of my friend the maple was considerably lessened.
By degrees the boundary line of the unknown was pushed back into
surrounding fields. Wonderful caves were hollowed in sandy banks.
Small pools, to the imaginative eyes of the six-year-old, became
lakes abounding with delightful adventures. The wintry alternations
of freezing and thawing were processes to be observed with closest
attention and never-failing interest. Nature displayed some new charm
with every mood.
There came a day when I looked beyond the fields, when even the river,
sluggish and muddy in summer, a broad, clear torrent in spring, was
known from end to end. Then it was that the range of low mountains--to
me sublime in loftiness--at the western horizon held my fascinated
gaze. To journey thither on foot became ambition's end and aim. This
feat, at first regarded as undoubtedly beyond the powers of man unaided
by horse and carry-all (the thing had once been done in that manner on
the occasion of a picnic), was at length proved possible.
What next? Like Alexander, I sought new worlds. Nothing less than real
camping out could satisfy that hitherto unappeasable longing. This
dream was realized in due season among the mountains of New Hampshire;
but the craving, far from losing its keenness, was whetted. Of late it
has been fed, but never satiated, by wider rovings on land and sea.
Perhaps it is in the blood and can never be eliminated.
Believing that this restlessness, accompanied by the love of
adventure and out-of-door life, is natural to every boy, I have
had in mind particularly in the writing of this narrative those
thousands of boys in our cities who are bound within a restricted,
and it may be unromantic, sphere of activity. To them I have wished
to give a glimpse of trail life, not with a view to increasing their
restlessness,--for I have not veiled discomforts and discouragements in
relating enjoyments,--but to enlarge their horizon,--to give them, in
imagination at least, mountain air and appetites, journeys by lake and
river, and an acquaintance with men and conditions as they now exist
in the great Northwest.
The Dalton trail, last year but little known, may soon become a much
travelled highway. With a United States garrison at Pyramid, and the
village of Klukwan a bone of contention between the governments of this
country and Canada, the region which it traverses is coming more and
more into notice. I would only add that natural features, scenery, and
people, have been described faithfully, however inadequately, and the
story throughout is based upon real happenings. Should any of my young
readers pass over the trail to-day in the footsteps of David and Roly,
they would find, save for possible vandalism of Indians or whites, the
cabins on the North Alsek and in the Kah Sha gorge just as they are
pictured, and they could be sure of a welcome from Lucky, Long Peter,
and Coffee Jack.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A LETTER FROM ALASKA 1
II. BUYING AN OUTFIT 7
III. FROM SEATTLE TO PYRAMID HARBOR 18
IV. THE FIRST CAMP 28
V. THE GREAT NUGGET, AND HOW UNCLE WILL HEARD OF IT 38
VI. ROLY IS HURT 47
VII. CAMP AT THE CAVE 54
VIII. SLEDDING 60
IX. KLUKWAN AND THE FORDS 69
X. A PORCUPINE-HUNT AT PLEASANT CAMP 77
XI. THE MYSTERIOUS THIRTY-SIX 88
XII. THE SUMMIT OF CHILKAT PASS 101
XIII. DALTON'S POST 112
XIV. FROM THE STIK VILLAGE TO LAKE DASAR-DEE-ASH 120
XV. STAKING CLAIMS 127
XVI. A CONFLAGRATION 135
XVII. THROUGH THE ICE 142
XVIII. BUILDING THE CABIN 149
XIX. THE FIRST PROSPECT-HOLE 157
XX. ROLY GOES DUCK-HUNTING 166
XXI. LAST DAYS AT PENNOCK'S POST 175
XXII. A HARD JOURNEY 182
XXIII. THE LAKE AFFORDS TWO MEALS AND A PERILOUS CROSSING 192
XXIV. DAVID GETS HIS BEAR-SKIN 201
XXV. MORAN'S CAMP 210
XXVI. HOW THE GREAT NUGGET NEARLY COST THE BRADFORDS DEAR 216
XXVII. AN INDIAN CREMATION 223
XXVIII. THE PLAGUE OF MOSQUITOES 231
XXIX. LOST IN THE MOUNTAINS 238
XXX. WASHING OUT THE GOLD 248
XXXI. DAVID MAKES A BOAT-JOURNEY 256
XXXII. CHAMPLAIN'S LANDING 264
XXXIII. ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS 272
XXXIV. RAIDED BY A WOLF 279
XXXV. A LONG MARCH, WITH A SURPRISE AT THE END OF IT 289
XXXVI. HOW DAVID MET THE OFFENDER AND WAS PREVENTED FROM
SPEAKING HIS MIND 297
XXXVII. HOMEWARD BOUND 306
XXXVIII. A CARIBOU, AND HOW IT WAS KILLED 314
XXXIX. DANGERS OF THE SUMMER FORDS 321
XL. SUNDAY IN KLUKWAN 331
XLI. THE ROBBERS AT LAST 339
XLII. PYRAMID, SKAGWAY, AND DYEA.--CONCLUSION 348
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
SLEDDING UP THE CHILKAT VALLEY _Frontispiece_
PYRAMID HARBOR, PYRAMID MOUNTAIN IN THE DISTANCE 26
MAP OF THE DALTON TRAIL 28
A CURIOUS PHENOMENON BESIDE THE TRAIL 89
THE CAMP OF THE MYSTERIOUS THIRTY-SIX 93
"PRESENTLY SOME LITTLE YELLOW SPECKS WERE UNCOVERED" 131
CHILDREN OF THE WILDERNESS 192
RAFTING DOWN THE NORTH ALSEK 265
A HERD OF CATTLE.--YUKON DIVIDE IN THE DISTANCE 267
FORDING THE KLAHEENA 325
"SALMON BY THE THOUSAND" 349
GOLD-SEEKING
ON
THE DALTON TRAIL
CHAPTER I
A LETTER FROM ALASKA
In a large, old-fashioned dwelling which overlooked from its hillside
perch a beautiful city of Connecticut, the Bradford family was
assembled for the evening meal. It was early in February, and the wind,
which now and then whirled the snowflakes against the window-panes,
made the pretty dining-room seem doubly cozy. But Mrs. Bradford
shivered as she poured the tea.
"Just think of poor Will," she said, "away off in that frozen
wilderness! Oh, if we could only know that he is safe and well!" and
the gentle lady's brown eyes sought her husband's face as if for
reassurance.
Mr. Bradford was a tall, strongly built man of forty-five, with
light-brown hair and mustache, and features that betrayed much care
and responsibility. Upon him as treasurer had fallen a great share
of the burden of bringing a large manufacturing establishment through
two years of financial depression, and his admirable constitution had
weakened under the strain. But now a twinkle came into his gray eyes as
he said, "My dear, I hardly think Will is suffering. At least he wasn't
a month ago."
"Why, how do you know?" asked Mrs. Bradford. "Has he written at last?"
For answer Mr. Bradford drew from the depths of an inside pocket a
number of letters, from which he selected one whose envelope was torn
and travel-stained. It bore a Canadian and an American postage stamp,
as if the sender had been uncertain in which country it would be
mailed, and wished to prepare it against either contingency.
At sight of the foreign stamp Ralph,--or "Roly," as he had been known
ever since a certain playmate had called him "Roly-poly" because of his
plumpness,--aged fifteen, was awake in an instant. Up to that moment
his energies had been entirely absorbed in the laudable business of
dulling a very keen appetite, but it quickly became evident that his
instincts as a stamp collector were even keener. He had paused in the
act of raising a bit of bread to his mouth, and made such a comical
figure with his lips expectantly wide apart that his younger sister
Helen, a little maid of nine, was betrayed into a sudden and violent
fit of laughter, in which, in spite of the superior dignity of eighteen
years, their brother David was compelled to join.
"Yes," said Mr. Bradford, "I received a letter from Will this
afternoon. Suppose I read it aloud." Absolute quiet being magically
restored, he proceeded as follows:--
RAINY HOLLOW, CHILKAT PASS, Jan. 9, 1898.
DEAR BROTHER CHARLES,--I am storm-bound at this place, and waiting for
an opportunity to cross the summit, so what better can I do than write
the letter so long deferred?
I have been as far west as the Cook Inlet region, and have acquired
some good coal properties. While there I heard from excellent
authorities that rich gold placers have been discovered on the Dalton
trail, which | 2,378.509698 |
2023-11-16 18:56:42.6341350 | 1,370 | 8 |
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by The Internet Archive)
Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation and spelling remain unchanged except where in conflict
with the index.
Page numbers have been added to the index entries for City Police, the,
and for Kingston-on-Hull
Italics are represented thus _italic_, bold thus =bold= and underlining
thus +underline+.
+The Survey of London+
MEDIÆVAL
LONDON
HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL
_UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME_
PRICE =30/= NET EACH
LONDON
IN THE TIME OF THE TUDORS
_With 146 Illustrations and a Reproduction of Agas’ Map of London in
1560._
“For the student, as well as for those desultory readers who are drawn
by the rare fascination of London to peruse its pages, this book
will have a value and a charm which are unsurpassed by any of its
predecessors.”—_Pall Mall Gazette._
“A vivid and fascinating picture of London life in the sixteenth
century—a novelist’s picture, full of life and movement, yet with the
accurate detail of an antiquarian treatise.”—_Contemporary Review._
LONDON
IN THE TIME OF THE STUARTS
_With 116 Illustrations and a Reproduction of Ogilby’s Map of London in
1677._
“It is a mine in which the student, alike of topography and of manners
and customs, may dig and dig again with the certainty of finding
something new and interesting.”—_The Times._
“The pen of the ready writer here is fluent; the picture wants nothing
in completeness. The records of the city and the kingdom have been
ransacked for facts and documents, and they are marshalled with
consummate skill.”—_Pall Mall Gazette._
LONDON
IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
_With 104 Illustrations and a Reproduction of Rocque’s Map of London in
1741-5._
“The book is engrossing, and its manner delightful.”—_The Times._
“Of facts and figures such as these this valuable book will be found
full to overflowing, and it is calculated therefore to interest all
kinds of readers, from the student to the dilettante, from the romancer
in search of matter to the most voracious student of Tit-Bits.”—_The
Athenæum._
[Illustration: EDWARD IV. AND HIS COURTIERS.
From MS. in British Museum. Royal 15 E4.]
MEDIÆVAL
LONDON
VOL. I
HISTORICAL & SOCIAL
BY
SIR WALTER BESANT
[Illustration]
LONDON
ADAM & CHARLES BLACK
1906
CONTENTS
PART I
MEDIÆVAL SOVEREIGNS
CHAP. PAGE
1. HENRY II. 3
2. RICHARD I. 9
3. JOHN 13
4. HENRY III. 20
5. EDWARD I. 35
6. EDWARD II. 48
7. EDWARD III. 58
8. RICHARD II. 78
9. HENRY IV. 92
10. HENRY V. 103
11. HENRY VI. 111
12. EDWARD IV. 138
13. RICHARD III. 152
PART II
SOCIAL AND GENERAL
1. GENERAL VIEW 159
2. PORT AND TRADE OF LONDON 185
3. TRADE AND GENTILITY 216
4. THE STREETS 226
5. THE BUILDINGS 240
6. FURNITURE 255
7. WEALTH AND STATE OF NOBLES AND CITIZENS 259
8. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS 264
9. FOOD 294
10. SPORT AND RECREATION 307
11. LITERATURE AND SCIENCE IN LONDON—
§ I. THE LIBRARIES OF LONDON 327
§ II. LONDON AND LITERATURE 330
§ III. THE PHYSICIAN 336
12. FIRE, PLAGUE, AND FAMINE 341
13. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 349
14. CHRISTIAN NAMES AND SURNAMES 372
APPENDICES 379
INDEX 405
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Edward IV. and his Courtiers _Frontispiece_
Henry II. 3
Coronation of the “Young King” 5
Becket disputing with the King 7
Great Seal of Henry II. 8
First Seal of Richard I. 10
Cross of Knight Templar 12
King John 13
Henry Fitzailwyn, Knt., First Lord Mayor of London 14
King John hunting 16
A Portion of the Great Charter 17
Coronation of Henry III. 21
Jews’ Passover 27
A Pope in Consistory 29
Edward I. 35
Queen Eleanor of Castile 36
Charing Cross 41
Parliament of Edward I. _Facing_ 44
Great Seal of Edward I. 46
Head of Edward II. 48
Shrine of King Edward II., Gloucester Cathedral 56
Edward III. 58
A Joust or Tournament of the Period 63
Sir Henry Picard entertaining the Kings | 2,378.654175 |
2023-11-16 18:56:42.6896710 | 128 | 20 | RAVEN***
Transcribed from the 1913 Thomas J. Wise pamphlet by David Price, email
[email protected]
THE NIGHTINGALE
THE VALKYRIE AND RAVEN
AND OTHER BALLADS
BY
GEORGE BORROW
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION
1913
_Copyright in the United States of America_
_by Houghton_, _Mifflin and Co. for Clement Shorter_.
THE NIGHTINGALE, OR THE TRANSFORMED DAMSEL | 2,378.709711 |
2023-11-16 18:56:42.8384570 | 789 | 67 |
Produced by MWS, Carolyn Jablonski and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
[Illustration: titlepage]
Conundrum_s_
Riddles _and_ Puzzles
Containing one thousand of the late_s_t
and be_s_t _Conundrums_, gathered from
every conceivable source, and comprising
many that are entirely new and original
By
DEAN RIVERS
Philadelphia
The Penn Publishing Company
1903
COPYRIGHT 1893 BY THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT 1900 BY THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY
PREFACE
A taste for guessing puzzles and enigmas is coeval with the race. The
early Greeks were extremely fond of such intellectual exercises, and
they are found in the language of all civilized nations. One of the
brightest forms of these puzzles is that of the conundrum, the answer of
which is usually a play upon words similar to the pun. Each language has
its own particular form of this kind of wit, but the English language,
on account of its composite nature, is especially rich in such forms of
wit and humor.
The compiler of this little volume has made a choice selection of
conundrums from those in actual use among people belonging to refined
and cultured society. They are classified under four principal
heads—General Conundrums, Biblical Conundrums, Poetical Conundrums, and
French Conundrums. Some of the most ingenious and interesting forms of
wit will be found under each of these classes.
In addition to these conundrums, the book contains a rare collection of
arithmetical puzzles. These were especially prepared for the work by a
mathematician of wide reputation who has used many of them in one of his
own publications. They will be found of great interest to those who have
a taste for numbers and their curious combinations and results.
The collection as a whole will afford innocent recreation for the
fireside and social circle, and thus contribute to the happiness of
those who enjoy the higher forms of pleasure that flow from the exercise
of the mind upon those subjects that require quickness of thought and a
nimble wit.
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS
PAGE
GENERAL CONUNDRUMS, 9
BIBLICAL CONUNDRUMS, 117
POETICAL CONUNDRUMS, 125
FRENCH CONUNDRUMS, 133
ARITHMETICAL PUZZLES, 137
GENERAL CONUNDRUMS
Why is life the greatest of all conundrums? Because we must all give it
up.
When may an army be said to be totally destroyed? When its soldiers are
all in quarters.
Which is swifter, heat or cold? Heat, because you can catch cold.
Why is a young lady like a letter? Because if she isn’t well stamped the
mails (males) won’t take her.
Why are dudes no longer imported into this country from England? Because
a Yankee dude ’ll do (Yankee doodle doo).
What flowers can be found between the nose and chin? Tulips (two lips).
Why is a dude’s hat like swearing? Because it is something to avoid.
How many wives is a man lawfully entitled to by the English prayer-book?
Sixteen: Four richer, four poorer, four better, four worse.
Why is a bright young lady like a spoon in a cup of tea? | 2,378.858497 |
2023-11-16 18:56:43.0381810 | 128 | 19 |
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made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
GOSLINGS
By
J. D. BERESFORD
Author of "The Hampdenshire Wonder," etc.
London
William Heinemann
1913
BOOK I
THE NEW PLAGUE
I--THE GOSLING FAMILY
1
"Where's the gels gone to?" asked Mr Gosling | 2,379.058221 |
2023-11-16 18:56:43.1343190 | 5,639 | 8 |
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THE DAY OF HIS YOUTH
By
ALICE BROWN
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
M DCCC XCVII
COPYRIGHT, 1897
BY ALICE BROWN
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
THE RIVERSIDE PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U.S.A.
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY
H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO.
THE DAY OF HIS YOUTH
The life of Francis Hume began in an old yet very real tragedy. His
mother, a lovely young woman, died at the birth of her child: an event
of every-day significance, if you judge by tables of mortality and the
probabilities of being. She was the wife of a man well-known among
honored American names, and her death made more than the usual ripple
of nearer pain and wider condolence. To the young husband it was an
afflicting calamity, entirely surprising even to those who were
themselves acquainted with grief. He was not merely rebellious and
wildly distraught, in the way of mourners. He sank into a cold
sedateness of change. His life forsook its accustomed channels. Vividly
alive to the one bright point still burning in the past, toward the
present world he seemed absolutely benumbed. Yet certain latent
conceptions of the real values of existence must have sprung up in him,
and protested against days to be thereafter dominated by artificial
restraints. He had lost his hold on life. He had even acquired a sudden
distaste for it; but his previous knowledge of beauty and perfection
would not suffer him to shut himself up in a cell of reserve, and
isolate himself thus from his kind. He could become a hermit, but only
under the larger conditions of being. He had the firmest conviction
that he could never grow any more; yet an imperative voice within bade
him seek the highest out-look in which growth is possible. He had
formed a habit of beautiful living, though in no sense a living for any
other save the dual soul now withdrawn; and he could not be satisfied
with lesser loves, the makeshifts of a barren life. So, turning from
the world, he fled into the woods; for at that time Nature seemed to
him the only great, and he resolved that Francis, the son, should be
nourished by her alone.
One spring day, when the boy was eight years old, his father had said
to him:--
"We are going into the country to sleep in a tent, catch our own fish,
cook it ourselves, and ask favors of no man."
"Camping!" cried the boy, in ecstasy.
"No; living."
The necessities of a simple life were got together, and supplemented by
other greater necessities,--books, pictures, the boy's violin,--and
they betook themselves to a spot where the summer visitor was yet
unknown, the shore of a lake stretching a silver finger toward the
north. There they lived all summer, shut off from human intercourse
save with old Pierre, who brought their milk and eggs and constituted
their messenger-in-ordinary to the village, ten miles away. When autumn
came, Ernest Hume looked into his son's brown eyes and asked,--
"Now shall we go back?"
"No! no! no!" cried the boy, with a child's passionate cumulation of
accent.
"Not when the snow comes?"
"No, father."
"And the lake is frozen over?"
"No, father."
"Then," said Hume, with a sigh of great content, "we must have a
log-cabin, lest our bones lie bleaching on the shore."
Next morning he went into the woods with Pierre and two men hastily
summoned from the village, and there they began to make axe-music, the
requiem of the trees. The boy sat by, dreaming as he sometimes did for
hours before starting up to throw himself into the active delights of
swimming, leaping, or rowing a boat. Next day, also, they kept on
cutting into the heart of the forest. One dryad after another was
despoiled of her shelter; one after another, the green tents of the
bird and the wind were folded to make that sacred tabernacle--a home.
Sometimes Francis chopped a little with his hatchet, not to be left out
of the play, and then sat by again, smoothing the bruised fern-forests,
or whistling back the squirrels who freely chattered out their opinions
on invasion. Then came other days just as mild winds were fanning the
forest into gold, when the logs went groaning through the woods, after
slow-stepping horses, to be piled into symmetry, tightened with
plaster, and capped by a roof. This, windowed, swept and garnished,
with a central fireplace wherein two fires could flame and roar, was
the log-cabin. This was home. The hired builders had protested against
its primitive form; they sighed for a snug frame house, French roof and
bay windows. "'Ware the cold!" was their daily croak.
"We'll live in fur and toughen ourselves," said Ernest Hume. And
turning to his boy that night, when they sat together by their own
fire, he asked,--
"Shall we fashion our muscles into steel, our skin into armor? Shall we
make our eyes strong enough to face the sun by day, and pure enough to
meet the chilly stars at night? Shall we have Nature for our only love?
Tell me, sir!"
And Francis, who hung upon his father's voice, even when the words were
beyond him, answered, "Yes, father, please!" and went on feeding birch
strips to the fire, where they turned from vellum to mysterious missals
blazoned by an unseen hand.
The idyl continued unbroken for twelve years. Yet it was not wholly
idyllic, for, even with money multiplying for them out in the world,
there were hard personal conditions against which they had to fight.
Ernest Hume delighted in the fierceness of the winter wind, the cold
resistance of the snow; cut off, as he honestly felt himself to be,
from spiritual growth, he had great joy in strengthening his physical
being until it waxed into insolent might. Francis, too, took so happily
to the stern yet lovely phases of their life that his father never
thought of possible wrong to him in so shaping his early years. As for
Ernest Hume, he had bound himself the more irrevocably to right living
by renouncing artificial bonds. He had removed his son from the world,
and he had thereby taken upon himself the necessity of becoming a
better world. Therefore he did not allow himself in any sense to rust
out. He did a colossal amount of mental burnishing; and, a gentleman by
nature, he adopted a daily purity of speech and courtesy of manner
which were less like civilized life than the efflorescence of chivalry
at its best. He had chosen for himself a part; by his will, a Round
Table sprang up in the woods, though two knights only were to hold
counsel there.
The conclusion of the story--so far as a story is ever concluded--must
be found in the words of Francis Hume. Before he was twenty, his
strength began stirring within him, and he awoke, not to any definite
discontent, but to that fever of unrest which has no name. Possibly a
lad of different temperament might not have kept housed so long; but he
was apparently dreamy, reflective, in love with simple pleasures, and,
though a splendid young animal, inspired and subdued by a thrilling
quality of soul. And he woke up. How he awoke may be learned only from
his letters.
These papers have, by one of the incredible chances of life, come into
my hands. I see no possible wrong in their publication, for now the
Humes are dead, father and son; nay, even the name adopted here was not
their own. They were two slight bubbles of being, destined to rise, to
float for a time, and to be again resolved into the unknown sea. Yet
while they lived, they were iridescent; the colors of a far-away sun
played upon them, and they sent him back his gleams. To lose them
wholly out of life were some pain to those of us who have been
privileged to love them through their own written confessions. So here
are they given back to the world which in no other way could adequately
know them.
[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to the Unknown Friend_[1]]
[1] This title is adopted by the editor that the narrative may be
at least approximately clear. The paragraphs headed thus were
scribblings on loose sheets: a sort of desultory journal.
I never had a friend! Did any human creature twenty years old ever
write that before, unless he did it in a spirit of bitterness because
he was out of humor with his world? Yet I can say it, knowing it to be
the truth. My father and I are one, the oak and its branch, the fern
and its fruitage; but for somebody to be the mirror of my own thoughts,
tantalizingly strange, intoxicatingly new, where shall I look? Ah, but
I know! I will create him from my own longings. He shall be born of the
blood and sinew of my brain and heart. Stand forth, beautiful one, made
in the image of my fancy, and I will tell thee all--all I am ashamed to
tell my father, and tired of imprisoning in my own soul. What shall I
call thee? Friend: that will be enough, all-comprehending and rich in
joy. To-day I have needed thee more than ever, though it is only to-day
that I learned to recognize the need. All the morning a sweet languor
held me, warm, like the sun, and touched with his fervor, so that I
felt within me darts of impelling fire. I sat in the woods by the
spring, my eyes on the dancing shadows at my feet, not thinking, not
willing, yet expectant. I felt as if something were coming, and that I
must be ready to meet it when the great moment should strike. Suddenly
my heart beat high in snatches of rhythm; my feet stirred, my ears woke
to the whir of wings, and my eyes to flickering shade. My whole self
was whelmed and suffocated in a wave of sweet delight. And then it was
that my heart cried out for another heart to beat beside it and make
harmony for the two; then it was that thou, dear one, wast born from my
thought. I am not disloyal in seeking companionship. My father is
myself. Let me say that over and over. When I tell him my fancies, he
smiles sadly, saying they are the buds of youth, born never to flower.
To him Nature is goddess and mother; he turns to her for sustenance by
day, and lies on her bosom at night. After death he will be content to
rest in her arms and become one flesh with her mould. But I--I! O, is
it because I am young; and will the days chill out this strange, sweet
fever, as they have in him? Two years ago--yes, a year--I had no higher
joy than to throw myself, body and soul, into motion: to row, fish,
swim, to listen, in a dream of happiness, while my father read old
Homer to me in the evening, or we masterfully swept through
duets--'cello and violin--that my sleep was too dreamless to repeat to
me. And now the very world is changed; help me to understand it, my
friend; or, if I am to blame, help me to conquer myself.
II
I have much to tell thee, my friend! and of a nature never before known
in these woods and by this water. Last night, at sunset, I stood on the
Point waiting for my father to come in from his round about the island,
when suddenly a boat shot out from Silver Stream and came on toward me,
rowed to the accompaniment of a song I never heard. I stood waiting,
for the voices were beautiful, one high and strong (and as I listened,
it flashed upon me that my father had said the 'cello is like a woman
singing), another, deep and rich. There were two men, as I saw when
they neared me, and two women; and all were young. The men--what were
they like? I hardly know, except that they made me feel ashamed of my
roughness. And the women! One was yellow-haired and pale; she had a
fairy build, I think, and her shoulders were like the birch-tree. Her
head was bare, and the sun--he had stayed to do it--had turned all the
threads to gold. She was so white! white as the tiarella in the spring.
When I saw her, I bent forward; they looked my way, and I drew back
behind the tree. I had been curious, and I was ashamed; it seemed to me
they might stop and say, "Who is this fellow who lives in the woods and
stares at people like an owl by night?" But the oars dipped, and the
boat and song went on. The song! if I but knew it! It called my feet to
dancing. It was like laughter and the play of the young squirrels. I
watched for them to go back, and in an hour they did, still singing in
jubilant chorus; and after that came my father. As soon as I saw him, I
knew something had happened. I have never seen him so sad, so weary. He
put his hand on my shoulder, after we had beached the boat and were
walking up to the cabin.
"Francis," he said, "our good days are over."
"Why?" I asked.
It appeared to me, for some reason, that they had just begun; perhaps
because the night was so fragrant and the stars so near. The world had
never seemed so homelike and so warm. I knew how a bird feels in its
own soft nest.
"Because some people have come to camp on the Bay Shore. I saw their
tents, and asked Pierre. He says they are here for the summer. Fool!
fool that I was, not to buy that land!"
"But perhaps we shall like them!" I said, and my voice choked in the
saying, the world seemed so good, so strange. He grasped my shoulder,
and his fingers felt like steel. "Boy! boy!" he whispered. For a
minute, I fancied he was crying, as I cried once, years ago, when my
rabbit died. "I knew it would come," he said. "Kismet! I bow the neck.
Put thy foot upon it gently, if may be."
We went on to the cabin, but somehow we could not talk; and it was not
long before my father sought his tent. I went also to mine, and lay
down as I was: but not to sleep. Those voices sang in my ears, and my
heart beat till it choked me. Outside, the moon was at full flood, and
I could bear it no longer. I crept softly out of my tent, and
ran--lightly, so that my father should not hear, but still swiftly--to
the beach. I pushed off a boat, grudging every grating pebble, and
dipped my oars carefully, not to be heard. My father would not have
cared, for often I go out at midnight; but I felt strangely. Yet I knew
I must see those tents. Out of his earshot, I rowed in hot haste, and
every looming tree on the wooded bank seemed to whisper "Hurry! hurry!"
I rounded the Point in a new agony lest I should never hear those
singing voices again; and there lay the tents, white in the moonlight.
I rowed into the shadow of a cliff, tied my boat, and crept along the
shore. I could see my mates, and they were mad with fun. Perhaps a
dozen people stood there together on the sand laughing, inciting one
another to some merrier deed. I stayed in the shadow of my tree,
watching them. Then five who were in bathing-dress began wading, and
struck out swimming lazily. She was there, the slight, young creature,
now with her hair in a glory below her waist. The jealous dark had hid
its gold, but I knew what it would be by day. They swam about, calling
and laughing in delicious tones, while those on the bank--older people
I think--challenged and cautioned them. Then a cry went up, "The raft!
the raft!" and they began swimming out, while the women on the bank
urged them not to dive, but to wait until to-morrow. I thought I had
seen all the sports of young creatures, but I never dreamed of anything
so full of happy delight in life as that one girl who climbed on the
raft without touching the hand a man offered to help her, and danced
about on it, laughing like a wood-thrush gone mad with joy, while the
other women shrieked in foolish snatches. Then a man dived from the
raft, and another. A woman called from shore, "Don't dive, Zoe,
to-night!" and suddenly I knew she was Zoe, and that she would dive and
that I must be with her. I knocked off my shoes, waded out, still in
the shadow, and swam toward the raft. As I neared it, there was one
splash after another; then they were coming up, and I was among them.
It seemed as if I had dreamed it, and knew how it would all happen; for
when her head, sleek as polished metal, came up beside me, I knew it
would, and that I should grasp her dress and swim back with her to
land. She was surprised; but quite mechanically she swam beside me.
"Let me alone, Tom," she said at last. "I don't want to go in." I had
guided her down the bank to my shadowy covert, and there we rose on our
feet in shallow water. Then she turned and looked at me. I was not Tom.
I was a stranger. I wondered if she would be frightened, if it was a
woman's way to scream; and, still worse, if the others would come. I
felt that if they did come to mar that one moment, I should kill them.
But she was scarcely even surprised. I saw a quiver at the corner of
her mouth.
"Will you tell me who you are?" she asked, in a very soft, cool voice.
"You must never dive again from that raft," said I, and my own voice
sounded rough and hard. "Pierre knew better than to let you anchor it
there. The water is too shallow. There are rocks."
"You are the hermit's son!" quite as if she had not heard me, and still
looking at me with a little smile.
"You have been in the water long enough," said I. "Go to your tent at
once and dress. In another minute you will be shivering."
At that she broke into laughter; it was like the moonlight ripple of
the lake.
"Sir, I obey," she said with a mock humility which enchanted me.
"Good-night." She walked up the bank, her wet skirt dripping as she
went. I stood dazed, foolish, looking after. Then as she threaded among
the trees toward the glimmer of a tent, I recovered myself and ran
after her.
"Tell me," I said in haste, "tell me, are you Zoe?"
She was walking on, and I kept pace with her, knowing how rash I was to
follow. She turned her head.
"Not to you," she answered, without pausing in her walk. "Good-night!"
and she was gone.
I know I found my boat, and that, as I rowed away, there were cries of
"Zoe!" from the swimmers who had missed her. I was dripping, but my
blood ran fast. Was she cold? Was she shivering? Fools, to let so
delicate a creature go into the water at night! The men were fools.
III
Ask me now what of the night and what of the day, for I am the watchman
who is fixing his eyes upon life and finding it good. Again I knew
there were events in the wind. This morning my father, too, was uneasy,
and when we had finished our work, we went out together to the grove
near the landing, each with a book; but we did not read. He watched the
lake, and I tried not to listen for the dip of oars. At last it
came,--O happy sound!--and when I started up, I found his glance upon
me.
"Yes, they are coming," he said sadly, bitterly. "It seems we both
expected it."
I could not answer, for I do not understand him. Why should it be a
grief to him more than to me, this seeing men and women who talk and
laugh, with whom one could say all one thought without being
misunderstood, and who can bring us such news of the world? But I had
not time to say these things, for they were coming, two boatloads of
them; and I ran down to the landing to meet them. She was in the first
boat, her hair covered now, but kissed by the sun wherever he could
reach it. With her was an older woman, the brown-eyed young one, and
the same young men. The boat touched the landing, and I helped the
other women ashore; but she put her fingers on the shoulder of a man in
the boat and stepped past me. Why? why? my heart cried out to her. Does
she hate me for last night? Am I so different from her people because I
live in the woods? In the moment I hesitated, thinking it over, they
all got on shore, and were standing about my father and talking to him.
Then I found he had known them, years ago.
"You have changed," the older woman was saying. "You are sadder, but
not so bitter."
"That must be because of my son," he said. And he turned to me, and
named me to them, and I heard their names. She is Zoe Montrose, the
older woman is her aunt, and the two men her cousins; the others, all
young, all laughing, and looking and moving about like birds, are
friends.
"Do you mean to say you have brought him up in this wilderness?" asked
Mrs. Montrose in a whisper I heard. "He is perfect." And then she
added, after a quick glance at my face, "Quite perfect, for he can
blush."
My father turned aside as if he had no stomach for soft speeches, and
asked them to sit on the bank, because it was pleasanter out of doors.
And though Mrs. Montrose said plainly that she wished to see how we
lived, he only smiled and led her to a seat under a tree. No one can
withstand my father. It seems to me, now that I see him with other
people, that he is far finer, more courteous, more commanding than any
of them.
"Bring us the wine, Francis," he said to me, and I went in to find he
had set it out on a salver in a beautiful decanter I had never seen,
and that there were glasses and bits of bread all ready, as if he had
expected guests. I brought it out, and then went back for the little
glasses; and my father served them all. She held her glass in her hand,
and I feared she would not drink; but suddenly, behind the others, she
lifted the glass, bowed to me, and a quick smile ran over her face. And
then she set it to her lips, still looking at me. It was I who took the
glasses away, and hers, which had not been emptied, I left inside my
tent. (O, you know, my friend, my other self, what these things are to
me! only you! only you!)
"This is Homeric," said Mrs. Montrose. "Bread and wine. The flesh is
happily absent."
"Did you expect the blood of'muttons, beefs, or goats'?" asked my
father. "Sacrifice may come later."
Then followed a great deal of talk; but I have not been used to hearing
so many people speaking at once, and I could scarcely follow, and
cannot at all remember it. But while I sat fearing every instant that
they would go, my heart bounded again, for Mrs. Montrose asked us both
to row over to their camp and lunch with them. My father at once
refused, sternly I thought, but he added, without looking at me,--
"I cannot answer for my son."
"O, yes, I will go," I cried. I must have been very eager, for they all
laughed; all except my father, and he replied, "So be it."
They said good-by to him, and fluttered down to the wharf; and I pushed
off my boat with the rest.
"Good-by!" I called to him, but he only waved his hand and turned away.
[Sidenote: _From Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_]
Certainly I meant every word I said. The moment I saw what you had
written for that stupid game, I knew you had a marvelous facility of
expression. No doubt your father has nourished it by making you write | 2,379.154359 |
2023-11-16 18:56:43.3573580 | 1,370 | 18 |
Produced by David Widger
GOLDSMITH'S FRIEND ABROAD AGAIN
By Mark Twain
NOTE.--No experience is set down in the following letters
which had to be invented. Fancy is not needed to give
variety to the history of a Chinaman's sojourn in America.
Plain fact is amply sufficient.
Contents
LETTER I
LETTER II
LETTER III
LETTER IV
LETTER V
LETTER VI
LETTER VII
LETTER I
SHANGHAI, 18--.
DEAR CHING-FOO: It is all settled, and I am to leave my oppressed and overburdened native land and cross the sea to that noble realm where all are free and all equal, and none reviled or abused--America! America, whose precious privilege it is to call herself the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. We and all that are about us here look over the waves longingly, contrasting the privations of this our birthplace with the opulent comfort of that happy refuge. We know how America has welcomed the Germans and the Frenchmen and the stricken and sorrowing Irish, and we know how she has given them bread and work, and liberty, and how grateful they are. And we know that America stands ready to welcome all other oppressed peoples and offer her abundance to all that come, without asking what their nationality is, or their creed or color. And, without being told it, we know that the foreign sufferers she has rescued from oppression and starvation are the most eager of her children to welcome us, because, having suffered themselves, they know what suffering is, and having been generously succored, they long to be generous to other unfortunates and thus show that magnanimity is not wasted upon them.
AH SONG HI.
LETTER II
AT SEA, 18--.
DEAR CHING-FOO: We are far away at sea now; on our way to the beautiful Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. We shall soon be where all men are alike, and where sorrow is not known.
The good American who hired me to go to his country is to pay me $12 a month, which is immense wages, you know--twenty times as much as one gets in China. My passage in the ship is a very large sum--indeed, it is a fortune--and this I must pay myself eventually, but I am allowed ample time to make it good to my employer in, he advancing it now. For a mere form, I have turned over my wife, my boy, and my two daughters to my employer's partner for security for the payment of the ship fare. But my employer says they are in no danger of being sold, for he knows I will be faithful to him, and that is the main security.
I thought I would have twelve dollars to begin life with in America, but the American Consul took two of them for making a certificate that I was shipped on the steamer. He has no right to do more than charge the ship two dollars for one certificate for the ship, with the number of her Chinese passengers set down in it; but he chooses to force a certificate upon each and every Chinaman and put the two dollars in his pocket. As 1,300 of my countrymen are in this vessel, the Consul received $2,600 for certificates. My employer tells me that the Government at Washington know of this fraud, and are so bitterly opposed to the existence of such a wrong that they tried hard to have the extor--the fee, I mean, legalised by the last Congress;--[Pacific and Mediterranean steamship bills.(Ed. Mem.)]--but as the bill did not pass, the Consul will have to take the fee dishonestly until next Congress makes it legitimate. It is a great and good and noble country, and hates all forms of vice and chicanery.
We are in that part of the vessel always reserved for my countrymen. It is called the steerage. It is kept for us, my employer says, because it is not subject to changes of temperature and dangerous drafts of air. It is only another instance of the loving unselfishness of the Americans for all unfortunate foreigners. The steerage is a little crowded, and rather warm and close, but no doubt it is best for us that it should be so.
Yesterday our people got to quarrelling among themselves, and the captain turned a volume of hot steam upon a mass of them and scalded eighty or ninety of them more or less severely. Flakes and ribbons of skin came off some of them. There was wild shrieking and struggling while the vapour enveloped the great throng, and so some who were not scalded got trampled upon and hurt. We do not complain, for my employer says this is the usual way of quieting disturbances on board the ship, and that it is done in the cabins among the Americans every day or two.
Congratulate me, Ching-Foo In ten days more I shall step upon the shore of America, and be received by her great-hearted people; and I shall straighten myself up and feel that I am a free man among freemen.
AH SONG HI.
LETTER III
SAN FRANCISCO, 18--.
DEAR CHING-FOO: I stepped ashore jubilant! I wanted to dance, shout, sing, worship the generous Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. But as I walked from the gangplank a man in a gray uniform--[Policeman] --kicked me violently behind and told me to look out--so my employer translated it. As I turned, another officer of the same kind struck me with a short club and also instructed me to look out. I was about to take hold of my end of the pole which had mine and Hong-Wo's basket and things suspended from it, when a third officer hit me with his club to signify that I was to drop it, and then kicked me to signify that he was satisfied with my promptness. Another person came now, and searched all through our basket and bundles, emptying everything out on the dirty wharf. Then this person and another searched us all over. They found a little package of opium sewed into the artificial part of Hong-Wo's queue, and they took that, and also they made him prisoner and handed him over to an officer, who marched him away. They took his luggage, too, because of his crime, and as our luggage was so mixed | 2,379.377398 |
2023-11-16 18:56:43.4350440 | 8 | 8 |
Produced by Patrick Hopkins and | 2,379.455084 |
2023-11-16 18:56:43.4542640 | 1,357 | 48 |
Transcribed from the 1913 Thomas J. Wise pamphlet by David Price, email
[email protected]. Many thanks to Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library,
UK, for kindly supplying the images from which this transcription was
made.
THE GOLD HORNS
TRANSLATED BY
GEORGE BORROW
_from the Danish of_
ADAM GOTTLOB OEHLENSCHLAGER
EDITED
_with an Introduction by_
EDMUND GOSSE, C.B.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION
1913
_Copyright in the United States of America_
_by Houghton_, _Mifflin & Co. for Clement Shorter_.
INTRODUCTION
Early in the present year Mr. Thos. J. Wise discovered among the
miscellaneous MSS. of Borrow a fragment which proved to be part of a
version of Oehlenschlager's _Gold Horns_. His attention being drawn to
the fact, hitherto unknown, that Borrow had translated this famous poem,
he sought for, and presently found, a complete MS. of the poem, and from
this copy the present text has been printed. The paper on which it is
written is watermarked 1824, and it is probable that the version was
composed in 1826. The hand-writing coincides with that of several of the
pieces included in the _Romantic Ballads_ of that year, and there can be
little doubt that Borrow intended _The Gold Horns_ for that volume, and
rejected it at last. He was conscious, perhaps, that his hand had lacked
the skill needful to reproduce a lyric the melody of which would have
taxed the powers of Coleridge or of Shelley. Nevertheless, his attempt
seems worthy of preservation.
_The Gold Horns_ marks one of the most important stages in the history of
Scandinavian literature. It is the earliest, and the freshest, specimen
of the Romantic Revival in its definite form. In this way, it takes in
Danish poetry a place analogous to that taken by _The Ancient Mariner_ in
English poetry.
The story of the events which led to the composition of _The Gold Horns_
is told independently, by Steffens and by Oehlenschlager in their
respective Memoirs, and the two accounts tally completely. Adam Gottlob
Oehlenschlager (1779-1850), the greatest poet whom the North of Europe
has produced, had already attracted considerable renown and even profit
by his writings, which were in the classico-sentimental manner of the
late 18th century, when, in the summer of 1802, the young Norwegian
philosopher, Henrik Steffens, arrived in Copenhagen from Germany, where
he had imbibed the new romantic ideas. He began to give lectures on
aesthetics, and these awakened a turmoil of opposition. Among those who
heard him, no one was more scandalised than Oehlenschlager, then in his
twenty-third year. He was not acquainted with Steffens, but in the
course of the autumn they happened to meet at a restaurant in Copenhagen,
when they instantly experienced a violent mutual attraction. Steffens
has described how deep an impression was made upon him by the handsome
head, flashing eyes, and graceful vivacity of the poet, while
Oehlenschlager bears witness to being no less fascinated by the gravity
and enthusiasm of the philosopher. The new friends found it impossible
to part, and sixteen hours had gone by, and 3 a.m. had struck, before
Oehlenschlager could tear himself away from the company of Steffens.
He scarcely slept that night, and rose in a condition of bewilderment and
rapture. His first act, after breakfast, was to destroy a whole volume
of his own MS. poetry, which was ready for press, and for which a
publisher had promised him a handsome sum of money. His next was to sit
down and write _The Gold Horns_, a manifesto of his complete conversion
to the principles of romanticism. Later in the day he presented himself
again at Steffens' lodgings, bringing the lyric with him, "to prove," as
he says, "to Steffens that I was a poet at last beyond all doubt or
question." His new friend received him with solemn exultation. "Now you
are indeed a poet," he said, and folded him in his arms. The conversion
of Oehlenschlager to romanticism meant the conquest of Danish literature
by the new order of thought.
Oehlenschlager has explained what it was that suggested to him the
leading idea of his poem. Two antique horns of gold, discovered some
time before in the bogs of Slesvig, had been recently stolen from the
national collection at Rosenborg, and the thieves had melted down the
inestimable treasures. Oehlenschlager treats these horns as the reward
for genuine antiquarian enthusiasm, shown in a sincere and tender passion
for the ancient relics of Scandinavian history. From a generation
unworthy to appreciate them, the _Horns_ had been withdrawn, to be
mysteriously restored at the due romantic hour. He was, when he came
under the influence of Steffens, absolutely ripe for conversion, filled
with the results of his Icelandic studies, and with an imagination
redolent of _Edda_ and the Sagas. To this inflammable material, Henrik
Steffens merely laid the torch of his intelligence.
It is impossible to pretend that Borrow has caught the enchanting beauty
and delicacy of the Danish poem. But he has made a gallant effort to
reproduce the form and language of Oehlenschlager, and we have thought it
not without interest to print opposite his version the whole of the
original Danish.
EDMUND GOSSE.
GULDHORNENE {10} THE GOLD HORNS
De higer og soger Upon the pages
I gamle Boger, Of the olden ages,
I oplukte Hoie, | 2,379.474304 |
2023-11-16 18:56:43.8342230 | 1,371 | 12 |
Produced by Demian Katz and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Images courtesy
of the Digital Library@Villanova University
(http://digital.library.villanova.edu/)
THE ART
... OF...
KISSING.
[Illustration: SEVEN.
At seven!! a sly kiss is so sweet,
To steal one now and then’s a treat.]
Curiously,
Historically,
Humorously,
Poetically
Considered.
[Illustration: SEVENTEEN.
At seventeen!! they’re nicer still,
And there’s a way where there’s a will.]
DEDICATED
TO
ALL WHO LOVE.
[Illustration: SEVENTY.
At seventy!! it’s just the same,
They still keep up the old, old game.]
New York:
J. S. Ogilvie Publishing Company,
57 Rose Street.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE
ART OF KISSING.
CURIOUSLY, HISTORICALLY,
HUMOROUSLY, POETICALLY
CONSIDERED.
--------------
(COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY WILL ROSSITER.)
--------------
NEW YORK:
J. S. OGILVIE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
57 ROSE STREET.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE
ART OF KISSING.
I.
ORIGIN OF KISSING; THE SCANDINAVIAN TRADITION; AN OLD
POET’S IDEA—KISSING IN ANCIENT ROME, AND AMONG THE
JEWS AND EARLY CHRISTIANS—BIBLICAL KISSING—RELIGIOUS
SIGNIFICANCE—KISSING IN EARLY ENGLAND—ANCIENT KISSING
CUSTOMS AS DESCRIBED BY ERASMUS—THE PURITANICAL VIEWS
OF JOHN BUNYAN—HOW ADAM KISSED EVE—A KISS DEFINED: BY
THE DICTIONARY, SHAKESPEARE, ROBERT HERRICK, SIDNEY,
COLERIDGE—COMICAL AND SHORT DESCRIPTIONS—A GRAMMAR OF
KISSING—THE SCIENTIFIC REASON WHY KISSES ARE PLEASANT.
Of kissing it has been quaintly said that nature was its author and it
began with the first courtship. The Scandinavian tradition was that
kissing was an exotic introduced into England by Rowena, the beautiful
daughter of Hengist, the Saxon. At a banquet given by the British
monarch in honor of his allies the princess, after pressing the brimming
beaker to her lips, saluted the astonished and delighted Vortigern with
a little kiss, after the manner of her own people.
For a long time it was an act of religion in ancient Rome and among the
Romans the sacredness of the kiss was inviolable. At length it was
degraded into a current form of salutation.
The kiss was, in process of time, used generally as a form of salutation
in Rome where men testified their regard and the warmth of their welcome
for each other chiefly by the number of their kisses. There was a
curious law among the Romans made by Constantine; that, if a man had
kissed his betrothed she gained thereby the half of his effects should
he die before the celebration of the marriage; and should the lady
herself die, under the same circumstances, her heirs or nearest to kin
would take the half due her, a kiss among the ancients being the sign of
plighted faith.
Among the Jews, kissing was a customary mode of salutation as we may
judge from the circumstance of Judas approaching his Master with a kiss.
The Rabbis did not permit more than three kinds of kisses, the kiss of
reverence, of reception and dismissal. Kissing in many religions has
played a part as a mark of adoration or veneration. In Hosea xiii-2,
speaking of idolatry, we find the sentence “Let the men that sacrifice
kiss the calves.” Again, the discontented prophet is told that even in
idolatrous Israel are seven thousand knees which have not bowed to Baal,
“and every mouth which hath not kissed him.” The Mohammedans, on their
pious pilgrimage to Mecca, kiss the sacred black stone and the four
corners of the Kaaba. The Roman Catholic priest kisses the aspergillum,
and Palm Sunday the palm.
In the works of St. Augustine we find an account of four kinds of
kissing; the first, the kiss of reconciliation which was given between
enemies wishing to become friends; the second, the kiss of peace which
Christians exchanged in church in the time of the celebration of the
holy eucharist. The third, the kiss of love which loving souls gave to
one another and to those whom they showed hospitality. St. Peter and St.
Paul used to finish their letters by saying, “salute one another with a
holy kiss.” In the early church kissing seems to have been a common form
of greeting, irrespective of age, sex, or social condition, and, in some
it seems to have created a jealous feeling.
One heathen writer speaks of how annoying it must be to a heathen
husband to see his wife exchanging kisses with the Christian brethren.
Origen, one of the early Christian writers, says that the kisses must be
“holy.” He may have had occasion to give this reminder for mention is
made by another writer of kisses so loud that they resounded through the
churches and occasioned foul suspicions and evil reports.
In the Bible there are eight kinds of kisses mentioned:
_Salutation._—David fell on his face to the ground, and bowed himself
three times; and they [David and Jonathan] kissed one another, and wept
one with another, until David exceeded. I. Samuel xx, 41. Greet all the
brethren with a holy kiss. I. Thess. v, 26. Salute one another with a
holy kiss. Romans xvi, 16. See also Ex. xviii, 7; I. Cor. xvi, 20; I.
Pet. v, 14.
_Valediction | 2,379.854263 |
2023-11-16 18:56:43.8378590 | 5,638 | 17 |
Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Charles Aldarondo and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
GOING SOME
A ROMANCE OF STRENUOUS AFFECTION
BY
REX BEACH
SUGGESTED BY THE PLAY BY REX BEACH AND PAUL ARMSTRONG
ILLUSTRATED BY MARK FENDERSON
CHAPTER I
Four cowboys inclined their bodies over the barbed-wire fence
which marked the dividing-line between the Centipede Ranch and
their own, staring mournfully into a summer night such as only
the far southwestern country knows. Big yellow stars hung thick
and low--so low that it seemed they might almost be plucked by an
upstretched hand--and a silent air blew across thousands of open
miles of land lying crisp and fragrant under the velvet dark.
And as the four inclined their bodies, they inclined also their
ears, after the strained manner of listeners who feel anguish at
what they hear. A voice, shrill and human, pierced the night like
a needle, then, with a wail of a tortured soul, died away amid
discordant raspings: the voice of a phonograph. It was their own,
or had been until one overconfident day, when the Flying Heart
Ranch had risked it as a wager in a foot-race with the
neighboring Centipede, and their own man had been too slow. As it
had been their pride, it remained their disgrace. Dearly had they
loved, and dearly lost it. It meant something that looked like
honor, and though there were ten thousand thousand phonographs,
in all the world there was not one that could take its place.
The sound ceased, there was an approving distant murmur of men's
voices, and then the song began:
"Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
Lift up your voice and sing--"
Higher and higher the voice mounted until it reached again its
first thin, ear-splitting pitch.
"Still Bill" Stover stirred uneasily in the darkness. "Why 'n
'ell don't they keep her wound up?" he complained. "Gallagher's
got the soul of a wart-hog. It's criminal the way he massacres
that hymn."
From a rod farther down the wire fence Willie answered him, in a
boy's falsetto:
"I wonder if he does it to spite me?"
"He don't know you're here," said Stover.
The other came out of the gloom, a little stoop-shouldered man
with spectacles.
"I ain't noways sure," he piped, peering up at his lanky foreman.
"Why do you reckon he allus lets Mrs. Melby peter out on my
favorite record? He done the same thing last night. It looks like
an insult."
"It's nothing but ignorance," Stover replied. "He don't want no
trouble with you. None of 'em do."
"I'd like to know for certain." The small man seemed torn by
doubt. "If I only knew he done it a-purpose, I'd git him. I bet I
could do it from here."
Stover's voice was gruff as he commanded: "Forget it! Ain't it
bad enough for us fellers to hang around like this every night
without advertising our idiocy by a gun-play?"
"They ain't got no right to that phonograph," Willie averred,
darkly.
"Oh yes, they have; they won it fair and square."
"Fair and square! Do you mean to say Humpy Joe run that foot-race
on the square?"
"I never said nothin' like that whatever. I mean we bet it, and
we lost it. Listen! There goes Carara's piece!"
Out past the corral floated the announcement in a man's metallic
syllables:
"_The Baggage Coach Ahead,_ as sung by Helena Mora for the
Echo Phonograph, of New York and Pa-a-aris!"
From the dusk to the right of the two listeners now issued soft
Spanish phrases.
"_Madre de Dios!_ 'The Baggage Car in Front!' T'adora Mora!
God bless 'er!"
During the rendition of this affecting ballad the two cow-men
remained draped uncomfortably over the barbed-wire barrier, lost
in rapturous enjoyment. When the last note had died away, Stover
roused himself reluctantly.
"It's time we was turnin' in." He called softly, "Hey, Mex!"
"_Si, Senor!_"
"Come on, you and Cloudy. _Vamos!_ It's ten o'clock."
He turned his back on the Centipede Ranch that housed the
treasure, and in company with Willie, made his way to the ponies.
Two other figures joined them, one humming in a musical baritone
the strains of the song just ended.
"Cut that out, Mex! They'll hear us," Stover cautioned.
"_Caramba!_ This t'ing is brek my 'eart," said the Mexican,
sadly. "It seem like the Senorita Mora is sing that song to me.
Mebbe she knows I'm set out 'ere on cactus an' listen to her. Ah,
I love that Senorita ver' much."
The little man with the glasses began to swear in his high
falsetto. His ear had caught the phonograph operator in another
musical mistake.
"That horn-toad let Mrs. Melby die again to-night," said he.
"It's sure comin' to a runnacaboo between him and me. If somebody
don't kill him pretty soon, he'll wear out that machine before we
git it back."
"Humph! It don't look like we'd ever get it back," said Stover.
One of the four sighed audibly, then vaulting into his saddle,
went loping away without waiting for his companions.
"Cloudy's sore because they didn't play _Navajo,"_ said
Willie. "Well, I don't blame 'em none for omittin' that war-
dance. It ain't got the class of them other pieces. While it's
devised to suit the intellect of an Injun, perhaps; it ain't in
the runnin' with _The Holy City,_ which tune is the sweetest
and sacredest ever sung."
Carara paused with a hand upon the neck of his cayuse.
"Eet is not so fine as _The Baggage Car in Front,"_ he
declared.
"It's got it beat a mile!" Willie flashed back, harshly.
"Here you!" exclaimed Stover, "no arguments. We all have our
favorites, and it ain't up to no individual to force his likes
and dislikes down no other feller's throat." The two men he
addressed mounted their broncos stiffly.
"I repeat," said Willie: "_The Holy City_, as sung by Mrs.
Melby, is the swellest tune that ever hit these parts."
Carara muttered something in Spanish which the others could not
understand.
"They're all fine pieces," Stover observed, placatingly, when
fairly out of hearing of the ranch-houses. "You boys have each
got your preference. Cloudy, bein' an Injun, has got his, and I
rise to state that I like that monologue, _Silas on Fifth
Avenoo_, better than all of 'em, which ain't nothin' ag'inst
my judgment nor yours. When Silas says, 'The girl opened her
valise, took our her purse, closed her valise, opened her purse,
took out a dime, closed her purse, opened her valise, put in her
purse, closed her valise, give the dime to the conductor, got a
nickel in change, then opened her valise, took out her purse,
closed her valise-'" Stover began to rock in his saddle, then
burst into a loud guffaw, followed by his companions. "Gosh!
That's awful funny!"
"_Si! si!_" acknowledged Carara, his white teeth showing
through the gloom.
"An' it's just like a fool woman," tittered Willie. "That's sure
one ridic'lous line of talk."
"Still Bill" wiped his eyes with the back of a bony hand. "I know
that hull monologue by heart, but I can't never get past that
spot to save my soul. Right there I bog down, complete." Again he
burst into wild laughter, followed by his companions. "I don't
see how folks can be so dam' funny!" he gasped.
"It's natural to 'em, like warts," said Willie; "they're born
with it, the same as I was born to shoot straight with either
hand, and the same as the Mex was born to throw a rope. He don't
know how he does it, and neither do I. Some folks can say funny
things, some can sing, like Missus Melby; some can run
foot-races, like that Centipede cook--" Carara breathed an eloquent
Mexican oath.
"Do you reckon he fixed that race with Humpy Joe?" inquired
Stover.
"Name's Skinner," Willie observed. "It sure sounds bad."
"I'm sorry Humpy left us so sudden," said Still Bill. "We'd ought
to have questioned him. If we only had proof that the race was
crooked--"
"You can so gamble it was crooked," the little man averred. "Them
Centipede fellers never done nothin' on the square. They got
Humpy Joe, and fixed it for him to lose so they could get that
talkin'-machine. That's why he pulled out."
"I'd hate to think it," said the foreman, gloomily; then after a
moment, during which the only sound was that of the muffled
hoof-beats: "Well, what we goin' to do about it?"
"Humph! I've laid awake nights figurin' that out. I reckon we'll
just have to git another foot-racer and beat Skinner. He ain't
the fastest in the world."
"That takes coin. We're broke."
"Mebbe Mr. Chapin would lend a helpin' hand."
"No chance!" said Stover, grimly. "He's sore on foot-racin'. Says
it disturbs us and upsets our equalubrium."
Carara fetched a deep sigh.
"It's ver' bad t'ing, Senor. I don' feel no worse w'en my
gran'mother die."
The three men loped onward through the darkness, weighted heavily
with disappointment.
Affairs at the Flying Heart Ranch were not all to Jack Chapin's
liking. Ever since that memorable foot-race, more than a month
before, a gloom had brooded over the place which even the
presence of two Smith College girls, not to mention that of Mr.
Fresno, was unable to dissipate. The cowboys moped about like
melancholy shades, and neglected their work to discuss the
disgrace that had fallen upon them. It was a task to get any of
them out in the morning, several had quit, the rest were
quarrelling among themselves, and the bunk-house had already been
the scene of more than one encounter, altogether too sanguinary
to have originated from such a trivial cause as a foot-race. It
was not exactly an auspicious atmosphere in which to entertain a
houseful of college boys and girls, all unversed in the ways of
the West.
The master of the ranch sought his sister Jean, to tell her
frankly what was on his mind.
"See here, Sis," he began, "I don't want to cast a cloud over
your little house-party, but I think you'd better keep your
friends away from my men."
"Why, what is the matter?" she demanded.
"Things are at a pretty high tension just now, and the boys have
had two or three rows among themselves. Yesterday Fresno tried to
'kid' Willie about _The Holy City;_ said it was written as a
<DW53> song, and wasn't sung in good society. If he hadn't been a
guest, I guess Willie would have murdered him."
"Oh, Jack! You won't let Willie murder anybody, not even
Berkeley, while the people are here, will you?" coaxed Miss
Chapin, anxiously.
"What made you invite Berkeley Fresno, anyhow?" was the
rejoinder. "This is no gilded novelty to him. He is a Western
man."
Miss Chapin numbered her reasons sagely. "In the first place--
Helen. Then there had to be enough men to go around. Last and
best, he is the most adorable man I ever saw at a house-party.
He's an angel at breakfast, sings perfectly beautifully--you know
he was on the Stanford Glee Club--"
"Humph!" Jack was unimpressed. "If you roped him for Helen Blake
to brand, why have you sent for Wally Speed?"
"Well, you see, Berkeley and Helen didn't quite hit it off, and
Mr. Speed is--a friend of Culver's." Miss Chapin blushed
prettily.
"Oh, I see! I thought myself that this affair had something to do
with you and Culver Covington, but I didn't know it had lapsed
into a sort of matrimonial round-up. Suppose Miss Blake shouldn't
care for Speed after he gets here?"
"Oh, but she will! That's where Berkeley Fresno comes in. When
two men begin to fight for her, she'll have to begin to form a
preference, and I'm sure it will be for Wally Speed. Don't you
see?"
The brother looked at his sister shrewdly. "It seems to me you
learned a lot at Smith."
Jean tossed her head. "How absurd! That sort of knowledge is
perfectly natural for a girl to have." Then she teased: "But you
admit that my selection of a chaperon was excellent, don't you,
Jack?"
"Mrs. Keap and I are the best of friends," Jack averred, with
supreme dignity. "I'm not in the market, and a man doesn't marry
a widow, anyhow. It's too old and experienced a beginning."
"Nonsense! Roberta Keap is only twenty-three. Why, she hardly
knew her husband, even! It was one of those sudden, impulsive
affairs that would overwhelm any girl who hadn't seen a man for
four years. And then he enlisted in the Spanish War, and was
killed."
"Considerate chap!"
"Roberta, you know, is my best friend, after Helen. Do be nice to
her, Jack." Miss Chapin sighed. "It is too bad the others
couldn't come."
"Yes, a small house-party has its disadvantages. By-the-way,
what's that gold thing on your frock?"
"It's a medal. Culver sent it to me."
"Another?"
"Yes, he won the intercollegiate championship again." Miss Chapin
proudly extended the emblem on its ribbon.
"I wish to goodness Covington had been here to take Humpy Joe's
place," said the young cattle-man as he turned it over. "The boys
are just brokenhearted over losing that phonograph."
"I'll get him to run and win it back," Jean offered, easily. Her
brother laughed. "Take my advice, Sis, and don't let Culver mix
up in this game! The stakes are too high. I think that Centipede
cook is a professional runner, myself, and if our boys were
beaten again--well, you and mother and I would have to move out
of New Mexico, that's all. No, we'd better let the memory of that
defeat die out as quickly as possible. You warn Fresno not to
joke about it any more, and I'll take Mrs. Keap off your hands.
She may be a widow, she may even be the chaperon, but I'll do it;
I will do it," promised Jack--"for my sister's sake."
CHAPTER II
Helen Blake was undeniably bored. The sultry afternoon was very
long--longer even than Berkeley Fresno's autobiography, and quite
as dry. It was too hot and dusty to ride, so she took refuge in
the latest "best seller," and sought out a hammock on the vine-
shaded gallery, where Jean Chapin was writing letters, while the
disconsolate Fresno, banished, wandered at large, vaguely injured
at her lack of appreciation.
Absent-mindedly, the girls dipped into the box of bonbons between
them. Jean finished her correspondence and essayed conversation,
but her companion's blond head was bowed over the book in her
lap, and the effort met with no response. Lulled by the
somniferous droning of insects and lazy echoes from afar, Miss
Chapin was on the verge of slumber, when she saw her guest
rapidly turn the last pages of her novel, then, with a chocolate
between her teeth, read wide-eyed to the finish. Miss Blake
closed the book reluctantly, uncurled slowly, then stared out
through the dancing heat-waves, her blue eyes shadowed with
romance.
"Did she marry him?" queried Jean.
"No, no!" Helen Blake sighed, blissfully. "It was infinitely
finer. She killed herself."
"I like to see them get married."
"Naturally. You are at that stage. But I think suicide is more
glorious, in many cases."
Miss Chapin yawned openly. "Speaking of suicides, isn't this
ranch the deadest place?"
"Oh, I don't think so at all." Miss Blake picked her way
fastidiously through the bonbons, nibbling tentatively at several
before making her choice. "Oh yes, you do, and you needn't be
polite just because you're a guest." "Well, then, to be as
truthful as a boarder, it _is_ a little dull. Not for our
chaperon, though. The time doesn't seem to drag on her hands.
Jack certainly is making it pleasant for her."
"If you call taking her out to watch a lot of bellowing calves
get branded, entertainment," Miss Chapin sighed.
"I wonder what makes widows so fascinating?" observed the
youthful Miss Blake.
"I hope I never find out." Jean clutched nervously at the gold
medal on her dress. "Wouldn't that be dreadful!"
"My dear, Culver seems perfectly healthy. Why worry?"
"I--I wish he were here."
Miss Blake leaned forward and read the inscription on her
companion's medal. "Oh, isn't it heavy!" feeling it reverently.
"Pure gold, like himself! You should have seen him when he won
it. Why, at the finish of that race all the men but Culver were
making the most horrible faces. They were simply _dead_."
Miss Blake's hands were clasped in her lap. "They all make
faces," said she. "Have you told Roberta about your engagement?"
"No, she doesn't dream of it, and I don't want her to know. I'm
so afraid she'll think, now that mother has gone, that I asked
her here just as a chaperon. Perhaps I'll tell her when Culver
comes."
"I adore athletes. I wouldn't give a cent for a man who wasn't
athletic."
"Does Mr. Speed go in for that sort of thing?"
"Rather! The day we met at the Yale games he had medals all over
him, and that night at the dance he used the most wonderful
athletic language--we could scarcely understand him. Mr.
Covington must have told you all about him; they are chums, you
know."
Miss Chapin furrowed her brows meditatively.
"I have heard Culver speak of him, but never as an athlete. Have
you and Mr. Speed settled things between you, Helen? I mean, has
he--said anything?"
Miss Blake flushed.
"Not exactly." She adjusted a cushion to cover her confusion,
then leaned back complacently. "But he has stuttered dangerously
several times."
A musical tinkle of silver spurs sounded in the distance, and
around the corner of the cook-house opposite came Carara, the
Mexican, his wide, spangled sombrero tipped rakishly over one
ear, a corn-husk cigarette drooping from his lips. Evidently his
presence was inspired by some special motive, for he glanced
sharply about, and failing to detect the two girls behind the
distant screen of vines, removed his cigarette and whistled
thrice, like a quail, then, leaning against the adobe wall,
curled his black silken mustaches to needle-points.
"It's that romantic Spaniard!" whispered Helen. "What does he
want?"
"It's his afternoon call on Mariedetta, the maid," said Jean.
"They meet there twice a day, morning and afternoon."
"A lovers' tryst!" breathed Miss Blake, eagerly. "Isn't he
graceful and picturesque! Can we watch them?"
"'Sh-h! There she comes!"
From the opposite direction appeared a slim, swarthy Mexican
girl, an Indian water-jug balanced upon her shoulders. She was
clad in the straight-hanging native garment, belted in with a
sash; her feet were in sandals, and she moved as silently as a
shadow.
During the four days since Miss Blake's arrival at the Flying
Heart Ranch she had seen Mariedetta flitting noiselessly here and
there, but had never heard her speak. The pretty, expressionless
face beneath its straight black hair had ever retained its wooden
stolidity, the velvety eyes had not laughed nor frowned nor
sparkled. She seemed to be merely a part of this far southwestern
picture; a bit of inanimate yet breathing local color. Now,
however, the girl dropped her jug, and with a low cry glided to
her lover, who tossed aside his cigarette and took her in his
arms. From this distance their words were indistinguishable.
"How perfectly romantic," said the Eastern girl, breathlessly. "I
had no idea Mariedetta could love anybody."
"She is a volcano," Jean answered.
"Why, it's like a play!"
"And it goes on all the time."
"How gentle and sweet he is! I think he is charming. He is not at
all like the other cowboys, is he?"
While the two witnesses of the scene were eagerly discussing it,
Joy, the Chinese cook, emerged from the kitchen bearing a bucket
of water, his presence hidden from the lovers by the corner of
the building. Carara languidly released his inamorata from his
embrace and lounged out of sight around the building, pausing at
the farther corner to waft her a graceful kiss from the ends of
his fingers, as with a farewell flash of his white teeth he
disappeared. Mariedetta recovered her water-jug and glided onward
into the court in front of the cook-house, her face masklike, her
movements deliberate as usual. Joy, spying the girl, grinned at
her. She tossed her head coquettishly and her step slackened,
whereupon the cook, with a sly glance around, tapped her gently
on the arm, and said:
"Nice l'il gally."
"The idea!" indignantly exclaimed Miss Blake from her hammock.
But Mariedetta was not offended. Instead she smiled over her
shoulder as she had smiled at her lover an instant before.
"Me like you fine. You like pie?" Joy nodded toward the door to
the culinary department, as if to make free of his hospitality,
at the instant that Carara, who had circled the building, came
into view from the opposite side, a fresh cigarette between his
lips. His languor vanished at the first glimpse of the scene, and
he strode toward the white-clad Celestial, who dove through the
open door like a prairie dog into its hole. Carara followed at
his heels.
"It serves him right!" cried Miss Blake, rising. "I hope Mr.
Carara--"
A din of falling pots and pans issued from the cook-house,
mingled with shrill cries and soft Spanish imprecations; then,
with one long-drawn wail, the pandemonium ceased as suddenly as
it had commenced, and Carara issued forth, black with anger.
"Ha!" said he, scowling at Mariedetta, who had retreated, her
hand upon her bosom. He exhaled a lungful of cigarette smoke
through his nostrils fiercely. "You play wit' me, eh?"
"No! no!" Mariedetta ran to him, and, seizing his arm, cooed
amorously in Spanish.
"Bah! _Vamos!"_ Carara flung her from him, and stalked away.
"Well, of all the outrageous things!" said Miss Blake. "Why, she
was actually flirting with that Chinaman."
"Mariedetta flirts with every man she can find," said Jean,
calmly, "but she doesn't mean any harm. She'll marry Carara some
time--if he doesn't kill her."
"Kill her!" Miss Blake's eyes were round. "He wouldn't do
_that!"_
"Indeed, yes. He is a Mexican, and he has a terrible temper."
Miss Blake sank back into the hammock. "How perfectly dreadful!
And yet--it must be heavenly to love a man who would kill you."
Miss Chapin lost herself in meditation for an instant. "Culver is
almost like that when he is angry. Hello, here comes our
foreman!"
Stover, a tall, gangling cattle-man with drooping grizzled
mustache, came shambling up to the steps. His weather-beaten
chaps were much too short for his lengthy limbs, the collar | 2,379.857899 |
2023-11-16 18:56:44.1494170 | 7,435 | 6 |
Produced by Greg Bergquist and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
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A SOLDIER IN
THE PHILIPPINES
BY
N. N. FREEMAN
(PRIVATE, U.S.A.)
[Illustration]
F. TENNYSON NEELY CO.
114 Fifth Avenue
NEW YORK
96 Queen Street
LONDON
Copyright, 1901,
by
D. L. FREEMAN,
in the
United States
and
Great Britain.
Entered at
Stationers' Hall, London.
All Rights Reserved.
A SOLDIER IN THE PHILIPPINES.
CHAPTER I.
Needom Freeman, in the United States regular army during the years
1898-1900, was born in the quiet little country village of
Barrettsville, Dawson County, Ga., on the 25th of September, 1874.
Many things have been said and written of army life during the
Spanish-American war, but usually from the officers' point of view. As a
matter of fact the ideas of a private if spoken or written are
unbelieved simply because the prestige of office was not attached, and
receives but little credit.
The early part of my life was passed in and near the little village of
my birth. Working on the farm and attending the village school a few
months during the time when farming operations were suspended, consumed
about all my time. My father being a poor man with a large family and
unable to give his children the benefit of any advanced education, it
fell to my lot to receive but little instruction. I was the eighth child
in a family of thirteen--five sons and eight daughters.
Having attained the long awaited age of twenty-one, when most young men
are buoyant and full of hope and ambition, I turned my thoughts
westward, where I hoped to make my fortune. I gathered together my few
possessions and proceeded to Texas, arriving at Alvarado, Texas, the
second day of November, 1895.
Obtaining employment on a farm, my old occupation was resumed for
eighteen weeks, but finding this too commonplace and not fulfilling my
desires nor expectations, the farm work was once more given up.
I obtained a position with a wrecking crew on the Santa Fe Railroad. For
twelve months I worked with this crew, then gave it up in disgust.
A few weeks' employment in the cotton mills of Dallas, Texas, were
sufficient to satisfy me with that sort of work.
I next obtained employment with the street railroad of Dallas, filling
the position of motorman, which I held for three months. One night,
while with several friends, the subject of enlisting in the army was
discussed; this strongly appealed to me, and studying the matter
further, I became enthused over the idea. I determined to enlist at
once. My position as motorman with the street railroad company was given
up. My salary was forty-five dollars a month, as against one-third that
amount in the army, but this made little difference to me. I was anxious
to be a soldier and live the life of one.
I proceeded to the recruiting office in Dallas to stand an examination,
was weighed, then measured all over, every scar was measured, my
complexion was noted, my age, place of birth and all about my people
were taken. My fingers and toes were twisted and almost pulled off. It
occurred to me that possibly my examiners thought my fingers and toes
might be artificial. After part of two days' weighing, measuring, finger
pulling, toe-twisting and questioning I was pronounced subject and sent
to the St. George Hotel, in Dallas, to await further orders. Of twelve
applicants who were standing the same examination I was the only
successful one. I enlisted under Lieutenant Charles Flammil for a
service of three years, unless discharged before the expiration of that
time. I was to obey all the orders of my superior officers, which meant
every officer from corporal up.
From Dallas I was sent to Fort McIntosh, south-west of Dallas, on the
border of Texas and Mexico, on the Rio Grande. My long cherished hope
was now being fulfilled. I had from a mere boy had a desire to be one of
Uncle Sam's soldiers and fight for my country. I had now entered the
service for three years and will let the reader judge for himself
whether or not he thinks that I should be satisfied with the service and
experience of a soldier.
Fort McIntosh is in Laredo, Texas. Here I was assigned, upon my arrival,
to Company A, Twenty-third United States Infantry. I had only been there
a few days when Company A was ordered out on a practice march of one
hundred and twenty miles. Of course I wanted to go, thinking it would be
a picnic. I only had a few days' drilling at the fort, and that was all
I ever had, but I was anxious to go on this march with my company, and
Goodale, called "Grabby" by the men, had my uniform and necessary
equipage issued to me and let me go with the company. I learned during
the first days' march its object was not to have a picnic, but just to
try us and prepare us for the service we might at any time be called
upon to perform. We were to get hardened a little by this practice
march.
The second day out we were halted every hour and rested ten minutes.
During one of those rests I pulled off my shoes to see what was hurting
my feet. I found on each of my heels a large blister and several small
ones. A non-commissioned officer saw the condition of my feet and
ordered me into the ambulance. I was afraid the soldiers would laugh at
me for falling out. First I hesitated, but very soon I had plenty of
company in the ambulance.
The march was through a rough country, the roads were very bad, and
travel was difficult. Twenty miles a day through chaparral bushes and
cactus is a good day's march for soldiers, with all their equipage. The
infantryman carried a rifle, belt, haversack and canteen. Tents were
pitched every night and guards stationed around the camp to keep away
prowling Mexicans and others who would steal the provisions of the camp.
Tents were struck at morning and everything put in readiness for the
day's march. The company was out fifteen days on that practice march
across the plains. Four days, however, were really holidays. We spent
them hunting and fishing. Fish and game were plentiful. A few deer were
to be found, but ducks and blue quail were the principal game. The
company returned to Fort McIntosh on the third of December.
I had to be drilled as a recruit; never having had any military
training, everything was new to me. I was drilled hard for a month
before I was assigned to the company for duty. That month's drill was
very hard.
After I was assigned for duty I learned something new about military
affairs every day for a year. The manner of all the drill masters was
very objectionable to me at first; I did not like the way they spoke to
a soldier and gave commands, which, if disobeyed, punishment was
inflicted. The month I drilled as a recruit by myself I was under
Sergeant Robert Scott of my company. During that time I thought Sergeant
Scott the most unkind man I had ever seen. He looked ugly and talked
harshly. I thought he meant every word he said. After I learned how the
commands were given and was taught how to execute them, it seemed very
simple and then I was assigned for duty.
When my time came to serve on guard duty I did not understand the
"general orders" and "special orders." I went on guard perfectly
bewildered with the instructions given me about my duties.
I did not know what to do. I watched for the officer of the day to make
his round and give orders every day and night.
Two hours' duty on post was the time we stood guard before being
relieved by the proper authority. If a man is caught sitting down while
on duty he is severely punished by being placed in the guard house, and
sentenced to hard labor for a long time. Sometimes the labor sentence
runs as high as six months or more, according to the gravity of the
offense.
I was very careful not to get in the guard house or miss roll call,
having to pay fines or working hard all day with a sentry over me.
Every soldier had to be on his bunk at eleven o'clock at night; his
check was taken and delivered to the officer of the day. Nine o'clock
was bed time, but the checks were not taken up until eleven. The first
call of the morning was sounded at a quarter before six, when we must
answer to reveille, followed by a drilling exercise of fifteen minutes.
After breakfast every soldier had to sweep under his bunk and prepare it
and himself for inspection, which took place after drill hour, which was
from eight to nine o'clock.
A gymnastic drill of thirty minutes each day, except Saturday and
Sunday, was given the company for a month, then for three months this
was omitted, then another month's drill was given us, and then the same
intermission; thus we had them alternately the whole year.
The Sabbath receives but little notice in the army. All duties went on
just as any other day.
Several hours every day were unoccupied by the soldier's duties. The men
could amuse themselves during these hours by reading newspapers and
books, as a very good library was at hand. Aside from reading were such
amusements as billiards, cards and music. These became monotonous and
disgusting to me, and in less than two months I would have gladly given
up my position, but I was in for three years, and had to stay and make
the best of it.
CHAPTER II.
The Christmas holidays were delightful indeed for soldiers, no tasks to
perform for one whole week, except guard duty. The week was spent in
gambling and revelry.
All other holidays meant hard work all day for soldiers; usually they
were days of celebrating some event in the history of our country or
some man must be honored, and homage paid to his memory. The soldiers on
these occasions had to parade and march along the streets all day. Every
holiday, except that of Christmas, was a dreaded day to soldiers.
April first, 1898, my company was ordered out on the target range for
practice. We had had but little practice, only being there six days when
orders were received to prepare to leave our post at a moment's notice.
Those were memorable days. History was being added to, or rather made,
almost daily. Every one was talking of war with Spain, its results and
possibilities. Our camp was in a commotion, expecting war to be declared
at once. Everything was put in readiness for marching. In this condition
we remained until April seventeenth, when orders came at last for the
Twenty-third to proceed to New Orleans.
The city of Laredo gave our regiment a grand banquet before we left
there. Every man, woman and child, apparently, who could get out to see
us off, turned out.
The Twenty-third Regiment had been stationed at Laredo for eight years,
and during this time great attachment had been formed between the
soldiers and citizens. From Laredo to San Antonio was a long run,
attended by nothing of interest. At San Antonio the citizens
demonstrated their patriotism and hospitality by having a grand banquet
awaiting our arrival. Every man seemed to have a good time while there.
Before our train left, the citizens put several kegs of beer in every
car. This was appreciated very much, as beer seems to be a soldier's
favorite beverage, and one that he will have if he has money and is
where it can be bought. A soldier rarely refuses beer when offered to
him.
From San Antonio a run of forty hours carried us into New Orleans on
April nineteenth.
For a month we were there on guard duty. The majority of the regiment
seemed to enjoy their stay in New Orleans, but for me it was anything
but enjoyment.
The citizens were very kind to all soldiers, and seemed to regard them
very highly; when one went into the city he was generally given all the
beer he wished to drink, and made to feel welcome.
Soldiers care very little for anything, and do not seem to care very
much for themselves or for each other. They know that the responsibility
rests upon the officers, and that food and clothing will be furnished as
long as they are in the army. When a soldier draws his pay, usually the
first thing he looks for is some place to gamble and get rid of his
money in a few minutes, then he can be content. He is restless as long
as he has a dollar, and must gamble or take some friends to a saloon and
drink it up, then go away drunk.
If one man has any money and expects to keep it he must not let others
know of it, for they will expect him to spend it for all. Generally when
one man has any money it is free to all, and it is enjoyed as long as it
lasts. Soldiers are very generous and good-natured men; if not that way
at first they become so before a service of three years expires.
Army life is dangerous to the morals of many young men. They will take
up some bad habits if they have not power and determination to control
themselves. It is very easy for a man, especially a young man, to take
up some bad habits and lead a different life altogether in a short time
after he becomes a soldier. A man soon learns to drink and to gamble,
although he may have known nothing of these vices before his enlistment.
I thought that a soldier's life would suit me, but after a service of
three years I can truthfully state that it was not what I desired. Life
in camps at one place a little while, then at another place, winter and
summer, rain, sleet and snow, with twenty men in one wall tent, is very
disagreeable, unhealthy and unpleasant. I spent one month in camp in New
Orleans during the hot weather, and all the pleasure I had there was
fighting mosquitoes. We had a fierce battle with them every night.
My regiment had all the service at New Orleans they wanted in the line
of guard and special duty. Four hours of hard drilling five mornings in
each week, special duty in the afternoon, then half of every night
fighting mosquitoes. May was very hot. I believe that the battalion and
skirmish drills, without stopping to rest or to get water, were very
injurious to the soldiers.
I know that they injured my feelings very much.
I was a private in Company "A," Captain Goodale in command. I thought a
great deal of my captain; he was a good officer, and was soon promoted
to major of the 23d Regiment, and commanded it for several months. He
was then promoted to a lieutenant-colonel and assigned to duty with the
Third Infantry, then in the Philippines. After he set out to join his
new regiment I never saw him again. He was the first captain I served
under.
Soldiers who served under good officers were fortunate, but if they had
bad ones they were soon in trouble and had a hard service. A son of
Lieutenant-Colonel Goodale, who was a lieutenant, was placed in command
of Company "A." He, like his father, was a good officer, and soon won
the confidence and esteem of his company.
After the declaration of war between the United States and Spain, the
23d Regiment was recruited to its full quota of one hundred men for each
of twelve companies. Four new companies had to be formed, which were
called, at first, skeleton companies, because they only had a few men
transferred to them from the old ones.
Non-commissioned officers were transferred to the new companies and
placed in charge of the recruits, to drill and prepare them for duty.
Drilling recruits is hard work, and all the officers avoided it as much
as possible. From the 20th of April to the 24th of May we had nothing
but drill.
When Admiral Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay, orders
were sent to the 23d Regiment to proceed at once to San Francisco. It
will be remembered that we had gone to New Orleans under orders
directing our regiment to Cuba, but everything had changed so suddenly
that we were ordered to San Francisco to be in readiness to go to the
Philippines.
The orders from the War Department were received by Colonel French on
the night of the 23d of May.
The following day everything was put in readiness for leaving for San
Francisco, but to hasten preparations all our tents were struck at 4
o'clock in the evening. Soon afterwards it commenced raining for the
first time during our stay at New Orleans. Our tents were down and we
had no place to shelter and pass the night. We were ready to leave next
morning. I never saw so many wet soldiers before. I was on guard and saw
two hundred men or more go into stables that were near our camp. We were
camping in the race track of the city fair grounds, which were
surrounded by a great many stables. This was rough fare, and I could not
say whether the men slept or killed mosquitoes. One thing I know beyond
question: I saw the toughest, sleepiest looking lot of men next morning
that I had yet seen in my military service. They all seemed to have
colds. To add to our discomfort all the rations had been boxed and
marked for shipping, and we were without food for breakfast. Those who
had any money were allowed to go out and buy something to eat. It is
plain that if a man had no money he went without breakfast.
The men were all formed in line with gun, belt and knapsack, and were
kept standing ready to march at the command, until one o'clock in the
evening before taking up the march of three miles to the railroad
station. We marched through the city and to the station without a halt.
It seemed to me the hottest day I ever knew. It had been nearly
twenty-four hours since I had eaten, and I think my condition was no
worse than that of the whole regiment, with but very few exceptions.
We were in the city of New Orleans, and rations were plentiful, but it
seemed they were scarce for us. This, however, was only the beginning of
what we were to get accustomed to in a few months.
At two o'clock on the 25th day of May, our regiment boarded the cars of
the Southern Pacific Railroad and set out on its journey for San
Francisco. The regiment was divided into three sections for the journey,
which was made in six days.
The rations issued to us on this journey consisted of hard tack, canned
tomatoes, canned salmon, and last, but not least, nor more desirable,
canned horse meat. To use a soldier's expression, such "grub" is almost
enough to make a man sick to look at, but this made no difference, we
had to eat it.
I have seen a few people who seemed to think soldiers were not human
beings like other people. They thought they could endure anything and
would eat any kind of stuff for rations.
While eating supper one evening in our camp at New Orleans, the men
were seated in their usual manner on the open ground grouped around
their mess kits containing their rations; a young lady with her escort
was passing through the camp and observing the men eating supper,
remarked to her companion that the soldiers looked like men.
She had possibly never seen a soldier before.
At another time a man with two small boys were looking over our camp and
talking about the soldiers, when one of the little boys noticing the
soldiers eating, and seeming to be interested in their manner of eating,
said: "Papa, will soldiers eat hay?" His youthful curiosity appeared to
be fully satisfied by the father answering: "Yes, if whiskey is put on
it."
Crowds of people were out at every city and town we passed through
awaiting our arrival. Some had bouquets of beautiful flowers for the
soldiers containing notes of kind words and wishes, and signed by the
giver. Some gave us small baskets of nicely prepared rations. These were
what suited us most, and were very highly appreciated by every one who
was fortunate enough to get one.
Our train passed through many places without stopping. We saw crowds of
people at those places with bouquets and various gifts of kindness and
appreciation which they had no opportunity to give us. Whenever our
train stopped it would only be for a few minutes, and there was only
time enough to receive the little tokens of kindness and good will,
exchange a very few words, and we would again be off.
CHAPTER III.
Traveling through western Texas and the plains of New Mexico is very
mountainous and lonely. Villages of prairie dogs here and there seem to
be about all the living things that the traveler sees. These little
animals burrow deep in the ground, thousands of them close together, and
this is why it is called a prairie dog town. I was told that these
little dogs live mostly on roots and drink no water. I give this as it
was told me, and do not know how true it is. One thing which I noticed
was that we would travel two or three hundred miles and not see any
water courses.
The section that I was with was detained about three hours at El Paso,
Texas, on account of some trouble on the road ahead of us. Many of us
took advantage of this to look about the city. A considerable change of
temperature was noted, it being much cooler than at New Orleans. Before
the next morning we were passing through New Mexico. It was cold enough
to wear an overcoat, but as we only had blankets every man had one drawn
close around him, and was then shivering with cold. This cold weather
continued until the Rocky Mountains were crossed, and we began to
descend the Pacific <DW72>.
Crossing the deserts of Arizona was disagreeable. The white sand from a
distance looks like snow, and is so dry and light that it is lifted
about by the wind. Some places it will drift several feet deep. The
railroad company kept men employed all the time shoveling sand from the
track. Nothing but some scattering, scrubby bushes grows in the deserts.
Almost any time looking from the cars there seems to be smoke away off
in the distance. This is nothing but the dry sand being blown about by
the wind.
Where the railroad crossed the deserts they are from one hundred and
fifty to two hundred miles wide.
The first place we stopped after crossing the Rocky Mountains was in the
city of Los Angeles, California. The good people of Los Angeles had a
bountiful supply of oranges and other nice fruit, which were given to
the soldiers, who enjoyed them very much. Some towns where we stopped
the citizens would put two or three crates of oranges in every car of
our train.
The country was beautiful, orange groves and orchards of different kinds
were numerous and fine.
California is the most beautiful country I have seen in my travels from
Georgia to the Philippine Islands.
The Oakland Ferry was reached about ten o'clock on the morning of the
first day of June. Our regiment commenced to cross at once over to San
Francisco. A detail was left to take our supplies from the train and
load them on boats, all the balance of the regiment going across. My
first sergeant was unfriendly to me and included me in the detail as a
mark of disrespect to me, although it was not my time to be placed on
detail duty according to the system of rotating that duty.
Our detail worked very hard for about two hours and seeing no prospect
of dinner we crossed over into San Francisco to find something to eat.
We found our regiment just ready to enjoy a grand banquet prepared by
the Red Cross Society. It was prepared near the piers in a long stone
building; long tables were piled full of all that a crowd of hungry
soldiers could wish for, excellent music was furnished while we did full
justice to the feast before us. The Red Cross has spent a great deal of
money since the commencement of the Spanish-American war; it has
accomplished much toward softening the horrors of war by caring for the
sick and wounded, providing medicines and necessaries for their relief,
and doing many charitable acts too numerous to be enumerated here. Many
men to-day enjoying health and strength were rescued from what must have
been an untimely grave had not the work of the Red Cross come to their
relief when sick or wounded. The army physician frequently was a
heartless, and apparently indifferent man about the ills of his
patients. While at Camp Merritt I was sick for a month. The physician
pronounced the malady fever; he did not seem to care about my recovery
or that of any other man; his chief concern seemed to be that of
obtaining his salary of one hundred and twenty-five dollars per month.
Beyond this his interest seemed to cease, and if a sick soldier
recovered he was considered lucky.
There were many sick men in Camp Merritt in the months of June and
July. We were stationed there for five months.
Twenty-five men, myself included, volunteered to be transferred from
Company "A" to Company "E." This transfer was made on the sixth of June,
and was done to fill up Company "E" to its full quota for the purpose of
going to Manila on the transport Colon, which was to leave San Francisco
on the fifteenth of June.
My company, now Company "E," was being prepared by Captain Pratt, and
was drilling for the last time in the United States before going to
Manila. I unfortunately became ill and had to be left at Camp Merritt to
go over later. It was sad news to me, for I wanted to go over with this
expedition.
One battalion of the 23d Regiment was left at Camp Merritt, which
included my old company, to which I was assigned. We stayed at Camp
Merritt until about the middle of August, when orders were received to
go to Manila. By the time everything was packed and ready to strike
tents a second order was received, not to go to Manila, but to go to
Presidio, in San Francisco, and await further orders. About the 10th of
October, to our great joy, orders were read out at parade in the
evening, that we would start to Manila on the seventeenth. The men were
so glad they threw up their hats and shouted for joy. We were glad to
leave the cold, foggy and disagreeable climate of San Francisco, and
delighted that we were going to Manila, which was then the central
battle field.
The bad climate, incidentally mentioned, of San Francisco seemed to be
only local, extending along the coast for only a few miles.
I have been in San Francisco when it was cold enough to wear an
overcoat, and going across the bay to Oakland it was warm enough for a
man to be comfortable in his shirt sleeves. The distance between these
two points is only six miles. The native citizens of San Francisco, and
those who have been residents for many years and accustomed to the damp,
foggy atmosphere, are very healthy.
But this climate was very detrimental to the soldiers in Camp Merritt,
and fatal to many.
While stationed in Camp Merritt I spent a great deal of time in the San
Francisco park, which contained one thousand acres of land.
A great variety of wild animals and many different kinds of birds were
there, and I found in it a great deal of interest and amusement. Crowds
of people were there every night. Many people were there for the purpose
of committing some crime. People were frequently being sandbagged and
robbed, or sometimes boldly held up, and money and valuables secured.
I knew a great many soldiers who were robbed, sometimes they received
bruised heads just by loafing in the park at night.
No reflection is intended to be cast upon the police whose duty was in
the park; there were a great many of them, but they did not know all
that was being done in the park, and it was necessary for a man to keep
a sharp lookout for himself if he wished to escape uninjured.
The date of our departure the Red Cross gave a fine dinner for all who
were going to leave the camp. This was the custom with that society when
any soldiers left there for the Philippines.
All those who left while I was there partook of a splendid dinner just
before leaving.
This society, in addition to the dinner given to us, had several hundred
dollars worth of provisions put on board our transport, and all marked,
"For enlisted men only on deck."
At three o'clock in the afternoon of the seventeenth day of October,
1898, we sailed on board the transport "Senator." The provisions put on
board for us were well cared for--by the officers, who took charge of
them and guarded them so well that if an enlisted man got any of them,
he had to steal them from under a guard. Actually had to steal what
belonged to him by gift, and if caught stealing them he was court
martialed, and fined enough to buy his rations for a month, but the fine
money was not appropriated in that way.
We had a rough voyage, not on account of the weather, but because the
transport was so packed and crowded that a man did well to walk from one
end of the ship to the other. We were crowded like a cargo of animals
bound for a slaughter pen.
A private may think all or anything he pleases, but he does not have an
opportunity to say very much about anything. He must obey the commands
of his officers.
Our officers on the transport had everything to suit themselves, and the
private had to do the best he could and try to be satisfied, or at least
appear that way.
It would take two-thirds of the deck for half a dozen officers to have
room. They thought themselves so superior to the privates they did not
want to be near them. Our ship had fifteen hundred men on board.
We reached the port of Honolulu, after several days' sailing on rough
seas, October twenty-fifth; five days were taken to coal for our long
voyage to Manila. Honolulu is a fine city, about 2,190 miles from San
Francisco. Located as it is, away out in the Pacific Ocean, makes it the
more attractive to a Georgia soldier who was on his first sea voyage.
There are some fine views in and around Honolulu. As our transport
steamed into the harbor of the city I thought it a grand sight. From
what I could learn I had but one objection to it as a desirable place to
live--leprosy is too prevalent. A small island is used for the lepers'
home, where all who are afflicted with this most loathsome of diseases
are carried, yet the fact that those poor victims are in that country is
a disagreeable one and makes one shudder to look at the island. No one
is allowed to go there, except on business, and they have to get passes
from the authorities to do so. I had no desire to visit the place.
Honolulu is a very good city, with some of the modern city improvements,
such as water works, electric lights, street railroads and ice
factories. These are the results of emigration, people of other
countries going in with money and experience. The natives are called
Kanakis. Agriculture consists in the cultivation of rice, bananas,
cocoanuts and coffee. It was there where I first saw bananas, cocoanuts
and coffee growing. A lieutenant, with about twenty-five men, including
myself, went out about six miles along the beach. We went to the Diamond
Head, six miles eastward from Honolulu. This is an old crater of an
extinct volcano. Returning to the beach we went in bathing and enjoyed
it very much.
Our party had to get passes and present them to guards on going out and
returning. Our transport having coaled and made all the necessary
preparations for the voyage to Manila, we went on board and sailed about
four o'clock in the afternoon of October the thirtieth. But few of the
soldiers had been sea-sick before arriving at Honolulu, but after
leaving there many of them were ill for several days.
I think that the native drink called swipes was the cause of much of it.
This had been very freely imbibed by the soldiers. It is a peculiar
beverage, producing a drunkenness that lasted several days. Some of the
men getting over a drunk on this stuff, by taking a drink of water would
again be drunk. I escaped sea-sickness and, but for the fact that we
were living on the transport like pigs in a crowded pen, I would have
gone over comfortably and would have enjoyed the voyage.
Our rations were very poor, scarcely fit for hogs to eat. They consisted
of a stewed stuff of beef scraps, called by the men "slum;" prunes, hard
tack and hot water for coffee. Once a week we had a change from
this of salmon or cod fish. I believe those who shared this food stuff
with me on this voyage will bear me out in the statement that it was
tough fare.
The soldiers were not alone on board--there were other passengers who
seemed to dispute our possession and waged war on us both day and night.
These belligerents were known as "gray backs," some of them being nearly
one-fourth of an inch long and very troublesome. Clothing and everything
else seemed to be full of them.
I have seen soldiers pick them off of their bodies and clothing and kill
them before the men went to bed, hoping to get rid of them and get to
sleep.
I have seen several times almost the whole body of soldiers on board
sick and vomiting. There was something peculiar about this sickness.
Nevertheless, it was true; the men were fed on | 2,380.169457 |
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Produced by Chuck Greif, MFR and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
CONSTABLE’S RUSSIAN LIBRARY UNDER THE
EDITORSHIP OF STEPHEN GRAHAM
THE REPUBLIC OF
THE SOUTHERN CROSS
CONSTABLE’S RUSSIAN LIBRARY
_Edited with Introductions_
By STEPHEN GRAHAM
THE SWEET SCENTED NAME
By Fedor Sologub
WAR AND CHRISTIANITY
THREE CONVERSATIONS
By Vladimir Solovyof
THE WAY OF THE CROSS
By V. Doroshevitch
A SLAV SOUL AND OTHER STORIES
By Alexander Kuprin
THE EMIGRANT
By L. F. Dostoieffshaya
THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD
By Vladimir Solovyof
THE REPUBLIC OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS
AND OTHER STORIES
By Valery Brussof
THE REPUBLIC OF
THE SOUTHERN CROSS
AND OTHER STORIES
BY
VALERY BRUSSOF
WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY BY
STEPHEN GRAHAM
LONDON
CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD.
1918
INTRODUCTION
VALERY BRUSSOF
Valery Brussof is a celebrated Russian writer of the present time. He is
in the front rank of contemporary literature, and is undoubtedly very
gifted, being considered by some to be the greatest of living Russian
poets, and being in addition a critic of penetration and judgment, a
writer of short tales, and the author of one long historical novel from
the life of Germany in the sixteenth century.
He is a Russian of strong European tastes and temperament, a sort of
Mediterraneanised Russian, with greater affinities in France and Italy
than in his native land; an artificial production in the midst of the
Russian literary world. A hard, polished, and even merciless
personality, he has little in common with the compassionate spirits of
Russia. If Kuprin or Gorky may be taken as characteristic of modern
Russia, Brussof is their opposite. He sheds no tears with the reader, he
makes no passionate and “unmanly” defiance of the world, but is
restrained and concentrated and wrapped up in himself and his ideas. The
average length of a sentence of Dostoieffsky is probably about
twenty-five words, of Kuprin thirty, but of Brussof only twenty, and if
you take the staccato “Republic of the Southern Cross,” only twelve. His
fine virile style is admired by Russians for its brevity and directness.
He has been called a maker of sentences in bronze.
It is curious, however, that the theme of his writing has little in
common with the virility of his style. As far as our Western point of
view is concerned it is considered rather feminine than masculine to
doubt the reality of our waking life and to give credence to dreams. Yet
such is undoubtedly the preoccupation of Brussof in these stories.
He says in his preface to the second edition of that collection which
bears the title _The Axis of the Earth_, “the stories are written to
show, in various ways, that there is no fixed boundary line between the
world of reality and that of the imagination, between the dreaming and
the waking world, life and fantasy; that what we commonly call
‘imaginary’ may be the greatest reality of the world, and that which all
call reality the most dreadful delirium.”
This volume, to which we have given the title of _The Republic of the
Southern Cross_ contains the best of Brussof’s tales, and they all
exemplify this particular attitude towards life. Six tales are taken
from _The Axis of the Earth_, but “For Herself or Another” is taken
from the volume entitled _Nights and Days_, and “Rhea Silvia” and
“Eluli, son of Eluli,” from the book bearing the title of _Rhea Silvia_,
in the Russian Universal Library.
In Russia, as I have previously pointed out, the short story is
considered of much more literary importance than it is here. It is the
fashion to write short stories, and readers remember those they have
read and refer to them, as we do to the distinctive and memorable poems
on our intimate bookshelves. But, then, as a rule in Russia a short
story must possess as its foundation some particular literary idea and
conception. The story written for the sake of the story is almost
unknown, and as a general rule the sort of love story and “love
interest” so indispensable with us is not asked there. It often happens,
therefore, that a volume of short tales makes a real and vital
contribution to literature. I think possibly that these specimen volumes
of Russian stories which I have edited from Sologub Kuprin and Brussof
may be helpful in our own literary world as affording new conceptions,
new models, and showing new possibilities of literary form. Brussof’s
volume is an emotional study of reality and unreality cast in the form
of brilliant tales.
* * * * *
“Rhea Silvia,” the longest and perhaps the best, tells of the dream
which becomes reality in the Golden House of Nero which had been lost;
the subterranean Rome where a Goth can meet a crazed girl who imagines
she is the vestal Rhea Silvia, the mother of Romulus and Remus who
founded Rome itself, and that the Goth, one of the barbarian destroyers
of Rome, is the god Mars; the whole before and after intermingled.
* * * * *
In “The Republic of the Southern Cross” Brussof projects himself several
centuries into the future and imagines an industrial community of
millions of workers, so divorced from reality that they are living at
the South Pole where no life is possible, in a huge town called Star
City where no star is visible, because they have built an immense opaque
roof to the town-- | 2,380.654195 |
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Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers
VAUTRIN
A DRAMA IN FIVE ACTS
BY
HONORE DE BALZAC
Presented for the first time at the
Porte-Saint-Martin Theatre, Paris
March 14, 1840
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
It is difficult for the playwright to put himself, five days after the
first presentation of his piece, in the situation in which he felt
himself on the morning after the event; but it is still more difficult
to write a preface to _Vautrin_, to which every one has written his
own. The single utterance of the author will infallibly prove inferior
to so vast a number of divergent expressions. The report of a cannon
is never so effective as a display of fireworks.
Must the author explain his work? Its only possible commentator is M.
Frederick Lemaitre.
Must he complain of the injunction which delayed the presentation of
his play? That would be to betray ignorance of his time and country.
Petty tyranny is the besetting sin of constitutional governments; it
is thus they are disloyal to themselves, and on the other hand, who
are so cruel as the weak? The present government is a spoilt child,
and does what it likes, excepting that it fails to secure the public
weal or the public vote.
Must he proceed to prove that _Vautrin_ is as innocent a work as a
drama of Berquin's? To inquire into the morality or immorality of the
stage would imply servile submission to the stupid Prudhommes who
bring the matter in question.
Shall he attack the newspapers? He could do no more than declare that
they have verified by their conduct all he ever said about them.
Yet in the midst of the disaster which the energy of government has
caused, but which the slightest sagacity in the world might have
prevented, the author has found some compensation in the testimony of
public sympathy which has been given him. M. Victor Hugo, among
others, has shown himself as steadfast in friendship as he is
pre-eminent in poetry; and the present writer has the greater
happiness in publishing the good will of M. Hugo, inasmuch as the
enemies of that distinguished man have no hesitation in blackening his
character.
Let me conclude by saying that _Vautrin_ is two months old, and in the
rush of Parisian life a novelty of two months has survived a couple of
centuries. The real preface to _Vautrin_ will be found in the play,
_Richard-Coeur-d'Eponge_,[*] which the administration permits to be
acted in order to save the prolific stage of Porte-Saint-Martin from
being overrun by children.
[*] A play never enacted or printed.
PARIS, May 1, 1840.
PERSONS OF THE PLAY
Jacques Collin, known as Vautrin
The Duc de Montsorel
The Marquis Albert de Montsorel, son to Montsorel
Raoul de Frascas
Charles Blondet, known as the Chevalier de Saint-Charles
Francois Cadet, known as the Philosopher
Fil-de-Soie
Buteux
Philippe Boulard, known as Lafouraille
A Police Officer
Joseph Bonnet, footman to the Duchesse de Montsorel
The Duchesse de Montsorel (Louise de Vaudrey)
Mademoiselle de Vaudrey, aunt to the Duchesse de Montsorel
The Duchesse de Christoval
Inez de Christoval, Princesse D'Arjos
Felicite, maid to the Duchesse de Montsorel
Servants, Gendarmes, Detectives, and others
SCENE: Paris
TIME: 1816, after the second return of the Bourbons.
VAUTRIN
ACT I.
SCENE FIRST.
(A room in the house of the Duc de Montsorel.)
The Duchesse de Montsorel and Mademoiselle de Vaudrey.
The Duchess
Ah! So you have been waiting for me! How very good of you!
Mademoiselle de Vaudrey
What is the matter, Louise? This is the first time in the twelve years
of our mutual mourning, that I have seen you cheerful. Knowing you as
I do, it makes me alarmed.
The Duchess
I cannot help showing my unhappiness, and you, who have shared all my
sorrows, alone can understand my rapture at the faintest gleam of
hope.
Mademoiselle de | 2,380.654393 |
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[Illustration: THE HOUSE WITH SIXTY CLOSETS
BY FRANK SAMUEL CHILD
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. RANDOLPH BROWN]
[Illustration: THE CHILDREN TAKE POSSESSION OF THE HOUSE. Page 13.]
THE HOUSE WITH SIXTY CLOSETS
A Christmas Story for Young Folks and Old Children
by
FRANK SAMUEL CHILD
Author of "An Old New England Town" "The Colonial Parson
of New England" "A Colonial Witch"
"A Puritan Wooing" etc.
With Illustrations by J. Randolph Brown
Boston
Lee and Shepard Publishers
1899
Copyright, 1899, by Lee and Shepard
All rights reserved
THE HOUSE WITH SIXTY CLOSETS
To
Frank
and
Bess
and
Arthur
and
Theodora
and
Grace
and
Ruth
and
Amy
and
the "Little Judge"
and
All
Their
Merry
Friends
ALL ABOUT IT
A
PAGE
HOUSE, PEOPLE, THINGS 11
B
THE HOUSE THAT THE JUDGE BUILT 15
C
THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN THE HOUSE THAT THE JUDGE BUILT 33
D
THE THINGS THAT HAPPENED
TO THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE
IN THE HOUSE THAT THE JUDGE BUILT 53
I
PORTRAITS WALK AND TALK 57
II
CLOSETS TALK AND WALK 85
III
THE PROCESSION OF GOAT, DOG, CAT, BICYCLES, PORTRAITS,
CLOSETS, RUTH, AND THE "LITTLE JUDGE" 113
IV
THE PARTY WITH SUPPER FOR SEVENTEEN, AND TOASTS WITH
A TOASTING-FORK 141
V
STOCKINGS FILLED WITH MUSIC, RAINBOWS, SENSE,
BACKBONE, SUNSETS, IMPULSES, GOLD SPOON, IDEALS,
SUNSHINE, STAR, MANTLE, FLOWERS,--AND THE LIKE
QUEER STUFF 185
E
HAPPY DAY 215
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
THE CHILDREN TAKING POSSESSION OF THE HOUSE _Frontispiece._
INITIAL O 15
MRS. "JUDGE" PLANNING THE CLOSETS 19
MRS. "JUDGE'S" LIVING-ROOM 24
CANDLESTICK AND BIBLE 29
INITIAL I 33
NAILING FLAG TO CHIMNEY 41
THE CHILDREN TAKING A RIDE 44
INITIAL I 57
RUTH SEES FIGURES IN THE FIRE 59
STEPPING OUT OF THE FRAMES 61
SUSIE AND LITTLE JUDGE 67
ENTERING THE CLOCK 80
INITIAL T 85
PLAYING TAG 87
CHAMPAIGN COMPLAINING 93
THE CLOSETS TALK AND WALK 103
THE JUDGE SITTING ON THE COG-WHEEL 105
INITIAL I 113
BILLY EATING FUNERAL CLOTH AND WREATH 114
THE PROCESSION STARTS 121
BILLY, SATAN, AND TURK TAKING A RIDE 126
MRS. "JUDGE" AND MAN IN MOON 132
RETURNING FROM THE CHURCH 135
INITIAL W 141
THE WALK AROUND 163
THERE WAS THE GREATEST CONFUSION 180
INITIAL R 185
RUTH AND SATAN 186
THE ROOM WAS A BLAZE OF GLORY 187
THE ROOM STUDDED WITH TWINKLING, RADIANT STARS 211
A
HOUSE, PEOPLE, THINGS
_I will first describe the house._
_Then I will tell something about the people that live
in it._
_After that I will speak of the very strange things
which happened there the night before Christmas._
B
THE HOUSE THAT THE JUDGE BUILT
B.
THE HOUSE THAT THE JUDGE BUILT.
ONCE upon a time there lived a good Judge in an old New England town.
People said the reason that he was so good was because his father was a
minister. But he may have gotten his goodness from his mother. I don't
know. Or he may have had it from his uncle who took him into his family
and sent him to college. For the minister was poor, and like many of his
brethren he had a big family; so his brother who was a rich lawyer and a
statesman helped his nephew get his education.
Now, this son of a minister and nephew of a great man studied law and
became a Judge. He was liked by every one who knew him. People felt that
he was an honest, noble man who had mastered all the law books, and
showed more common sense than any other person in the State. So they
made him Judge. This man who started poor and had to make his own way in
the world earned a great deal of money. People came to him from all
parts of the country, and sought his advice. They put into his hands the
most important law cases. Only sometimes he would not have anything to
do with the cases that he was asked to manage because he thought them
wrong.
As years went by he saved his money, and the time came when he was ready
to build a house. The Judge had become the most honored and the best
known man in the State. He had many friends among the great people of
the land. He enjoyed company, and was a famous host. So it seemed well
to him and his wife that they build a house which should be large enough
to hold their friends, and fine enough to satisfy the taste of the
society in which they moved.
The Judge was not moved by pride or a wish to make a show. He wished to
do the right thing. Everybody said that he ought to have the largest and
the finest house in town. He was not only a lawyer and rich, but he was
deacon in the church and the leading man in society. He was likewise a
great scholar; and many people said that he was the most eloquent
speaker of his State. Such a person must live in a generous way. So the
Judge built this house.
Now, when it came to drawing plans the wife had a good deal to say about
it; for the house was to be her home just as much as his; and he always
tried to do what he knew was for the pleasure of his wife. "I think,"
said she when they began to talk about building, "that it should have a
great many closets." Had you been a friend of Mrs. "Judge" you would
have seen why she said this. She was not only a woman who liked to have
all her friends come to visit her, but she was also very liberal and
kind. She was always doing some nice thing for people, and always giving
presents.
She was able to do this because she had the things to give away. I know
men and women who would make a great many presents if they had the money
to buy them--at least they say that they would. Such people like to tell
how they would act if they had all the money that some neighbor has
saved. They are great on giving away things that do not belong to them.
Now, the Judge's wife was the best giver in town; and she gave to her
friends, and the poor, and everybody that was in need, all sorts of
things. But in order to do this she must buy the gifts that she
scattered so freely; and when she bought things she wanted a place to
keep them until the time came for her to give them away. This was why
she spoke to the Judge about the closets.
[Illustration]
"Well, my dear," said the Judge (he was always kind and polite), "you
may have just as many closets as you wish." So she began her plans of
the house by drawing the closets. I don't know exactly how she managed
to arrange it on paper. Very likely she said to herself, "I shall want
thirty closets." And then she would divide the number into four parts
and say, "Let me see, I suppose that four will be enough for the
cellar. Then I shall need ten on the first floor, and twelve on the
second floor, and six in the attic. That makes--why, that makes
thirty-two. Dear me! I wonder if that will be enough?" And as she thinks
over the various uses to which she will put her closets, and the many
things she will store in them, she says, on the next day, "Well, I
believe that I must have five or six more closets." So she starts her
drawing by marking down thirty-eight closets. After she has settled it
that the main floor shall have thirteen of them, she puts upon the paper
some dots showing the size of each little room; then she draws the other
rooms about them, and so she gets one story arranged.
But no sooner does she begin the plans for the next floor, than she
thinks of one or two more closets which she needs for the first, and so
goes back to her work of yesterday, and does it all over again, making
several changes. And so very likely the weeks are spent in making paper
closets, and drawing the halls and parlors and bedrooms and other rooms
about them, until she puts her plans by the side of the Judge's plans;
then they get an architect; and then she asks for four more closets,
which makes forty-four.
After a time the men begin to build; and she sends for the builder, and
tells him of course that she finds she will certainly need five more
closets,--one in the cellar, two on the first story, and three on the
second. He is a pleasant man; and the changes are made. But ere the
house is half built other needs appear, and Mrs. "Judge" insists upon
three new closets, which make fifty-two. And without doubt on the very
week that the carpenters leave the handsome mansion, she asks them for
several changes and three closets more. And will you believe it, they
move into the new house, get nicely settled, and everything running in
good order, when the generous housewife finds that the carpenter must
come, for she still wishes five new closets, which added to the others
make sixty. And so you have the house with sixty closets. It seems to
me that I have made it clear how there came to be so many of these
curious rooms and spaces in the Judge's house. At least you know all
that I know about it; and I do not believe that ever another house was
built in such a way.
But I must tell you how the house was divided. A plan of each story will
be the best means of fixing this in the mind; and then you can turn back
to it whenever you lose your way in the house, and wish to get what are
called "your bearings." We must begin at the bottom and work toward the
top. The cellar was really three cellars,--a big one, a fair-sized one,
and the wine cellar. There was a small closet in this deep, dark place
where they kept certain kinds of liquor. The main cellar was divided
lengthwise through the middle, and there were two closets for provisions
on each side.
The main floor had twenty-seven closets. For my own part, I think that
woman is a remarkable person who can invent and arrange such a number
of little nooks and rooms. But if this is a mark of genius, what shall
we say when it comes to keeping track of all the closets and their
contents? Why, I should be obliged to carry a plan of the whole house
with me, and every few minutes I should pull it out and study it. The
Judge's wife was a most wonderful woman. She built her closets, and then
she filled them, and then she remembered all about them and their
contents. Here is the plan of the first floor. A hall through the
middle. On the left as you enter is the library. There was one closet
connected with this room, and a door opened into it from the northeast
corner. Back of the library was the dining-room. It had three closets
connected with it; doors leading to them from three corners of the room.
To the left of the dining-room you passed into a side entry. Three doors
opened into three large closets. The kitchen adjoined the dining-room.
There was one closet in it, and two closets out of it to the right, and
these two latter had one closet and two closets respectively.
[Illustration]
On the right of the hall was the parlor. It had one closet. A large
window reaching to the floor gave entrance to this room near the
northeast corner. Back of the parlor was a long, dark closet which made
a passage-way from the hall to the schoolroom. Back of this closet was a
first-floor chamber with three closets. The third of these closets
opened into the chamber from the north. It was formerly Mrs. "Judge's"
store-room. Another large closet was connected with it, and these two
large closets contained two small closets. To the east of this chamber
was the schoolroom (formerly the Judge's library). This room had two
closets in it, and two closets out of it. The room to the north of the
schoolroom was the annex to the Judge's library, and it held his books
bequeathed to the minister. It also held two closets. And now my first
story is ended.
The short hall on the second floor opens at the rear into a long, narrow
hall. There are five chambers in this part of the house. The front room
on the right as you look toward the street is the "Study," and it has
two closets, one on each side of the big chimney. The two chambers back
and to the left as you face the chimney are without a single closet; but
the lack is made up when you pass to the other side of the house. The
front chamber has two closets, one on each side of the chimney. As you
pass into the one on the right (you face the chimney, remember) a door
opens to the right and leads you into another large closet with a window
in it. Going across this closet to the right another door opens into a
big, dark closet; turning to the street and stepping back three paces
you open a door into another closet; passing into this one (there is a
small window in it) you open a door into the linen closet. Withdrawing
from this series of small rooms, you get into the Betsey-Bartram room,
and there you find on the south side two doors leading into two large
closets. North of this room is another bedroom. One closet lies in the
southeast corner, and one opens to you from the west side of the room.
The thirteenth closet on this floor is at the end of the back hall, and
the fourteenth is by the side of the chimney in the room above the
down-stairs chamber. The attic was one big room with five closets
scattered around the chimneys. They hung hams in the larger one. It was
a fine place to smoke meat. There was always a greasy, smothered flavor
to the air in that place.
Now, if you have kept track of the closets you will see that we number
only fifty-one. There had been three neat, retired little closets under
the stairs in the first-floor hall. When the hall was enlarged these
poor things were taken out. It was on this occasion that Samuel said:
"See how rich we are; for we have closets to burn." And still there are
six closets missing. Well, the closet with the skeleton in it is a
mystery, and I do not like to speak of it. Three closets were found one
day carefully tucked away in a corner of the attic. The other two
missing ones have simply grown up and become big rooms with windows in
them. They put on a good deal of style, and look down upon the other
closets.
What a lovely time the Judge's wife had in furnishing her new home. I
have been reading the bills, yellow-stained and time-worn. She had a
taste for handsome things. As the house was a colonial building, the
grandest in that part of the country, she tried to get furniture that
matched.
There were mahogany chairs and tables, sofas and bedsteads, cabinets
and stands. She paid $155 in gold for her gilt-framed looking-glass,
which stood between the front windows in the parlor, and $125 for her
Grecian sofa with cushions. There were twelve fancy-chairs and two
arm-chairs. Her rocker cost $25. Then she had another little work-table,
for which they paid $20.75.
Her parlor carpet was made in England. The Judge had it made to order;
so you may believe it was uncommonly fine. The curtains were yellow
damask, lined with chintz. During the summer these curtains were stored
away on long shelves in one of the closets, and lace curtains hung in
their places.
Every large room in the house had a fireplace, and the supply of
andirons was enormous. Some of them cost $19 and $20. Then there were
venetian blinds in the parlor; and on the centre table stood an astral
bronzed lamp worth $18, and on the mantle, high silver candlesticks. A
plated pair cost them $18, and the snuffers and tray $8 more. There
were the best Brussels carpets, the most fashionable china and silver,
the richest linen for the table,--a vast amount of things needed to make
a house pleasant and comfortable.
[Illustration]
C.
THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN THE HOUSE THAT THE JUDGE BUILT.
C.
THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN THE HOUSE THAT THE JUDGE BUILT.
IT was on this wise that the present family came to live in the
parsonage. The church had been without a pastor for several months, and
the people were tired of hearing Tom, Dick, and Harry in the pulpit. But
what was to be done? They had found no man that suited them. One
minister was too young, and another too old. The first candidate had a
very long neck, a sort of crane neck, and it made some of the ladies
nervous. The last candidate was fat, and everybody said he must be lazy.
Several were so anxious to come that the congregation turned against
them. There was always some reason why each man was not liked. So it
began to look as if they might never get another minister.
The society finally asked the ladies their views upon the subject. It
was one afternoon when the Dorcas Daughters were sewing for the poor.
The president of the little band had been reading a missionary letter.
"Well," she said, "I have heard so much about filling the pulpit that I
am sick of it. I think it's about time that we filled the parsonage.
Just see what kind of ministers we have had for the last thirty years.
Two bachelors, and one married man without a chick or a child. I say
that it's time for us to call a man to fill the parsonage."
"Why, that's what I think!" remarked one of the mothers present. "It is
a shame to have that great house given over to the rats and mice. And I
know that not a minister has been in it for all these years that used
more'n half or two-thirds of the room. But, dear me, it would take a
pretty big family to fill the parsonage! Let me see; there are
twenty-seven rooms and sixty closets, aren't there?"
"So they say," replied the president. "I never counted them. But that
would just suit some folks."
"Where is that letter that you read us at the last meeting?" inquired
one of the sisters. "How many children did that man say he had? I
remember that we never sent another box like it to a home missionary in
all the history of this church." "I've got the letter right here in my
hand," said the president, "and I've had that man in mind for a week.
He's got fifteen children,--eight of his own, and seven of his deceased
sister. I shouldn't wonder if he was the very one we want." One of the
younger women nodded. She was thinking of playmates for her boys and
girls. "And then if they overflowed the house," continued the president,
"there is the little building in the yard. They might start a cottage
system. You know that is the way they do in schools these days. Divide
up the young folks, and set them in small companies. The minister might
do it; and if the family expanded we might build two or three extra
cottages."
"Now, Mrs. President," said one of the ladies, "I fear you are making
fun. But I think that letter from the missionary with fifteen children
in the family was the best we ever had. A man that could write such a
letter must be very much of a man."
"He is," replied the president. "I have looked him up in the Year Book,
and I have written to the secretary of the Missionary Society. He's a
very good man. Nobody has done better work in that frontier country."
So the ladies said that they would ask the church to call this parson
with the big family. When the meeting was held and everybody was
talking, one gentleman arose, and told the people that the ladies had a
candidate. His name being proposed, the president of the Dorcas Society
explained how she felt, that they ought to have a man to fill the
parsonage, and this man whom they named was the one to do it; therefore
the meeting voted unanimously to call him.
"I think we had better charter a train to bring them from the West,"
said one of the deacons. But it was finally decided to engage a car; so
everything was arranged, and in four weeks they came.
When the train stopped at the station, the church committee was on hand
with three carryalls. It reminded one of an orphanage, or a company of
Fresh-air children. But a hearty welcome was given; they were hurried
into the carriages, and soon the whole family was in the parsonage.
A nice dinner had been prepared by the ladies of the parish. After the
travellers had washed and made some slight changes, they all sat down to
the feast.
It was a happy thing that the church and the Judge furnished the
parsonage. This poor, large-hearted missionary brought nothing with him
but books and children; his library was really a very fine one, and it
had filled the small house in the West. His own family of children had
been increased by the seven orphans left when his sister and her husband
died. There was nothing for him to do but adopt them; so they had been
packed into the little home until one was reminded of a box of sardines.
But this sort of kindness was like the good man. He was ready to share
the last crust with any one who needed it.
"Why, what a big house it is!" exclaimed Grace. "Just see; I guess we
could put the whole of our Western house right here in the parlor." And
I think they could if they had only brought it along with them. When
dinner was over the children scattered all through the mansion and the
grounds.
What a delightful sense of freedom and importance they had. Could it be
possible that all these things belonged to them? Were the ten acres of
lawn, garden, orchard, field, and pasture really for their use and
pleasure? As parents and children wandered through the big rooms, and
peered into the sixty closets, and looked out of the numerous windows,
it seemed to them like a dream. And yet the dreamy sensation soon
passed; for the parson and his wife, happening to look out of a front
window, were struck with the expression of alarm, amusement, or interest
shown by several people going along the street. It was caused by the way
in which the family was showing its presence and possession. There were
three children on the front piazza standing in a row gazing at the sea;
four of the younger ones were climbing in and out of the windows on the
second floor, running along the tin roof of the piazza; two boys had
already climbed a tree looking for birds' nests; three children had
hurried through the attic to the roof, and leaned against the big
chimneys that towered over the house. With curious interest they were
taking a general survey of the town and country, quite unconscious that
their rashness attracted any attention. The other youngsters were
having a frolic in the yard, walking along the top of the picket-fence,
jumping from one gate-post to another, shouting with healthful lungs,
and making the very welkin ring.
Had a pack of wild Indians swooped down upon the house, they could not
have made themselves more | 2,380.701616 |
2023-11-16 18:56:44.7341960 | 2,623 | 38 |
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produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
A CHRISTMAS ACCIDENT
AND OTHER STORIES
[Illustration]
BY
ANNIE ELIOT TRUMBULL
A Christmas Accident
STORIES BY
ANNIE ELIOT TRUMBULL
[Illustration: Leaf]
A CHRISTMAS ACCIDENT AND OTHER
STORIES. 16mo. Cloth $1.00
ROD'S SALVATION AND OTHER STORIES.
16mo. Cloth 1.00
A CAPE COD WEEK. 16mo. Cloth 1.00
MISTRESS CONTENT CRADOCK.
Cloth. 16mo. 1.00
[Illustration: Leaf]
A. S. BARNES & CO., PUBLISHERS,
_New York_.
A Christmas Accident
_And Other Stories_
By
Annie Eliot Trumbull
Author of "White Birches," "A Masque of Culture," etc.
[Illustration: Emblem]
New York
A. S. Barnes and Company
1900
_Copyright, 1897_,
BY A. S. BARNES AND COMPANY.
=University Press:=
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
OF the stories included in this volume, the first originally appeared in
the _Hartford Courant_; "After--the Deluge," in the _Atlantic Monthly_;
"Mary A. Twining," in the _Home Maker_; "A Postlude" and "Her Neighbor's
Landmark," in the _Outlook_; "The 'Daily Morning Chronicle,'" in _The
New England Magazine_; and "Hearts Unfortified," in _McClure's
Magazine_. To the courtesy of the editors of these periodicals I am
indebted for permission to reprint them.
A. E. T.
Contents
Page
A CHRISTMAS ACCIDENT 1
AFTER--THE DELUGE 32
MEMOIR OF MARY TWINING 67
A POSTLUDE 99
THE "DAILY MORNING CHRONICLE" 139
HEARTS UNFORTIFIED 177
HER NEIGHBOR'S LANDMARK 210
A Christmas Accident
[Illustration: Leaf]
AT first the two yards were as much alike as the two houses, each house
being the exact copy of the other. They were just two of those little
red brick dwellings that one is always seeing side by side in the
outskirts of a city, and looking as if the occupants must be alike too.
But these two families were quite different. Mr. Gilton, who lived in
one, was a pretty cross sort of man, and was quite well-to-do, as cross
people sometimes are. He and his wife lived alone, and they did not have
much going out and coming in, either. Mrs. Gilton would have liked more
of it, but she had given up thinking about it, for her husband had said
so many times that it was women's tomfoolery to want to have people,
whom you weren't anything to and who weren't anything to you, ringing
your doorbell all the time and bothering around in your
dining-room,--which of course it was; and she would have believed it if
a woman ever did believe anything a man says a great many times.
In the other house there were five children, and, as Mr. Gilton said,
they made too large a family, and they ought to have gone somewhere
else. Possibly they would have gone had it not been for the fence; but
when Mr. Gilton put it up and Mr. Bilton told him it was three inches
too far on his land, and Mr. Gilton said he could go to law about it,
expressing the idea forcibly, Mr. Bilton was foolish enough to take his
advice. The decision went against him, and a good deal of his money went
with it, for it was a long, teasing lawsuit, and instead of being three
inches of made ground it might have been three degrees of the Arctic
Circle for the trouble there was in getting at it. So Mr. Bilton had to
stay where he was.
It was then that the yards began to take on those little differences
that soon grew to be very marked. Neither family would plant any vines
because they would have been certain to heedlessly beautify the other
side, and consequently the fence, in all its primitive boldness, stood
out uncompromisingly, and the one or two little bits of trees grew
carefully on the farther side of the enclosure so as not to be mixed up
in the trouble at all. But Mr. Gilton's grass was cut smoothly by the
man who made the fires, while Mr. Bilton only found a chance to cut his
himself once in two weeks. Then, by and by, Mr. Gilton bought a red
garden bench and put it under the tree that was nearest to the fence. No
one ever went out and sat on it, to be sure, but to the Bilton children
it represented the visible flush of prosperity. Particularly was Cora
Cordelia wont to peer through the fence and gaze upon that red bench,
thinking it a charming place in which to play house, ignorant of the
fact that much of the red paint would have come off on her back. Cora
Cordelia was the youngest of the five. All the rest had very simple
names,--John, Walter, Fanny, and Susan,--but when it came to Cora
Cordelia, luxuries were beginning to get very scarce in the Bilton
family, and Mrs. Bilton felt that she must make up for it by being
lavish, in one direction or another. She had wished to name Fanny, Cora,
and Susan, Cordelia, but she had yielded to her husband, and called one
after his mother and one after herself, and then gave both her favorite
names to the youngest of all. Cora Cordelia was a pretty little girl,
prettier even than both her names put together.
After the red bench came a quicksilver ball, that was put in the middle
of the yard and reflected all the glory of its owner, albeit in a
somewhat distorted form. This effort of human ingenuity filled the
Bilton children with admiration bordering on awe; Cora Cordelia spent
hours gazing at it, until called in and reproved by her mother for
admiring so much things she could not afford to have. After this, she
only admired it covertly.
Small distinctions like these barbed the arrows of contrast and
comparison and kept the disadvantages of neighborhood ever present.
Then, it was a constant annoyance to have their surnames so much alike.
Matters were made more unpleasant by mistakes of the butcher, the
grocer, and so on,--Gilton, 79 Holmes Avenue, was so much like Bilton,
77 Holmes Avenue. Gilton changed his butcher every time he sent his
dinner to Bilton; and though the mistakes were generally rectified,
neither of the two families ever forgot the time the Biltons ate,
positively ate, the Gilton dinner, under a misapprehension. Mrs. Bilton
apologized, and Mrs. Gilton boldly told her husband that she was glad
they'd had it, and she hoped they'd enjoyed it, which only made matters
worse; and altogether it was a dark day, the only joy of it being that
fearful one snatched by John, Walter, Susan, Fanny, and Cora Cordelia
from the undoubted excellence of the roast.
Of course there was an assortment of minor difficulties. The smoke from
the Biltons' kitchen blew in through the windows of the Giltons'
sitting-room when the wind was in one direction, and, when it was in the
other, many of the clothes from the Giltons' clothesline were blown into
the Biltons' yard, and Fanny, Susan, or Cora Cordelia had to be sent out
to pick them up and drop them over the fence again, which Mrs. Bilton
said was very wearing, as of course it must have been. Things like this
were always happening, but matters reached a climax when it came to the
dog. It wasn't a large dog, but it was a tiresome one. It got up early
in the morning and barked. Now we all know that early rising is a good
thing and honorable among all men, but it is something that ought to be
done quietly, out of regard to the weaker vessels; and a dog that barks
between five and seven in the morning, continuously, certainly ought to
be suppressed, even if it be necessary to use force. Everybody agreed
with the Biltons about that,--everybody except the Giltons themselves,
who, by some one of nature's freaks, didn't mind it. Mrs. Bilton often
said she wished Mrs. Gilton could be a light sleeper for a week and see
what it was like. So, too, everybody thought that Mr. Bilton had right
on his side when he complained that this same dog came into his yard,
being apparently indifferent to any coolness between the estate owners,
and ran over a bed of geraniums and one thing and another, that was the
small Bilton offset to the Gilton bench and ball. But when one morning,
for the first time, that dog remained quiet and restful, and was found
cold and poisoned, and Mr. Gilton was loud in his accusations of the
Bilton boys and their father, public opinion wavered for a moment. After
that accident, no member of either family spoke to any member of the
other. That was the way matters stood the day before Christmas.
* * * * *
It was snowing hard, and the afternoon grew dark rapidly, and the
whirling flakes pursued a blinding career. In spite of that, everybody
was out doing the last thing. Mrs. Gilton was not, to be sure. Of course
they would have a big dinner, but even that was all arranged for,
although the turkey hadn't come and her husband was going to stop and
see about it on his way home. She shuddered as the possibility of its
having gone to the Biltons occurred to her. But she didn't believe it
had,--they hadn't the same butcher any longer. Meanwhile there was so
little to do. It was too dark to read or sew, and she sat idly at the
window looking out at the passers and the driving snow. Everybody else
was in a hurry. She wished she, too, had occasion to hasten down for a
last purchase, or to light the lamp in order to finish a last bit of
dainty sewing, as she used to do when she was a girl. She seemed to have
so few friends now with whom she exchanged Christmas greetings. Was it
then only for children and youth, this Christmas cheer? And must she
necessarily have left it behind her with her girlhood? No, she knew
better than that. She felt that there was a deeper significance in the
Christmas-tide than can come home to the hearts of children and
unthoughtfulness, and yet it had grown to be so painfully like other
days,--an occasion for a little bigger dinner, that was about all. With
an unconscious sigh she looked across to the Bilton house. Plenty of
people over there to make merry. Five stockings to hang up. She wished
she might have sent something in. To be sure, there was the dog, but
that was some time ago. Very likely the dog would have been dead now,
anyhow. She felt, herself, that this logic was not irrefutable, but she
wished she could have sent some paper parcels just the same. So strong
had this impulse been that she had said to her husband somewhat | 2,380.754236 |
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Produced by Anthony Matonac
TOM SWIFT AND HIS SUBMARINE BOAT
or
Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure
by
VICTOR APPLETON
CONTENTS
I News of a Treasure Wreck
II Finishing the Submarine
III Mr. Berg Is Astonished
IV Tom Is Imprisoned
V Mr. Berg Is Suspicious
VI Turning the Tables
VII Mr. Damon Will Go
VIII Another Treasure Expedition
IX Captain Weston's Advent
X Trial of the Submarine
XI On the Ocean Bed
XII For a Breath of Air
XIII Off for the Treasure
XIV In the Diving Suits
XV At the Tropical Island
XVI "We'll Race You For It!"
XVII The Race
XVIII The Electric Gun
XIX Captured
XX Doomed to Death
XXI The Escape
XXII At the Wreck
XXIII Attacked by Sharks
XXIV Ramming the Wreck
XXV Home with the Gold
TOM SWIFT AND HIS SUBMARINE BOAT
Chapter One
News of a Treasure Wreck
There was a rushing, whizzing, throbbing noise in the air. A great
body, like that of some immense bird, sailed along, casting a grotesque
shadow on the ground below. An elderly man, who was seated on the
porch of a large house, started to his feet in alarm.
"Gracious goodness! What was that, Mrs. Baggert?" he called to a
motherly-looking woman who stood in the doorway. "What happened?"
"Nothing much, Mr. Swift," was the calm reply "I think that was Tom and
Mr. Sharp in their airship, that's all. I didn't see it, but the noise
sounded like that of the Red Cloud."
"Of course! To be sure!" exclaimed Mr. Barton Swift, the well-known
inventor, as he started down the path in order to get a good view of
the air, unobstructed by the trees. "Yes, there they are," he added.
"That's the airship, but I didn't expect them back so soon. They must
have made good time from Shopton. I wonder if anything can be the
matter that they hurried so?"
He gazed aloft toward where a queerly-shaped machine was circling about
nearly five hundred feet in the air, for the craft, after swooping down
close to the house, had ascended and was now hovering just above the
line of breakers that marked the New Jersey seacoast, where Mr. Swift
had taken up a temporary residence.
"Don't begin worrying, Mr. Swift," advised Mrs. Baggert, the
housekeeper. "You've got too much to do, if you get that new boat done,
to worry."
"That's so. I must not worry. But I wish Tom and Mr. Sharp would land,
for I want to talk to them."
As if the occupants of the airship had heard the words of the aged
inventor, they headed their craft toward earth. The combined aeroplane
and dirigible balloon, a most wonderful traveler of the air, swung
around, and then, with the deflection rudders slanted downward, came on
with a rush. When near the landing place, just at the side of the
house, the motor was stopped, and the gas, with a hissing noise, rushed
into the red aluminum container. This immediately made the ship more
buoyant and it landed almost as gently as a feather.
No sooner had the wheels which formed the lower part of the craft
touched the ground than there leaped from the cabin of the Red Cloud a
young man.
"Well, dad!" he exclaimed. "Here we are again, safe and sound. Made a
record, too. Touched ninety miles an hour at times--didn't we, Mr.
Sharp?"
"That's what," agreed a tall, thin, dark-complexioned man, who followed
Tom Swift more leisurely in his exit from the cabin. Mr. Sharp, a
veteran aeronaut, stopped to fasten guy ropes from the airship to
strong stakes driven into the ground.
"And we'd have done better, only we struck a hard wind against us about
two miles up in the air, which delayed us," went on Tom. "Did you hear
us coming, dad?"
"Yes, and it startled him," put in Mrs. Baggert. "I guess he wasn't
expecting you."
"Oh, well, I shouldn't have been so alarmed, only I was thinking deeply
about a certain change I am going to make in the submarine, Tom. I was
day-dreaming, I think, when your ship whizzed through the air. But tell
me, did you find everything all right at Shopton? No signs of any of
those scoundrels of the Happy Harry gang having been around?" and Mr.
Swift looked anxiously at his son.
"Not a sign, dad," replied Tom quickly. "Everything was all right. We
brought the things you wanted. They're in the airship. Oh, but it was a
fine trip. I'd like to take another right out to sea."
"Not now, Tom," said his father. "I want you to help me. And I need
Mr. Sharp's help, too. Get the things out of the car, and we'll go to
the shop."
"First I think we'd better put the airship away," advised Mr. Sharp. "I
don't just like the looks of the weather, and, besides, if we leave the
ship exposed we'll be sure to have a crowd around sooner or later, and
we don't want that."
"No, indeed," remarked the aged inventor hastily. "I don't want people
prying around the submarine shed. By all means put the airship away,
and then come into the shop."
In spite of its great size the aeroplane was easily wheeled along by
Tom and Mr. Sharp, for the gas in the container made it so buoyant that
it barely touched the earth. A little more of the powerful vapor and
the Red Cloud would have risen by itself. In a few minutes the
wonderful craft, of which my readers have been told in detail in a
previous volume, was safely housed in a large tent, which was securely
fastened.
Mr. Sharp and Tom, carrying some bundles which they had taken from the
car, or cabin, of the craft, went toward a large shed, which adjoined
the house that Mr. Swift had hired for the season at the seashore. They
found the lad's father standing before a great shape, which loomed up
dimly in the semi-darkness of the building. It was like an immense
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Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
THE YOUNG FUR-TRADERS.
UNIFORM WITH THIS BOOK.
_THE CORAL ISLAND. MARTIN RATTLER. UNCAVA._
[Illustration: Pierre was standing over the great kettle. "_The Young
Fur Traders_]" Frontispiece
SNOWFLAKES AND SUNBEAMS; OR, THE YOUNG FUR-TRADERS
A Tale of the Far North.
BY ROBERT MICHAEL BALLANTYNE
PEEFACE.
In writing this book my desire has been to draw an exact copy of the
picture which is indelibly stamped on my own memory. I have carefully
avoided exaggeration in everything of importance. All the chief, and
most of the minor incidents are facts. In regard to unimportant
matters, I have taken the liberty of a novelist--not to colour too
highly, or to invent improbabilities, but--to transpose time, place,
and circumstance at pleasure; while, at the same time, I have
endeavoured to convey to the reader's mind a truthful impression of the
_general effect_--to use a painter's language--of the life and country
of the Fur Trader.
EDINBURGH, 1856.
CHAPTER I Plunges the reader into the middle of an arctic winter;
conveys him into the heart of the wildernesses of North America; and
introduces him to some of the principal personages of our tale
CHAPTER II The old fur-trader endeavours to "fix" his son's "flint,"
and finds the thing more difficult to do than he expected
CHAPTER III The counting-room
CHAPTER IV. A wolf-hunt in the prairies; Charley astonishes his father,
and breaks in the "noo'oss" effectually
CHAPTER V Peter Mactavish becomes an amateur doctor; Charley
promulgates his views of things in general to Kate; and Kate waxes
sagacious
CHAPTER VI Spring and the voyageurs
CHAPTER VII. The store
CHAPTER VIII. Farewell to Kate; departure of the brigade; Charley
becomes a voyageur
CHAPTER IX. The voyage; the encampment; a surprise
CHAPTER X. Varieties, vexations, and vicissitudes
CHAPTER XI. Charley and Harry begin their sporting career without much
success; Whisky-John catching
CHAPTER XII. The storm
CHAPTER XIII. The canoe; ascending the rapids; the portage;
deer-shooting and life in the woods
CHAPTER XIV. The Indian camp; the new outpost; Charley sent on a
mission to the Indians
CHAPTER XV. The feast; Charley makes his first speech in public; meets
with an old friend; an evening in the grass
CHAPTER XVI The return; narrow escape; a murderous attempt, which
fails; and a discovery
CHAPTER XVII The scene changes; Bachelors' Hall; a practical joke and
its consequences; a snow-shoe walk at night in the forest
CHAPTER XVIII The walk continued; frozen toes; an encampment in the snow
CHAPTER XIX Shows how the accountant and Harry set their traps, and
what came of it
CHAPTER XX The accountant's story
CHAPTER XXI Ptarmigan-hunting; Hamilton's shooting powers severely
tested; a snow-storm
CHAPTER XXII The winter packet; Harry hears from old friends, and
wishes that he was with them CHAPTER XXIII Changes; Harry and Hamilton
find that variety is indeed, charming; the latter astonishes the former
considerably
CHAPTER XXIV Hopes and fears; an unexpected meeting; philosophical talk
between the hunter and the parson
CHAPTER XXV Good news and romantic scenery; bear-hunting and its results
CHAPTER XXVI An unexpected meeting, and an unexpected deer-hunt;
arrival at the outpost; disagreement with the natives; an enemy
discovered, and a murder
CHAPTER XXVII The chase; the fight; retribution; low spirits and good
news
CHAPTER XXVIII Old friends and scenes; coming events cast their shadows
before
CHAPTER XXIX The first day at home; a gallop in the prairie, and its
consequences
CHAPTER XXX Love; old Mr. Kennedy puts his foot in it
CHAPTER XXXI The course of true love, curiously enough, runs smooth for
once; and the curtain falls
CHAPTER I.
Plunges the reader into the middle of an Arctic winter; conveys him
into the heart of the wildernesses of North America; and introduces him
to some of the principal personages of our tale.
Snowflakes and sunbeams, heat and cold, winter and summer, alternated
with their wonted regularity for fifteen years in the wild regions of
the Far North. During this space of time the hero of our tale sprouted
from babyhood to boyhood, passed through the usual amount of accidents,
ailments, and vicissitudes incidental to those periods of life, and
finally entered upon that ambiguous condition that precedes early
manhood.
It was a clear, cold winter's day. The sunbeams of summer were long
past, and snowflakes had fallen thickly on the banks of | 2,380.879865 |
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Produced by Charles Aldarondo. HTML version by Al Haines.
THE ARAN ISLANDS
BY
JOHN M. SYNGE
Introduction
The geography of the Aran Islands is very simple, yet it may need a
word to itself. There are three islands: Aranmor, the north island,
about nine miles long; Inishmaan, the middle island, about three
miles and a half across, and nearly round in form; and the south
island, Inishere--in Irish, east island,--like the middle island but
slightly smaller. They lie about thirty miles from Galway, up the
centre of the bay, but they are not far from the cliffs of County
Clare, on the south, or the corner of Connemara on the north.
Kilronan, the principal village on Aranmor, has been so much changed
by the fishing industry, developed there by the Congested Districts
Board, that it has now very little to distinguish it from any
fishing village on the west coast of Ireland. The other islands are
more primitive, but even on them many changes are being made, that
it was not worth while to deal with in the text.
In the pages that follow I have given a direct account of my life on
the islands, and of what I met with among them, inventing nothing,
and changing nothing that is essential. As far as possible, however,
I have disguised the identity of the people I speak of, by making
changes in their names, and in the letters I quote, and by altering
some local and family relationships. I have had nothing to say about
them that was not wholly in their favour, but I have made this
disguise to keep them from ever feeling that a too direct use had
been made of their kindness, and friendship, for which I am more
grateful than it is easy to say.
Part I
I am in Aranmor, sitting over a turf fire, listening to a murmur of
Gaelic that is rising from a little public-house under my room.
The steamer which comes to Aran sails according to the tide, and it
was six o'clock this morning when we left the quay of Galway in a
dense shroud of mist.
A low line of shore was visible at first on the right between the
movement of the waves and fog, but when we came further it was lost
sight of, and nothing could be seen but the mist curling in the
rigging, and a small circle of foam.
There were few passengers; a couple of men going out with young pigs
tied loosely in sacking, three or four young girls who sat in the
cabin with their heads completely twisted in their shawls, and a
builder, on his way to repair the pier at Kilronan, who walked up
and down and talked with me.
In about three hours Aran came in sight. A dreary rock appeared at
first sloping up from the sea into the fog; then, as we drew nearer,
a coast-guard station and the village.
A little later I was wandering out along the one good roadway of the
island, looking over low walls on either side into small flat fields
of naked rock. I have seen nothing so desolate. Grey floods of water
were sweeping everywhere upon the limestone, making at limes a wild
torrent of the road, which twined continually over low hills and
cavities in the rock or passed between a few small fields of
potatoes or grass hidden away in corners that had shelter. Whenever
the cloud lifted I could see the edge of the sea below me on the
right, and the naked ridge of the island above me on the other side.
Occasionally I passed a lonely chapel or schoolhouse, or a line of
stone pillars with crosses above them and inscriptions asking a
prayer for the soul of the person they commemorated.
I met few people; but here and there a band of tall girls passed me
on their way to Kilronan, and called out to me with humorous wonder,
speaking English with a slight foreign intonation that differed a
good deal from the brogue of Galway. The rain and cold seemed to
have no influence on their vitality and as they hurried past me with
eager laughter and great talking in Gaelic, they left the wet masses
of rock more desolate than before.
A little after midday when I was coming back one old half-blind man
spoke to me in Gaelic, but, in general, I was surprised at the
abundance and fluency of the foreign tongue.
In the afternoon the rain continued, so I sat here in the inn
looking out through the mist at a few men who were unlading hookers
that had come in with turf from Connemara, and at the long-legged
pigs that were playing in the surf. As the fishermen came in and out
of the public-house underneath my room, I could hear through the
broken panes that a number of them still used the Gaelic, though it
seems to be falling out of use among the younger people of this
village.
The old woman of the house had promised to get me a teacher of the
language, and after a while I heard a shuffling on the stairs, and
the old dark man I had spoken to in the morning groped his way into
the room.
I brought him over to the fire, and we talked for many hours. He
told me that he had known Petrie and Sir William Wilde, and many
living antiquarians, and had taught Irish to Dr. Finck and Dr.
Pedersen, and given stories to Mr. Curtin of America. A little after
middle age he had fallen over a cliff, and since then he had had
little eyesight, and a trembling of his hands and head.
As we talked he sat huddled together over the fire, shaking and
blind, yet his face was indescribably pliant, lighting up with an
ecstasy of humour when he told me anything that had a point of wit
or malice, and growing sombre and desolate again when he spoke of
religion or the fairies.
He had great confidence in his own powers and talent, and in the
superiority of his stories over all other stories in the world. When
we were speaking of Mr. Curtin, he told me that this gentleman had
brought | 2,380.954181 |
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Produced by Sonya Schermann, Les Galloway and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
GENERAL ANATOMY,
APPLIED TO
PHYSIOLOGY AND MEDICINE;
BY XAVIER BICHAT,
PHYSICIAN OF THE GREAT HOSPITAL OF HUMANITY AT PARIS, AND
PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY.
Translated from the French.
BY GEORGE HAYWARD, M.D.
FELLOW OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES,
AND OF THE MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL SOCIETY.
_IN THREE VOLUMES._
VOLUME III.
_BOSTON_:
PUBLISHED BY RICHARDSON AND LORD.
J. H. A. FROST, PRINTER.
1822.
DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS, _to wit_:
DISTRICT CLERK'S OFFICE.
BE IT REMEMBERED, that on the seventeenth day of April, A.D. 1822,
in the forty-sixth year of the Independence of the United States of
America, _Richardson & Lord_, of the said District, have deposited
in this office the title of a book, the right whereof they claim as
proprietors, in the words following, _to wit_:
"General Anatomy, applied to Physiology and Medicine; by Xavier Bichat,
Physician of the Great Hospital of Humanity at Paris, and Professor of
Anatomy and Physiology. Translated from the French, by George Hayward,
M. D. Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the
Massachusetts Medical Society. In three Volumes. Volume III."
In conformity to the Act of the Congress of the United States,
entitled, "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by securing the
Copies of Maps, Charts and Books, to the Authors and Proprietors of
such Copies, during the times therein mentioned:" and also to an Act
entitled, "An Act supplementary to an Act, entitled, An Act for the
encouragement of Learning, by securing the Copies of Maps, Charts and
Books, to the Authors and Proprietors of such Copies during the times
therein mentioned; and extending the Benefits thereof to the Arts of
Designing, Engraving and Etching Historical and other Prints."
JOHN W. DAVIS,
_Clerk of the District of Massachusetts._
MUSCULAR SYSTEM OF ORGANIC LIFE.
This system is not as abundantly spread out in the economy as the
preceding. The whole mass which it forms, compared with the whole of
the other, which is more than one third of the body, presents in this
respect a very remarkable difference. Its position is also different;
it is concentrated, 1st, in the thorax, where the heart and œsophagus
belong to it; 2d, in the abdomen where the stomach and intestines are
in part formed by it; 3d, in the pelvis where it contributes to form
the bladder and even the womb, though this belongs to generation, which
is a function distinct from organic life. This system then occupies
the middle of the trunk, is foreign to the extremities, and is found
far from the action of external bodies, whilst the other superficially
situated, forming almost alone the extremities, seems, as we have said,
almost as much destined in the trunk to protect the other organs, as
to execute the different motions of the animal. The head contains no
part of the organic muscular system; this region of the body is wholly
devoted to the organs of animal life.
ARTICLE FIRST.
OF THE FORMS OF THE MUSCULAR SYSTEM OF ORGANIC LIFE.
All the muscles of the preceding system take in general a straight
direction. These are all on the contrary curved upon themselves; all
represent muscular cavities differently turned, sometimes cylindrical
as in the intestines, sometimes conical as in the heart, sometimes
rounded as in the bladder, and sometimes very irregular as in the
stomach. No one is attached to the bones; all are destitute of
tendinous fibres. The white fibres arising from the internal surface of
the heart, and going to be attached to the valves of its ventricles,
have by no means the nature of the tendons. Ebullition does not easily
reduce them to gelatine; desiccation does not give them the yellowish
appearance of these organs; they resist maceration longer than them.
It is in general a great character that distinguishes the muscular
organic system from that of animal life, that it does not arise from,
nor terminate in fibrous organs. All the fibres of this last are
continuous either with tendons, or aponeuroses or fibrous membranes.
Almost all those of the first go on the contrary from the cellular
texture, and return to it after having run their course. I at first
thought that the dense and compact texture which is between the mucous
membrane and the fleshy fibres of the intestines, the bladder, the
stomach, &c. was an assemblage and net-work of many small tendons
corresponding to these fibres, and interwoven in the form of an
aponeurosis; the density of this layer deceived me at first view.
Ebullition, maceration, and desiccation have since taught me, that this
layer, completely foreign to the fibrous system, should be referred, as
Haller has said, to the cellular, which is only more dense and compact
there than elsewhere. It is this layer, which I have designated, in
the cellular system by the name of the sub-mucous texture. Many fibres
of the system of which we are treating appear to form an entire curve,
which is not crossed by any cellular intersection; some layers of the
heart exhibit this arrangement, which is in general very rare; so that
there is almost always an origin and termination of the fibres, upon an
organ of a nature different from their own.
We can hardly consider in a general manner the forms of the system of
which we are treating; each organ belonging to it is moulded upon the
form of the viscus to the formation of which it contributes. In fact,
the organic muscles do not exist in distinct fasciculi, like those of
animal life; all, except the heart, form but a third, a quarter and
often even less in the structure of a viscus.
The greatest number has a thin, flat and membranous form. There are
layers more or less broad, and hardly ever distinct fasciculi. Placed
at the side of each other, the fibres are rarely one above another;
hence it happens that occupying a very great extent, these muscles form
however a very small volume. The great gluteus alone would be larger
than all the fibres of the stomach, the intestines and the bladder, if
they were united like it into a thick and square muscle.
ARTICLE SECOND.
ORGANIZATION OF THE MUSCULAR SYSTEM OF ORGANIC LIFE.
The organization of the involuntary muscles is not as uniform as that
of the preceding. In these all is exactly similar excepting the
differences of the proportion of the fleshy fibres to the tendinous,
of the length of the first, of the prominence of the fasciculi,
of their assemblage into flat, long or short muscles; in whatever
place we examine them, their varieties are in their forms and not in
their texture. Here on the contrary, there is in this texture marked
differences; the heart compared with the stomach, the intestines with
the bladder are sufficient to convince us of this. It is by virtue of
these different textures, that the contractility and sensibility vary
as we shall see in each muscle, that the force of the contraction is
not the same, and that life is different in each, whilst it is uniform
in all those of animal life. We shall now consider in a general manner
the organization of the involuntary muscles.
I. _Texture peculiar to the Organization of the Muscular System of
Organic Life._
The organic muscular fibre is in general much finer and more delicate
than that of the preceding system; it is not brought into as thick
fasciculi. Very red in the heart, it is whitish in the gastric and
urinary organs. Besides, this colour varies remarkably. I have observed
that sometimes maceration renders it of a deep brown in the intestines.
This fibre never has one single direction, like that of the preceding
muscles; it is interlaced always, or found in juxta-position in
different directions; sometimes it is at a right angle that the
fasciculi are cut, as in the longitudinal and circular fibres of
the gastric tubes; sometimes it is with angles more or less obtuse
or acute, as in the stomach, the bladder, &c. In the heart, this
interlacing is such in the ventricles, that it is a true muscular
net-work. From these varieties of direction, results an advantage in
the motions of these sorts of muscles, which, being all hollow can by
contracting diminish according to many diameters the extent of their
cavity.
Every organic muscular fibre is in general short; those which, like
the longitudinal of the œsophagus, the rectum, &c. appear to run a
long course, are not continuous; they arise and terminate at short
distances, and thus arise and terminate successively in the same
direction or line; no one is comparable to those of the sartorius, the
gracilis, &c. as it respects length.
We know the nature of their fibres no better than that of those of
animal life; but they appear nearly the same under the action of the
different reagents. Desiccation, putrefaction, maceration, ebullition,
exhibit in them the same phenomena. I have observed upon the subject of
this last, that once boiled, the fibres of both systems are much less
alterable by the acids sufficiently weakened. After being some time in
the sulphuric, the muriatic and nitric diluted with water, they soften
a little, but keep their original form, and do not change into that
pulp to which raw fibres are always reduced in the same experiment. The
last of these acids turns them yellow as before ebullition.
I have also made an observation as it respects the horny hardening
which is produced the instant ebullition commences; it is this, that it
is always the same whatever may have been the antecedent dilatation or
contraction of the fibres. The stomach which at death was so dilated
as to contain many pints of fluid, is reduced to the same size, all
other things being equal, as that which is contracted so as to be no
larger than the cœcum. Diseases have a little influence on the horny
hardening. The heart of a phthisical patient exhibited to me in the
same experiment this phenomenon much less evidently, than that of an
apoplectic.
The resistance of the organic muscular fibre is in proportion much
greater than that of the fibres of the animal muscular system.
Whatever may be the distension of the hollow muscles by the fluid which
fills them during life, ruptures hardly ever take place in them.
The bladder alone sometimes exhibits this phenomenon, which is
however very rare in it. In the great retentions of the urine, in
which ruptures take place, it is almost always the urethra that is
ruptured, and the bladder remains whole. We meet in practice with a
hundred fistulas in the perineum, coming from the membranous portion,
to one above the pubis. We find in authors many examples of rupture of
the diaphragm; we know of but few of the rupture of the stomach, the
intestines and the heart.
II. _Common Parts in the Organization of the Muscular System of Organic
Life._
The cellular texture is in general much more rare in the organic
muscles than in the others. The fibres of the heart are in
juxta-position, rather than united by this texture. It is a little more
evident in the gastric and urinary muscles. It is almost wanting in the
womb; thus these muscles are not infiltrated, like the preceding, in
dropsies; they never exhibit that fatty state of which we have spoken,
and which sometimes loads the fibres. I have not observed in these
fibres the yellowish tinge which the others often take, especially in
the vertebral depressions.
The blood vessels are very numerous in this system; they are found
in it even in greater proportion than in the other; more blood
consequently penetrates them. This fact is remarkable, especially in
the intestines, in which the mesenteric arteries distribute numerous
branches, over an extremely delicate fleshy surface. But I would remark
that this appearance is to a certain degree deceptive, as many of these
vessels only traverse the fleshy surface to go to the mucous membrane.
In the ordinary state they give to the gastric viscera a reddish tinge,
which I have rendered at will livid and afterwards brought back to
its primitive state, by shutting and afterwards opening the stop-cock
adapted to the wind pipe, in my experiments upon asphyxia.
The absorbents and exhalants have nothing peculiar in this system.
The nerves come to them from two sources; 1st, from the cerebral
system; 2d, from that of the ganglions.
Except in the stomach in which the par vagum is distributed, the nerves
of the ganglions predominate everywhere. In the heart, they are the
principal; in the intestines, they are the only ones; at the extremity
of the rectum and the bladder, their proportion is greater than that of
the nerves coming from the spine.
The cerebral nerves intermix with them, in penetrating the organic
muscles. The cardiac, solar, hypogastric, plexuses, &c. result from
this intermixture which appears to have an influence upon the motions,
though we are ignorant of the nature of this influence.
All the nerves of the ganglions which go to the organic muscles, do not
appear to be exclusively destined to them. A great number of filaments
belong only to the arteries; such is in fact their interlacing, that
they form, as we have seen, around these vessels a real nervous
membrane, superadded to their own, and exclusively destined to them.
I would compare this nervous envelope to the cellular envelope which
is also found around the arteries, and which is wholly distinct from
the surrounding cellular texture; thus it only has communications with
the nerves of the organic muscles, without being distributed to these
muscles. Besides as the nerves of the ganglions are always the most
numerous and essential in them, and as their tenuity is extreme, the
nervous mass destined to each is infinitely inferior to that which
is found in the voluntary muscles. The heart and the deltoid muscle
compared together, exhibit in this respect a remarkable difference.
ARTICLE THIRD.
PROPERTIES OF THE MUSCULAR SYSTEM OF ORGANIC LIFE.
Under the relation of properties, this system is in part analogous to
the preceding, and in part very different from it.
I. _Properties of Texture. Extensibility._
Extensibility is very evident in the organic muscles. The dilatation of
the intestines and the stomach by aliments, by the extrication of gas,
by the fluids that are found there, that of the bladder by the urine,
by injections that are forced in, &c. are essentially owing to this
extensibility.
This property is characterized here by two remarkable attributes; 1st,
by the rapidity with which it can be put into action; 2d, by the very
great extent of which it is susceptible.
The stomach and intestines pass in an instant from complete vacuity
to great extension. Artificially distended, the bladder becomes
immediately of a size treble, quadruple even of that which is natural
to it. It sometimes however resists, but this does not prove its
defect of extensibility; it is because the fluid injected irritates
it and makes it contract; the organic contractility in exercise, then
prevents the development of extensibility, as it sometimes cannot be
brought into action by stimulants in a muscle laid bare, because the
animal contractility in exercise in the muscle, forms an obstacle to
it. The muscles of animal life are never capable of this rapidity in
their extensibility, whether because they are intersected by numerous
aponeuroses which dilate but slowly, or whether because their layers
of fibres are very thick, two circumstances that do not exist in the
muscles of organic life. Hence a remarkable phenomenon that I have
observed in all cases of tympanites. When we open the abdomen of
subjects that have died in this state, without wounding the swelled
intestines, these immediately burst out, swell more, and occupy twice
as large a space as they were contained in in the abdomen; why? Because
the parietes of the abdomen being unable to yield in proportion to the
quantity of gas that is developed, this has been compressed in the
intestines during life, and expands immediately by its elasticity when
the cause of compression ceases. In dropsies in which the distension is
slow, the abdominal parietes enlarge much more than in tympanites. The
size of the abdomen would be double in this, if the extensibility of
the parietes was in proportion to that of the intestines.
As to the extent of the extensibility of the organic muscles, we can
form an idea of it by comparing the empty stomach which oftentimes
is not larger than the cæcum in its ordinary state, with the stomach
containing sometimes five, six and even eight pints of fluid; the
bladder contracted and concealed behind the pubis, with the bladder
full of urine from suppression, rising sometimes even above the
umbilicus; the rectum empty, with the rectum filling a part of the
pelvis in old people in whom the excrements have accumulated in it; the
intestines contracted with the intestines greatly distended.
It is to the extent of extensibility of the organic muscles and to the
limits placed to that of the abdominal parietes, that must be referred
a constant phenomenon that is observed in the gastric viscera; viz.
that in the natural series of their functions, they are never all
distended at the same time; the intestines are filled when the matters
contained in the stomach are evacuated; the bladder is not full of
urine in the digestive order, until the other hollow organs are empty,
&c. In general, that is an unnatural order in which all the organs are
distended at once.
There is for the organic muscles a mode of extensibility wholly
different from that of which I have just spoken; it is that of the
heart in aneurisms, and the womb in pregnancy. The first, for example,
acquires a size double, treble even sometimes in its left side, and yet
it increases at the same time in thickness. This size is not owing to
distension, but to a preternatural growth. The aneurismatic heart is
to the ordinary heart, what this is to the heart of the infant; it is
nutrition that makes the difference and not distension; for whenever
it is owing to this it diminishes in thickness as it increases in
extent; there is no addition of substance. Besides the aneurismatic
heart has not often the cause that distends it, for commonly in this
case the mitral valves allow a free passage to the blood; whilst when
they are ossified the left ventricle often remains in a natural state.
Moreover, the slow progress of the formation of aneurism proves that
it is a preternatural nutrition that has presided over this increase
of the heart. You would in vain then empty this organ of the blood
it contains, it would not contract and resume its dimensions, as the
inflated intestine does which we puncture to allow the air to escape.
In the womb there are two causes of distension; 1st, the sinuses
greatly developed; 2d, an addition of substance, a real momentary
increase of the fibres of the organ which remains as thick and even
more so than in the natural state. At the time of accouchement, the
sinuses immediately flatten by the contraction of the fibres; hence
the sudden contraction of the organ. But as on the one hand nutrition
alone can remove by decomposition the substances added to the fibres to
enlarge them, and as on the other, this function is exerted slowly,
after the womb has undergone the sudden contraction owing to the
flattening of its sinuses, it returns but gradually and at the end of
some time to its ordinary size. Extensibility is not then brought into
action in the womb filled by the fœtus, and in the aneurismatic heart;
these organs really become at that time the seat of a more active
nutrition; they grow preternaturally, as they have grown naturally
with the other organs; but these do not then experience an analogous
phenomenon, they become monstrous in comparison. The womb decreases,
because the motion of decomposition naturally predominates over that of
composition after accouchement, whilst it was the reverse before this
period. The aneurismatic heart remains always so.
These dilatations of the heart should be carefully distinguished from
those really produced by extensibility, as in the right auricle and
ventricle for example, which are found full of blood at the moment
of death, because the lungs which are weakened, not allowing it to
pass through them, compel it to flow back to the place from which it
came. There are but few hearts which do not exhibit in very various
degrees, these dilatations, which we have the power in a living
animal of increasing or diminishing at will, according to the kind of
death we produce. Two hearts are hardly ever of the same size after
death; many varieties are met with, and these depend more or less on
the difficulties which the blood experiences in the last moments,
in passing through the lungs. Hence why in the diseases of the
heart, there is no standard by which we can compare the morbid size,
especially if we examine the organ as a whole. In fact the distension
of the right side can give it an aneurismatic appearance, and a size
even greater than that of some aneurisms. If we examine the left side
separately, the error is more easily proved, because this side is
subject to less variations. But the principal difference consists
in the thickness. The power of contraction appears to increase in
proportion to this thickness, which arises from the substance added by
nutrition. It is this power which produces the great beating that is
felt under the ribs, the strength of the pulse, &c.
_Contractility._
It is in proportion to extensibility. It is often brought into action
in the ordinary state. It is in virtue of this property, that the
stomach, the bladder, the intestines, &c. contract, and acquire a size
so small compared to what they have when they are full. In general,
there is no muscle of animal life, which is capable of such extreme
contractions as those of organic life.
It should be remarked, however, that life, without having contractility
immediately dependant upon it, since the intestines, the stomach, and
the bladder contract after death when their distension is removed,
modifies it in a very evident manner. The causes even which alter
or diminish the vital forces have an influence upon it; hence the
following observation that all those accustomed to open dead bodies can
make. When the subject has died suddenly, and the stomach is empty, it
is much contracted; when, on the contrary, death has been preceded by a
long disease which has weakened its forces, the stomach, though empty,
remains flaccid, and is found but very little contracted.
We should consider the substances contained in the hollow muscles of
organic life, as true antagonists of these muscles; for they have
not muscles that act in a direction opposite to theirs. As long as
these antagonists distend them, they do not obey their contractility
of texture; when they are empty, this is brought into action. It is
not, however, upon this property that the mechanism of the expulsion
of matters from these organs turns, as aliments from the stomach and
intestines, urine from the bladder, blood from the heart, &c. It is
the organic contractility that presides over this mechanism. It is
difficult to distinguish these properties in exercise. One occasions
a slow and gradual contraction, which is without the alternation of
relaxation; the other, quick and sudden, consisting in a series of
relaxations and contractions, produces the peristaltic motion, those
of systole, diastole, &c. It is after the organic contractility has
procured the evacuation of the hollow muscles, that the contractility
of texture closes them. In death from hemorrhage from a great artery,
the left and even the right side of the heart send out all the blood
they contain; afterwards empty, they contract powerfully, and the
organ is very small. On the contrary, it is very large when much blood
remaining in its cavities, distends it, as in asphyxia. These are the
two extremes. There are, as I have said, many intermediate states.
The contractility of texture is, in the system of which we are
treating, in proportion to the number of fleshy fibres. Thus, all
things being equal, the rectum, when empty, contracts upon itself with
much more force than the other large intestines; the contraction of the
ventricles is much greater than that of the auricles, and that of the
œsophagus is much greater than that of the duodenum, | 2,381.396015 |
2023-11-16 18:56:45.5351790 | 2,080 | 8 | WEAK MEANS***
Transcribed from the 1822 R. Thomas edition by David Price, email
[email protected]
[Picture: Public domain book cover]
THE
_GLORY OF GRACE_
Effected by weak Means:
BEING THE SUBSTANCE OF
A SERMON,
PREACHED ON THE
DEATH OF SAMUEL CHURCH,
_Aged Twelve Years_.
On SUNDAY Evening, APRIL 14, 1822,
BY J. CHURCH,
At the Surrey Tabernacle.
* * * * *
And Eli perceived that the Lord had called the Child.—1 _Sam._ iii,
8.
And there is hope in thine end, saith the LORD, that thy Children
shall come
again to their own Border.—_Jeremiah_ xxxi, 17.
* * * * *
SOUTHWARK,
PRINTED BY R. THOMAS, RED LION STREET, BOROUGH.
1822.
* * * * *
_A SERMON_, _&c._
Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength,
because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the
avenger. _Psalm_ viii, 2.
WHEN David had his mind most divinely elevated and filled with holy
thoughts of the person, work, and glory of the dear Redeemer, he burst
forth in holy admiration, joy, and praise, in this adoring language: I
will extol thee, my God, O king! I will bless thy name for ever and
ever! One generation shall praise thy works unto another, and shall
declare thy mighty acts: and surely the most wonderful and astonishing
act, is the everlasting salvation of lost, ruined, guilty man. This is a
greater act than the formation of worlds, either heaven or earth. The
salvation of one poor sinner is a more marvellous display of God, than
the creation, with all its wonders. This salvation we are to speak of to
others, both ministers and people; and in proportion as we see our
interest in it, so are we to declare its greatness, because it is the
highest act of God, as the God of all grace, and
Why should the wonders he has wrought
Be lost in silence and forgot?
But babes, men, and children, let them praise the name of the Lord.
I could wish this task, on this solemn, and to me, painful occasion, had
devolved on one suitable, but supported by the Lord’s presence, upheld by
his power, and cheered with his approbation in my mind, I humbly attempt
to rehearse the wonders of his love, the riches of his grace, and the
displays of his mercy to me, and mine, and attempt, in my poor way, to
prove the glorious truth in the text: Out of the mouths of babes God has
ordained his own glory, the glory of his _love_, his _grace_, his
_mercy_, his _truth_, his _power_, his _faithfulness_, and infinite
_condescension_. It is true that I can do no justice to the important
words, by way of a Sermon. They contain a vast store of rich truth and
precious experience. I must therefore merely glance at the meaning, and
shew, in as concise a manner as I can, to whom they belong, and to whom
they will, with scriptural propriety, apply.
The title of this psalm is to the chief musician upon Gittith, a psalm of
David.—Various are the conjectures of learned men on this title. Some
think the word Gittith signifies the wine press, and the title means, To
the conqueror over the trodden wine press, wrath; and if so, we are not
at a loss to know to whom it belongs. A psalm of, or concerning the
beloved one, to whom be glory. Amen.
The ever blessed Redeemer is the subject of this psalm. Hence we find it
quoted in the New Testament, and twice applied to him. It is a
revelation of Christ, as God-man, in his headship, his empire, dominion,
and excellent name, his royalties, majesty, and glory, with his union,
relation, and interest in his people. It is addressed to him as Jehovah,
the covenant God of the church; as one of the glorious and divine
persons, subsisting in the divine essence, with the Father and the holy
Spirit, the incomprehensible God, the most high God, blessed for
evermore; the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the first and the last.
If the first, there were none before him, and if the last, there can be
none after him. He is the Almighty, himself has declared it; the true
God and eternal life, possessing every divine and glorious perfection,
the maker of heaven and earth, the centre, the foundation, the glory, the
beauty, and ornament of creation; and the whole is sustained by him—he is
omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal, unchangeable—the adorable I
am, that I am!—and as God in covenant, as well as absolute deity, he is
called our God, your God, their God, my Lord, and my God, the most
mighty, the great God, the living God; and must not that person have
diabolical effrontery to deny the essential and eternal Godhead of the
Lord Jesus Christ? Such conduct clearly demonstrates that such persons
are in nature’s thickest gloom, nor can those characters give the church
or the world any scriptural account of the holy Spirit’s work upon their
hearts. We, therefore, can never allow such unconverted persons to be
proper judges of any one truth in divine revelation. When persons are
called by divine grace, they are brought to feel their need of just such
a saviour as Christ is, and are led to prize the infinite value of his
blood, the merit of his obedience, the power of his arm, and the love of
his heart. But amidst the host of enemies to the person and dignity of
Christ, we humbly and gratefully unite with the Psalmist: Oh Lord, our
Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth, thy perfections, and
thy gospel, wherever it has been carried. And how glorious it will be in
the new heavens and earth, during the millennium, his thousand years
personal reign with his people. There _he_ has set his glory above the
heavens, his everlasting love, his holy humanity; and his church, as
considered in himself, are exalted above the ærial or starry heavens.
This is his glory, the joy of the redeemed, the wonder of elect angels,
and the envy of devils.
The Psalmist, having been led to adore Jehovah Jesus, as God in covenant,
and as God-man, the brightness of the Father’s glory, is sweetly brought
on to view him in his humiliation, final victory, and exaltation; and
while considering the heavenly bodies, their glory and greatness, with
his own insufficiency to celebrate his power, he yet adores him for that
knowledge with which his mind was favored, and exclaims, What is man that
thou art mindful of him? This passage is quoted by the apostle, and the
whole of it is applied to Christ, as the mediator, as the Son of man,
admiring that grace which conferred so great an honor upon him, as to
choose his individual nature, his humanity, as to unite it with the
Godhead, that he should prepare it in the covenant, anoint it with the
oil of gladness above his fellows, delight in it, exalt it, and take such
providential care of it; support it under his direful sorrows, raise it,
and give it glory. Thus the sacred Messiah is represented, as filled
with holy and admiring thoughts of the subject, and in extacy asks, What
is man? the human nature made a little lower than God, but next unto him,
and in personal union with the Son of God; a little lower than the angels
for the suffering of death, but crowned with glory and honor, as the
whole election of grace, and as the mediator of reconciliation. Christ
by delegation, hath universal dominion over all things, visible and
invisible, nature, providence, grace, glory, earth, and hell; and this
will ever form a subject for the admiration of God’s people. O Lord, our
Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! for as thou hast formed
thy people for thy praise, thou hast ordained the wonders of thy grace
shall be celebrated by them in time and eternity. Out of the mouths of
babes and sucklings thou hast ordained strength, because of thine
enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.
We may consider these words as justly applicable to 1. David. 2, David’s
Lord.—3, The children of the temple. 4, The apostles in their
minority.—5, The experience of believers.—6, The salvation of children.
This good man was chosen and ordained for the glory of God, and for the
benefit of his people; eternally chosen in Christ to salvation; he | 2,381.555219 |
2023-11-16 18:56:45.6659430 | 1,013 | 9 |
Produced by Al Haines
A MARRIAGE AT SEA
BY
W. CLARK RUSSELL
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.
LONDON
_First Issued in this Cheap Form in 1919_
This Book was First Published (Two Vols.) ... February 1891
Second Edition (One Vol.) ........... February 1892
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE RUE DE MAQUETRA
II. THE ELOPEMENT
III. AT SEA
IV. SWEETHEARTS IN A DANDY
V. DIRTY WEATHER
VI. SWEETHEARTS IN A STORM
VII. THE CARTHUSIAN
VIII. OUTWARD BOUND
IX. WE ARE MUCH OBSERVED
X. A SINGULAR PROPOSAL
XI. GRACE CONSENTS
XII. A MARRIAGE AT SEA
XIII. THE MERMAID
XIV. HOMEWARD BOUND
XV. THE END
POSTSCRIPT
A MARRIAGE AT SEA
CHAPTER I
THE RUE DE MAQUETRA
My dandy-rigged yacht, the _Spitfire_, of twenty-six tons, lay in
Boulogne harbour, hidden in the deep shadow of the wall against which
she floated. It was a breathless night, dark despite the wide spread
of cloudless sky that was brilliant with stars. It was hard upon the
hour of midnight, and low down where we lay we heard but dimly such
sounds of life as was still abroad in the Boulogne streets. Ahead of
us loomed the shadow of a double-funnelled steamer--an inky dye of
scarcely determinable proportions upon the black and silent waters of
the harbour. The Capecure pier made a faint, phantom-like line of
gloom as it ran seawards on our left, with here and there a lump of
shadow denoting some collier fast to the skeleton timbers.
The stillness was impressive; from the sands came a dull and distant
moan of surf; the dim strains of a concertina threaded the hush which
seemed to dwell like something material upon the black, vague shape of
a large brig almost directly abreast of us. We were waiting for the
hour of midnight to strike and our ears were strained.
"What noise is that?" I exclaimed.
"The dip of sweeps, sir," answered my captain, Aaron Caudel; "some
smack a-coming along--ay, there she is," and he shadowily pointed to a
dark, square heap betwixt the piers, softly approaching to the impulse
of her long oars, the rhythmic grind of which in the thole-pins made a
strange, wild ocean music of the far-off roar of the surf, and the sob
of water alongside, and the delicate wash of the tide in the green
piles and timbers of the two long, narrow, quaint old piers.
"How is your pluck now, Caudel?" said I in a low voice, sending a
glance up at the dark edge of the harbour-wall above us, where stood
the motionless figure of a _douanier_, with a button or two of his
uniform faintly glimmering to the gleam of a lamp near him.
"Right for the job, sir--right as your honour could desire it. There's
but one consideration which ain't like a feeling of sartinty--and that
I must say consarns the dawg."
"Smother the dog! But you are right, Caudel. We must leave our boots
in the ditch."
"Ain't there plenty of grass, sir?" said he.
"I hope so; but a fathom of gravel will so crunch under those hoofs of
yours that the very dead buried beneath might turn in their
coffins--let alone a live dog wide awake from the end of his beastly
cold snout to the tip of his tail. Does the ladder chafe you?"
"No, sir. Makes me feel a bit asthmatic-like, and if them duniers get
a sight of me they'll reckon I've visited the Continent to make a show
of myself," he exclaimed, with a low, deep-sea laugh, whilst he spread
his hands upon his breast, around which, under cover of a large, loose,
long pea-coat, he had coiled a length of rope-ladder with | 2,381.685983 |
2023-11-16 18:56:45.7418590 | 3,313 | 25 |
Produced by Brian Coe, John Campbell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
A superscript is denoted by ^x, for example S^t (Street).
Some minor changes are noted at the end of the book.
HISTORICAL RECORD
OF
THE FORTY-SIXTH,
OR
THE SOUTH DEVONSHIRE,
REGIMENT OF FOOT:
CONTAINING
AN ACCOUNT OF THE FORMATION OF THE REGIMENT
IN 1741
AND OF ITS SUBSEQUENT SERVICES
TO 1851.
COMPILED BY
RICHARD CANNON, ESQ.,
ADJUTANT-GENERAL'S OFFICE, HORSE GUARDS.
ILLUSTRATED WITH PLATES.
LONDON:
PARKER, FURNIVALL, & PARKER,
30, CHARING CROSS.
M DCCC LI.
LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET,
FOR HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE.
GENERAL ORDERS.
_HORSE-GUARDS_,
_1st January, 1836._
His Majesty has been pleased to command that, with the view of
doing the fullest justice to Regiments, as well as to Individuals
who have distinguished themselves by their Bravery in Action with
the Enemy, an Account of the Services of every Regiment in the
British Army shall be published under the superintendence and
direction of the Adjutant-General; and that this Account shall
contain the following particulars, viz.:--
---- The Period and Circumstances of the Original Formation of
the Regiment; The Stations at which it has been from time to time
employed; The Battles, Sieges, and other Military Operations
in which it has been engaged, particularly specifying any
Achievement it may have performed, and the Colours, Trophies,
&c., it may have captured from the Enemy.
---- The Names of the Officers, and the number of
Non-Commissioned Officers and Privates Killed or Wounded by the
Enemy, specifying the place and Date of the Action.
---- The Names of those Officers who, in consideration of their
Gallant Services and Meritorious Conduct in Engagements with the
Enemy, have been distinguished with Titles, Medals, or other
Marks of His Majesty's gracious favour.
---- The Names of all such Officers, Non-Commissioned Officers,
and Privates, as may have specially signalized themselves in
Action.
And,
---- The Badges and Devices which the Regiment may have been
permitted to bear, and the Causes on account of which such Badges
or Devices, or any other Marks of Distinction, have been granted.
By Command of the Right Honorable
GENERAL LORD HILL,
_Commanding-in-Chief_.
JOHN MACDONALD,
_Adjutant-General_.
PREFACE.
The character and credit of the British Army must chiefly depend
upon the zeal and ardour by which all who enter into its service
are animated, and consequently it is of the highest importance that
any measure calculated to excite the spirit of emulation, by which
alone great and gallant actions are achieved, should be adopted.
Nothing can more fully tend to the accomplishment of this desirable
object than a full display of the noble deeds with which the
Military History of our country abounds. To hold forth these bright
examples to the imitation of the youthful soldier, and thus to
incite him to emulate the meritorious conduct of those who have
preceded him in their honorable career, are among the motives that
have given rise to the present publication.
The operations of the British Troops are, indeed, announced in the
"London Gazette," from whence they are transferred into the public
prints: the achievements of our armies are thus made known at the
time of their occurrence, and receive the tribute of praise and
admiration to which they are entitled. On extraordinary occasions,
the Houses of Parliament have been in the habit of conferring on
the Commanders, and the Officers and Troops acting under their
orders, expressions of approbation and of thanks for their skill
and bravery; and these testimonials, confirmed by the high honour
of their Sovereign's approbation, constitute the reward which the
soldier most highly prizes.
It has not, however, until late years, been the practice (which
appears to have long prevailed in some of the Continental armies)
for British Regiments to keep regular records of their services
and achievements. Hence some difficulty has been experienced in
obtaining, particularly from the old Regiments, an authentic
account of their origin and subsequent services.
This defect will now be remedied, in consequence of His Majesty
having been pleased to command that every Regiment shall, in
future, keep a full and ample record of its services at home and
abroad.
From the materials thus collected, the country will henceforth
derive information as to the difficulties and privations which
chequer the career of those who embrace the military profession. In
Great Britain, where so large a number of persons are devoted to
the active concerns of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, and
where these pursuits have, for so long a period, been undisturbed
by the _presence of war_, which few other countries have escaped,
comparatively little is known of the vicissitudes of active service
and of the casualties of climate, to which, even during peace, the
British Troops are exposed in every part of the globe, with little
or no interval of repose.
In their tranquil enjoyment of the blessings which the country
derives from the industry and the enterprise of the agriculturist
and the trader, its happy inhabitants may be supposed not often to
reflect on the perilous duties of the soldier and the sailor,--on
their sufferings,--and on the sacrifice of valuable life, by which
so many national benefits are obtained and preserved.
The conduct of the British Troops, their valour, and endurance,
have shone conspicuously under great and trying difficulties; and
their character has been established in Continental warfare by the
irresistible spirit with which they have effected debarkations in
spite of the most formidable opposition, and by the gallantry and
steadiness with which they have maintained their advantages against
superior numbers.
In the official Reports made by the respective Commanders, ample
justice has generally been done to the gallant exertions of the
Corps employed; but the details of their services and of acts of
individual bravery can only be fully given in the Annals of the
various Regiments.
These Records are now preparing for publication, under His
Majesty's special authority, by Mr. RICHARD CANNON, Principal Clerk
of the Adjutant General's Office; and while the perusal of them
cannot fail to be useful and interesting to military men of every
rank, it is considered that they will also afford entertainment and
information to the general reader, particularly to those who may
have served in the Army, or who have relatives in the Service.
There exists in the breasts of most of those who have served, or
are serving, in the Army, an _Esprit de Corps_--an attachment
to everything belonging to their Regiment; to such persons a
narrative of the services of their own Corps cannot fail to prove
interesting. Authentic accounts of the actions of the great, the
valiant, the loyal, have always been of paramount interest with
a brave and civilized people. Great Britain has produced a race
of heroes who, in moments of danger and terror, have stood "firm
as the rocks of their native shore:" and when half the world has
been arrayed against them, they have fought the battles of their
Country with unshaken fortitude. It is presumed that a record of
achievements in war,--victories so complete and surprising, gained
by our countrymen, our brothers, our fellow-citizens in arms,--a
record which revives the memory of the brave, and brings their
gallant deeds before us,--will certainly prove acceptable to the
public.
Biographical Memoirs of the Colonels and other distinguished
Officers will be introduced in the Records of their respective
Regiments, and the Honorary Distinctions which have, from time to
time, been conferred upon each Regiment, as testifying the value
and importance of its services, will be faithfully set forth.
As a convenient mode of Publication, the Record of each Regiment
will be printed in a distinct number, so that when the whole shall
be completed, the Parts may be bound up in numerical succession.
INTRODUCTION
TO
THE INFANTRY.
The natives of Britain have, at all periods, been celebrated for
innate courage and unshaken firmness, and the national superiority
of the British troops over those of other countries has been
evinced in the midst of the most imminent perils. History contains
so many proofs of extraordinary acts of bravery, that no doubts can
be raised upon the facts which are recorded. It must therefore be
admitted, that the distinguishing feature of the British soldier is
INTREPIDITY. This quality was evinced by the inhabitants of England
when their country was invaded by Julius Cæsar with a Roman army,
on which occasion the undaunted Britons rushed into the sea to
attack the Roman soldiers as they descended from their ships; and,
although their discipline and arms were inferior to those of their
adversaries, yet their fierce and dauntless bearing intimidated
the flower of the Roman troops, including Cæsar's favourite tenth
legion. Their arms consisted of spears, short swords, and other
weapons of rude construction. They had chariots, to the axles of
which were fastened sharp pieces of iron resembling scythe-blades,
and infantry in long chariots resembling waggons, who alighted
and fought on foot, and for change of ground, pursuit or retreat,
sprang into the chariot and drove off with the speed of cavalry.
These inventions were, however, unavailing against Cæsar's
legions: in the course of time a military system, with discipline
and subordination, was introduced, and British courage, being
thus regulated, was exerted to the greatest advantage; a full
development of the national character followed, and it shone forth
in all its native brilliancy.
The military force of the Anglo-Saxons consisted principally of
infantry: Thanes, and other men of property, however, fought on
horseback. The infantry were of two classes, heavy and light. The
former carried large shields armed with spikes, long broad swords
and spears; and the latter were armed with swords or spears only.
They had also men armed with clubs, others with battle-axes and
javelins.
The feudal troops established by William the Conqueror consisted
(as already stated in the Introduction to the Cavalry) almost
entirely of horse; but when the warlike barons and knights, with
their trains of tenants and vassals, took the field, a proportion
of men appeared on foot, and, although these were of inferior
degree, they proved stout-hearted Britons of stanch fidelity. When
stipendiary troops were employed, infantry always constituted a
considerable portion of the military force; and this _arme_ has
since acquired, in every quarter of the globe, a celebrity never
exceeded by the armies of any nation at any period.
The weapons carried by the infantry, during the several reigns
succeeding the Conquest, were bows and arrows, half-pikes, lances,
halberds, various kinds of battle-axes, swords, and daggers. Armour
was worn on the head and body, and in course of time the practice
became general for military men to be so completely cased in steel,
that it was almost impossible to slay them.
The introduction of the use of gunpowder in the destructive
purposes of war, in the early part of the fourteenth
century, produced a change in the arms and equipment of the
infantry-soldier. Bows and arrows gave place to various kinds of
fire-arms, but British archers continued formidable adversaries;
and, owing to the inconvenient construction and imperfect bore of
the fire-arms when first introduced, a body of men, well trained
in the use of the bow from their youth, was considered a valuable
acquisition to every army, even as late as the sixteenth century.
During a great part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth each company
of infantry usually consisted of men armed five different ways; in
every hundred men forty were "_men-at-arms_," and sixty "_shot_;"
the "men-at-arms" were ten halberdiers, or battle-axe men, and
thirty pikemen; and the "shot" were twenty archers, twenty
musketeers, and twenty harquebusiers, and each man carried, besides
his principal weapon, a sword and dagger.
Companies of infantry varied at this period in numbers from 150
to 300 men; each company had a colour or ensign, and the mode of
formation recommended by an English military writer (Sir John
Smithe) in 1590 was:--the colour in the centre of the company
guarded by the halberdiers; the pikemen in equal proportions, on
each flank of the halberdiers: half the musketeers on each flank
of the pikes; half the archers on each flank of the musketeers,
and the harquebusiers (whose arms were much lighter than the
muskets then in use) in equal proportions on each flank of the
company for skirmishing.[1] It was customary to unite a number
of companies into one body, called a REGIMENT, which frequently
amounted to three thousand men: but each company continued to carry
a colour. Numerous improvements were eventually introduced in the
construction of fire-arms, and, it having been found impossible to
make armour proof against the muskets then in use (which carried
a very heavy ball) without its being too weighty for the soldier,
armour was gradually laid aside by the infantry in the seventeenth
century: bows and arrows also fell into disuse, and the infantry
were reduced to two classes, viz.: _musketeers_, armed with
matchlock muskets, swords, and daggers; and _pikemen_, armed with
pikes from fourteen to eighteen feet long, and swords.
In the early part of the seventeenth century Gustavus Adolphus,
King of Sweden, reduced the strength of regiments to 1000 men. He
caused the gunpowder, which had heretofore been carried in flasks,
or in small wooden bandoliers, each containing a charge, to be
made up into cartridges, and carried in pouches; and he formed
each regiment into two wings of musketeers, and a centre division
of pikemen. He also adopted the practice of forming four regiments
into a brigade; and the | 2,381.761899 |
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Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: Volume I is available as Project Gutenberg ebook
number 49844.
WILLIAM COBBETT.
A BIOGRAPHY.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS,
ST. JOHN’S SQUARE.
WILLIAM COBBETT:
_A BIOGRAPHY_.
BY EDWARD SMITH.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
London:
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON,
CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET.
1878.
[_All rights reserved._]
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER XIV.
1805-1806.
“I NEVER SAT MYSELF DOWN ANYWHERE, WITHOUT MAKING THE FRUITS
AND FLOWERS TO GROW” 1
CHAPTER XV.
1806-1807.
“I DID DESTROY THEIR POWER TO ROB US ANY LONGER WITHOUT THE
ROBBERY BEING PERCEIVED” 24
CHAPTER XVI.
1807-1809.
“THEY NATURALLY HATE ME” 45
CHAPTER XVII.
1808-1809.
“THE OUTCRY AGAINST ME IS LOUDER THAN EVER” 63
CHAPTER XVIII.
1809-1810.
“COMPARED WITH DEFEATING ME, DEFEATING BUONAPARTE IS A MERE
TRIFLE” 88
CHAPTER XIX.
1810.
“THE FOLLY, COMMON TO ALL TYRANTS, IS THAT THEY PUSH THINGS
TOO FAR” 114
CHAPTER XX.
1810-1812.
“TO PUT A MAN IN PRISON FOR A YEAR OR TWO DOES NOT KILL HIM” 127
CHAPTER XXI.
1812-1816.
“THE NATION NEVER CAN BE ITSELF AGAIN WITHOUT A REFORM” 149
CHAPTER XXII.
1816-1817.
“BETWEEN SILENCE AND A DUNGEON LAY MY ONLY CHOICE” 173
CHAPTER XXIII.
1817-1821.
“WHATEVER OTHER FAULTS I MAY HAVE, THAT OF LETTING GO MY
HOLD IS NOT ONE” 198
CHAPTER XXIV.
1821-1826.
“THEY COMPLAIN THAT THE TWOPENNY TRASH IS READ” 229
CHAPTER XXV.
1821-1831.
“I HAVE PLEADED THE CAUSE OF THE WORKING-PEOPLE, AND I SHALL
NOW SEE THAT CAUSE TRIUMPH” 249
CHAPTER XXVI.
1832-1835.
“I NOW BELONG TO THE PEOPLE OF OLDHAM” 275
CHAPTER XXVII.
1835.
“I HAVE BEEN THE GREAT ENLIGHTENER OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND” 291
APPENDIX: BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST OF WILLIAM COBBETT’S
PUBLICATIONS 305
INDEX 321
WILLIAM COBBETT: A BIOGRAPHY.
CHAPTER XIV.
“I NEVER SAT MYSELF DOWN ANYWHERE, WITHOUT MAKING THE FRUITS AND
FLOWERS TO GROW.”
The summer of 1805 finds Mr. Cobbett again at Botley with his family.
A letter to Wright, dated 5th July, says, “I have found here a most
delightful house and a more delightful garden.” Preparations are being
made for a prolonged stay, and for the occasional entertainment of his
correspondent: “I have given you a deal of trouble, and hope that you
will find hereafter some compensation during the time you will spend at
Botley.” The carpets are to be taken up (in Duke Street), and all the
bedding, &c., to be “removed upstairs, packed in mats or something.” On
the 28th of July Cobbett writes--
“I am glad that you are like to close your labours so soon,
for I really wish very much to see you here, and so do all the
children and their mother, all of whom have delightful health;
and Mrs. Cobbett is more attached to Botley than I am--one
cause of which is, she has made her servants humble, and she
bakes good bread. I shall have made it a delightful place
before you will have finished your volume.”[1]
There is a good deal about Botley and its neighbourhood to charm the
tastes of men like Cobbett. A fine open country, which was then to a
great extent unenclosed--it was a genuine agricultural and sporting
district, of which the little town was the | 2,381.854192 |
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Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer
HIRAM THE YOUNG FARMER
By Burbank L. Todd
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. THE CALL OF SPRING
CHAPTER II. AT MRS. ATTERSON'S
CHAPTER III. A DREARY DAY
CHAPTER IV. THE LOST CARD
CHAPTER V. THE COMMOTION AT MOTHER ATTERSON'S
CHAPTER VI. THIS DIDN'T GET BY HIRAM
CHAPTER VII. HOW HIRAM LEFT TOWN
CHAPTER VIII. THE LURE OF GREEN FIELDS
CHAPTER IX. THE BARGAIN IS MADE
CHAPTER X. THE SOUND OF BEATING HOOFS
CHAPTER XI. A GIRL RIDES INTO THE TALE
CHAPTER XII. SOMETHING ABOUT A PASTURE FENCE
CHAPTER XIII. THE UPROOTING
CHAPTER XIV. GETTING IN THE EARLY CROPS
CHAPTER XV. TROUBLE BREWS
CHAPTER XV. ONE SATURDAY AFTERNOON
CHAPTER XVII. MR. PEPPER APPEARS
CHAPTER XVIII. A HEAVY CLOUD
CHAPTER XIX. THE REASON WHY
CHAPTER XX. AN ENEMY IN THE DARK
CHAPTER XXI. THE WELCOME TEMPEST
CHAPTER XXII. FIRST FRUITS
CHAPTER XXIII. TOMATOES AND TROUBLE
CHAPTER XXIV. "CORN THAT'S CORN"
CHAPTER XXV. THE BARBECUE
CHAPTER XXVI. SISTER'S TURKEYS
CHAPTER XXVII. RUN TO EARTH
CHAPTER XXVIII. HARVEST
CHAPTER XXIX. LETTIE BRONSON'S CORN HUSKING
CHAPTER XXX. ONE SNOWY MIDNIGHT
CHAPTER XXXI. "MR. DAMOCLES'S SWORD"
CHAPTER XXXII. THE CLOUD IS LIFTED
CHAPTER XXXIII. "CELERY MAD"
CHAPTER XXXIV. CLEANING UP A PROFIT
CHAPTER XXXV. LOOKING AHEAD
CHAPTER I. THE CALL OF SPRING
"Well, after all, the country isn't such a bad place as some city folk
think."
The young fellow who said this stood upon the highest point of the Ridge
Road, where the land sloped abruptly to the valley in which lay the
small municipality of Crawberry on the one hand, while on the other open
fields and patches of woodland, in a huge green-and-brown checkerboard
pattern, fell more easily to the bank of the distant river.
Dotted here and there about the farming country lying before the youth
as he looked westward were cottages, or the more important-looking
homesteads on the larger farms; and in the distance a white church spire
behind the trees marked the tiny settlement of Blaine's Smithy.
A Sabbath calm lay over the fields and woods. It was mid-afternoon of
an early February Sunday--the time of the mid-winter thaw, that false
prophet of the real springtime.
Although not a furrow had been turned as yet in the fields, and the snow
lay deep in some fence corners and beneath the hedges, there was, after
all, a smell of fresh earth--a clean, live smell--that Hiram Strong had
missed all week down in Crawberry.
"I'm glad I came up here," he muttered, drawing in great breaths of
the clean air. "Just to look at the open fields, without any brick and
mortar around, makes a fellow feel fine!"
He stretched his arms above his head and, standing alone there on the
upland, felt bigger and better than he had in weeks.
For Hiram Strong was a country boy, born and bred, and the town stifled
him. Besides, he had begun to see that his two years in Crawberry had
been wasted.
"As a hustler after fortune in the city I am not a howling success,"
mused Hiram. "Somehow, I'm cramped down yonder," and he glanced back
at the squalid brick houses below him, the smoky roofs, and the ugly
factory chimneys.
"And I declare," he pursued, reflectively, "I don't believe I can stand
Old Dan Dwight much longer. Dan, Junior, is bad enough--when he is
around the store; but the boss would drive a fellow to death."
He shook his head, now turning from the pleasanter prospect of the
farming land and staring down into the town.
"Maybe I'm not a success because I don't stick to one thing. I've had
six jobs in less'n two years. That's a bad record for a boy, I believe.
But there hasn't any of them suited me, nor have I suited them.
"And Dwight's Emporium beats 'em all!" finished Hiram, shaking his head.
He turned his back upon the town once more, as though to wipe his
failure out of his memory. Before him sloped a field of wheat and
clover.
It had kept as green under the snow as though winter was an unknown
season. Every cloverleaf sparkled and the leaves of wheat bristled like
tiny spears.
Spring was on the way. He could hear the call of it!
Two years before Hiram had left the farm. He had no immediate relatives
after his father died. The latter had been a tenant-farmer only, and
when his tools and stock and the few household chattels had been sold
to pay the debts that had accumulated during his last illness, there was
very little money left for Hiram.
There was nobody to say him nay when he packed his bag and started for
Crawberry, which was the metropolis of his part of the country. He had
set out boldly, believing that he could get ahead faster, and become
master of his own fortune more quickly in town than in the locality
where he was born.
He was a rugged, well-set-up youth of seventeen, not over-tall, but
sturdy and able to do a man's work. Indeed, he had long done a man's
work before he left the farm.
Hiram's hands were calloused, he shuffled a bit when walked, and his
shoulders were just a little bowed from holding the plow handles since
he had been big enough to bridle his father's old mare.
Yes, the work on the farm had been hard--especially for a growing boy.
Many farm boys work under better conditions than Hiram had.
Nevertheless, after a two years' trial of what the city has in store for
most country boys who cut loose from their old environment, Hiram Strong
felt to-day as though he must get back to the land.
"There's nothing for me in town. Clerking in Dwight's Emporium will
never get me anywhere," he thought, turning finally away from the open
country and starting down the steep hill.
"Why, there are college boys working on our street cars here--waiting
for some better job to turn up. What chance does a fellow stand who's
only got a country school education?
"And there isn't any clean fun for a fellow in Crawberry--fun that
doesn't cost money. And goodness knows I can't make more than enough to
pay Mrs. Atterson, and for my laundry, and buy a new suit of overalls
and a pair of shoes occasionally.
"No, sir!" concluded Hiram. "There's nothing in it. Not for a fellow
like me, at any rate. I'd better be back on the farm--and I wish I was
there now."
He had been to church that morning; but after the late dinner at his
boarding house had set out on this lonely walk. Now he had nothing to
look forward to as he returned but the stuffy parlor of Mrs. Atterson's
boarding house, the cold supper in the dining-room, which was attended
in a desultory fashion by such of the boarders as were at home, and then
a long, dull evening in his room, or bed after attending the evening
service at the church around the corner.
Hiram even shrank from meeting the same faces at the boarding house
table, hearing the same stale jokes or caustic remarks about Mrs.
Atterson's food from Fred Crackit and the young men boarders of his
class, or the grumbling of Mr. Peebles, the dyspeptic invalid, or the
inane monologue of Old Lem Camp.
And Mrs. Atterson herself--good soul though she was--had gotten on Hiram
Strong's nerves, too. With her heat-blistered face, near-sighted eyes
peering through beclouded spectacles, and her gown buttoned up hurriedly
and with a gap here and there where a button was missing, she was the
typically frowsy, hurried, nagged-to-death boarding house mistress.
And as for "Sister," Mrs. Atterson's little slavey and
maid-of-all-work----
"Well, Sister's the limit!" smiled Hiram, as he turned into the street,
with its rows of ugly brick houses on either hand. "I believe Fred
Crackit has got it right. Mrs. Atterson keeps Sister instead of a
cat--so there'll be something to kick."
The half-grown girl--narrow-chested, round shouldered, and sallow--had
been taken by Mrs. Atterson from some charity institution. "Sister," as
the boarders all called her, for lack of any other cognomen, would have
her yellow hair in four attenuated pigtails hanging down her back, and
she would shuffle about the dining-room in a pair of Mrs. Atterson's old
shoes----
"By Jove! there she is now," exclaimed the startled youth.
At the corner of the street several "slices" of the brick block had
been torn away and the lot cleared for the erection of some business
building. Running across this open space with wild shrieks and spilling
the milk from the big pitcher she carried--milk for the boarders' tea,
Hi knew--came Mrs. Atterson's maid.
Behind her, and driving her like a horse by the ever present "pigtails,"
bounded a boy of about her own age--a laughing, yelling imp of a boy
whom Hiram knew very well.
"That Dan Dwight is the meanest little scamp at this end of the town!"
he said to himself.
The noise the two made attracted only the idle curiosity of a few
people. It was a locality where, even on Sundays, there was more or less
noise.
Sister begged and screamed. She feared she would spill the milk and told
Dan, Junior, so. But he only drove her the harder, yelling to her to
"Get up!" and yanking as hard as he could on the braids.
"Here! that's enough of that!" called Hiram, stepping quickly toward the
two.
For Sister had stopped exhausted, and in tears.
"Be off with you!" commanded Hiram. "You've plagued the girl enough."
"Mind your business, Hi-ram-Lo-ram!" returned Dan, Junior, grabbing at
Sister's hair again.
Hiram caught the younger boy by the shoulder and whirled him around.
"You run along to Mrs. Atterson, Sister," he said, quietly. "No, you
don't!" he added, gripping Dan, Junior, more firmly. "You'll stop right
here."
"Lemme be, Hi Strong!" bawled the other, when he found he could not
easily jerk away. "It'll be the worse for you if you don't."
"Just you wait until the girl is home," returned Hiram, laughing. It was
an easy matter for him to hold the writhing Dan, Junior.
"I'll fix you for this!" squalled the boy. "Wait till I tell my father."
"You wouldn't dare tell your father the truth," laughed Hi.
"I'll fix you," repeated Dan, Junior, and suddenly aimed a vicious kick
at his captor.
Had the kick landed where Dan, Junior, intended--under Hi's kneecap--the
latter certainly would have been "fixed." But the country youth was too
agile for him.
He jumped aside, dragged Dan, Junior, suddenly toward him, and then gave
him a backward thrust which sent the lighter boy spinning.
Now, it had rained the day before and in a hollow beside the path was
a puddle several inches deep. Dan, Junior, lost his balance, staggered
back, tripped over his own clumsy heels, and splashed full length into
it.
"Oh, oh!" he bawled, managing to get well soaked before he scrambled
out. "I'll tell my father on you, Hi Strong. You'll catch it for this!"
"You'd better run home before you catch cold," said Hiram, who could not
help laughing at the young rascal's plight. "And let girls alone another
time."
To himself he said: "Well, the goodness knows I couldn't be much more
in bad odor with Mr. Dwight than I am already. But this escapade of his
precious son ought to about 'fix' me, as Dan, Junior, says.
"Whether I want to, or not, I reckon I will be looking for another job
in a very few days."
CHAPTER II. AT MRS. ATTERSON'S
When you came into "Mother" Atterson's front hall (the young men
boarders gave her that appellation in irony) the ghosts of many ancient
boiled dinners met you with--if you were sensitive and unused to the
odors of cheap boarding houses--a certain shock.
He was starting up the stairs, on which the ragged carpet threatened to
send less agile persons than Mrs. Atterson's boarders headlong to
the bottom at every downward trip, when the clang of the gong in the
dining-room announced the usual cold spread which the landlady thought
due to her household on the first day of the week.
Hiram hesitated, decided that he would skip the meal, and started up
again. But just then Fred Crackit lounged out of the parlor, with Mr.
Peebles following him. Dyspeptic as he was, Mr. Peebles never missed a
meal himself, and Crackit said:
"Come on, Hi-Low-Jack! Aren't you coming down to the usual feast of
reason and flow of soul?"
Crackit thought he was a natural humorist, and he had to keep up his
reputation at all times and seasons. He was rather a dissipated-looking
man of thirty years or so, given to gay waistcoats and wonderfully knit
ties. A brilliant as large as a hazel-nut--and which, in some lights,
really sparkled like a diamond--adorned the tie he wore this evening.
"I don't believe I want any supper," responded Hiram, pleasantly.
"What's the matter? Got some inside information as to what Mother
Atterson has laid out for us? You're pretty thick with the old girl,
Hi."
"That's not a nice way to speak of her, Mr. Crackit," said Hi, in a low
voice.
The other boarders--those who were in the house-straggled into the
basement dining-room one after the other, and took their places at the
long table, each in his customary manner.
That dining-room at Mother Atterson's never could have been a cheerful
place. It was long, and low-ceiled, and the paper on the walls was
a dingy red, so old that the figure on it had retired into the
background--been absorbed by it, so to speak.
The two long, dusty, windows looked upon an area, and were grilled half
way up by wrought-iron screens which, too, helped to shut out the light
of day.
The long table was covered by a red figured table cloth. The "castors"
at both ends and in the middle were the ugliest--Hiram was sure--to be
found in all the city of Crawberry. The crockery was of the coarsest
kind. The knives and forks were antediluvian. The napkins were as coarse
as huck towels.
But Mrs. Atterson's food--considering the cost of provisions and the
charge she made for her table--was very good. Only it had become a habit
for certain of the boarders, led by the jester, Crackit, to criticise
the viands.
Sometimes they succeeded in making Mrs. Atterson angry; and sometimes,
Hiram knew, she wept, alone in the dining-room, after the harumscarum,
thoughtless crowd had gone.
Old Lem Camp--nobody save Hiram thought to put "Mr." before the old
gentleman's name--sidled in and sat down beside the country boy, as
usual. He was a queer, colorless sort of person--a man who never looked
into the face of another if he could help it. He would look all around
Hiram when he spoke to him--at his shoulder, his shirtfront, his hands,
even at his feet if they were visible, but never at his face.
And at the table he kept up a continual monologue. It was difficult
sometimes for Hiram to know when he was being addressed, and when poor
Mr. Camp was merely talking to himself.
"Let's see--where has Sister put my napkin--Oh! here it is--You've been
for a walk, have you, young man?--No, that's not my napkin; I didn't
spill any gravy at dinner--Nice day out, but raw--Goodness me! can't I
have a knife and fork?--Where's my knife and fork?--Sister certainly has
forgotten my knife and fork.--Oh! Here they are--Yes, a very nice day
indeed for this time of year."
And so on. It was quite immaterial to Mr. Camp whether he got an answer
to his remarks to Hiram, or not. He went on muttering to himself, all
through the meal, sometimes commenting upon what the others said at the
table--and that quite shrewdly, Hiram noticed; but the other boarders
considered him a little cracked.
Sister smiled sheepishly at Hiram as she passed the tea. She drowned
his tea with milk and put in no less than four spoonfuls of sugar. But
although the fluid was utterly spoiled for Hiram's taste he drank it
with fortitude, knowing that the girl's generosity was the | 2,382.056791 |
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Produced by Avinash Kothare, Tom Allen, Charles Franks,
Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College
By JESSIE GRAHAM FLOWER, A. M.
PHILADELPHIA
HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY
Copyright, 1914
[Illustration: The Door Was Cautiously Opened to Mrs. Elwood.]
CONTENTS
I. Overton Claims Her Own
II. The Unforseen
III. Mrs. Elwood to the Rescue
IV. The Belated Freshman
V. The Anarchist Chooses Her Roommate
VI. Elfreda Makes a Rash Promise
VII. Girls and Their Ideals
VIII. The Invitation
IX. Anticipation
X. An Offended Freshman
XI. The Finger of Suspicion
XII. The Summons
XIII. Grace Holds Court
XIV. Grace Makes a Resolution
XV. The Quality of Mercy
XVI. A Disgruntled Reformer
XVII. Making Other Girls Happy
XVIII. Mrs. Gray's Christmas Children
XIX. Arline's Plan
XX. A Welcome Guest
XXI. A Gift to Semper Fidelis
XXII. Campus Confidences
XXIII. A Fault Confessed
XXIV. Conclusion
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Door Was Cautiously Opened to Mrs. Elwood.
"It Is My Theme."
Each Girl Carried an Unwieldy Bundle.
The Two Boxes Contained Elfreda's New Suit and Hat.
Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College
CHAPTER I
OVERTON CLAIMS HER OWN
"Oh, there goes Grace Harlowe! Grace! Grace! Wait a minute!" A
curly-haired little girl hastily deposited her suit case, golf bag, two
magazines and a box of candy on the nearest bench and ran toward a
quartette of girls who had just left the train that stood puffing
noisily in front of the station at Overton.
The tall, gray-eyed young woman in blue turned at the call, and, running
back, met the other half way. "Why, Arline!" she exclaimed. "I didn't
see you when I got off the train." The two girls exchanged affectionate
greetings; then Arline was passed on to Miriam Nesbit, Anne Pierson and
J. Elfreda Briggs, who, with Grace Harlowe, had come back to Overton
College to begin their second year's course of study.
Those who have followed the fortunes of Grace Harlowe and her friends
through their four years of high school life are familiar with what
happened during "Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School,"
the story of her freshman year. "Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at
High School" gave a faithful account of the doings of Grace and her
three friends, Nora O'Malley, Anne Pierson and Jessica Bright, during
their sophomore days. "Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High
School" and "Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School"
told of her third and fourth years in Oakdale High School and of how
completely Grace lived up to the high standard of honor she had set for
herself.
After their graduation from high school the four devoted chums spent a
summer in Europe; then came the inevitable separation. Nora and Jessica
had elected to go to an eastern conservatory of music, while Anne and
Grace had chosen Overton College. Miriam Nesbit, a member of the Phi
Sigma Tau, had also decided for Overton, and what befell the three
friends as Overton College freshmen has been narrated in "Grace
Harlowe's First Year at Overton College."
Now September had rolled around again and the station platform of the
town of Overton was dotted with groups of students laden with suit
cases, golf bags and the paraphernalia belonging peculiarly to the
college girl. Overton College was about to claim its own. The joyous
greetings called out by happy voices testified to the fact that the next
best thing to leaving college to go home was leaving home to come back
to college.
"Where is Ruth?" was Grace's first question as she surveyed Arline with
smiling, affectionate eyes.
"She'll be here directly," answered Arline. "She is looking after the
trunks. She is the most indefatigable little laborer I ever saw. From
the time we began to get ready to come back to Overton she refused
positively to allow me to lift my finger. She is always hunting
something to do. She says she has acquired the work habit so strongly
that she can't break herself of it, and I believe her," finished Arline
with a sigh of resignation. "Here she comes now."
An instant later the demure young woman seen approaching was surrounded
by laughing girls.
"Stop working and speak to your little friends," laughed Miriam Nesbit.
"We've just heard bad reports of you."
"I know what you've heard!" exclaimed Ruth, her plain little face alight
with happiness. "Arline has been grumbling. You haven't any idea what a
fault-finding person she is. She lectures me all the time."
"For working," added Arline. "Ruth will have work enough and to spare
this year. Can you blame me for trying to make her take life easy for a
few days?"
"Blame you?" repeated Elfreda. "I would have lectured her night and day,
and tied her up to keep her from work, if necessary."
"Now you see just how much sympathy these worthy sophomores have for
you," declared Arline.
"Do you know whether 19-- is all here yet?" asked Anne.
"I don't know a single thing more about it than do you girls," returned
Arline. "Suppose we go directly to our houses, and then meet at Vinton's
for dinner to-night. I don't yearn for a Morton House dinner. The meals
there won't be strictly up to the mark for another week yet. When the
house is full again, the standard of Morton House cooking will rise in a
day, but until then--let us thank | 2,382.154327 |
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[This text is the “Notes” volume accompanying _Selections from Early
Middle English_, Project Gutenberg e-text 26413. There is no Index
or Glossary, so the notes to each selection can be treated as a
free-standing unit.
The text includes characters that require UTF-8 (Unicode) file encoding,
including:
Ȝ ȝ; ƿ ⁊ (yogh; wynn, Tironian ampersand and similar)
ꝥ (thorn þ with stroke, unicode A765)
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make sure your text reader’s “character set” or “file encoding” is set
to Unicode (UTF-8). You may also need to change the default font.
Transliterations of Greek words and phrases (rare) are given at the end
of the sections in which they occur.
_Unusual Forms_ are represented with brackets:
[ ] half-width space, used between prefix and main verb
[g] Orm’s special “g”
[;] inverted semicolon
The first two are rare in this Notes volume; all three are common in the
primary text. All other brackets are in the original.
_Cross-References_ such as “see p. 123” or “see 12/34” (page/line) come
in several forms:
-- Page numbers up to 222 refer to the primary text. See table of
contents in the main volume for pagination; line numbers refer to
the text, not to the physical page.
-- The form “12/34 note”, and all higher page numbers (223 and up),
refer to the present volume. The first kind are linenotes; the
second refer to some earlier text’s notes, identified by physical
line number. These references have been individually identified.
_Typography:_ Partial-word italics representing editorial expansions are
shown in braces as “mi{n}e”. Other italics are shown conventionally with
_lines_. Other markings:
#boldface#
=letter-spaced= (never adjacent to = signs)
^superscript (always continues to end of word)
{1} {2} (subscript, only used with numerals 1 and 2)
_Errors and Inconsistencies:_ Formatting of less common characters such
as þ and ȝ has been silently corrected to agree with the rest of the
text. Inconsistent punctuation in subheaders (“#Accidence:#” and
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listed at the end of each section. The word “invisible” means that there
is an appropriately sized gap, but the letter or punctuation mark itself
is absent. Note that text format (bold or italic) has semantic meaning
in this volume.
Editorial corrections listed in the Corrigenda have been made in the
text. The page as printed is retained for completeness. Some
inconsistencies that were left as printed are listed at the end of the
full e-text.
The work cited as “NED.” is now known as OED.]
SELECTIONS FROM
EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH
1130-1250
EDITED WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES
by
JOSEPH HALL
M.A., HON. D.LITT., Durham University
PART II: NOTES
OXFORD
at the Clarendon Press
M CM XX
Oxford University Press
London Edinburgh Glasgow New York
Toronto Melbourne Cape Town Bombay
Humphrey Milford
Publisher to the University
PREFACE
The order of the vowels in the phonological sections follows Bülbring’s
Altenglisches Elementarbuch, that of the consonants, Sievers’ Old
English Grammar, translated by Cook. The basis of comparison is Early
West Saxon. The object of these sections has been to provide collections
for the interpretation of the teacher. In accidence Sievers has been
followed generally, but Zupitza’s classification of the strong verbs has
been | 2,382.258418 |
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produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
WORKS OF
ANNA KATHARINE GREEN
I——THE LEAVENWORTH CASE. A Lawyer’s Story.
4to, paper, 20 cents; 16mo, paper, 50 cents; 16mo, cloth, $1 00
II——A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE.
4to, paper, 20 cents; 16mo, paper, 50 cents; 16mo, cloth, $1 00
III——HAND AND RING.
4to, paper, 20 cents; 16mo, paper, 50 cents; 16mo, cloth, $1 00
IV——THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES. A Story of New York Life.
16mo, paper, 50 cents; cloth $1 00
V——X. Y. Z. A Detective Story.
16mo, paper 25
VI——THE DEFENCE OF THE BRIDE, and other Poems.
16mo, cloth $1 00
VII——THE MILL MYSTERY.
16mo, paper, 50 cents; cloth $1 00
VIII——RISIFI’S DAUGHTER. A Drama.
16mo, cloth $1 00
IX——7 to 12. A Story.
16mo, paper 25
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS, PUBLISHERS,
NEW YORK AND LONDON.
7 to 12
A DETECTIVE STORY
BY
ANNA KATHARINE GREEN
AUTHOR OF “THE LEAVENWORTH CASE,” “THE MILL MYSTERY,” ETC.
NEW YORK AND LONDON
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
The Knickerbocker Press
1887
COPYRIGHT BY
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
1887
Press of
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
New York
CONTENTS
7 TO 12, A DETECTIVE STORY 1
ONE HOUR MORE 79
7 TO 12.
A DETECTIVE STORY.
“Clarke?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Another entrance through a second-story window. A detective wanted
right off. Better hurry up there, —— East Seventy-third Street.”
“All right, sir.”
Clarke turned to go; but the next moment I heard the Superintendent
call him back.
“It is Mr. Winchester’s, you know; the banker.”
Clarke nodded and started again; but a suppressed exclamation from the
Superintendent made him stop for the second time.
“I’ve changed my mind,” said the latter, folding up the slip of paper
he held in his hand. “You can see what Halley has for you to do; I’ll
attend to this.” And giving me a look that was a summons, he whispered
in my ear: “This notification was written by Mr. Winchester himself,
and at the bottom I see hurriedly added, ‘Keep it quiet; send your
discreetest man | 2,382.55683 |
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PASSAGES FROM THE AMERICAN NOTE-BOOKS, VOLUME I
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
Salem, June 15, 1835.--A walk | 2,382.556952 |
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RICHARD DARE'S VENTURE
OR
STRIKING OUT FOR HIMSELF
BY EDWARD STRATEMEYER
Author of Oliver Bright's Search, To Alaska For Gold,
The Last Cruise Of The Spitfire, Shorthand Tom, Etc.
PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION.
"Richard Dare's Venture," although a complete story in itself, forms
the initial volume of the "Bound to Succeed" Series, a line of books
written primarily for boys, but which it would seem not only girls but
also persons of mature age have taken up with more or less interest.
The story relates the adventures of a country youth who comes to New
York to seek his fortune, just as many country lads have done in the
past and many are likely to do in the future. Richard feels that there
is nothing for him to do in the sleepy village in which he resides,
and that he must "strike out for himself," and he does so, with no
cash capital to speak of, but with plenty of true American backbone,
and with the firm conviction that if he does his duty as he finds it,
and watches his chances, he will be sure to make a place for himself.
Richard finds life in the metropolis no bed of roses, and when he at
length gains a footing he is confronted by many a snare and pitfall.
But, thanks to the Christian teachings of the best of mothers, and his
natural uprightness of character, he escapes these evils, and gives
a practical teaching of the Biblical admonition of "returning evil
with good."
When the first edition of this work was placed on the market several
years ago, the author had hoped that it would receive some notice; but
he was hardly prepared for the warm reception which readers and critics
alike all over the country accorded it. For this enthusiasm he is
profoundly grateful. The street scenes in New York have been
particularly commended; the author would add that these are not
fictitious, but are taken from life.
EDWARD STRATEMEYER.
NEWARK, N.J., March 1, 1899.
CONTENTS
I. A Serious Accident
II. Bitter Moments
III. Preparing to Start
IV. On the Train
V. The Smash-up
VI. Under Suspicion
VII. The End of the Journey
VIII. The "Watch Below"
IX. Locked Out
X. The First Night in New York
XI. Robbed
XII. On the Search
XIII. Richard Calls on Mr. Joyce
XIV. Work Obtained
XV. New Quarters
XVI. Pep
XVII. Getting Acquainted
XVIII. A Strange Situation
XIX. The Laurel Club
XX. Trouble Brewing
XXI. Richard in Trouble
XXII. Richard Visits Mr. Joyce Again
XXIII. Strange Discoveries
XXIV. Pep's Home
XXV. Tom Clover
XXVI. A Scene in the Stock-room
XXVII. A Fire and its Result
XXVIII. A Lucky Resolve
XXIX. Frank's Idea
XXX. Mr. Martin's Clerks
XXXI. Tom Clover's Statement
XXXII. The Firm of Massanet and Dare
CHAPTER I.
A SERIOUS ACCIDENT.
"It is high time, mother, that I found something to do. Father seems
to be worse, and I'm afraid before long he won't be able to go to work
every day. Ever since I finished schooling I've felt like a fish out
of water."
And stowing away the remainder of the slice of bread he was eating,
Richard Dare leaned back in his chair and gazed inquiringly across the
breakfast-table to where his mother stood, ready to clear away the
dishes when he had finished his meal.
"I'm sure you have been busy enough, Richard," responded Mrs. Dare
fondly. "I am well satisfied with the way you have planted the garden;
and no carpenter could have made a neater job of the front fence. You
haven't wasted your time."
"Oh, I don't mean that. Fixing up around the house is well enough. But
I mean some regular work--some position where I could bring home my
weekly wages. I know it would be a big help all around. It takes a
heap of money to run a family of three girls and a growing boy."
Mrs. Dare smiled sadly.
"What do you know about that?" she asked. "We all have enough to eat
and drink, and our own roof over our heads."
"Yes, but I know that my dear mother sits up sewing sometimes long
after we have gone to bed, so that our clothing may be cared for, and
I know that she hasn't had a new dress in a year, though she deserves
a dozen," added Richard heartily.
"I haven't much use for a new dress--I go out so little," said his
mother. "But what kind of work do you wish to get?"
"Oh, anything that pays. I'm not particular, so long as it's honest.
"I'm afraid you will find but few chances in Mossvale. Times are dull
here--ever since the hat factory moved away. I guess the stores have
all the help they want. You might get a place on one of the farms."
"I don't think any farmer would pay much besides my board," replied
the boy. "I've got another plan," he continued, with some hesitation.
"And what is that?"
"To try my luck in New York. There ought to be room enough for me in
such a big city."
"New York!" exclaimed Mrs. Dare, in astonishment. "Why, you have never
been there in your whole life!"
"I know it, but I've read the papers pretty well, and I wouldn't be
afraid but what I could get along first rate."
Mrs. Dare shook her head doubtfully.
"It is almost impossible to get a footing there," she declared. "When
we were first married your father struggled hard enough, both there
and in Brooklyn, but somehow, he didn't seem to make it go, and so we
moved here. Everything rushes in the city, and unless you have some
one to speak for you no one will give you a chance."
"I would take the first thing that came to hand, no matter what it
paid, and then watch for something better."
"It might be that you would have luck," said Mrs. Dare reflectively.
"I don't like to discourage you. Still--"
"You wouldn't like to see me go away and then fail, is that it?"
"Yes. Failures at the start of life often influence all the after
years. Suppose you have a talk with your father about this."
"I thought I'd speak to you first, mother. I wanted to know if you
would be willing to let me go."
"If your father thinks it best, I shall be satisfied, Richard. Of
course, I will miss you."
"I know that, mother," | 2,382.578418 |
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LADIES MUST LIVE
by
ALICE DUER MILLER
Author of "Come Out of the Kitchen," etc.
1917
CHAPTER I
Mrs. Ussher was having a small house party in the country over New Year's
Day. This is equivalent to saying that the half dozen most fashionable
people in New York were out of town.
Certain human beings are admitted to have a genius for discrimination in
such matters as objects of art, pigs or stocks. Mrs. Ussher had this same
instinct in regard to fashion, especially where fashions in people were
concerned. She turned toward hidden social availability very much as the
douser's hazel wand turns toward the hidden spring. When she crossed the
room to speak to some woman after dinner, whatever that woman's social
position might formerly have been, you could be sure that at present she
was on the upward wing. When Mrs. Ussher discovered extraordinary
qualities of mind and sympathy in some hitherto impossible man, you might
be certain it was time to begin to book him in advance.
Not that Mrs. Ussher was a kingmaker; she herself had no more power over
the situation than the barometer has over the weather. She merely was
able to foretell; she had the sense of approaching social success.
She was unaware of her own powers, and really supposed that her sudden
and usually ephemeral friendships were based on mutual attraction. The
fact that for years her friends had been the small group of the
momentarily fashionable required, in her eyes, no explanation. So simple
was her creed that she believed people were fashionable for the same
reason that they were her friends, because "they were so nice."
During the short period of their existence, Mrs. Ussher gave to these
friendships the utmost loyalty and devotion. She agonized over the
financial, domestic and romantic troubles of her friends; she sat up till
the small hours, talking to them like a schoolgirl; during the height of
their careers she organized plots for their assistance; and even when
their stars were plainly on the decline, she would often ask them to
lunch, if she happened to be alone.
Many people, we know, are prone to make friends with the rich and great.
Mrs. Ussher's genius consisted in having made friends with them before
they were either. When you hurried to her with some account of a newly
discovered treasure--a beauty or a conversable young man--she would
always say: "Oh, yes, I crossed with her two years ago," or "Isn't he a
dear?--he was once in Jack's office." The strange thing was these
statements were always true; the subjects of them confessed with tears
that "dear Mrs. Ussher" or "darling Laura" was the kindest friend they
had ever had.
Her house party was therefore likely to be notable.
First, there was of course Mrs. Almar--of course without her husband.
There is only one thing, or perhaps two, to be said for Nancy Almar--that
she was very handsome and that she was not a hypocrite, no more than a
pirate is a hypocrite who comes aboard with his cutlass in his teeth.
Mrs. Almar's cutlass was always in her teeth, when it was not in
somebody's vitals.
She had smooth, jet-black hair, done close to her pretty head, a clear
white-and-vermilion complexion, and a good figure, not too tall. She said
little, but everything she did say, she most poignantly meant. If, while
you were talking to her, she suddenly cried out: "Ah, that's really
good!" there was no doubt you had had the good fortune to amuse her;
while if she yawned and left you in the midst of a sentence there was no
question that she was bored.
She hated her husband--not for the conventional reason that she had
married him. She hated him because he was a hypocrite, because he was
always placating and temporizing.
For instance, he had said to her as she was about to start for the
Usshers':
"I hope you'll explain to them why I could not come."
There had never been the least question of Mr. Almar's coming, and she
turned slowly and looked at him as she asked:
"You mean that I would not have gone if you had?"
He did not seem annoyed.
"No," he said, "that I'm called South on business."
"I shan't tell them that," she said, slowly wrapping her furs about her
throat; and then foreseeing a comic moment, she added, "but I'll tell
them you say so, if you like."
She was as good as her word--she usually was.
When the party was at tea about the drawing-room fire, she asked without
the slightest change of expression:
"Would any one like to hear Roland's explanation of why he is not with
us?"
"Had it anything to do with his not being asked?" said a pale young man;
and as soon as he had spoken, he glanced hastily round the circle to
ascertain how his remark had succeeded.
So far as Mrs. Almar was concerned it had not succeeded at all, in fact,
though he did not know it, nothing he said would ever succeed with her
again, although a week before she had hung upon his every word. He had
been a new discovery, something unknown and Bohemian, but alas, a day or
two before, she had observed that underlying his socialistic theories was
an aching desire for social recognition. He liked to tell his bejeweled
hostesses about his friends the car-drivers; but, oh, twenty times more,
he would have liked to tell the car-drivers about his friends the
bejeweled hostesses. For this reason Mrs. Almar despised him, and where
she despised she made no secret of the fact.
"Not asked, Mr. Wickham!" she said. "I assume my husband is asked
wherever I am," and then turning to Laura Ussher she added with a faint
smile: "One's husband is always asked, isn't he?"
"Certainly, as long as you never allow him to come," said another
speaker.
This was the other great beauty of the hour--or, since she was blond and
some years younger than Mrs. Almar, perhaps it would be right to say that
she was the beauty of the hour.
She was very tall, golden, fresh, smooth, yet with faint hollows in her
cheeks that kept her freshness from being insipid. Christine Fenimer had
another advantage--she was unmarried. In spite of the truth of the
observation that a married woman's greatest charm is her husband, he is
also in the most practical sense a disadvantage; he does sometimes stand
across the road of advancement, even in a land of easy divorce. Mrs.
Almar, for instance, was regretfully aware that she might have done much
better than Roland Almar. The great stakes were really open to the
unmarried.
She was particularly aware of this fact at the moment, for the party was
understood to be awaiting a great stake. Mrs. Ussher had discovered a
cousin, a young man who, soon after graduating from a technical college,
had invented a process in the manufacture of rubber that had brought him
a fortune before he was thirty. He was now engaged in spending it on
aviation experiments. He was reckless and successful. Besides which he
was understood to be personally attractive--his picture in a silver
frame stood on a neighboring table. He was of the lean type that Mrs.
Almar admired.
Now it was perfectly clear to her why he was asked. Mrs. Ussher adored
Christine Fenimer. Of all girls in the world it was essential that
Christine should marry money. This man, Max Riatt, new to the fashionable
world, ought to be comparatively easy game. The thing ought to go on
wheels. But Mrs. Almar herself was not indifferent to six feet of
splendid masculinity; nor without her own uses at the moment for a
good-looking young man.
In other words, there was going to be a contest; in the full sight of the
little public that really mattered, the lists were set. Nobody present,
except perhaps Wickham, who was dangerously ignorant of the world in
which he was moving, doubted for one moment that Miss Fenimer had
resolved to marry Max Riatt, if, that is, he turned out to be actually as
per the recommendations of Mrs. Ussher; nor was it less certain that Mrs.
Almar intended that he should be hers.
Of course if Mrs. Ussher had been absolutely single-minded, she would not
have invited Mrs. Almar to this party; but though a warm friend to
Christine Fenimer, Laura was not a fanatic, and the piratical Nancy was
her friend, too.
Mrs. Almar could have pleaded an additional reason for her wish to
interfere with this match, besides the natural one of not wishing Miss
Fenimer to attain any success; and that was the fact that Edward Hickson,
her brother, had wanted for several years to marry Christine. Hickson was
a dull, kindly, fairly well-to-do young man--exactly the type you would
like to see your rival marry. Hickson had motored out with his sister,
and had received some excellent counsel on the way.
"Now, Ned," she had said, "don't cut your own throat by being an adoring
foil. Don't let Christine grind your face in the dust, just to show this
new man that she can do it."
"You don't do Christine justice," he had answered, "if you think she
would do that."
His sister did not reply. She thought it would have been doing the girl
injustice to suppose that she would do anything else.
They were still sitting about the tea-table at a quarter to seven, when
Christine and Mrs. Almar rose simultaneously. It was almost time for the
arrival of Riatt, and neither had any fancy for meeting him save at her
best--in all the panoply of evening dress.
"We're not dining till a quarter past eight, my dears," said Mrs. Ussher.
Both ladies thought they would lie down before dinner. And here chance
took a hand. Riatt's train was late, whereas Christine's clock was fast.
And so it happened that she came downstairs just as he was coming up.
There had been no one to greet him. He was told by the butler that Mrs.
Ussher was dressing, that dinner would be in fifteen minutes; he started
to bound up the stairs, following the footman with his bags, when
suddenly looking up the broad flight he saw a blond vision in white and
pearls coming slowly down. He hoped that his lower jaw hadn't fallen, but
she really was extraordinarily beautiful; and he could not help slowing
down a little. She stopped, with her hand on the banisters, like Louise
of Prussia.
"Oh, you're Mr. Riatt," she said, very gently. "You know you're most
awfully late."
"I wish," he said, "that I were wise enough to be able to say: 'Oh,
you're Miss ----'"
"I might be a Mrs."
"Oh, I hope not," he answered. "Are you?"
She smiled.
"You'll know as soon as you come down to dinner."
"I shall be quick about dressing."
He went on up, and she pursued her slow progress down. She felt that her
future had been settled by those few seconds on the stairs.
"He will do admirably," she said to herself, and a smile like that of a
sleeping infant curved her lips. She felt calmly triumphant. She had
always said there was no reason why even a rich man should be absolutely
impossible. She recalled certain great fortunes with repulsive owners,
which some of her friends had accepted. For herself she had always
intended to have everything--love and money, too. And here it was, almost
in her hands. There had | 2,382.754131 |
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MY LADY OF THE
CHIMNEY CORNER
BY
ALEXANDER IRVINE
AUTHOR OF "FROM THE BOTTOM UP," ETC.
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1914
Copyright, 1913, by
THE CENTURY CO.
_Published, August, 1913_
TO
LADY GREGORY
AND
THE PLAYERS OF THE ABBEY THEATRE
DUBLIN
FOREWORD
This book is the torn manuscript of the most beautiful life I ever knew.
I have merely pieced and patched it together, and have not even changed
or disguised the names of the little group of neighbors who lived with
us, at "the bottom of the world." A. I.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I LOVE IS ENOUGH 3
II THE WOLF AND THE CARPENTER 21
III REHEARSING FOR THE SHOW 38
IV SUNDAY IN POGUE'S ENTRY 63
V HIS ARM IS NOT SHORTENED 85
VI THE APOTHEOSIS OF HUGHIE THORNTON 110
VII IN THE GLOW OF A PEAT FIRE 133
VIII THE WIND BLOWETH WHERE IT LISTETH 153
IX "BEYOND TH' MEADOWS AN' TH' CLOUDS" 171
X THE EMPTY CORNER 198
MY LADY OF THE CHIMNEY-CORNER
A STORY OF LOVE AND POVERTY IN
IRISH PEASANT LIFE
CHAPTER I
LOVE IS ENOUGH
"Anna's purty, an' she's good as well as purty, but th' beauty an'
goodness that's hers is short lived, I'm thinkin'," said old Bridget
McGrady to her neighbor Mrs. Tierney, as Mrs. Gilmore passed the door,
leading her five-year-old girl, Anna, by the hand. The old women were
sitting on the doorstep as the worshipers came down the lane from early
mass on a summer morning.
"Thrue for you, Bridget, for th' do say that th' Virgin takes all sich
childther before they're ten."
"Musha, but Mrs. Gilmore'll take on terrible," continued Mrs. Tierney,
"but th' will of God must be done."
Anna was dressed in a dainty pink dress. A wide blue ribbon kept her
wealth of jet black hair in order as it hung down her back and the
squeaking of her little shoes drew attention to the fact that they were
new and in the fashion.
"It's a mortal pity she's a girl," said Bridget, "bekase she might hev
been an althar boy before she goes."
"Aye, but if she was a bhoy shure there's no tellin' what divilmint
she'd get into; so maybe it's just as well."
The Gilmores lived on a small farm near Crumlin in County Antrim. They
were not considered "well to do," neither were they poor. They worked
hard and by dint of economy managed to keep their children at school.
Anna was a favorite child. Her quiet demeanor and gentle disposition
drew to her many considerations denied the rest of the family. She was a
favorite in the community. By the old women she was considered "too good
to live"; she took "kindly" to the house of God. Her teacher said, "Anna
has a great head for learning." This expression, oft repeated, gave the
Gilmores an ambition to prepare Anna for teaching. Despite the schedule
arranged for her she was confirmed in the parish chapel at the age of
ten. At fifteen she had exhausted the educational facilities of the
community and set her heart on institutions of higher learning in the
larger cities. While her parents were figuring that way the boys of the
parish were figuring in a different direction. Before Anna was seventeen
there was scarcely a boy living within miles who had not at one time or
another lingered around the gate of the Gilmore garden. Mrs. Gilmore
watched Anna carefully. She warned her against the danger of an
alliance with a boy of a lower station. The girl was devoted to the
Church. She knew her Book of Devotions as few of the older people knew
it, and before she was twelve she had read the Lives of the Saints. None
of these things made her an ascetic. She could laugh heartily and had a
keen sense of humor.
The old women revised their prophecies. They now spoke of her "takin'
th' veil." Some said she would make "a gey good schoolmisthress," for
she was fond of children.
While waiting the completion of arrangements to continue her schooling,
she helped her mother with the household work. She spent a good deal of
her time, too, in helping the old and disabled of the village. She
carried water to them from the village well and tidied up their cottages
at | 2,383.005538 |
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Distributed Proofreaders
PAX VOBISCUM
BY HENRY DRUMMOND, F.R.S.E., F.G.S., LL.D.
1890
"PAX VOBISCUM," prepared for publication by the Author, is now published
for the first time, being the second of a series of which "The Greatest
Thing in the World" was the first.
Nov. 1, 1890. "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and
I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am
meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my
yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
CONTENTS
PREFACE
PAX VOBISCUM
EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES
WHAT YOKES ARE FOR
HOW FRUITS GROW
PAX VOBISCUM
I heard the other morning a sermon by a distinguished preacher upon
"Rest." It was full of beautiful thoughts; but when I came to ask
myself, "How does he say I can get Rest?" there was no answer. The
sermon was sincerely meant to be practical, yet it contained no
experience that seemed to me to be tangible, nor any advice which
could help me to find the thing itself as I went about the world that
afternoon. Yet this omission of the only important problem was not the
fault of the preacher. The whole popular religion is in the twilight
here. And when pressed for really working specifics for the experiences
with which it deals, it falters, and seems to lose itself in mist.
The want of connection between the great words of religion and every-day
life has bewildered and discouraged all of us. Christianity possesses
the noblest words in the language; its literature overflows with terms
expressive of the greatest and happiest moods which can fill the soul of
man. Rest, Joy, Peace, Faith, Love, Light--these words occur with such
persistency in hymns and prayers that an observer might think they
formed the staple of Christian experience. But on coming to close
quarters with the actual life of most of us, how surely would he be
disenchanted. I do not think we ourselves are aware how much our
religious life is made up of phrases; how much of what we call Christian
experience is only a dialect of the Churches, a mere religious
phraseology with almost nothing behind it in what we really feel and
know.
To some of us, indeed, the Christian experiences seem further away than
when we took the first steps in the Christian life. That life has not
opened out as we had hoped; we do not regret our religion, but we are
disappointed with it. There are times, perhaps, when wandering notes
from a diviner music stray into our spirits; but these experiences come
at few and fitful moments. We have no sense of possession in them. When
they visit us, it is a surprise. When they leave us, it is without
explanation. When we wish their return, we do not know how to secure
it. All which points to a religion without solid base, and a poor and
flickering life. It means a great bankruptcy in those experiences which
give Christianity its personal solace and make it attractive to the
world, and a great uncertainty as to any remedy. It is as if we knew
everything about health--except the way to get it.
I am quite sure that the difficulty does not lie in the fact that
men are not in earnest. This is simply not the fact. All around us
Christians are wearing themselves out in trying to be better. The amount
of spiritual longing in the world--in the hearts of unnumbered thousands
of men and women in whom we should never suspect it; among the wise and
thoughtful; among the young and gay, who seldom assuage and never betray
their thirst--this is one of the most wonderful and touching facts of
life. It is not more heat that is needed, but more light; not more
force, but a wiser direction to be given to very real energies already
there.
The Address which follows is offered as a humble contribution to this
problem, and in the hope that it may help some who are "seeking Rest and
finding none" to a firmer footing on one great, solid, simple
principle which underlies not the | 2,383.313013 |
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APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS
FROM THE WORKS OF T. H. HUXLEY
Selected By Henrietta A. Huxley
1908
PREFACE
Although a man by his works and personality shall have made his mark
upon the age he lives in, yet when he has passed away and his influence
with him, the next generation, and still more the succeeding one, will
know little of this work, of his ideals and of the goal he strove to
win, although for the student his scientific work may always live.
Thomas Henry Huxley may come to be remembered by the public merely as
the man who held that we were descended from the ape, or as the apostle
of Darwinism, or as the man who worsted Bishop Wilberforce at Oxford.
To prevent such limitation, and to afford more intimate and valuable
reasons for remembrance of this man of science and lover of his
fellow-men, I have gathered together passages, on widely differing
themes, from the nine volumes of his "Essays," from his "Scientific
Memoirs" and his "Letters," to be published in a small volume, complete
in itself and of a size that can be carried in the pocket.
Some of the passages were picked out for their philosophy, some for
their moral guidances, some for their scientific exposition of natural
facts, or for their insight into social questions; others for their
charms of imagination or genial humour, and many--not the least--for
their pure beauty of lucid English writing.
In so much wealth of material it was difficult to | 2,383.628598 |
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SONNETS
BY THE
NAWAB NIZAMAT JUNG BAHADUR
"_Love is not discoverable by the eye, but only by the soul. Its
elements are indeed innate in our mortal constitution, and we
give it the names of Joy and Aphrodite; but in its highest nature no
mortal hath fully comprehended it_."
EMPEDOCLES.
"_Every one choose the object of his affections according to his
character.... The Divine is beauty, wisdom, goodness, and by these the
wings of the soul are nourished_."
PLATO.
1917
CONTENTS
FOREWORD, BY R.C. FRASER
NOTE ON THE HISTORY OF THE SONNET IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
PROLOGUE
I. REBIRTH
II. THE CROWN OF LIFE
III. BEFORE THE THRONE
IV. WORSHIP
V. UNITY
VI. LOVE'S SILENCE
VII. THE SUBLIME HOPE
VIII. THE HEART OF LOVE
IX. "'TWIXT STAR AND STAR"
X. THE HIGHER KNIGHTHOOD
XI. IN BEAUTY'S BLOOM
XII. ETERNAL JOY
XIII. CONSTANCY
XIV. CALM AFTER STORM
XV. THE STAR OF LOVE
XVI. IMPRISONED MUSIC
XVII. LOVE'S MESSAGE
XVIII. ECSTASY
XIX. THE DREAM
XX. ETHEREAL BEAUTY
XXI. A CROWN OF THORNS
XXII. TWO HEARTS IN ONE
XXIII. YEARNING
XXIV. LOVE'S GIFT
EPILOGUE
FOREWORD
BY RICHARD CHARLES FRASER
The following Sonnet Sequence,--written during rare intervals of leisure
in a busy and strenuous life,--was privately printed in Madras early in
1914, without any intention of publication on the part of the author. He
has, however, now consented to allow it to be given to a wider audience;
and we anticipate in many directions a welcome for this small but
significant volume by the writer of _India to England_, one of the most
popular and often-quoted lyrics evoked by the Great War.
The Nawab Nizamat Jung Bahadur, was born in the State of Hyderabad, but
educated in England; and there are some--at Cambridge and elsewhere--who
will remember his keenly discriminating interest in British history and
literature, and the comprehensive way he, in a few words, would indicate
his impressions of poets and heroes, long dead, but to him ever-living.
His appreciation was both ardent and just; he could swiftly recognise
the nobler elements in characters which at first glance might seem
startlingly dissimilar; and he could pass without apparent effort from
study of the lives of men of action to the inward contemplations of
abstruse philosophers.
To those who have not met him, it may appear paradoxical to say that his
tastes were at the same moment acutely fastidious and widely
sympathetic; but anyone who has talked with him will recall the blend of
high impersonal ideas with a remarkable personality which seldom failed
to stimulate other minds--even if those others shared few if any of his
intellectual tastes.
A famous British General (still living) was once asked, "What is the
most essential quality for a great leader of men?" And he replied in one
word "SYMPATHY." The General was speaking of leadership in relation to
warfare; and by "Sympathy" he meant swift insight into the minds of
others; and, with this insight, the power to arouse and fan into a flame
the spark of chivalry and true nobility in each. The career of the Nawab
Nizamat Jung has not been set in the world of action,--he is at present
a Judge of the High Court in Hyderabad,--but nevertheless this
definition of sympathy is not irrelevant, for the Nawab's personal
influence has been more subtle and far-reaching than he himself is yet
aware. His love of poetry and history, if on the one hand it has
intensified his realisation of the sorrows and tragedies of earthly
life, on the other hand has equipped him with a power to awake in others
a vivid consciousness of the moral value of literature,--through which
(for the mere asking) we any of us can find our way into a kingdom of
great ideas. This kingdom is also the kingdom of eternal realities--or
so at least it should be; and those who in the early nineties in England
talked with Nizamoudhin (as he then was) could scarcely fail to notice
that he valued the genius of an author, or the exploits of a character
in history, chiefly in proportion to the permanent and vital nature of
the truths this character had laboured to express--whether in words or
action.
But Truth, has many faces; and scarcely any poet (except perhaps
Shakespeare) has come within measurable distance of expressing every
aspect of the human character. The Nawab could take pleasure in reading
poets as temperamentally dissimilar as Shelley and Scott, Spenser and
Byron,--to name only a few. Shelley, who was a spirit utterly unable to
understand this world or ordinary homespun human nature; and Scott, who
not only comprehended both without an effort, but who combined the
practical and the romantic elements successfully in his own life, A
devotion to Spenser, "the poet's poet," the poet of a dreamy yet very
real and living chivalry,--Spenser who used to forget himself in his
creations,--did not prevent the Nawab from understanding Byron, who
never could forget himself at all; and who, with all his vivid impulses
of generous sympathy for the oppressed, is nevertheless generally
classed to-day as a colossal egoist. (Unjustly so, for no mere egoist
would have toiled as he toiled for Greek emancipation, in the
nerve-racking campaign which cost him his life.)
In _India to England_--most characteristic of the war poems of Nizamat
Jung--we see traces of the influence of more than one of the English
poets he has read so lovingly. But the poem is none the less poignantly
personal. The same may be said of the Sonnets here prefaced; for
although they are related to the sonnets of earlier poets whose work
must be familiar to the writer, yet they are in no sense imitations, nor
are they echoes.
"_Poetry is the natural language of strong emotion_," the Nawab said many
years ago;--and if it may be asked why, holding this view, he has chosen
such an elaborate (and, some people might add, artificial) form as the
Sonnet, we can only answer that when an emotion or conviction is
deep-seated and permanent, it becomes clarified, concentrated, and
intensified under the stern discipline of compression within the
arbitrary yet expressive limitations of a sonnet.[A]
One of the main reasons why the Nawab's friends have urged the
publication of his Sonnets, is that despite occasional imperfections (of
which he himself is conscious), they form a consistent whole, and in
their spirit and sentiment they are akin to some of the most noble
utterances of the great minds and hearts whose words have been like
torches to show what heights a strong aspiring soul can climb.
"_The Will is the master. Imagination the tool, and the body the plastic
material_," said a famous physician, who was also a practical man of the
world;--and the poet who identifies his will and imagination with the
eternal truths, who looks up to the stars instead of down into the mud,
may always, even in his weariest hours, cheer himself by mental
companionship with the other resolute souls whose pens have been used as
swords in the service of Divine Beauty.
Of all the most famous writers of Sonnets, it is Michelangelo whose
words come back most vividly to memory as we read the Nawab's
expressions of faith.
"_Love wakes the soul and gives it wings to fly_."
"_All beauty that to human sight is given
Is but the shadow, if we rightly see,
Of Him from Whom man's spirit issueth_."
"_As heat from fire, my love from the ideal
Is parted never_."
"_Oh noble spirit, noble semblance taking,
We mirrored in Thy mortal beauty see
What Heaven and earth achieve in harmony_."
Thus wrote Michelangelo of Vittoria Colonna (Marchioness of Pescara),
"being enamoured of her divine spirit";[B] and though in the Sonnets of
the Nawab, who uses what is for him a foreign tongue, the ideal is
sometimes greater than the expression of it, yet the spirit shines out
with a light which none can mistake. And whether the average man accepts
or rejects the standards therein embodied, lovers of poetry will
recognise that the Nawab, in his championship of a high and noble ideal,
fights in the same army as Dante and Michelangelo,--neither of them
cloistered dreamers, neither of them arm-chair theorists, but men who
lived and loved and suffered amidst the turmoil of a world they viewed
with wide-open eyes and unflinching minds.
The chivalrous ideal of an exalted and inspiring love can be rejected if
we please;--but let none claim to be manly because this ideal seems too
ethereal. For it is by the most vigorous, most strenuous, and most
commanding souls and minds that this faith in the Eternal Beauty has
been cherished and upheld most ardently and resolutely.
_September 29, 1917_.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] See "Note on the History of the Sonnet in English Literature," below.
[B] Ascanio Condivi's "Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti."
NOTE ON THE HISTORY OF THE SONNET IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
Now that Italy holds such a brilliant place among our Allies during this
the greatest war in the world's history--the war of chivalry (which is
to say moral and spiritual right) against the arrogant might of the
Prussian Octopus,--it is well to remember that it was from Italy the
Sonnet first came into England. The word _sonnet_ in fact, is from the
Italian _sonetto_ (literally "a little sound"), and the _sonetto_ was
originally a short poem recited or sung to the accompaniment of music,
probably the lute or mandolin.
Whether its birth should be attributed to Italy or Sicily,--or to
Provence, the cradle of troubadour poetry,--is a subject on which the
learned may still indulge in pleasant controversies. But in Italy,
towards the end of the thirteenth century, it had already become a
favourite mode of expression; and some forty years later, in a
manuscript treatise on the _Poetica Volgare_ (written in 1332 by a Judge
in Padua), sixteen different forms of sonnet were enumerated as then in
current use.
But despite the continued vogue of the Sonnet, and its association with
the names of such masters as Dante, Petrarch, Tasso and Michelangelo in
Italy; Ronsard in France; Camoens in Portugal; Shakespeare, Milton,
Wordsworth and Rossetti in England--to say nothing of a host of minor
poets, who, though one star differeth from another in glory, yet
constitute a brilliant galaxy--it is remarkable that even now the
average non-literary reader when asked "What is a Sonnet?" seldom gives
any more explicit reply than to say it is "a short poem limited to
fourteen lines."
The rules for the structure of those fourteen lines, and the labour and
patience entailed in producing a poem under these limitations, are not
always realised even by those who enjoy the results of the poet's
concentrated efforts. The more successful a sonnet, the more the reader
is apt to accept its beauty as if it had grown by a natural process like
a flower. This, perhaps, is the best compliment we could pay the poet;
but if the poet is one who boldly essays a most difficult and complex
form, in a language which for him is foreign, then we should pause a
moment to consider what it is that he has set out to accomplish.
Taking the structure first (though for the poet the spirit and impetus
of the central idea must of course come first)--a sonnet on the Italian
(Petrarchan) model must consist of fourteen lines of ten syllables each,
and must be composed of a major and minor system, i.e. an octave and a
sestet.
In the octave (the first eight lines) the first, fourth, fifth and
eighth lines must rhyme on the same sound, and the second, third, sixth
and seventh, must rhyme on another sound.
In the sestet (the last six lines) more liberty of rhyme and arrangement
is permitted, but a rhymed couplet at the end is not usual except when
the sonnet departs from the Italian model and is on the English or, as
we say, "Shakespearian" pattern.
Each sonnet must be complete; and, even if one of a sequence, it should
contain within itself everything necessary to the understanding of it.
It must be the expression of _one_ emotion, _one_ fact, _one_ idea, and
"the continuity of the thought, idea, or emotion must be unbroken
throughout." "Dignity and repose," "expression ample yet reticent," are
qualities which one of our ablest modern critics emphasises as
essential, and the end must always be more impressive than the
beginning,--the reader must be carried onwards and upwards, and left
with a definite feeling that in what has been said there is neither
superfluity nor omission, but rather a completeness which precludes all
wish or need for a longer poem.
How difficult this is for the poet can only be realised by trying to
achieve it.
The earliest writers of English sonnets were two very romantic and
gallant men of action, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and Henry Howard, Earl of
Surrey,--both destined to brief brilliant lives and tragic deaths. They
were followed by Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney and a host of Elizabethan
poets, courtly and otherwise. But it is Shakespeare whose Sonnets
(though not conforming to the Petrarchan model) show the most force and
fire of any in our language until those of Milton.
To analyse the variations of the Shakesperian, Spenserian and Miltonian
forms is, however, unnecessary to our present purpose, as the Sonnet
Sequence we are now prefacing is based on the Petrarchan model. Strictly
speaking, the Petrarchan sestet (the last six lines) should have three
separate rhymed sounds; the first and fourth lines, the second and
fifth, and the third and sixth should form the three rhymes. But this
rule is by no means invariably followed; even Wordsworth and Rossetti
often rhymed the first with the third, and the second with the fourth
lines; and sometimes used only two sounds,--the first, third, and fifth
lines making one rhyme and the second, fourth, and sixth the other.
As already said, these liberties are permitted, for the sestet is not
under such arbitrary regulations as the octave.
There are writers who keep all the rules, and yet leave their readers
cold; and others who are technically less correct, but in whom the
vigour and intensity of emotion is swiftly felt and silences adverse
criticism. The ideal is to combine deep and exalted feeling with perfect
expression, and produce a whole which goes to the heart like a beautiful
piece of music, and satisfies the mind--like one of those ancient Greek
gems which, in a small space, presents engraved images symbolic of
sublime ideas vast as the universe.
The Nawab Nizamat Jung has written in English several sonnets which we
should admire even if English were his native language. But if any of us
would like to form some estimate of the difficulties he has surmounted,
let us sit down and try to express in a sonnet in _any_ foreign language
our own thoughts and beliefs. We shall then the better appreciate what
he has achieved.
As, however, while the Great War lasts, few of us have leisure for
literary experiments, it will perhaps be best to read these Sonnets
primarily for their soul and spirit. In melody and expression they are
of varying degrees of merit and completeness, but in the inspiring ideal
they consistently embody they rise to heights which have been scaled
only by the noblest. In tone and temper--as already said--they are akin
to the Sonnets to Vittoria Colonna by Michelangelo,--of whom it was
written by one who knew him well, "_Though I have held such long
intercourse with him I have never heard from his mouth a word, that was
not most honourable.... In him there are no base thoughts.... He loves
not only human beauty, but everything that is beautiful and exquisite in
its own kind,--marvelling at it with a wonderful admiration_."
Here we see defined the temperament of the heroic poet, that inner
nobility and exaltation without which mere technical skill can avail
little in moving and holding the hearts of men.
This note on the structure of the Sonnet would fail in its purpose if it
distracted the reader from the spirit behind the form;--for the spirit
is the life,--and few who read these Sonnets will deny that the spirit
of Nizamat Jung is that of the true poet, ever striving to look beyond
ephemeral sorrows up to the Eternal Beauty--now hidden behind a veil,
but some day to be revealed in all its splendour and completeness.
R.C.F.
_October 6, 1917_.
SONNETS
PROLOGUE
As one who wanders lone and wearily
Through desert tracts of Silence and of Night,
Pining for Lovers keen utterance and for light,
And chasing shadowy forms that mock and flee,
My soul was wandering through Eternity,
Seeking, within the depth and on the height
Of Being, one with whom it might unite
In life and love and immortality;
When lo! she stood before me, whom I'd sought,
With dying hope, through life's decaying years--
A form, a spirit, human yet divine.
Love gave her eyes the light of heav'n, and taught
Her lips the mystic music of the spheres.
Our beings met,--I felt her soul in mine;
I
REBIRTH
To me no mortal but a spirit blest,
A Light-girt messenger of Love art thou--
The radiant star of Hope upon thy brow.
The thrice-pure fire of Love within thy breast!
Thou comest to me as a heavenly guest,
As God's fulfilment of the purest vow
Love's heart e'er made--thou com'st to show e'en _now_
The Infinite, th' Eternal and the Best!
I clasp thy feet,--O fold me in thy wings,
And place thy pure white hands upon my head,
And breathe, O breathe, thy love-breath o'er mine eyes
Till, like the flame that from dark ashes springs,
My chastened spirit, from a self that's dead,
Upon the wings of Love shall heav'nward rise.
II
THE CROWN OF LIFE
I know not what Love is,--a memory
Of Heav'n once known,--a yearning for some goal
That shines afar,--a dream that doth control
The spirit, shadowing forth what is to be.
But this I know, my heart hath found in thee
The crown of life, the glory of the soul,
The healing of all strife, the making whole
Of my imperfect being,--yea, of me!
For to mine eyes thine eyes, through Love, reveal
The smile of God; to me God's healing breath
Comes through thy hallowed lips whose pray'r is Love.
Thy touch gives life! And oh, let me but feel
Thy hovering hand my closing eyes above,--
Then, then, my soul will triumph over Death.
III
BEFORE THE THRONE
When on thy brow I gaze and in thine eyes--
Eyes heavy-laden with the soul's desire,
Not passion-lit, but lit with Heav'n's own fire--
I have a vision of Love's Paradise.
Gazing, my tranced spirit straightway flies
Beyond the zone to which the stars aspire;
I hear the blent notes of the white-wing'd quire
Around Immortal Love triumphant rise.
And there I kneel before th' eternal throne
Of Love, whose light conceals him,--there I see,
Veiled in his sacred light, a face well known
To me on earth, now, yearning, bend o'er me.
Heaven's mystic veil, inwove of light and tone,
Conceals thee not, Beloved,--I know thee!
IV
WORSHIP
How poor is all my love, how great thy claim!
How weak the breath, the voice which would reveal
All that thy soul hath taught my soul to feel--
Longings profound,--deep thoughts without a name.
If God's self might be worshipped, without blame,
In His best works, then would I silent kneel
Watching thine eyes,--until my soul should steal
Back, unperceived, to regions whence it came!
If my whole life were but one thought of thee,
That thought the purest worship of my heart
And my soul's yearning blent; if at thy feet
I offered such a life, there still would be
Something to wish for,--something to complete
The measure of my love and thy desert.
V
UNITY
When I approach thee, Love, I lay aside
All that is mortal in me; with a heart
Absolved and pure, and cleansed in every part
Of every thought that I might wish to hide
From God, I come,--fit spirit to abide
With such a soaring spirit as thou art,
Whose eye transfixes with a fiery dart
Presumptuous passion and ignoble pride.
Yea, thus I come to thee, and thus I dare
To gaze into thine eyes; I take thy hand,
And its soft touch upon my lips and eyes
Thrills thy pure being, while it lingers there,
Into my heart and soul;--and then we stand
Like the first two that loved in Paradise!
VI
LOVE'S SILENCE
When through thine eyes the light of Heav'n doth shine
Upon my being, and thy whisper brings,
As the soft rustling of an angel's wings,
Joy to my soul and peace and grace divine;
When thus thy body and thy soul combine
To weave the mystic web thy beauty flings
Around my heart, whose thrilling silence rings
With Hope's unuttered songs that make thee mine,--
Ah, then, O Love! what need of words have we,
Who speak in feeling to each other's heart?
Words are too weak Love's message to impart,
Too frail to live through Love's eternity.
Silence, the voice of God, alone must be
Love's voice for thee, beloved as them art.
VII
THE SUBLIME HOPE
What need to tell thee o'er and o'er again
What eyes to eyes have spoken silently
And heart to heart hath uttered? Love must be
For us a hushed delight, a voiceless pain
Serenely borne! Our lips must ne'er profane
Our inmost feelings,--lest the sanctity
Of Love be lessened in our hearts and we
Nought higher than the common path attain!
The common path were death to us, whose love,
O'erruled by Fate, from earthly hopes debarred,
Must look to Heav'n for sublimer joys
Than those which earth can give, which earth destroys.
Our path is steep, but there is light above,
And Faith can make the roughest way less hard.
VIII
THE HEART OF LOVE
Look in mine eyes, Beloved,--for my tongue
Must never utter what my heart doth claim,--
And read Love there, for Love's forbidden name
Dies on my trembling lips unvoiced, unsung.
Nor sighs, nor tears--the bitter tribute wrung
From hearts of woe--must e'er that love proclaim
For which the world's unpitying heart would blame
Thy pity--though from purest fountains sprung.
Fate and the world, they bid wide oceans roll
Between our yearning hearts and their desire;
Yea, lips they silence, but can ne'er control
The heart of Love, nor quench its sacred fire.
I must not speak; O look into my soul--
There read the message which thou dost require!
IX
"TWIXT STAR AND STAR"
Not here,--not here, where weak conventions mar
Life's hopes and joys, Love's beauty, truth and grace,
Must I come near thee, greet thee face to face,
Pour in thine ear the songs and sighs that are
My heart's best offerings. But in regions far,
Where Love's ethereal pinions may embrace
Beauty divine--in the clear interspace
Of twilight silence betwixt star and star,
And in the smiles of cloudless skies serene,
In Dawn's first blush and Sunset's lingering glow,
And in the glamour of the Moon's chaste beams--
My soul meets thine, and there thine image seen,
More real than life, doth to my lone heart show
Such charms as live in Memory's haunting dreams!
X
THE HIGHER KNIGHTHOOD
A time there was, when for thy beauty's prize--
Hadst thou but deemed my love that prize deserved--
What hope, what faith my daring heart had nerved
For proud achievement and for high emprize!
No Knight, that owned the spell of Beauty's eyes
And wore her sleeve upon his helm, had served
His vows with faith like mine; I ne'er had swerved
One jot from mine for all beneath the skies.
That time is dead, alas! and yet this heart
Is thine, still thine, with Love's high chivalry
And Faith that cannot die; but now its part
Must be a higher knighthood,--patiently
To brook life's ills, and, pierced with many a dart,
By sacrifice of self to merit thee.
XI
IN BEAUTY'S BLOOM
As when the Moon, emerging from a cloud,
Sheds on the dreary earth her gracious light,
A smile comes o'er the frowning brow of Night,
Who hastens to withdraw her sable shroud;
And then the lurking shadows' dark-robed crowd,
Pursued with glitt'ring shafts, is put to flight;
And, robed in silv'ry raiment, soft and bright
The humblest flower as a Queen seems proud;
So when thou com'st to me in Beauty's bloom,
And on thy face soft Pity's graces shine,
Thou can'st dispel the heavy shades of gloom
From my sad heart, which ceases then to pine;
And Hope and Joy their quenched beams relume
And gild the universe with light divine.
XII
ETERNAL JOY
Truth is but as the eye of God doth see;
And Love is truth, and Love hath made thee mine.
What though on earth our lives may not combine,
Love makes us one for all Eternity!
God gives us to each other, bids us be
Each other's soul's fulfilment, makes Love shine
Upon our souls as His own light divine.
An effluence of His own deity.
Why ask for more? Our union is above
All earthly unions, ours those heights serene
Where Love alone is Heav'n and Heav'n is Love--
Where never comes the world's harsh breath between
Hope's fruits and flow'rs. Ah, why then earthward move,
Where pure and perfect bliss hath never been?
XIII
CONSTANCY
Ah, Love, I know that to my love thou art,
And must be, in this life, a dream,--a name!
But be it joy or grief, or praise or blame,
I give thee all the worship of my heart.
'Tis not for Love to bid life's cares depart;
Love wings the soul for Heaven whence it came.
Such love from Petrarch's soul did Laura claim,
And Beatrice to Dante did impart.
To thee I turn,--be thou or near or far,
And whether on my love thou frown or smile,--
As, in mid-ocean, to some fairy isle
Palm-crowned; as, in the heav'ns, to eve's bright star
Whose pure white fire allures the vision, while
Myriads of paler lights unnoticed are!
XIV
CALM AFTER STORM
Thou hast but seen what but mine eyes have shown--
Mine eyes that gazing on thee picture Heaven;
Thou hast but heard what but my voice hath given--
My voice that takes from thine a calmer tone.
Ah! couldst thou know all that my heart hath known,
While with Despair's dark phantoms it hath striven--
From faith to doubt, from joy to sorrow driven,
Till rescued and redeemed by Love alone,--
Thou wouldst not marvel were my cloudless brow
O'er-clouded, were my aspect less serene!
Love smiles on Death, unveils his mystery
Of joy and grief, and Love bids me avow
This truth, with chastened heart and tranquil mien,--
'Less pure Love's bliss if less Love's agony.'
XV
THE STAR OF LOVE
Time's cycle rolls--once more I hail the day
On which propitious Heaven sent to Earth,
Disguised in thy fair form, in mortal birth,
The Star of Love, whose pure celestial ray
Glides through the spirit's gloom and lights the way
To bliss! I hail thy coming'midst the dearth
Of the soul's aspirations, when the worth
Of hearts like thine had ceased men's hearts to sway.
I greet thee, Love, and with thee scale the height,
That cloudless height where winged spirits rest:
Where the deep yearnings of the mortal breast,
From mortal bin set free, reveal to sight
That living Presence, that Eternal Light
In which enwrapt the eager soul is blest.
XVI
IMPRISONED MUSIC
Oh, had I but the poet's voice to sing,
Then would the music prisoned in my heart
(Panting in vain its message to impart)
Hover around thee, Love, on trembling wing,
To tell thee of the soft-eyed hopes that cling
To Love's white feet, the doubts and fears that start
And pierce his bosom with a poisoned dart,--
The smiles that soothe, the cold hard looks that sting!
But 'tis not mine, the soaring joy of Song:
I strive to voice my soul, but strive in vain.
Though passion thrills, and eager fancies throng,
Deckt in the varying hues of joy and pain,
Yet the weak voice--as weak as Love is strong--
Dies murm'ring on Love's throbbing heart again.
XVII
LOVE'S MESSAGE
We will not take Love's name; that little word,
By lips too oft profaned, we will not use.
From Nature's best and loveliest we will choose
Fit symbols for Love's message; like a bird,--
Whose warbled love-notes by its mate are heard
In greenwood glade,--shalt thou in strains profuse
The prisoned music of thy heart unloose,
While my heart's love is by sweet flow'rs averred.
Then take, O take these fresh-awakened flowers,
The symbols of my love, and keep them near,
Where they may feel thy breath and touch thy hand;
Then sing thy songs to me,--in silver showers
Pour forth, thine eager soul, and I shall hear;
Ah, thus will Love Love's message Understand!
XVIII
ECSTASY
The Nightingale upon the Rose's breast
Warbling her tale of life-long sorrow lies,
Till in love's tranced ecstasy her eyes
Close and her throbbing heart is set at rest;
For, to the yielding flow'r her bosom prest,
Death steals upon her in the sweet disguise
Of crowned love and brings what life denies,--
mingling of the souls,--Love's eager quest!
Thus let my heart against thy heart repose,
Sigh forth its life in one delicious sigh,
Then drink new life from out thy balmy breath;
Thus in love's languor let our eyelids close,
And let our blended | 2,383.898249 |
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History of Free Thought
in Reference to
The Christian Religion
Eight Lectures
Preached Before The
University of Oxford, in the year M.DCCC.LXII., on the Foundation of the
Late Rev. John Bampton, M.A., Canon of Salisbury.
By
Adam Storey Farrar, M.A.
Michel Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford.
New York:
D. Appleton And Company,
443 & 445 Broadway.
1863
CONTENTS
Will of Rev. John Bampton.
Preface.
Analysis of the lectures.
Lecture I. On The Subject, Method, And Purpose Of The Course Of Lectures.
Lecture II. The Literary Opposition of Heathens Against Christianity in
the Early Ages.
Lecture III. Free Thought During The Middle Ages, and At The Renaissance;
Together With Its Rise in Modern Times.
Lecture IV. Deism in England Previous to A.D. 1760.
Lecture V. Infidelity in France in the Eighteenth Century, and Unbelief in
England Subsequent to 1760.
Lecture VI. Free Thought In The Theology Of Germany From 1750-1835.
Lecture VII. Free Thought: In Germany Subsequently To 1835; And In France
During The Present Century.
Lecture VIII. Free Thought in England in the Present Century; Summary of
the Course of Lectures; Inferences in Reference to Present Dangers and
Duties.
Notes.
Lecture I.
Lecture II.
Lecture III.
Lecture IV.
Lecture V.
Lecture VI.
Lecture VII.
Lecture VIII.
Index.
Footnotes
WILL OF REV. JOHN BAMPTON.
Extract From The Last Will And Testament Of The Late Rev. John Bampton,
Canon Of Salisbury.
-------------------------------------
"----I give and bequeath my Lands and Estates to the Chancellor, Masters,
and Scholars of the University of Oxford for ever, to have and to hold all
and singular the said Lands or Estates upon trust, and to the intents and
purposes hereinafter mentioned; that is to say, I will and appoint that
the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford for the time being shall
take and receive all the rents, issues, and profits thereof, and (after
all taxes, reparations, and necessary deductions made) that he pay all the
remainder to the endowment of eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, to be
established for ever in the said University, and to be performed in the
manner following:
-------------------------------------
"I direct and appoint, that, upon the first Tuesday in Easter Term, a
Lecturer be yearly chosen by the Heads of Colleges only, and by no others,
in the room adjoining to the Printing-House, between the hours of ten in
the morning and two in the afternoon, to preach eight Divinity Lecture
Sermons, the year following, at St. Mary's in Oxford, between the
commencement of the last month in Lent Term, and the end of the third week
in Act Term.
"Also I direct and appoint, that the eight Divinity Lecture Sermons shall
be preached upon either of the following Subjects--to confirm and establish
the Christian Faith, and to confute all heretics and schismatics--upon the
divine authority of the holy Scriptures--upon the authority of the writings
of the primitive Fathers, as to the faith and practice of the primitive
Church--upon the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ--upon the
Divinity of the Holy Ghost--upon the Articles of the Christian Faith as
comprehended in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds.
"Also I direct, that thirty copies of the eight Divinity Lecture Sermons
shall be always printed, within two months after they are preached; and
one copy shall be given to the Chancellor of the University, and one copy
to the Head of every College, and one copy to the Mayor of the city of
Oxford, and one copy to be put into the Bodleian Library; and the expense
of printing them shall be paid out of the revenue of the Land or Estates
given for establishing the Divinity Lecture Sermons; and the Preacher
shall not be paid nor be entitled to the revenue before they are printed.
"Also I direct and appoint, that no person shall be qualified to preach
the Divinity Lecture Sermons, unless he hath taken the degree of Master of
Arts at least, in one of the two Universities of Oxford or Cambridge; and
that the same person shall never preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons
twice."
PREFACE.
The object of this Preface is to explain the design of the following
Lectures, and to enumerate the sources on which they are founded.
What is the province and mode of inquiry intended in a "Critical History
of Free Thought"?(1) What are the causes which led the author into this
line of study?(2) What the object proposed by the work?(3) What the
sources from which it is drawn?(4)--these probably are the questions which
will at once suggest themselves to the reader. The answers to most of them
are so fully given in the work,(5) that it will only be necessary here to
touch upon them briefly.
The word "free thought" is now commonly used, at least in foreign
literature(6), to express the result of the revolt of the mind against the
pressure of external authority in any department of life or speculation.
Information concerning the history of the term is given elsewhere.(7) It
will be sufficient now to state, that the cognate term, _free thinking_,
was appropriated by Collins early in the last century(8) to express Deism.
It differs from the modern term _free thought_, both in being restricted
to religion, and in conveying the idea rather of the method than of its
result, the freedom of the mode of inquiry rather than the character of
the conclusions attained; but the same fundamental idea of independence
and freedom from authority is implied in the modern term.
Within the sphere of its application to the Christian religion, free
thought is generally used to denote three different systems; viz.
Protestantism, scepticism, and unbelief. Its application to the first of
these is unfair.(9) It is true that all three agree in resisting the
dogmatism of any earthly authority; but Protestantism reposes implicitly
on what it believes to be the divine authority of the inspired writers of
the books of holy scripture; whereas the other two forms acknowledge no
authority external to the mind, no communication superior to reason and
science. Thus, though Protestantism by its attitude of independence seems
similar to the other two systems, it is really separated by a difference
of kind, and not merely of degree.(10) The present history is restricted
accordingly to the treatment of the two latter species of free
thought,--the resistance of the human mind to the Christian religion as
communicated through revelation, either in part or in whole, neither the
scepticism which disintegrates it, or the unbelief which rejects it: the
former directing itself especially against Christianity, the latter
against the idea of revelation, or even of the supernatural generally.
An analogous reason to that which excludes the history of Protestantism,
excludes also that of the opposition made to Christianity by heresy, and
by rival religions:(11) inasmuch as they repose on authorities, however
false, and do not profess to resort to an unassisted study of nature and
truth.
This account of the province included under free thought will prepare the
way for the explanation of the mode in which the subject is treated.
It is clear that the history, in order to rise above a chronicle, must
inquire into the causes which have made freedom of inquiry develop into
unbelief. The causes have usually been regarded by theologians to be of
two kinds, viz. either superhuman or human; and, if of the latter kind, to
be either moral or intellectual. Bishop Van Mildert, in his History of
Infidelity, restricted himself entirely to the former.(12) Holding
strongly that the existence of evil in the world was attributable, not
only indirectly and originally, but directly and perpetually, to the
operation of the evil spirit, he regarded every form of heresy and
unbelief to be the attempt of an invisible evil agent to thwart the truth
of God; and viewed the history of infidelity as the study of the results
of the operation of this cause in destroying the kingdom of righteousness.
Such a view invests human life and history with a very solemn character,
and is not without practical value; but it will be obvious that an
analysis of this kind must be strictly theological, and removes the
inquiry from the province of human science. Even when completed, it leaves
unexplored the whole field in which such an evil principle operates, and
the agencies which he employs as his instruments.
The majority of writers on unbelief accordingly have treated the subject
from a less elevated point of view, and have limited their inquiry to the
sphere of the operation of human causes, the _media axiomata_ as it
were,(13) which express the motives and agencies which have been
manifested on the theatre of the world, and visible in actual history. It
will be clear that within this sphere the causes are specially of two
kinds; viz. those which have their source in the will, and arise from the
antagonism of feeling, which wishes revelation untrue, and those which
manifest themselves in the intellect, and are exhibited under the form of
difficulties which beset the mind, or doubts which mislead it, in respect
to the evidence on which revelation reposes. The former, it may be feared,
are generally the ground of unbelief; the latter the basis of doubt.
Christian writers, in the wish to refer unbelief to the source of
efficient causation in the human will, with a view of enforcing on the
doubter the moral lesson of responsibility, have generally restricted
themselves to the former of these two classes; and by doing so have
omitted to explore the interesting field of inquiry presented in the
natural history of the variety of forms assumed by scepticism, and their
relation to the general causes which have operated in particular ages:--a
subject most important, if the intellectual antecedents thus discovered be
regarded as causes of doubt; and not less interesting, if, instead of
being causes, they are merely considered to be instruments and conditions
made use of by the emotional powers.
A history of free thought seems to point especially to the study of the
latter class. A biographical history of free thinkers would imply the
former; the investigation of the moral history of the individuals, the
play of their will and feelings and character; but the history of free
thought points to that which has been the product of their characters, the
doctrines which they have taught. Science however no less than piety would
decline entirely to separate the two;(14) piety, because, though admitting
the possibility that a judgment may be formed in the abstract on free
thought, it would feel itself constantly drawn into the inquiry of the
moral responsibility of the freethinker in judging of the concrete
cases;--science, because, even in an intellectual point of view, the
analysis of a work of art is defective if it be studied apart from the
personality of the mental and moral character of the artist who produces
it. If even the inquiry be restricted to the analysis of intellectual
causes, a biographic treatment of the subject, which would allow for the
existence of the emotional, would be requisite.(15)
The province of the following work accordingly is, the examination of this
neglected branch in the analysis of unbelief. While admitting most fully
and unhesitatingly the operation of emotional causes, and the absolute
necessity, scientific as well as practical, of allowing for their
operation, it is proposed to analyse the forms of doubt or unbelief in
reference mainly to the intellectual element which has entered into them,
and the discovery of the intellectual causes which have produced or
modified them. Thus the history, while not ceasing to belong to church
history, becomes also a chapter in the history of philosophy, a page in
the history of the human mind.
The enumeration of the causes into which the intellectual elements of
doubt are resolvable, is furnished in the text of the first Lecture.(16)
If the nature of some of them be obscure, and the reader be unaccustomed
to the philosophical study necessary for fully understanding them;
information must be sought in the books to which references are elsewhere
given, as the subject is too large to be developed in the limited space of
this Preface.
The work however professes to be not merely a narrative, but a "critical
history." The idea of criticism in a history imparts to it an ethical
aspect. For criticism does not rest content with ideas, viewed as facts,
but as realities. It seeks to pass above the relative, and attain the
absolute; to determine either what is right or what is true. It may make
this determination by means of two different standards. It may be either
independent or dogmatic;--independent if it enters upon a new field
candidly and without prepossessions, and rests content with the inferences
which the study suggests;--dogmatic, when it approaches a subject with
views derived from other sources, and pronounces on right or wrong, truth
or falsehood, by reference to them.
It is hoped that the reader will not be unduly prejudiced, if the
confession be frankly made, that the criticism in these Lectures is of the
latter kind. This indeed might be expected from their very character. The
Bampton Lecture is an establishment for producing apologetic treatises.
The authors are supposed to assume the truth of Christianity, and to seek
to repel attacks upon it. They are defenders, not investigators. The
reader has a right to demand fairness, but not independence; truth in the
facts, but not hesitation in the inferences. While however the writer of
these Lectures takes a definite line in the controversy, and one not
adopted professionally, but with cordial assent and heartfelt conviction,
he has nevertheless considered that it is due to the cause of scientific
truth to intermingle his own opinions as little as possible with the facts
of the history. A history without inferences is ethically and religiously
worthless: it is a chronicle, not a philosophical narrative. But a history
distorted to suit the inferences is not only worthless, but harmful. It is
for the reader to judge how far the author has succeeded in the result:
but his aim has been not to allow his opinions to warp his view of the
facts. History ought to be written with the same spirit of cold analysis
which belongs to science. Caricature must not be substituted for portrait,
nor vituperation for description.(17)
Such a mode of treatment in the present instance was the more possible,
from the circumstance that the writer, when studying the subject for his
private information, without any design to write upon it, had endeavoured
to bring his own principles and views perpetually to the test; and to
reconsider them candidly by the light of the new suggestions which were
brought before him. Instead of approaching the inquiry with a spirit of
hostility, he had investigated it as a student, not as a partisan. It may
perhaps be permitted him without egotism to explain the causes which led
him to the study. He had taken holy orders, cordially and heartily
believing the truths taught by the church of which he is privileged to be
an humble minister. Before doing so, he had read thoughtfully the great
works of evidences of the last century, and knew directly or indirectly
the character of the deist doubts | 2,384.159668 |
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Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
IN THE FOOTPRINTS OF
CHARLES LAMB
[Illustration: CHARLES LAMB.]
IN THE FOOTPRINTS OF
CHARLES LAMB
BY
BENJAMIN ELLIS MARTIN
AUTHOR OF “OLD CHELSEA,” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY HERBERT RAILTON
AND JOHN FULLEYLOVE
WITH A BIBLIOGRAPHY BY E. D. NORTH
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1890
COPYRIGHT, 1890, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS.
Press of J. J. Little & Co.
Astor Place, New York.
TO
L. H. F.
_During the half-century since the death of Charles Lamb, an immense
mass of matter has been gathered about him and about his writings. In
burrowing among the treasures and the rubbish of this mound, I have been
struck by the total absence of what may be called a topographical
biography of the man, or of any accurate record of his rovings: with the
exception of that necessarily brief one contained in Mr. Laurence
Hutton’s invaluable “Literary Landmarks of London.” Such a shortcoming
is the more marked, inasmuch as Lamb is so closely identified with the
Town. Not one among the men of letters, whose shadows walk the London
streets with us, knew them better, or loved them more, than he did. In
following his footsteps, I have found still untouched many of the houses
that harboured him; and I have taken delight in the task, before the
restless hand of reconstruction shall have plucked them forever away, of
helping to keep alive the look of all that is left of the walls within
which he lived and laboured._
_From this mere memento of brick-and-mortar--all my original intent--I
have been led on to a study of the man himself, from our more modern
and more humane point of view. The time has long gone by for that kindly
compact of reticence which may have been becoming in the years directly
after his death. Nothing need be hidden now about the madness of Mary,
about the terrible taking-off of her mother, about the early insanity of
Charles himself, or his later weaknesses. And, in telling the entire
truth, I have found comfort and cheer in the belief that neither apology
nor homily can ever again be deemed needful to a decorous demeanour
beside these dead._
_So that I have sketched him just as he lives for me--the lines and the
wrinkles of his aspect, the shine and the shadow of his soul: just as he
moved in the crowd, among his friends, by his sister’s side, and alone.
To show exactly what he was, rather than what he did, I have used his
own words wherever this was possible; altering them as to their letter
alone, where it has seemed essential. In this spirit of affectionate
allegiance I have followed him faithfully in all his wanderings, from
his cradle close by the Thames to his grave not far from the Lea._
_B. E. M._
_NEW YORK, October, 1890._
List of Illustrations.
CHARLES LAMB, FRONTISPIECE
PAGE
_The Temple Gardens, from Crown Office Row_, 14
_By John Fulleylove._
_A Corner in the Blue-Coat School_, 18
_By Herbert Railton._
_The East India House_, 26
_By Herbert Railton._
_No. 7 Little Queen Street_, 32
_The House in Pentonville_, 39
_The Feathers Tavern_, 48
_By Herbert Railton._
_No. 20 Russell Street, Covent Garden_, 78
_By Herbert Railton._
_The Cottage in Colebrook Row_, 96
_By Herbert Railton._
_Lamb’s two Houses at Enfield_, 102
_By John Fulleylove._
_No. 34 Southampton Buildings_, 122
_By Herbert Railton._
_Charles Lamb--the Maclise Portrait_, 126
_Fac-simile of a Receipt for a Legacy_, 128
_Signed by Charles Lamb as Guardian for
his Sister Mary._
_The Walden House at Edmonton_, 130
_By John Fulleylove._
_Edmonton Church, from Lamb’s Grave_, 136
_By John Fulleylove._
_The Grave of Charles and Mary Anne Lamb at
Edmonton_, 140
_By John Fulleylove._
[Illustration:
_In the_ Footprints _of_
Charles Lamb.]
“The sun set; but set not his hope:
Stars rose; his faith was earlier up:
Fixed on the enormous galaxy,
Deeper and older seemed his eye;
And matched his sufferance sublime
The taciturnity of time.
He spoke, and words more soft than rain
Brought the Age of Gold again:
His action won such reverence sweet,
As hid all measure of the feat.”
--EMERSON.
“Far from me, and from my friends, be such
frigid philosophy as may conduct us, indifferent
and unmoved, over any ground, which has been
dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue.”
--SAMUEL JOHNSON.
I.
[Illustration: “Old Bricks for Sale.”]
Such is the legend that catches one’s eye, plain for all men to see, on
many a hoarding in London streets. Behind those boards, wide or high, on
which the callous contractor shamelessly blazons his dreadful
trade--“Old Houses Bought to be Pulled Down”--he is stupidly pickaxing
to pieces historic bricks and mortar which ought to be preserved
priceless and imperishable. Within only a few years, I have had to look
on, while thus were broken to bits and carted away to chaos John
Dryden’s dwelling-place in Fetter Lane, Benjamin Franklin’s and
Washington Irving’s lodgings in Little Britain, Byron’s birthplace in
Hollis Street, Milton’s “pretty garden-house,” in Petty France,
Westminster. The spacious fireplace by which the poet sat, during his
fast-darkening days--for in this house he lost his first wife and his
eyesight--was knocked down, as only one among other numbered lots, to
stolid builders. And the stone, “Sacred to Milton, the Prince of
Poets”--placed in the wall facing the garden, by William Hazlitt, living
here early in our century, beneath which Jeremy Bentham, occupant of the
adjoining house, was wont to make his guests fall on their knees--this
stone has gone to “patch a wall to expel the winter’s flaw.”
To this house there used to come, to call on Hazlitt, a man of
noticeable and impressive presence:--small of stature, fragile of frame,
clad in clothing of tightly fitting black, which was clerical as to cut
and well-worn as to texture; his “almost immaterial legs,” in Tom Hood’s
phrase, ending in gaiters and straps; his dark hair, not quite black,
curling crisply about a noble head and brow--“a head worthy of
Aristotle,” Leigh Hunt tells us; “full of dumb eloquence,” are Hazlitt’s
words; “such only may be seen in the finer portraits of Titian,” John
Forster puts it; “a long, melancholy face, with keen penetrating eyes,”
we learn from Barry Cornwall; brown eyes, kindly, quick, observant; his
dark complexion and grave expression brightened by the frequent “sweet
smile, with a touch of sadness in it.”
This visitor, of such peculiar and piquant personality--externally “a
rare composition of the Jew, the gentleman, and the angel,” to use his
own words of the singer Braham--is Charles Lamb, a clerk in the East
India House, living with his sister Mary in chambers in the Inner
Temple. Let us walk with him as he returns to those peaceful precincts,
still of signal interest, despite the ruin wrought by recent
improvements. Here, as in the day of Spenser, “studious lawyers have
their bowers,” and “have thriven;” here, on every hand, we see the
shades of Evelyn, Congreve, Cowper, the younger Colman, Fielding,
Goldsmith, Johnson, Boswell; here, above all, the atmosphere is still
redolent with sweet memories of the “best beloved of English writers,”
as Algernon Swinburne well calls Charles Lamb. Closer and more compact
than elsewhere are his footprints in these Temple grounds; for he was
born within their gates, his youthful world was bounded by their walls,
his happiest years, as boy and as man, were passed in their buildings.
And out beyond these borders we shall track his steps mainly through
adjacent streets, almost always along the City’s streets, of which he
was as fond as Samuel Johnson or Charles Dickens. He loved, all through
life, “enchanting London, whose dirtiest, drab-frequented alley, and her
lowest-bowing tradesman, I would not exchange for Skiddaw, Helvellyn....
O! her lamps of a night! her rich goldsmiths, print-shops, toy-shops,
mercers, hardware men, pastry-cooks, St. Paul’s Churchyard, the Strand,
Exeter ’Change, Charing Cross, with the man _upon_ a black horse! These
are thy gods, O London!” He couldn’t care, he said, for the beauties of
nature, as they have been confinedly called; and used to persist, with
his pleasing perversity, that when he climbed Skiddaw he was thinking of
the ham-and-beef shop in St. Martin’s Lane! “Have I not enough without
your mountains?” he wrote to Wordsworth. “I do not envy you. I should
pity you, did I not know that the mind will make friends with
anything”--even with scenery! It was a serious step which Lamb took in
later life, out from his beloved streets into the country; a step which
certainly saddened, and doubtless shortened, the last stage of his
earthly journey.
By a happy chance--for they have an unhallowed habit in London town of
destroying just those buildings which I should select to save, leaving
unmolested those that would not be missed, for all they ever have to say
to us--nearly every one of Lamb’s successive homes has been rescued from
ruin, and kept inviolate for our reverent regard. “Cheerful Crown Office
Row (place of my kindly engendure)”--to use his own words--has been only
partly rebuilt; and that end of the block wherein lived his parents
stands almost in the same state as when it was erected in 1737; this
date told to us to-day by the old-fashioned figures cut on its easterly
end. It was then named “The New Building, opposite the Garden-Wall,” and
under that division of the Chamber-Book of the Inner Temple I have
hunted up its numerous occupants. By this archive, and by the Books of
Accounts for the eighteenth century, I have thus been enabled to trace
Samuel Salt from his first residence within the Temple in 1746, in Ram
Alley Building--now gone--through successive removals, until he settled
down in his last chambers, wherein he died in February, 1793. The record
reads--a “parliament” meaning one of the fixed meetings in each term of
the Benchers of the Temple, for the purpose of transacting business, and
of calling students to the bar--“13th May, 1768. At this Parliament: It
is ordered that Samuel Salt, Esquire, a Barrister of this Society, aged
about Fifty, be and is hereby admitted, for his own life, to the benefit
of an Assignment in and to All that Ground Chamber, No. 2, opposite the
Garden Walk in Crown Office Row: He, the said Samuel Salt having paid
for the Purchase thereof into the Treasury of this Society, the sum of
One Hundred and Fifty pounds.”
So that it was in No. 2--the numbers having remained always
unchanged--of Crown Office Row, in one of the rear rooms of the ground
floor, which then looked out on Inner Temple Lane, some of which rooms
have been swept away since, and others have been slightly altered, that
Charles Lamb was born, on the 10th February, 1775.
For Samuel Salt, Esquire--one of “The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple,”
whose pensive gentility is portrayed in Elia’s essay of that title--had
in his employ, as “his clerk, his good servant, his dresser, his friend,
his ‘flapper,’ his guide, stop-watch, auditor, treasurer,” one John
Lamb; who formed, with his wife and children, the greater part of the
household. Of him, too, under the well-chosen name of Lovel, we have the
portrait, vivid and rounded, in his son’s paper. “He was a man of an
incorrigible and losing honesty. A good fellow withal and ‘would
strike.’ In the cause of the oppressed he never considered inequalities,
or calculated the number of his opponents.... Lovel was the liveliest
little fellow breathing, had a face as gay as Garrick’s, whom he was
said greatly to resemble (I have a portrait of him which confirms it),
possessed a fine turn for humorous poetry--next to Swift and
Prior--moulded heads in clay or plaster of Paris to admiration, by the
dint of natural genius merely; turned cribbage-boards and such small
cabinet toys, to perfection; took a hand at quadrille or bowls with
equal facility; made punch better than any man of his degree in England;
had the merriest quips and conceits, and was altogether as brimful of
rogueries and inventions as you could desire. He was a brother of the
angle, moreover, and just such a free, hearty, honest companion as Mr.
Izaak Walton would have chosen to go a-fishing with.” In truth,
“A merry cheerful man. A merrier man,
A man more apt to frame matter for mirth,
Mad jokes and antics for a Christmas-eve,
Making life social, and the laggard time
To move on nimbly, never yet did cheer
The little circle of domestic friends.”
This John Lamb was devoted to the welfare of his master, Samuel Salt;
who, in turn, did nothing without consulting him, or failed in anything
without expecting and fearing his admonishing. “He put himself almost
too much in his hands, had they not been the purest in the world.” To
him and to his children Salt was a life-long benefactor, and never,
until death had made an end to the good man’s good deeds, did there
fall on the family any shadow of change or trouble or penury.
It was in Salt’s chambers that Charles and his sister Mary, in their
youthful years, “tumbled into a spacious closet of good old English
reading, and browsed at will on that fair and wholesome pasturage:” thus
already so early drawn together by kindred tastes and studies, even as
they were already at one in their joint heritage of the father’s latent
mental malady. They had learned their letters, and picked up crumbs of
rudimentary knowledge, at a small school in Fetter Lane, hard by the
Temple; the boys being taught in the mornings, the girls in the
afternoons. It stood on the edge of “a discoloured, dingy garden in the
passage leading into Fetter Lane from Bartlett’s buildings. This was
near to Holborn.” Bartlett’s name is still kept alive in Bartlett’s
Passage, right there; but no stone of his building now stands; and the
only growth of any garden in that turbulent thoroughfare to-day is
pavement and mud and obscene urchins.
The inscription painted over their school-door asserted that it was
kept by “Mr. William Bird, Teacher of Mathematics and Languages.”
“Heaven knows what languages were taught in it, then! I am sure that
neither my sister nor myself brought any out of it, but a little of our
native English”--so Charles wrote nearly fifty years after to William
Hone, the editor of the _Every Day Book_. In its pages had just appeared
a woful narrative of the poverty and desolation of one Starkey, who had
been “a gentle usher” in that school. In the letter written by Lamb as a
pendant to that paper, he gossips characteristically about the memories
of those school-days thus awakened in him and in his sister. He vividly
portrays that down-trodden and downcast usher, who “was not always the
abject thing he came to;” and who actually had bold and figurative words
for the big girls, when they talked together, or teased him during his
recitations. “Oh, how I remember our legs wedged into those
uncomfortable sloping desks, where we sat elbowing each other; and the
injunctions to attain a free hand, unattainable in that position!”
They had, also, an aged school-dame here, who was proud to prattle to
her pupils about her aforetime friend, Oliver Goldsmith; telling them
how the good-natured man, then too poor to present her with a copy of
his “Deserted Village,” had lent it to her to read. He had become famous
now, and so affluent--by the success of “The Good Natur’d Man,”
indeed!--that he had bought chambers on the second floor of No. 2 Brick
Court, Middle Temple. This was but a biscuit toss from Crown Office Row,
and perchance little Mary Lamb sometimes met, within the grounds, the
short, stout, plain, pock-marked Irish doctor. He died in those
chambers, only ten months before the birth of Charles; and was buried
somewhere in the burying-ground of the Temple church. Within it, the
Benchers put up a tablet to his memory. It is now in their vestry,
wherein you shall also find the baptismal records of nearly all the Lamb
children. The inscription on the tablet may have been first spelled out
by Mary to her small and eager brother. Doubtless the two children knew
the exact spot of his grave--known exactly to none of us to-day--even
as they knew every corner and cranny of the Temple grounds and
buildings. They played in its gardens, and looked down on them from
these same upper windows of No. 2 Crown Office Row, which have been
selected by Mr. Fulleylove for his point of view. _Then_ these gardens
were as Shakespeare saw them, when he, by a blameless anachronism,
caused to be enacted in them the famous scene of the Roses; really
rehearsed there, years before, when Warwick assigned the rose to
Plantagenet. Now, the grounds have been extended riverwards by the
construction of the Embankment; and the ancient historic blocks of
buildings about them have been vulgarized into something new and fine.
Mary and Charles were always together during these early days. Of the
seven children born into the family, only three escaped death in
infancy: our two, and their brother John, elder by two years than Mary.
Their mother loved them all, but most of all did she love “dear, little,
selfish, craving John;” who, as was well written by Charles in later
life, was
[Illustration: THE TEMPLE GARDENS, FROM CROWN OFFICE ROW.]
not worthy of one-tenth of that affection which Mary had a right to
claim. But the mother, like the father, was fond of fun, and found her
favourite in her handsome, sportive, noisy boy; showing scant sympathy
with and no insight into the “moythered brains”--her own phrase--of her
sensitive, brooding daughter, who already gave unheeded evidence of the
congenital gloom by which her mind was to become so clouded. Another
member of the small household was the father’s queer old-maiden sister,
Aunt Hetty, who passed her days sitting silently or mumbling
mysteriously as she peered over her spectacles at the two children,
huddled together in their youthful fear of her.
So it came to pass that Mary took charge of the “weakly but very pretty
babe”--as she recalled him, long years after, when he lay dead at
Edmonton, and she, in the next room, was rambling disjointedly on about
all their past. With a childish wisdom, born, surely, not of her years,
but rather of her loneliness and her unrequited caresses and her craving
for companionship, she became at once his big sister, his little
mother, his guardian angel. She cared for him in his helpless babyhood,
she gave strength to his feeble frame, she nurtured his growing brain,
she taught him to talk and to walk. We seem to see the tripping of his
feet, that
“---- half linger,
Half run before,”
trying to keep pace with her steps then; even as they always all through
life tried to do, wheresoever she walked, until they stopped at the edge
of his grave. The story of these two lives of double singleness, from
these childish footprints to that grave, is simply the story of their
love. He, like his own Child-Angel, was to know weakness and reliance
and the shadow of human imbecility; and he was to go with a lame gait;
_but, in his goings, he “exceeded all mortal children in grace and
swiftness_.” And so pity springs up in us, as in angelic bosoms; and
yearnings touch us, too, at the memory of this “immortal lame one.”
The boy’s next school, to which he obtained a presentation through the
influence of Mr. Salt, is known officially as Christ’s Hospital, and is
commonly called the Blue-Coat School. It still stands, a stately
monument of the munificence of “that godly and royal child, King Edward
VI., the flower of the Tudor name--the young flower that was untimely
cropped, as it began to fill our land with its early odours--the
boy-patron of boys--the serious and holy child, who walked with Cranmer
and Ridley.” To-day, as we stay our steps in Newgate Street, and peer
through the iron railings at the dingy red brick and stone facings of
the ancient walls; or, as we pause under the tiny statue of the
boy-king--founder, only ten days before his death, of this noble
hospital for poor fatherless children and foundlings--we may look at the
out-of-school games going on in the great quadrangle: the foolish
flapping skirts of the striplings tucked into their red leathern
waistbands to give fair and free play to their lanky yellow legs, their
uncapped heads taking sun or shower with equal unconcern.
Among them, unseen of them, seem to move the forms of those other boys,
Charles Lamb, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Leigh Hunt--all students here
about this time. _Our_ boy was then a little past seven, a gentle,
affectionate lad, “terribly shy,” as he said of himself later, and made
all the more sensitive by his slight stammer, which lapsed to a stutter
when his nerves were wrought upon and startled. Yet he was no more left
alone and isolated now than he was in after life; his schoolfellows
indulged him, the masters were fond of him, and he was given special
privileges not known to the others. His little complaints were listened
to; he had tea and a hot roll o’ mornings; his ancient aunt used to
toddle there to bring him good things, when he, schoolboy-like, only
despised her for it, and, as he confessed when older, used to be ashamed
to see her come and sit herself down on the old coal-hole steps near
where they went into the grammar-school, and open her apron, and bring
out her basin, with some nice thing she had caused to be saved for him.
And he was allowed to go home to the Temple for short visits, from time
to time, so passing his young days between “cloister and cloister.”
As he walks down the Old Bailey, or through Fleet Market--then in the
full foul odour of
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Vol. I. MAY, 1906 No. 3
MOTHER EARTH
[Illustration]
P. O. Box 217 EMMA GOLDMAN, Publisher 10c. a Copy
CONTENTS
PAGE
Tidings of May 1
Envy WALT WHITMAN 2
Observations and Comments 3
"This Man Gorky" MARGARET GRANT 8
Comrade MAXIM GORKY 17
Alexander Berkman E. G. 22
Poem VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE 25
The White Terror 25
Paternalistic Government THEODORE SCHROEDER 27
Liberty in Common Life BOLTON HALL 34
Statistics H. KELLY 35
Gerhart Hauptmann with the Weavers of Silesia MAX BAGINSKI 38
Disappointed Economists 47
Vital Art ANNY MALI HICKS 48
Kristofer Hansteen VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE 52
Fifty Years of Bad Luck SADAKICHI HARTMANN 56
10c. A COPY $1 A YEAR
MOTHER EARTH
Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature
Published Every 15th of the Month
EMMA GOLDMAN, Publisher, P. O. Box 217, Madison Square Station,
New York, N. Y.
Vol. I MAY, 1906 No. 3
TIDINGS OF MAY.
The month of May is a grinning satire on the mode of living of human
beings of the present day.
The May sun, with its magic warmth, gives life to so much beauty, so
much value.
The dead, grayish brown of the forest and woods is transformed into a
rich, intoxicating, delicate, fragrant green.
Golden sun-rays lure flowers and grass from the soil, and kiss branch
and tree into blossom and bloom.
Tillers of the soil are beginning their activity with plough, shovel,
rake, breaking the firm grip of grim winter upon the Earth, so that the
mild spring warmth may penetrate her breast and coax into growth and
maturity the seeds lying in her womb.
A great festival seems at hand for which Mother Earth has adorned
herself with garments of the richest and most beautiful hues.
What does civilized humanity do with all this splendor? It speculates
with it. Usurers, who gamble with the necessities of life, will take
possession of Nature's gifts, of wheat and corn, fruit and flowers, and
will carry on a shameless trade with them, while millions of toilers,
both in country and city, will be permitted to partake of the earth's
riches only in medicinal doses and at exorbitant prices.
May's generous promise to mankind, that they were to receive in
abundance, is being broken and undone by the existing arrangements of
society.
The Spring sends its glad tidings to man through the jubilant songs
that stream from the throats of her feathered messengers. "Behold," they
sing, "I have such wealth to give away, but you know not how to take.
You count and bargain and weigh and measure, rather than feast at my
heavily laden tables. You crawl about on the ground, bent by worry and
dread, rather than drink in the free balmy air!"
The irony of May is neither cold nor hard. It contains a mild yet
convincing appeal to mankind to finally break the power of the Winter
not only in Nature, but in our social life,--to free itself from the
hard and fixed traditions of a dead past.
[Illustration]
ENVY.
By WALT WHITMAN.
_When I peruse the conquered fame of heroes, and the victories of
mighty generals, I do not envy the generals,
Nor the President in his Presidency, nor the rich in his great
house;
But when I hear of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was with them,
How through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging, long and long
Through youth, and through middle and old age, how unfaltering, how
affectionate and faithful they were,
Then I am pensive--I hastily walk away, filled with the bitterest
envy._
OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS.
A young man had an Ideal which he cherished as the most beautiful and
greatest treasure he had on earth. He promised himself never to part
with it, come what might.
His surroundings, however, repeated from morn till night that one can
not feed on Ideals, and that one must become practical if he wishes to
get on in life.
When he attempted the practical, he realized that his Ideal could never
become reconciled to it. This, at first, caused him deep suffering, but
he soon conceived a pleasant thought: "Why should I expose my precious
jewel to the vulgarity, coarseness and filth of a practical life? I will
put it into a jewel case and hide it in a secluded spot."
From time to time, especially when business was bad, he stole over to
the case containing his Ideal, to delight in its splendor. Indeed, the
world was shabby compared with that!
Meanwhile he married and his business began to improve. The members of
his party had already begun to discuss the possibility of putting him up
as a candidate for Alderman.
He visited his Ideal at longer intervals now. He had made a very
unpleasant discovery,--his Ideal had lessened in size and weight in
proportion to the practical opulence of his mind. It grew old and full
of wrinkles, which aroused his suspicions. After all, the practical
people were right in making light of Ideals. Did he not observe with his
own eyes how his Ideal had faded?
It had been overlooked for a long time. Once more he stole over to the
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PYGMALION
BERNARD SHAW
1912
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: In the printed version of this text, all
apostrophes for contractions such as "can't", "wouldn't" and "he'd"
were omitted, to read as "cant", "wouldnt", and "hed". This etext
edition restores the omitted apostrophes.
PREFACE TO PYGMALION.
A Professor of Phonetics.
As will be seen later on, Pygmalion needs, not a preface, but a sequel,
which I have supplied in its due place. The English have no respect for
their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They
spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds
like. It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without
making some other Englishman hate or despise him. German and Spanish
are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to
Englishmen. The reformer England needs today is an energetic phonetic
enthusiast: that is why I have made such a one the hero of a popular
play. There have been heroes of that kind crying in the wilderness for
many years past. When I became interested in the subject towards the
end of the eighteen-seventies, Melville Bell was dead; but Alexander J.
Ellis was still a living patriarch, with an impressive head always
covered by a velvet skull cap, for which he would apologize to public
meetings in a very courtly manner. He and Tito Pagliardini, another
phonetic veteran, were men whom it was impossible to dislike. Henry
Sweet, then a young man, lacked their sweetness of character: he was
about as conciliatory to conventional mortals as Ibsen or Samuel
Butler. His great ability as a phonetician (he was, I think, the best
of them all at his job) would have entitled him to high official
recognition, and perhaps enabled him to popularize his subject, but for
his Satanic contempt for all academic dignitaries and persons in
general who thought more of Greek than of phonetics. Once, in the days
when the Imperial Institute rose in South Kensington, and Joseph
Chamberlain was booming the Empire, I induced the editor of a leading
monthly review to commission an article from Sweet on the imperial
importance of his subject. When it arrived, it contained nothing but a
savagely derisive attack on a professor of language and literature
whose chair Sweet regarded as proper to a phonetic expert only. The
article, being libelous, had to be returned as impossible; and I had to
renounce my dream of dragging its author into the limelight. When I met
him afterwards, for the first time for many years, I found to my
astonishment that he, who had been a quite tolerably presentable young
man, had actually managed by sheer scorn to alter his personal
appearance until he had become a sort of walking repudiation of Oxford
and all its traditions. It must have been largely in his own despite
that he was squeezed into something called a Readership of phonetics
there. The future of phonetics rests probably with his pupils, who all
swore by him; but nothing could bring the man himself into any sort of
compliance with the university, to which he nevertheless clung by
divine right in an intensely Oxonian way. I daresay his papers, if he
has left any, include some satires that may be published without too
destructive results fifty years hence. He was, I believe, not in the
least an ill-natured man: very much the opposite, I should say; but he
would not suffer fools gladly.
Those who knew him will recognize in my third act the allusion to the
patent Shorthand in which he used to write postcards, and which may be
acquired from a four and six-penny manual published by the Clarendon
Press. The postcards which Mrs. Higgins describes are such as I have
received from Sweet. I would decipher a sound which a cockney would
represent by zerr, and a Frenchman by seu, and then write demanding
with some heat what on earth it meant. Sweet, with boundless contempt
for my stupidity, would reply that it not only meant but obviously was
the word Result, as no other Word containing | 2,384.45494 |
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Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)
JEWISH LITERATURE
AND OTHER ESSAYS
JEWISH LITERATURE
AND
OTHER ESSAYS
BY
GUSTAV KARPELES
PHILADELPHIA THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA 1895
Copyright 1895, by
THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA
Press of
The Friedenwald Co.
Baltimore
PREFACE
The following essays were delivered during the last ten years, in the
form of addresses, before the largest associations in the great cities
of Germany. Each one is a dear and precious possession to me. As I once
more pass them in review, reminiscences fill my mind of solemn occasions
and impressive scenes, of excellent men and charming women. I feel as
though I were sending the best beloved children of my fancy out into the
world, and sadness seizes me when I realize that they no longer belong
to me alone--that they have become the property of strangers. The living
word falling upon the ear of the listener is one thing; quite another
the word staring from the cold, printed page. Will my thoughts be
accorded the same friendly welcome that greeted them when first they
were uttered?
I venture to hope that they may be kindly received; for these addresses
were born of devoted love to Judaism. The consciousness that Israel is
charged with a great historical mission, not yet accomplished, ushered
them into existence. Truth and sincerity stood sponsor to every word. Is
it presumptuous, then, to hope that they may find favor in the New
World? Brethren of my faith live there as here; our ancient watchword,
"Sh'ma Yisrael," resounds in their synagogues as in ours; the old
blood-stained flag, with its sublime inscription, "The Lord is my
banner!" floats over them; and Jewish hearts in America are loyal like
ours, and sustained by steadfast faith in the Messianic time when our
hopes and ideals, our aims and dreams, will be realized. There is but
one Judaism the world over, by the Jordan and the Tagus as by the
Vistula and the Mississippi. God bless and protect it, and lead it to
the goal of its glorious future!
To all Jewish hearts beyond the ocean, in free America, fraternal
greetings!
GUSTAV KARPELES
BERLIN, Pesach 5652/1892.
CONTENTS
A GLANCE AT JEWISH LITERATURE
THE TALMUD
THE JEW IN THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION
WOMEN IN JEWISH LITERATURE
MOSES MAIMONIDES
JEWISH TROUBADOURS AND MINNESINGERS
HUMOR AND LOVE IN JEWISH POETRY
THE JEWISH STAGE
THE JEW'S QUEST IN AFRICA
A JEWISH KING IN POLAND
JEWISH SOCIETY IN THE TIME OF MENDELSSOHN
LEOPOLD ZUNZ
HEINRICH HEINE AND JUDAISM
THE MUSIC OF THE SYNAGOGUE
A GLANCE AT JEWISH LITERATURE
In a well-known passage of the _Romanzero_, rebuking Jewish women for
their ignorance of the magnificent golden age of their nation's poetry,
Heine used unmeasured terms of condemnation. He was too severe, for the
sources from which he drew his own information were of a purely
scientific character, necessarily unintelligible to the ordinary reader.
The first truly popular presentation of the whole of Jewish literature
was made only a few years ago, and could not have existed in Heine's
time, as the most valuable treasures of that literature, a veritable
Hebrew Pompeii, have been unearthed from the mould and rubbish of the
libraries within this century. Investigations of the history of Jewish
literature have been possible, then, only during the last fifty years.
But in the course of this half-century, conscientious research has so
actively been prosecuted that we can now gain at least a bird's-eye view
of the whole course of our literature. Some stretches still lie in
shadow, and it is not astonishing that eminent scholars continue to
maintain that "there is no such thing as an organic history, a logical
development, of the gigantic neo-Hebraic literature"; while such as are
acquainted with the results of late research at best concede that
Hebrew literature has been permitted to garner a "tender aftermath."
Both verdicts are untrue and unfair. Jewish literature has developed
organically, and in the course of its evolution it has had its
spring-tide as well as its season of decay, this again followed by
vigorous rejuvenescence.
Such opinions are part and parcel of the vicissitudes of our literature,
in themselves sufficient matter for an interesting book. Strange it
certainly is that a people without a home, without a land, living under
repression and persecution, could produce so great a literature;
stranger still, that it should at first have been preserved and
disseminated, then forgotten, or treated with the disdain of prejudice,
and finally roused from torpid slumber into robust life by the breath of
the modern era. In the neighborhood of twenty-two thousand works are
known to us now. Fifty years ago bibliographers were ignorant of the
existence of half of these, and in the libraries of Italy, England, and
Germany an untold number awaits resurrection.
In fact, our literature has not yet been given a name that recommends
itself to universal acceptance. Some have called it "Rabbinical
Literature," because during the middle ages every Jew of learning bore
the title Rabbi; others, "Neo-Hebraic"; and a third party considers it
purely theological. These names are all inadequate. Perhaps the only one
sufficiently comprehensive is "Jewish Literature." That embraces, as it
should, the aggregate of writings produced by Jews from the earliest
days of their history up to the present time, regardless of form, of
language, and, in the middle ages at least, of subject-matter.
With this definition in mind, we are able to sketch the whole course of
our literature, though in the frame of an essay only in outline. We
shall learn, as Leopold Zunz, the Humboldt of Jewish science, well says,
that it is "intimately bound up with the culture of the ancient world,
with the origin and development of Christianity, and with the scientific
endeavors of the middle ages. Inasmuch as it shares the intellectual
aspirations of the past and the present, their conflicts and their
reverses, it is supplementary to general literature. Its peculiar
features, themselves falling under universal laws, are in turn helpful
in the interpretation of general characteristics. If the aggregate
results of mankind's intellectual activity can be likened unto a sea,
Jewish literature is one of the tributaries that feed it. Like other
literatures and like literature in general, it reveals to the student
what noble ideals the soul of man has cherished, and striven to realize,
and discloses the varied achievements of man's intellectual powers. If
we of to-day are the witnesses and the offspring of an eternal, creative
principle, then, in turn, the present is but the beginning of a future,
that is, the translation of knowledge into life. Spiritual ideals
consciously held by any portion of mankind lend freedom to thought,
grace to feeling, and by sailing up this one stream we may reach the
fountain-head whence have emanated all spiritual forces, and about
which, as a fixed pole, all spiritual currents eddy."[1]
The cornerstone of this Jewish literature is the Bible, or what we call
Old Testament literature--the oldest and at the same time the most
important of Jewish writings. It extends over the period ending with the
second century before the common era; is written, for the most part, in
Hebrew, and is the clearest and the most faithful reflection of the
original characteristics of the Jewish people. This biblical literature
has engaged the closest attention of all nations and every age. Until
the seventeenth century, biblical science was purely dogmatic, and only
since Herder pointed the way have its aesthetic elements been dwelt upon
along with, often in defiance of, dogmatic considerations. Up to this
time, Ernest Meier and Theodor Noeldeke have been the only ones to treat
of the Old Testament with reference to its place in the history of
literature.
Despite the dogmatic air clinging to the critical introductions to the
study of the Old Testament, their authors have not shrunk from treating
the book sacred to two religions with childish arbitrariness. Since the
days of Spinoza's essay at rationalistic explanation, Bible criticism
has been the wrestling-ground of the most extravagant exegesis, of bold
hypotheses, and hazardous conjectures. No Latin or Greek classic has
been so ruthlessly attacked and dissected; no mediaeval poetry so
arbitrarily interpreted. As a natural consequence, the aesthetic
elements were more and more pushed into the background. Only recently
have we begun to ridicule this craze for hypotheses, and returned to
more sober methods of inquiry. Bible criticism reached the climax of
absurdity, and the scorn was just which greeted one of the most
important works of the critical school, Hitzig's "Explanation of the
Psalms." A reviewer said: "We may entertain the fond hope that, in a
second edition of this clever writer's commentary, he will be in the
enviable position to tell us the day and the hour when each psalm was
composed."
The reaction began a few years ago with the recognition of the
inadequacy of Astruc's document hypothesis, until then the creed of all
Bible critics. Astruc, a celebrated French physician, in 1753 advanced
the theory that the Pentateuch--the five books of Moses--consists of two
parallel documents, called respectively Yahvistic and Elohistic, from
the name applied to God in each. On this basis, German science after him
raised a superstructure. No date was deemed too late to be assigned to
the composition of the Pentateuch. If the historian Flavius Josephus had
not existed, and if Jesus had not spoken of "the Law" and "the
prophets," and of the things "which were written in the Law of Moses,
and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms," critics would have been
disposed to transfer the redaction of the Bible to some period of the
Christian era. So wide is the divergence of opinions on the subject
that two learned critics, Ewald and Hitzig, differ in the date assigned
to a certain biblical passage by no less than a thousand years!
Bible archaeology, Bible exegesis, and discussions of grammatical
niceties, were confounded with the history of biblical literature, and
naturally it was the latter that suffered by the lack of
differentiation. Orthodoxy assumed a purely divine origin for the Bible,
while sceptics treated the holy book with greater levity than they would
dare display in criticising a modern novel. The one party raised a hue
and cry when Moses was spoken of as the first author; the other
discovered "obscene, rude, even cannibalistic traits"[2] in the sublime
narratives of the Bible. It should be the task of coming generations,
successors by one remove of credulous Bible lovers, and immediate heirs
of thorough-going rationalists, to reconcile and fuse in a higher
conception of the Bible the two divergent theories of its purely divine
and its purely human origin. Unfortunately, it must be admitted that
Ernest Meier is right, when he says, in his "History of the National
Poetry of the Hebrews," that this task wholly belongs to the future; at
present it is an unsolved problem.
The aesthetic is the only proper point of view for a full recognition of
the value of biblical literature. It certainly does not rob the sacred
Scriptures, the perennial source of spiritual comfort, of their exalted
character and divine worth to assume that legend, myth, and history
have combined to produce the perfect harmony which is their imperishable
distinction. The peasant dwelling on inaccessible mountain-heights, next
to the record of Abraham's shepherd life, inscribes the main events of
his own career, the anniversary dates sacred to his family. The young
count among their first impressions that of "the brown folio," and more
vividly than all else remember
"The maidens fair and true,
The sages and the heroes bold,
Whose tale by seers inspired
In our Book of books is told.
The simple life and faith
Of patriarchs of ancient day
Like angels hover near,
And guard, and lead them on the way."[3]
Above all, a whole nation has for centuries been living with, and only
by virtue of, this book. Surely this is abundant testimony to the
undying value of the great work, in which the simplest shepherd tales
and the naivest legends, profound moral saws and magnificent images, the
ideals of a Messianic future and the purest, the most humane conception
of life, alternate with sublime descriptions of nature and the sweet
strains of love-poems, with national songs breathing hope, or trembling
with anguish, and with the dull tones of despairing pessimism and the
divinely inspired hymns of an exalted theodicy--all blending to form
what the reverential love of men has named the Book of books.
It was natural that a book of this kind should become the basis of a
great literature. Whatever was produced in later times had to submit to
be judged by its exalted standard. It became the rule of conduct, the
prophetic mirror reflecting the future work of a nation whose fate was
inextricably bound up with its own. It is not known how and when the
biblical scriptures were welded into one book, a holy canon, but it is
probably correct to assume that it was done by the _Soferim_, the
Scribes, between 200 and 150 B.C.E. At all events, it is certain that
the three divisions of the Bible--the Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the
miscellaneous writings--were contained in the Greek version, the
Septuagint, so called from the seventy or seventy-two Alexandrians
supposed to have done the work of translation under Ptolemy
Philadelphus.
The Greek translation of the Bible marks the beginning of the second
period of Jewish literature, the Judaeo-Hellenic. Hebrew ceased to be the
language of the people; it was thenceforth used only by scholars and in
divine worship. Jewish for the first time met Greek intellect. Shem and
Japheth embraced fraternally. "But even while the teachings of Hellas
were pushing their way into subjugated Palestine, seducing Jewish
philosophy to apostasy, and seeking, by main force, to introduce
paganism, the Greek philosophers themselves stood awed by the majesty
and power of the Jewish prophets. Swords and words entered the lists as
champions of Judaism. The vernacular Aramaean, having suffered the Greek
to put its impress upon many of its substantives, refused to yield to
the influence of the Greek verb, and, in the end, Hebrew truth, in the
guise of the teachings of Jesus, undermined the proud structure of the
heathen." This is a most excellent characterization of that literary
period, which lasted about three centuries, ending between 100 and 150
C. E. Its influence upon Jewish literature can scarcely be said to have
been enduring. To it belong all the apocryphal writings which,
originally composed in the Greek language, were for that reason not
incorporated into the Holy Canon. The centre of intellectual life was no
longer in Palestine, but at Alexandria in Egypt, where three hundred
thousand Jews were then living, and thus this literature came to be
called Judaeo-Alexandrian. It includes among its writers the last of the
Neoplatonists, particularly Philo, the originator of the allegorical
interpretation of the Bible and of a Jewish philosophy of religion;
Aristeas, and pseudo-Phokylides. There were also Jewish _litterateurs_:
the dramatist Ezekielos; Jason; Philo the Elder; Aristobulus, the
popularizer of the Aristotelian philosophy; Eupolemos, the historian;
and probably the Jewish Sybil, who had to have recourse to the oracular
manner of the pagans to proclaim the truths of Judaism, and to Greek
figures of speech for her apocalyptic visions, which foretold, in
biblical phrase and with prophetic ardor, the future of Israel and of
the nations in contact with it.
Meanwhile the word of the Bible was steadily gaining importance in
Palestine. To search into and expound the sacred text had become the
inheritance of the congregation of Jacob, of those that had not lent ear
to the siren notes of Hellenism. Midrash, as the investigations of the
commentators were called, by and by divided into two streams--Halacha,
which establishes and systematizes the statutes of the Law, and Haggada,
which uses the sacred texts for homiletic, historical, ethical, and
pedagogic discussions. The latter is the poetic, the former, the
legislative, element in the Talmudic writings, whose composition,
extending over a thousand years, constitutes the third, the most
momentous, period of Jewish literature. Of course, none of these periods
can be so sharply defined as a rapid survey might lead one to suppose.
For instance, on the threshold of this third epoch stands the figure of
Flavius Josephus, the famous Jewish historian, who, at once an
enthusiastic Jew and a friend of the Romans, writes the story of his
nation in the Greek language--a character as peculiar as his age, which,
listening to the mocking laughter of a Lucian, saw Olympus overthrown
and its gods dethroned, the Temple at Jerusalem pass away in flame and
smoke, and the new doctrine of the son of the carpenter at Nazareth
begin its victorious course.
By the side of this Janus-faced historian, the heroes of the Talmud
stand enveloped in glory. We meet with men like Hillel and Shammai,
Jochanan ben Zakkai, Gamaliel, Joshua ben Chananya, the famous Akiba,
and later on Yehuda the Prince, friend of the imperial philosopher
Marcus Aurelius, and compiler of the Mishna, the authoritative code of
laws superseding all other collections. Then there are the fabulist
Meir; Simon ben Yochai, falsely accused of the authorship of the
mystical Kabbala; Chiya; Rab; Samuel, equally famous as a physician and
a rabbi; Jochanan, the supposed compiler of the Jerusalem Talmud; and
Ashi and Abina, the former probably the arranger of the Babylonian
Talmud. This latter Talmud, the one invested with authority among Jews,
by reason of its varying fortunes, is the most marvellous literary
monument extant. Never has book been so hated and so persecuted, so
misjudged and so despised, on the other hand, so prized and so honored,
and, above all, so imperfectly understood, as this very Talmud.
For the Jews and their literature it has had untold significance. That
the Talmud has been the conservator of Judaism is an irrefutable
statement. It is true that the study of the Talmud unduly absorbed the
great intellectual force of its adherents, and brought about a somewhat
one-sided mental development in the Jews; but it also is true, as a
writer says,[4] that "whenever in troublous times scientific inquiry was
laid low; whenever, for any reason, the Jew was excluded from
participation in public life, the study of the Talmud maintained the
elasticity and the vigor of the Jewish mind, and rescued the Jew from
sterile mysticism and spiritual apathy. The Talmud, as a rule, has been
inimical to mysticism, and the most brilliant Talmudists, in propitious
days, have achieved distinguished success in secular science. The Jew
survived ages of bitterness, all the while clinging loyally to his faith
in the midst of hostility, and the first ray of light that penetrated
the walls of the Ghetto found him ready to take part in the intellectual
work of his time. This admirable elasticity of mind he owes, first and
foremost, to the study of the Talmud."
From this much abused Talmud, as from its contemporary the Midrash in
the restricted sense, sprouted forth the blossoms of the Haggada--that
Haggada
"Where the beauteous, ancient sagas,
Angel legends fraught with meaning,
Martyrs' silent sacrifices,
Festal songs and wisdom's sayings,
Trope and allegoric fancies--
All, howe'er by faith's triumphant
Glow pervaded--where they gleaming,
Glist'ning, well in strength exhaustless.
And the boyish heart responsive
Drinks the wild, fantastic sweetness,
Greets the woful, wondrous anguish,
Yields to grewsome charm of myst'ry,
Hid in blessed worlds of fable.
Overawed it hearkens solemn
To that sacred revelation
Mortal man hath poetry called."[5]
A story from the Midrash charmingly characterizes the relation between
Halacha and Haggada. Two rabbis, Chiya bar Abba, a Halachist, and
Abbahu, a Haggadist, happened to be lecturing in the same town. Abbahu,
the Haggadist, was always listened to by great crowds, while Chiya, with
his Halacha, stood practically deserted. The Haggadist comforted the
disappointed teacher with a parable. "Let us suppose two merchants," he
said, "to come to town, and offer wares for sale. The one has pearls and
precious gems to display, the other, cheap finery, gilt chains, rings,
and gaudy ribbons. About whose booth, think you, does the crowd
press?--Formerly, when the struggle for existence was not fierce and
inevitable, men had leisure and desire for the profound teachings of the
Law; now they need the cheering words of consolation and hope."
For more than a thousand years this nameless spirit of national poesy
was abroad, and produced manifold works, which, in the course of time,
were gathered together into comprehensive collections, variously named
Midrash Rabba, Pesikta, Tanchuma, etc. Their compilation was begun in
about 700 C. E., that is, soon after the close of the Talmud, in the
transition period from the third epoch of Jewish literature to the
fourth, the golden age, which lasted from the ninth to the fifteenth
century, and, according to the law of human products, shows a season of
growth, blossom, and decay.
The scene of action during this period was western Asia, northern
Africa, sometimes Italy and France, but chiefly Spain, where Arabic
culture, destined to influence Jewish thought to an incalculable degree,
was at that time at its zenith. "A second time the Jews were drawn into
the vortex of a foreign civilization, and two hundred years after
Mohammed, Jews in Kairwan and Bagdad were speaking the same language,
Arabic. A language once again became the mediatrix between Jewish and
general literature, and the best minds of the two races, by means of the
language, reciprocally influenced each other. Jews, as they once had
written Greek for their brethren, now wrote Arabic; and, as in
Hellenistic times, the civilization of the dominant race, both in its
original features and in its adaptations from foreign sources, was
reflected in that of the Jews." It would be interesting to analyze this
important process of assimilation, but we can concern ourselves only
with the works of the Jewish intellect. Again we meet, at the threshold
of the period, a characteristic figure, the thinker Sa'adia, ranking
high as author and religious philosopher, known also as a grammarian and
a poet. He is followed by Sherira, to whom we owe the beginnings of a
history of Talmudic literature, and his son Hai Gaon, a strictly
orthodox teacher of the Law. In their wake come troops of physicians,
theologians, lexicographers, Talmudists, and grammarians. Great is the
circle of our national literature: it embraces theology, philosophy,
exegesis, grammar, poetry, and jurisprudence, yea, even astronomy and
chronology, mathematics and medicine. But these widely varying subjects
constitute only one class, inasmuch as they all are infused with the
spirit of Judaism, and subordinate themselves to its demands. A mention
of the prominent actors would turn this whole essay into a dry list of
names. Therefore it is better for us merely to sketch the period in
outline, dwelling only on its greatest poets and philosophers, the
moulders of its character.
The opinion is current that the Semitic race lacks the philosophic
faculty. Yet it cannot be denied that Jews were the first to carry Greek
philosophy to Europe, teaching and developing it there before its
dissemination by celebrated Arabs. In their zeal to harmonize philosophy
with their religion, and in the lesser endeavor to defend traditional
Judaism against the polemic attacks of a new sect, the Karaites, they
invested the Aristotelian system with peculiar features, making it, as
it were, their national philosophy. At all events, it must be
universally accepted that the Jews share with the Arabs the merit "of
having cherished the study of philosophy during centuries of barbar | 2,384.473297 |
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Produced by Charles Aldarondo [email protected]
MUTUAL AID
A FACTOR OF EVOLUTION
BY P. KROPOTKIN
1902
INTRODUCTION
Two aspects of animal life impressed me most during the journeys which I
made in my youth in Eastern Siberia and Northern Manchuria. One of them
was the extreme severity of the struggle for existence which most
species of animals have to carry on against an inclement Nature; the
enormous destruction of life which periodically results from natural
agencies; and the consequent paucity of life over the vast territory
which fell under my observation. And the other was, that even in those
few spots where animal life teemed in abundance, I failed to
find--although I was eagerly looking for it--that bitter struggle for
the means of existence, among animals belonging to the same species,
which was considered by most Darwinists (though not always by Darwin
himself) as the dominant characteristic of struggle for life, and the
main factor of evolution.
The terrible snow-storms which sweep over the northern portion of
Eurasia in the later part of the winter, and the glazed frost that often
follows them; the frosts and the snow-storms which return every year in
the second half of May, when the trees are already in full blossom and
insect life swarms everywhere; the early frosts and, occasionally, the
heavy snowfalls in July and August, which suddenly destroy myriads of
insects, as well as the second broods of the birds in the prairies; the
torrential rains, due to the monsoons, which fall in more temperate
regions in August and September--resulting in inundations on a scale
which is only known in America and in Eastern Asia, and swamping, on the
plateaus, areas as wide as European States; and finally, the heavy
snowfalls, early in October, which eventually render a territory as
large as France and Germany, absolutely impracticable for ruminants, and
destroy them by the thousand--these were the conditions under which I
saw animal life struggling in Northern Asia. They made me realize at an
early date the overwhelming importance in Nature of what Darwin
described as "the natural checks to over-multiplication," in comparison
to the struggle between individuals of the same species for the means of
subsistence, which may go on here and there, to some limited extent, but
never attains the importance of the former. Paucity of life,
under-population--not over-population--being the distinctive feature of
that immense part of the globe which we name Northern Asia, I conceived
since then serious doubts--which subsequent study has only confirmed--as
to the reality of that fearful competition for food and life within each
species, which was an article of faith with most Darwinists, and,
consequently, as to the dominant part which this sort of competition was
supposed to play in the evolution of new species.
On the other hand, wherever I saw animal life in abundance, as, for
instance, on the lakes where scores of species and millions of
individuals came together to rear their progeny; in the colonies of
rodents; in the migrations of birds which took place at that time on a
truly American scale along the Usuri; and especially in a migration of
fallow-deer which I witnessed on the Amur, and during which scores of
thousands of these intelligent animals came together from an immense
territory, flying before the coming deep snow, in order to cross the
Amur where it is narrowest--in all these scenes of animal life which
passed before my eyes, I saw Mutual Aid and Mutual Support carried on to
an extent which made me suspect in it a feature of the greatest
importance for the maintenance of life, the preservation of each
species, and its further evolution.
And finally, I saw among the semi-wild cattle and horses | 2,384.48344 |
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Produced by Olaf Voss, Don Kretz, Juliet Sutherland, Charles
Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
[Illustration]
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SUPPLEMENT NO. 286
NEW YORK, JUNE 25, 1881
Scientific American Supplement. Vol. XI, No. 286.
Scientific American established 1845
Scientific American Supplement, $5 a year.
Scientific American and Supplement, $7 a year.
* * * * *
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
I. ENGINEERING AND MECHANICS.--One Thousand Horse Power Corliss Engine.
5 figures, to scale, illustrating the construction of the new one
thousand horse power Corliss engine, by Hitch, Hargreaves & Co.
Opening of the New Workshop of the Stevens Institute of Technology.
Speech of Prof. R.W. Raymond, speech of Mr. Horatio Allen.
Light Steam Engine for Aeronautical Purposes. Constructed for Capt.
Mojoisky, of the Russian Navy.
Complete Prevention of Incrustation in Boilers. Arrangement for
purifying boiler water with lime and carbonate of soda.--The
purification of the water.--Examination of the purified
water.--Results of water purification.
Eddystone Lighthouse. Progress of the work.
Rolling Mill for Making Corrugated Iron. 1 figure. The new mill of
Schultz, Knaudt & Co., of Essen, Germany.
Railway Turntable in the Time of Louis XIV. 1 figure. Pleasure car.
Railway and turntable at Mary-le-Roy Chateau, France, in 1714.
New Signal Wire Compensator. Communication from A. Lyle, describing
compensators in use on the Nizam State Railway, East India.
Tangye's Hydraulic Hoist. 2 figures.
Power Loom for Delicate Fabrics. 1 figure.
How Veneering is Made.
II. TECHNOLOGY AND CHEMISTRY.--The Constituent Parts of Leather. The
composition of different leathers exhibited at the Paris
Exhibition.--Amount of leather produced by different tonnages of 100
pounds of hides.--Percentage of tannin absorbed under different
methods of tanning.--Amounts of gelatine and tannin in leather of
different tonnages, etc.
Progress in American Pottery.
Photographic Notes.--Mr. Waruerke's New Discovery.--Method of
converting negatives directly into positives.--Experiments of Capt.
Bing on the sensitiveness of coal oil--Bitumen plates.--Method of
topographic engraving. By Commandant DE LA NOE.--Succinate of Iron
Developer.--Method of making friable hydro-cellulose.
Photo-Tracings in Black and Color.
Dyeing Reds with Artificial Alizarin. By M. MAURICE PRUD'HOMME.
III. ELECTRICITY, PHYSICAL SCIENCE, ETC.--On Faure's Secondary Battery.
Physical Science in Our Common Schools.--An exceptionally strong
argument for the teaching of physical science by the experimental
method in elementary schools, with an outline of the method and the
results of such teaching.
On the Law of Avogadro and Ampere. By E. VOGEL.
IV. GEOGRAPHY, GEOLOGY, ETC.--Petroleum and Coal in Venezuela.
Geographical Society of the Pacific.
The Behring's Straits Currents.--Proofs of their existence.
Experimental Geology.--Artificial production of calcareous pisolites
and oolites.--On crystals of anhydrous lime.--4 figures.
V. NATURAL HISTORY, ETC.--Coccidae. By Dr. H. BEHR.--An important paper
read before the California Academy of Sciences.--The marvelous
fecundity of scale bugs.--Their uses.--Their ravages.--Methods of
destroying them.
Agricultural Items.
Timber Trees.
Blood Rains.
VI. MEDICINE AND HYGIENE.--Medical Uses of Figs.
Topical Medication in Phthisis.
VII. ARCHITECTURE, ETC.--Suggestions in Architecture.--Large
illustration.--The New High School for Girls, Oxford, England.
* * * * *
PETROLEUM AND COAL IN VENEZUELA.
MR. E. H. PLUMACHER, U. S. Consul at Maracaibo, sends to the State
Department the following information touching the wealth of coal and
petroleum probable in Venezuela:
The asphalt mines and petroleum fountains are most abundant in that part
of the country lying between the River Zulia and the River Catatumbo,
and the Cordilleras. The wonderful sand-bank is about seven kilometers
from the confluence of the Rivers Tara and Sardinarte. It is ten meters
high and thirty meters long. On its surface can be seen several round
holes, out of which rises the petroleum and water with a noise like that
made by steam vessels when blowing off steam, and above there ascends a
column of vapor. There is a dense forest around this sand-bank, and the
place has been called "El Inferno." Dr. Edward McGregor visited the
sand-bank, and reported to the Government that by experiment he had
ascertained that one of the fountains spurted petroleum and water at the
rate of 240 gallons per hour. Mr. Plumacher says that the petroleum is
of very good quality, its density being that which the British market
requires in petroleum imported from the United States. The river, up to
the junction of the Tara and Sardinarte, is navigable during the entire
year for flat-bottomed craft of forty or fifty tons.
Mr. Plumacher has been unable to discover that there are any deposits
of asphalt or petroleum in the upper part of the Department of Colon,
beyond the Zulia, but he has been told that the valleys of Cucuta and
the territories of the State of Tachira abound in coal mines. There are
coal mines near San Antonia, in a ravine called "La Carbonera," and
these supply coal for the smiths' forges in that place. Coal and asphalt
are also found in large quantities in the Department of Sucre. Mr.
Plumacher has seen, while residing in the State of Zulia, but one true
specimen of "lignite," which was given to him by a rich land-owner,
who is a Spanish subject. In the section where it was found there are
several fountains of a peculiar substance. It is a black liquid, of
little density, strongly impregnated with carbonic acid which it
transmits to the water which invariably accompanies it. Deposits of this
substance are found at the foot of the spurs of the Cordilleras, and are
believed to indicate the presence of great deposits of anthracite.
There are many petroleum wells of inferior quality between Escuque and
Bettijoque, in the town of Columbia. Laborers gather the petroleum in
handkerchiefs. After these become saturated, the oil is pressed out by
wringing. It is burned in the houses of the poor. The people thought, in
1824, that it was a substance unknown elsewhere, and they called it
the "oil of Columbia." At that time they hoped to establish a valuable
industry by working it, and they sent to England, France, and this
country samples which attracted much attention. But in those days no
method of refining the crude oil had been discovered, and therefore
these efforts to introduce petroleum to the world soon failed.
The plains of Ceniza abound in asphalt and petroleum. There is a large
lake of these substances about twelve kilometers east of St. Timoteo,
and from it some asphalt is taken to Maracaibo. Many deposits of asphalt
are found between these plains and the River Mene. The largest is that
of Cienega de Mene, which is shallow. At the bottom lies a compact
bed of asphalt, which is not used at present, except for painting
the bottoms of vessels to keep off the barnacles. There are wells of
petroleum in the State of Falcon.
Mr. Plumacher says that all the samples of coal submitted to him in
Venezuela for examination, with the exception of the "lignite" before
mentioned, were, in his opinion, asphalt in various degrees of
condensation. The sample which came from Tule he ranks with the coals
of the best quality. He believes that the innumerable fountains and
deposits of petroleum, bitumen, and asphalt that are apparent on the
surface of the region around Lake Maracaibo are proof of the existence
below of immense deposits of coal. These deposits have not been
uncovered because the territory remains for the most part as wild as it
was at the conquest.
* * * * *
ONE THOUSAND HORSE-POWER CORLISS ENGINE.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.
DIA. OF CYLINDER = 40''
STROKE = 10 ft.
REVS = 41
SCALE OF DIAGRAMS 40 LBS = 1 INCH
FIG. 2.]
We illustrate one of the largest Corliss engines ever constructed. It is
of the single cylinder, horizontal, condensing type, with one cylinder
40 inches diameter, and 10 feet stroke, and makes forty-five revolutions
per minute, corresponding to a piston speed of 900 feet per minute. At
mid stroke the velocity of the piston is 1,402 feet per minute nearly,
and its energy in foot pounds amounts to about 8.6 times its weight.
The cylinder is steam jacketed on the body and ends, and is fitted with
Corliss valves and Inglis & Spencer's automatic Corliss valve expansion
gear. Referring to the general drawing of the engine, it will be seen
that the cylinder is bolted directly to the end of the massive cast iron
frame, and the piston coupled direct to the crank by the steel piston
rod and crosshead and the connecting rod. The connecting rod is 28
feet long center to center, and 12 inches diameter at the middle. The
crankshaft is made of forged Bolton steel, and is 21 inches diameter at
the part where the fly-wheel is carried. The fly driving wheel is 35
feet in diameter, and grooved for twenty-seven ropes, which transmit the
power direct to the various line shafts in the mill. The rope grooves
are made on Hick, Hargreaves & Co.'s standard pattern of deep groove,
and the wheel, which is built up, is constructed on their improved plan
with separate arms and boss, and twelve segments in the rim with joints
planed to the true angle by a special machine designed and made by
themselves. The weight of the fly-wheel is about 60 tons. The condensing
apparatus is arranged below, so that there is complete drainage from the
cylinder to the condenser. The air pump, which is 36 inches diameter and
2 feet 6 inches stroke, is a vertical pump worked by wrought iron
plate levers and two side links, shown by dotted lines, from the main
crosshead. The engine is fenced off by neat railing, and a platform with
access from one side is fitted round the top of the cylinder for getting
conveniently to the valve spindles and lubricators. The above engraving,
which is a side elevation of the cylinder, shows the valve gear
complete. There are two central disk plates worked by separate
eccentrics, which give separate motion to the steam and exhaust valves.
The eccentrics are mounted on a small cross shaft, which is driven by a
line shaft and gear wheels. The piston rod passes out at the back end of
the cylinder and is carried by a shoe slide and guide bar, as shown more
fully in the detailed sectional elevation through the cylinder, showing
also the covers and jackets in section. The cylinder, made in four
pieces, is built up on Mr. W. Inglis's patent arrangement, with separate
liner and steam | 2,384.559564 |
2023-11-16 18:56:48.7476960 | 348 | 8 |
Produced by David Widger
LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE
WRITTEN PURPOSELY TO BIND WITH HIS WRITINGS
By Richard Carlile
SECOND EDITION.
1821.
LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE
The present Memoir is not written as a thing altogether necessary,
or what was much wanted, but because it is usual and fitting in all
collections of the writings of the same Author to accompany them with a
brief account of his life; so that the reader might at the same time be
furnished with a key to the Author's mind, principles, and works, as
the best general preface. On such an occasion it does not become the
Compiler to seek after the adulation of friends, or the slander of
enemies; it is equally unnecessary to please or perplex the reader with
either; for when an author has passed the bar of nature, it behoves us
not to listen to any tales about what he was, or what he did, but to
form our judgments of the utility or non-utility of his life, by the
writings he has left behind him. Our business is with the spirit or
immortal part of the man. If his writings be calculated to render
him immortal, we have nothing to do with the body that is earthly and
corruptible, and which passes away into the common mass of regenerating
matter. Whilst the man is living, we are justified in prying into his
actions to see whether his example corresponds with his precept, but
when dead, his writings must stand or fall by the test of reason and its
influence on public opinion. | 2,384.767736 |
2023-11-16 18:56:49.3342030 | 2,167 | 20 |
Produced by Andrea Ball & Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org
The Rise of the Dutch Kingdom
1795-1813
A SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT
OF THE MODERN KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDS
BY
Hendrik Willem van Loon,
ILLUSTRATED
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1915
[Illustration: WILLIAM I]
DEDICATION
This little book, telling the story of our national usurpation by a
foreign enemy during the beginning of the nineteenth century, appears at
a moment when our nearest neighbours are suffering the same fate which
befell us more than a hundred years ago.
I dedicate my work to the five soldiers of the Belgian army who saved my
life near Waerloos.
I hope that their grandchildren may read a story of national revival
which will be as complete and happy as that of our own land.
Brussels, Belgium,
Christmas night, 1914.
APOLOGIA
And for those other faults of barbarism, Doric dialect, extemporanean
style, tautologies, apish imitation, a rhapsody of rags gathered
together from several dung-hills, excrements of authors, toys and
fopperies confusedly tumbled out, without art, invention, judgment, wit,
learning, harsh, raw, rude, fantastical, absurd, insolent, indiscreet,
ill-composed, indigested, vain, scurrile, idle, dull, and dry, I confess
all ('tis partly affected); thou canst not think worse of me than I do
of myself.
* * * * *
So that as a river runs, sometimes precipitate and swift, then dull and
slow; now direct, then _per ambages_; now deep, then shallow; now muddy,
then clear; now broad, then narrow; doth my style flow: now serious,
then light; now comical, then satirical; now more elaborate, then
remiss, as the present subject required or as at that time I was
affected. And if thou vouchsafe to read this treatise, it shall seem no
otherwise to thee than the way to an ordinary traveller, sometimes fair,
sometimes foul, here champaign, there enclosed; barren in one place,
better soil in another.
--_Anatomy of Melancholy_.--Burton.
FOREWORD
This foreword is an afterthought. It was written when the first proofs
of the book had gone back to the printer. And this is how it took its
origin:
A few days ago I received a copy of a Dutch historical magazine
containing a violent attack upon one of my former books. The reviewer,
who evidently neither had taken the time to read my book nor had taken
the trouble to understand what I was trying to say, accused me among
other things of a haughty contempt for my forefathers during their time
of decline. Haughty contempt, indeed! Nay, Brother of the Acrid Pen, was
it not the truth which hurt thee so unexpectedly rather than my scornful
irony?
There are those who claim that reviews do not matter. There are those
who, when their work is talked about with supercilious ignorance, claim
that an author ought to forget what has been said about his work. Pious
wish! The writer who really cares for his work can no more forget an
undeserved insult to the product of his brain than he can forgive a
harsh word given unmerited to one of his children. The thing rankles.
And in my desire to see a pleasant face, to talk this hurt away, as soon
as I arrived this morning in New York I went to see a friend. He has an
office downtown. It overlooks the harbour. From its window one beholds
the Old World entering the new one by way of the Ellis Island ferryboat.
It was early and I had to wait. Over the water there hung a low, thin
mist. Sea-gulls, very white against the gray sky, were circling about.
And then suddenly, in the distance, there appeared a dark form coming
sliding slowly through the fog. And through a window, opened to get over
the suffocating effect of the steam-heat, there sounded the vibrating
tones of a hoarse steam-whistle--a sound which brought back to me my
earliest years spent among ships and craft of all sorts, and queer
noises of water and wind and steam. And then, after a minute, I
recognized by its green and white funnel that it was one of our own
ships which was coming up the harbour.
And at that instant everything upon which I had been brooding became so
clear to me that I took to the nearest typewriter, and there, in front
of that same open window, I sit and write what I have understood but a
moment ago.
Once, we have been a very great people. We have had a slow decline and
we have had a fall which we caused by our own mistakes and during which
we showed the worst sides of our character. But now all this has
changed. And at the present moment we have a better claim to a place on
the honour-list of nations than the mere fact that once upon a time,
some three centuries ago, our ancestors did valiant deeds.
For, more important, because more difficult of accomplishment, there
stands this one supreme fact: we have come back.
What I shall have to tell you in the following pages, if you are
inclined to regard it as such, will read like a mockery of one's own
people.
But who is there that has studied the events of those years between
1795-1815 who did not feel the utter indignation, the terrible shame, of
so much cowardice, of such hopeless vacillation in the hour of need, of
such indifference to civic duties? Who has ever tried to understand the
events of the year of Restoration who does not know that there was very
little glory connected with an event which the self-contented
contemporary delighted to compare to the great days of the struggle
against Spanish tyranny? And who that has studied the history of the
early nineteenth century does not know how for two whole generations
after the Napoleonic wars our country was no better than a negative
power, tolerated because so inoffensive? And who, when he compares what
was one hundred years ago with what is to-day, can fail to see what a
miracle of human energy here has happened? I have no statistics at hand
to tell you about our shipping, our imports and exports, or to show you
the very favourable place which the next to the smallest among the
nations occupies. Nor can I, without looking it up, write down for your
benefit what we have invented, have written, have painted. Nor is it my
desire to show you in detail how the old neglected inheritance of the
East India Company has been transformed into a colonial empire where not
only the intruding Hollander but where the native, too, has a free
chance to develop and to prosper.
But what I can say and will say with all emphasis is this: Look where
you will, in whatever quarter of the globe you desire, and you will find
Holland again upholding her old traditions for efficiency, energy, and
tenacity of purpose.
Pay a visit to the Hollander at home and you will find that he is trying
to solve with the same ancient industry of research the eternal problems
of nature, while with the utmost spirit of modern times he attempts to
reconstruct the relationship between those who have and those who have
not, until a basis mutually more beneficial shall have been established.
Then you will see how upon all sides there has been a return to a
renewed interest in life and to a desire to do cheerfully those tasks
which the country has been set to do.
And then you will understand how the year 1913, proud of what has been
achieved, though not content that the goal has been reached, can well
afford to tell the truth about the year 1813. For after a century and a
half of decline Holland once more has aspired to be great in everything
in which a small nation can be great.
_New York, N.Y., October 31, 1913._
CONTENTS
APOLOGIA
FOREWORD
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
PROLOGUE
THE LAST DAYS OF THE OLD ORDER
THE REVOLUTION
THE COST OF REVOLUTION
THE PROVISIONAL
THE OPENING CEREMONIES
PIETER PAULUS
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY NO. I AT WORK
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY NO. II AT WORK
GLORY ABROAD
COUP D'ETAT NO. I
THE CONSTITUTIONAL
COUP D'ETAT NO. II
CONSTITUTION NO. II AT WORK
MORE GLORY ABROAD
CONSTITUTION NO. III
THE THIRD CONSTITUTION AT WORK
ECONOMIC CONDITION
SOCIAL LIFE
PEACE
SCHIMMELPENNINCK
KING LOUIS OF HOLLAND
THE DEPARTMENT FORMERLY CALLED HOLLAND
LIBERATION
THE RESTORATION
WILLIAM I
A COMPARISON OF THE FOUR CONSTITUTIONS OF HOLLAND
BIBLIOGRAPHY
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
HALF-TONES
William I _Frontispiece_
The Estates of Holland
Flight of William V
Krayenhoff
Warship entering the Port of Amsterdam
Daendels
French troops entering Amsterdam
Capetown captured by the English
Pieter Paulus
The National Assembly
The speaker of the Assembly welcoming the French minister
Invasion of the British
Dutch troops rushing to the defence of the coast
Armed bark of the year 1801
The executive council of the East India Company
Dutch | 2,385.354243 |
2023-11-16 18:56:49.5343640 | 807 | 6 |
Produced by Jason Isbell, Irma Spehar and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
SEASONING OF WOOD
A TREATISE ON THE NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL
PROCESSES EMPLOYED IN THE PREPARATION
OF LUMBER FOR MANUFACTURE,
WITH DETAILED EXPLANATIONS OF ITS
USES, CHARACTERISTICS AND PROPERTIES
_ILLUSTRATIONS_
BY
JOSEPH B. WAGNER
AUTHOR OF "COOPERAGE"
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
D. VAN NOSTRAND COMPANY
25 PARK PLACE
1917
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY
D. VAN NOSTRAND COMPANY
THE.PLIMPTON.PRESS
NORWOOD.MASS.U.S.A
PREFACE
The seasoning and kiln-drying of wood is such an important process in
the manufacture of woods that a need for fuller information regarding
it, based upon scientific study of the behavior of various species at
different mechanical temperatures, and under different drying
processes is keenly felt. Everyone connected with the woodworking
industry, or its use in manufactured products, is well aware of the
difficulties encountered in properly seasoning or removing the
moisture content without injury to the timber, and of its
susceptibility to atmospheric conditions after it has been thoroughly
seasoned. There is perhaps no material or substance that gives up its
moisture with more resistance than wood does. It vigorously defies the
efforts of human ingenuity to take away from it, without injury or
destruction, that with which nature has so generously supplied it.
In the past but little has been known of this matter further than the
fact that wood contained moisture which had to be removed before the
wood could be made use of for commercial purposes. Within recent
years, however, considerable interest has been awakened among
wood-users in the operation of kiln-drying. The losses occasioned in
air-drying and improper kiln-drying, and the necessity for getting the
material dry as quickly as possible after it has come from the saw, in
order to prepare it for manufacturing purposes, are bringing about a
realization of the importance of a technical knowledge of the subject.
Since this particular subject has never before been represented by any
technical work, and appears to have been neglected, it is hoped that
the trade will appreciate the endeavor in bringing this book before
them, as well as the difficulties encountered in compiling it, as it
is the first of its kind in existence. The author trusts that his
efforts will present some information that may be applied with
advantage, or serve at least as a matter of consideration or
investigation.
In every case the aim has been to give the facts, and wherever a
machine or appliance has been illustrated or commented upon, or the
name of the maker has been mentioned, it has not been with the
intention either of recommending or disparaging his or their work, but
has been made use of merely to illustrate the text.
The preparation of the following pages has been a work of pleasure to
the author. If they prove beneficial and of service to his
fellow-workmen he will have been amply repaid.
THE AUTHOR.
September, 1917
CONTENTS
SECTION I
TIMBER
PAGES
Characteristics and Properties of Same--Structure
of Wood--Properties of Wood--Classes of Trees 1-7
SECTION II
CONIFEROUS TREES
Wood of Coniferous Trees--Bark and Pith--Sapwood and Heartwood--The
Annual or Yearly Ring--Spring- and Summer-Wood--Anatomical
| 2,385.554404 |
2023-11-16 18:56:49.5356870 | 342 | 13 |
Produced by Elizabeth Trapaga, S. R. Ellison, William A.
Pifer-Foote, Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team
[Illustration: "Miss Cary has consented to become my wife."]
THE NATIVE BORN
or
THE RAJAH'S PEOPLE
by
I. A. R. WYLIE
1910
with Illustrations by
JOHN NEWTON HOWITT
PREFACE
In earlier days a preface to a novel with no direct historical source
always seemed to me somewhat out of place, since I believed that the
author could be indebted solely to his own imagination. I have learned,
however, that even in a novel _pur sang_ it is possible to owe much to
others, and I now take the opportunity which the despised preface offers
to pay my debt--inadequately it is true--to Mr. Hughes Massie, whose
enthusiastic help in the launching of this, my first serious literary
effort, I shall always hold in grateful remembrance.
I. A. R. W.
May 9th, 1910
CONTENTS
BOOK I
CHAPTER
I WHICH IS A PROLOGUE
II THE DANCING IS RESUMED
III NEHAL SINGH
IV CIRCE
V ARCHIBALD TRAVERS PLAYS BRIDGE
VI BREAKING THE BARRIER
VII THE SECOND GENERATION
VIII THE IDEAL
IX CHECKED
X AT THE GATES OF | 2,385.555727 |
2023-11-16 18:56:49.5634680 | 2,288 | 10 |
Produced by Alan R. Light, and Gary M. Johnson
THE MAN AGAINST THE SKY
A Book of Poems
by Edwin Arlington Robinson
[Note on text: Italicized words or phrases are capitalized.
Lines longer than 78 characters are broken and the continuation
is indented two spaces. Some obvious errors may have been corrected.]
To
the memory of
WILLIAM EDWARD BUTLER
Several of the poems included in this book are reprinted
from American periodicals, as follows: "The Gift of God",
"Old King Cole", "Another Dark Lady", and "The Unforgiven";
"Flammonde" and "The Poor Relation"; "The Clinging Vine";
"Eros Turannos" and "Bokardo"; "The Voice of Age"; "Cassandra";
"The Burning Book"; "Theophilus"; "Ben Jonson Entertains
a Man from Stratford".
Contents
Flammonde
The Gift of God
The Clinging Vine
Cassandra
John Gorham
Stafford's Cabin
Hillcrest
Old King Cole
Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford
Eros Turannos
Old Trails
The Unforgiven
Theophilus
Veteran Sirens
Siege Perilous
Another Dark Lady
The Voice of Age
The Dark House
The Poor Relation
The Burning Book
Fragment
Lisette and Eileen
Llewellyn and the Tree
Bewick Finzer
Bokardo
The Man against the Sky
THE MAN AGAINST THE SKY
Flammonde
The man Flammonde, from God knows where,
With firm address and foreign air,
With news of nations in his talk
And something royal in his walk,
With glint of iron in his eyes,
But never doubt, nor yet surprise,
Appeared, and stayed, and held his head
As one by kings accredited.
Erect, with his alert repose
About him, and about his clothes,
He pictured all tradition hears
Of what we owe to fifty years.
His cleansing heritage of taste
Paraded neither want nor waste;
And what he needed for his fee
To live, he borrowed graciously.
He never told us what he was,
Or what mischance, or other cause,
Had banished him from better days
To play the Prince of Castaways.
Meanwhile he played surpassing well
A part, for most, unplayable;
In fine, one pauses, half afraid
To say for certain that he played.
For that, one may as well forego
Conviction as to yes or no;
Nor can I say just how intense
Would then have been the difference
To several, who, having striven
In vain to get what he was given,
Would see the stranger taken on
By friends not easy to be won.
Moreover, many a malcontent
He soothed and found munificent;
His courtesy beguiled and foiled
Suspicion that his years were soiled;
His mien distinguished any crowd,
His credit strengthened when he bowed;
And women, young and old, were fond
Of looking at the man Flammonde.
There was a woman in our town
On whom the fashion was to frown;
But while our talk renewed the tinge
Of a long-faded scarlet fringe,
The man Flammonde saw none of that,
And what he saw we wondered at--
That none of us, in her distress,
Could hide or find our littleness.
There was a boy that all agreed
Had shut within him the rare seed
Of learning. We could understand,
But none of us could lift a hand.
The man Flammonde appraised the youth,
And told a few of us the truth;
And thereby, for a little gold,
A flowered future was unrolled.
There were two citizens who fought
For years and years, and over nought;
They made life awkward for their friends,
And shortened their own dividends.
The man Flammonde said what was wrong
Should be made right; nor was it long
Before they were again in line,
And had each other in to dine.
And these I mention are but four
Of many out of many more.
So much for them. But what of him--
So firm in every look and limb?
What small satanic sort of kink
Was in his brain? What broken link
Withheld him from the destinies
That came so near to being his?
What was he, when we came to sift
His meaning, and to note the drift
Of incommunicable ways
That make us ponder while we praise?
Why was it that his charm revealed
Somehow the surface of a shield?
What was it that we never caught?
What was he, and what was he not?
How much it was of him we met
We cannot ever know; nor yet
Shall all he gave us quite atone
For what was his, and his alone;
Nor need we now, since he knew best,
Nourish an ethical unrest:
Rarely at once will nature give
The power to be Flammonde and live.
We cannot know how much we learn
From those who never will return,
Until a flash of unforeseen
Remembrance falls on what has been.
We've each a darkening hill to climb;
And this is why, from time to time
In Tilbury Town, we look beyond
Horizons for the man Flammonde.
The Gift of God
Blessed with a joy that only she
Of all alive shall ever know,
She wears a proud humility
For what it was that willed it so,--
That her degree should be so great
Among the favored of the Lord
That she may scarcely bear the weight
Of her bewildering reward.
As one apart, immune, alone,
Or featured for the shining ones,
And like to none that she has known
Of other women's other sons,--
The firm fruition of her need,
He shines anointed; and he blurs
Her vision, till it seems indeed
A sacrilege to call him hers.
She fears a little for so much
Of what is best, and hardly dares
To think of him as one to touch
With aches, indignities, and cares;
She sees him rather at the goal,
Still shining; and her dream foretells
The proper shining of a soul
Where nothing ordinary dwells.
Perchance a canvass of the town
Would find him far from flags and shouts,
And leave him only the renown
Of many smiles and many doubts;
Perchance the crude and common tongue
Would havoc strangely with his worth;
But she, with innocence unwrung,
Would read his name around the earth.
And others, knowing how this youth
Would shine, if love could make him great,
When caught and tortured for the truth
Would only writhe and hesitate;
While she, arranging for his days
What centuries could not fulfill,
Transmutes him with her faith and praise,
And has him shining where she will.
She crowns him with her gratefulness,
And says again that life is good;
And should the gift of God be less
In him than in her motherhood,
His fame, though vague, will not be small,
As upward through her dream he fares,
Half clouded with a crimson fall
Of roses thrown on marble stairs.
The Clinging Vine
"Be calm? And was I frantic?
You'll have me laughing soon.
I'm calm as this Atlantic,
And quiet as the moon;
I may have spoken faster
Than once, in other days;
For I've no more a master,
And now--'Be calm,' he says.
"Fear not, fear no commotion,--
I'll be as rocks and sand;
The moon and stars and ocean
Will envy my command;
No creature could be stiller
In any kind of place
Than I... No, I'll not kill her;
Her death is in her face.
"Be happy while she has it,
For she'll not have it long;
A year, and then you'll pass it,
Preparing a new song.
And I'm a fool for prating
Of what a year may bring,
When more like her are waiting
For more like you to sing.
"You mock me with denial,
You mean to call me hard?
You see no room for trial
When all my doors are barred?
You say, and you'd say dying,
That I dream what I know;
And sighing, and denying,
You'd hold my hand and go.
"You scowl--and I don't wonder;
I spoke too fast again;
But you'll forgive one blunder,
For you are like most men:
You are,--or so you've told me,
So many mortal times,
That heaven ought not to hold me
Accountable for crimes.
"Be calm? Was I unpleasant?
Then I'll be more discreet,
And grant you, for the present,
The balm of my defeat:
What she, with all her striving,
Could not have brought about,
You've done. Your own contriving
Has put the last light out.
"If she were the whole story,
If worse were not behind,
I'd creep with you to glory,
Believing I was blind;
I'd creep, and go on seeming
To be what I despise.
You laugh, and say I'm dreaming,
And all your laughs are lies.
"Are women mad? A few are,
And if it's true you say--
If most men are as you are--
We'll all be mad some day.
Be calm--and let me finish;
There's more for you to know.
I'll talk while you diminish,
And listen while you grow.
"There was a man who married
Because he couldn't see;
And | 2,385.583508 |
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Julia Kavanagh (1824-1877), _Daisy Burns_ (1853), volume 1, Tauchnitz
edition
Produced by Daniel FROMONT
COLLECTION
OF
BRITISH AUTHORS.
VOL. CCLXIII.
DAISY BURNS BY JULIA KAVANAGH.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
TAUCHNITZ EDITION
By the same Author,
NATHALIE 2 vols.
GRACE LEE 2 vols.
RACHEL GRAY 1 vol.
ADELE 2 vols.
A SUMMER AND WINTER IN THE TWO SICILES 2 vols.
SEVEN YEARS AND OTHER TALES 2 vols.
FRENCH WOMEN OF LETTERS 1 vol.
ENGLISH WOMEN OF LETTERS 1 vol.
QUEEN MAB 2 vols.
BEATRICE 2 vols.
SYBIL'S SECOND LOVE
DORA 2 vols.
SILVIA 2 vols.
BESSIE 2 vols.
JOHN DORRIEN 2 vols.
DAISY BURNS;
A TALE
BY
JULIA KAVANAGH,
AUTHOR OF "NATHALIE."
_COPYRIGHT EDITION_.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LEIPZIG
BERNHARDT TAUCHNITZ
1853.
JULIA KAVANAGH
DAISY BURNS.
CHAPTER I.
As I sat alone this evening beneath the porch, the autumn wind rose and
passed amongst the garden trees, then died away in the distance with a
low murmuring. A strange thrill ran through me; the present with its
aspects vanished; I saw no more the narrow though dearly loved limits
which bound my home; the little garden, so calm and grey in the dewy
twilight, was a wide and heaving sea; the low rustling of the leaves
seemed the sound of the receding tide; the dim horizon became a circular
line of light dividing wastes of waters from the solemn depths of vast
skies, and I, no longer a woman sitting in my home within reach of a
great city, but an idle, dreaming child, lay in the grassy nook at the
end of our garden, whence I watched the ships on their distant path, or
sent a wandering glance along the winding beach of sand and rock below.
A moment effaced years, and my childhood, with its home, its joys, and
its sorrows, passed before me like a thing of yesterday.
Rock Cottage, as my father had called it, rose on a lonely cliff that
looked forth to the sea. It was but a plain abode, with whitewashed
walls, green shutters, and low roof, standing in the centre of a wild and
neglected garden, overlooked by no other dwelling, and apparently far
removed from every habitation. In front, a road, coming down from the low
hills of Ryde, wound away to Leigh; behind, at the foot of a cliff,
stretched the sea. The people of Leigh wondered "how Doctor Burns could
live in a place so bleak and so lonely," and they knew not that to him
its charms lay in that very solitude with its boundless horizon; in the
murmurs of the wind that ever swept around his dwelling; in the aspect of
that sublime sea which daily spread beneath his view, serene or terrible,
but ever beautiful.
This was not however the sole recommendation of Rock Cottage; it stood
conveniently between the two villages of Ryde and Leigh, of which my
father was the only physician. There was indeed a surgeon at Ryde, but he
never passed the threshold of the aristocratic mansions to which Doctor
Burns was frequently summoned, and whence he derived the larger portion
of his income. That income, never very considerable, proved however
sufficient to the few wants of the lonely home where my father, a
widower, lived with me, his only child.
Of my mother I had no remembrance; my father seldom mentioned her name;
but there was a small miniature of her over our parlour mantle-piece, and
often in the evening, sitting by our quiet fireside, he would look long
and earnestly on the mild and somewhat mournful face before him, then
give me a silent ca | 2,385.654201 |
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Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
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Transcriber's Note:
Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without
note. Variant spellings have been retained. Unique sidenotes have
been placed at the beginning of relevant paragraphs and are shown
within {braces}. The oe ligature is represented by [oe].
THE LETTERS
OF HER MOTHER
TO ELIZABETH
[Device]
JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD
LONDON & NEW YORK. _MDCCCCI_
_Copyright, 1901_
BY JOHN LANE
FIFTH EDITION
UNIVERSITY PRESS. JOHN WILSON
AND SON. CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
NOTE
Every one who has read "The Visits of Elizabeth," in which a girl of
seventeen describes her adventures to her mother in a series of
entertaining and clever letters, has instinctively asked the question:
"What sort of woman was Elizabeth's Mother?"
Perhaps an answer that will satisfy all will be found in the following
"Letters of her Mother to Elizabeth."
THE LETTERS OF HER MOTHER TO ELIZABETH
LETTER I
MONK'S FOLLY, 27th July
DEAREST ELIZABETH:
I am glad you reached Nazeby without any mishap. Your letter was quite
refreshing, but, darling, do be more careful of your grammar. Remember,
one never talks grammar now-a-days in Society, it isn't done; it is
considered very Newnham and Girton and patronising, but one should
always know how to write one's language. Because the fashion might
change some day, and it would be so _parvenu_ to have to pick it up.
As I told you before you started on your round of visits, you will have
a capital opportunity of making a good match. You are young, very
pretty, of the bluest blood in the three kingdoms, and have a
fortune--to be sure this latter advantage, while it would be more than
a sufficient _dot_ to catch a twelfth-century French duke, would be
considered by an impecunious British peer quite beneath contempt. Your
trump card, Elizabeth, is your manner, and I count upon that to do more
for you than all the other attributes put together. Nature and my
training have made you a perfect specimen of an _ingenue_, and I beseech
you, darling, do me credit. Please forgive the coarseness of what I have
said, it is only a little plain speaking between us; I shan't refer to
it again; I know I can trust you.
{_These Horrid Smiths_}
From what you write I gather that the Marquis of Valmond is _epris_ with
Mrs. Smith. Horrid woman! the Chevingtons have met her. Mrs. Chevington
was here this morning to enquire after my neuralgia. She said that Mr.
Smith met his wife in Johannesburg five years ago before he "arrived."
He used to wear overalls, and carry a pick on his shoulder, and spent
his days digging in the earth, but he stopped at sunset, as I should
think he well might, and invariably went to the same inn to refresh
himself, where Mrs. Smith's mother cooked his dinner and Mrs. Smith
herself gave him what she called a "corpse-reviver" from behind the bar.
At night, a great many men who dug in the earth with Mr. Smith would
come for "corpse-revivers," and they called Mrs. Smith "Polly," and the
mother "old girl." And one day Mr. Smith found a nugget as big as a
roc's egg when he was digging in the earth, and after that he stopped.
The funny part was that "Polly" always said he would never find
anything, and he had a wager with her that if he did she should marry
him. So that is the story of their courtship and marriage, and they have
millions. Mrs. Chevington vouches for the truth of it all, for Algy
Chevington was out in Johannesburg at the time, and he dug in the same
hole with Mr. Smith and knows all about him and "Polly," only Algy never
found anything, for the flowers in Mrs. Chevington's hat were in the
bonnet she wore all last spring. But let us leave these horrid Smiths; I
am sure they are horrid. I can't understand how Lady Cecilia puts up
with them. Mrs. Chevington says she hears Sir Trevor is one of the
directors in the Yerburg Mine. Algy called him a guinea-pig, and said he
wished he was one.
{_An Eligible Parti_}
Lord Valmond has fifty thousand a year and six places besides the house
in Grosvenor Square. You will hardly meet a more eligible _parti_; I
hear he is very fast; they say he gave Betty Milbanke, the snake-dancer
at the Palace, all the diamonds she wears. If he is anything like his
father was, he must be both good-looking and fascinating. The late
Marquis was the handsomest man save one that I have ever seen, and could
have married any of the Duchess of Rougemont's daughters if he had been
a valet instead of a marquis, and the Duchess was the proudest woman in
England. The girl who gets this Valmond will not only be lucky but
clever; the way to attract him is to snub him; the fools that have
hitherto angled for him have always put cake on their hooks; but, if I
were fishing in the water in which My Lord Valmond disported himself, I
should bait my hook with a common worm. It is something he has never
yet seen.
{_The African Millionaire_}
Tell me more about Mr. Wertz, the African millionaire; is he the man who
is building the Venetian _palazzo_ in Belgrave Square? If so, it was
rumoured last season that he was to be made a baron. They blackballed
him at the Jockey Club in Paris, and even the Empire nobility who live
in _appartements_ in the Champs Elysees refused to know him; that is why
he came to England. He is a gentleman, if he is a Jew; the family belong
to the tribe of Levi. Algy Chevington, who knows everything about
everybody, says his Holbeins are priceless, and that the Pope offered to
make him a Papal Count if he would part with a "Flight into Egypt" known
as the Wertz Raphael. But of course even a knighthood is better than a
Papal Count, and if Mr. Wertz gives his Holbeins to the National Gallery
he is sure to be created something.
You cannot be too careful of the unmarried girls you know; Miss La
Touche is certainly not the sort of person for you to be intimate with.
The Rooses, of course, are quite correct, they will make capital foils
for you; beside Jane Roose is amiable, and has been out so many seasons
that her advice will be useful. Be sure, however, to do the very
opposite to what she tells you.
{_Lady Beatrice Carterville_}
If the weather is fine to-morrow, I am going to drive over in the
afternoon to call on Lady Beatrice Carterville. She has a house-party,
and the people who come to her are sure to be odd and amusing. My
neuralgia has been better these last few days. The things I ordered from
Paquin have come at last; the mauve crepe de chine with the valenciennes
lace flounces is lovely; the hat and parasol are creations, as the
Society papers say. Love to Lady Cecilia and the tips of my fingers to
Sir Trevor.--Your dearest Mamma.
LETTER II
MONK'S FOLLY, 29th July
DARLING ELIZABETH:
{_Lady Beatrice's Tea_}
{_A Live Authoress_}
I felt so well yesterday that I drove over in the afternoon to Lady
Beatrice's to tea. I felt I must show myself as Paquin made me to
someone. It was so warm that tea was served on the terrace; the view of
the Quantocks steaming in the distance over the tops of the oaks in the
park was charming. There were a great many people present, and when I
arrived, Lady Beatrice exclaimed at the courage I showed in coming when
the sun was so hot and the road so dusty. She presided at the tea-table
in white pique and a sailor hat which rested on the bridge of her nose.
She is as fat as Lady Theodosia Doran and plays tennis; the rouge on her
neck had stained her collar, quite a four-inch collar too, and there
were finger marks of rouge on her bodice. She introduces everybody,
which, while it is not the thing, certainly makes one more comfortable
than the fashion at present in vogue. I always like to know the names
of the people I am talking to. Everybody talked about the weather and
the dust, and it was deadly dull till Lady Beatrice said she wanted to
play tennis. She went off to play | 2,385.654354 |
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Produced by Charlene Taylor, Jonathan Ingram and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
[Transcriber's note: Original spelling varieties have not been
standardized. Characters with macrons have been marked in brackets with
an equal sign, as [=e] for a letter e with a macron on top; [th] was
used for the letter thorn, [dh] for eth, and [gh] for yogh. Saxon
characters have been marked in braces, as in {Eafel}. Underscores have
been used to indicate _italic_ fonts (or emphasis in Greek). A list of
volumes and pages in "Notes and Queries" has been added at the end.]
NOTES and QUERIES:
A MEDIUM OF INTER-COMMUNICATION
FOR
LITERARY MEN, ARTISTS, ANTIQUARIES, GENEALOGISTS, ETC.
"When found, make a note of."--CAPTAIN CUTTLE.
VOL. IV.--No. 99 SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20. 1851.
Price Threepence. Stamped Edition, 4_d._
CONTENTS.
Page
NOTES:--
Venerable Bede's Mental Arithmetic 201
Hyphenism, Hyphenic, Hyphenization 203
Gray and Cowley 204
Minor Notes:--[Greek: Hypopiazo]--Meaning of
Whitsunday--Anagrammatic Pun by William Oldys--Ballad of
Chevy Chase: Ovid--Horace Walpole at Eton 205
QUERIES:--
Continental Watchmen and their Songs 206
Minor Queries:--Quotation from Bacon--Carmagnoles--The
Use of Tobacco by the Elizabethan Ladies--Covines--Story
referred to by Jeremy Taylor--Plant in Texas--Discount
--Sacre Cheveux--"Mad as a March Hare"--Payments for
Destruction of Vermin--Fire unknown--Matthew Paris's
Historia Minor--Mother Bunche's Fairy Tales--Monumental
Symbolism--Meaning of "Stickle" and "Dray"--Son of the
Morning--Gild Book 208
REPLIES:--
Pope and Flatman 209
Test of the Strength of a Bow 210
Baskerville the Printer 211
Replies to Minor Queries:--Mazer Wood and Sin-eaters--"A
Posie of other Men's Flowers"--Table Book--Briwingable
--Simnels--A Ship's Berth--Suicides buried in Cross-roads
--A Sword-blade Note--Domesday Book of Scotland--Dole-bank
--The Letter "V"--Cardinal Wolsey--Nervous--Coleridge's
Essays on Beauty--"Nao" or "Naw," a Ship--Unde derivatur
Stonehenge--Nick Nack--Meaning of Carfax--Hand giving the
Benediction--Unlucky for Pregnant Women to take an
Oath--Borough-English--Date of a Charter 211
MISCELLANEOUS:--
Notes on Books, Sales, Catalogues, &c. 215
Books and Odd Volumes wanted 215
Notices to Correspondents 215
Advertisements 216
Notes.
VENERABLE BEDE'S MENTAL ALMANAC.
If our own ancient British sage, the Venerable Bede, could rise up from
the dust of eleven centuries, he might find us, notwithstanding all our
astounding improvements, in a worse position, in one respect at least,
than when he left us; and as the subject would be one in which he was
well versed, it would indubitably attract his attention.
He might then set about teaching us from his own writings a mental
resource, far superior to any similar device practised by ourselves, by
which the day of the week belonging to any day of the month, in any year
of the Christian era, might easily and speedily be found.
And when the few, who would give themselves the trouble of thoroughly
understanding it, came to perceive its easiness of acquirement, its
simplicity in practice, and its firm hold upon the memory, they might
well marvel how so admirable a facility should have been so entirely
forgotten, or by what perversion of judgment it could have been
superseded by the comparatively clumsy and impracticable method of the
Dominical letters.
Let us hear his description of it in his own words:
"QUAE SIT FERIA IN CALENDIS.
"Simile autem huic tradunt argumentum ad inveniendam diem
Calendarum promptissimum.
"Habet ergo regulares Januarius II, Februarius V, Martius V,
Apriles I, Maius III, Junius VI, Julius I, Augustus IIII,
September VII, October II, November V, December VII. Qui videlicet
regulares hoc specialiter indicant, quota sit feria per Calendas,
eo anno quo septem concurrentes adscripti sunt dies: caeteris vero
annis addes concurrentes quotquot in praesenti fuerunt adnotati ad
regulares mensium singulorum, et ita diem calendarum sine errore
semper invenies. Hoc tantum memor esto, ut cum imminente anno
bisextili unus concurrentium intermittendus est dies, eo tamen
numero quem intermissurus es in Januario Februarioque utaris: ac
in calendis primum Martiis per illum qui circulo centinetur solis
computare incipias. Cum ergo diem calendarum, verbi gratia,
Januarium, quaerere vis; dicis Januarius II, adde concurrentes
septimanae dies qui fuerunt anno quo computas, utpote III, fiunt
quinque; quinta feria intrant calendae Januariae. Item anno qui sex
habet concurrentes, sume v regulares mensis Martii, ad | 2,385.658921 |
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Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
book was produced from scanned images of public domain
material from the Google Print project.)
TOM SLADE
ON THE RIVER
BY
PERCY K. FITZHUGH
Author of
"TOM SLADE, BOY SCOUT OF THE MOVING PICTURES,"
"TOM SLADE AT TEMPLE CAMP" ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY
WALTER S. ROGERS
PUBLISHED WITH THE APPROVAL OF
THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA
GROS | 2,385.95428 |
2023-11-16 18:56:49.9729860 | 3,317 | 30 |
Transcribed by Peter Moulding
p e t e r @ m o u l d i n g n a m e. i n f o
Please visit http://www.mouldingname.info
OUR CHURCHES AND CHAPELS
THEIR PARSONS, PRIESTS, & CONGREGATIONS;
BEING A CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ACCOUNT
OF EVERY PLACE OF WORSHIP IN PRESTON.
BY "ATTICUS" (A. HEWITSON).
'T is pleasant through the loopholes of retreat to peep at such a
world.--Cowper.
Reprinted from the Preston Chronicle.
PRINTED AT THE "CHRONICLE" OFFICE, FISHERGATE, PRESTON. 1869.
TO THE READER.
The general satisfaction given by the following sketches when
originally printed in the Preston Chronicle, combined with a desire,
largely expressed, to see them republished, in book form, is the
principal excuse offered for the appearance of this volume. Into the
various descriptions of churches, chapels, priests, parsons,
congregations, &c., which it contains, a lively spirit, which may be
objectionable to the phlegmatic, the sad-faced, and the puritanical,
has been thrown. But the author, who can see no reason why a "man
whose blood is warm within" should "sit like his grandsire cut in
alabaster," on any occasion, has a large respect for cheerfulness,
and has endeavoured to make palatable, by a little genial humour,
what would otherwise have been a heavy enumeration of dry facts.
Those who don't care for the gay will find in these sketches the
grave; those who prefer vivacity to seriousness will meet with what
they want; those who appreciate all will discover each. The solemn
are supplied with facts; the facetious with humour; the analytical
with criticism. The work embodies a general history of each place of
worship in Preston--fuller and more reliable than any yet published;
and for reference it will be found valuable, whilst for general
reading it will be instructive. The author has done his best to be
candid and impartial. If he has failed in the attempt, he can't help
it; if he has succeeded, he is thankful. No writer can suit
everybody; and if an angel had compiled these sketches some men
would have croaked. To the generality of the Church of England,
Catholic, and Dissenting clergymen, &c., in the town, the author
tenders his warmest thanks for the generous manner they have
assisted him, and the kindly way in which they have supplied him
with information essential to the completion of the work.
Preston, Dec. 24th, 1869.
INDEX.
Page
7 Parish Church
13 St. Wilfrid's Catholic Church
18 Cannon-street Independent Chapel
23 Lune-street Wesleyan Methodist Chapel
28 Fishergate Baptist Chapel
34 St. George's Church
39 St. Augustine's Catholic Church
45 Quakers' Meeting House
51 St. Peter's Church
55 New Jerusalem Church
60 Trinity Church
66 Lancaster-road Congregational Chapel
70 Saul-street Primitive Methodist Chapel
75 St. Ignatius's Catholic Church
82 Vauxhall-road Particular Baptist Chapel
88 Christ Church
94 Wesley and Moor Park Methodist Chapels
99 Presbyterian and Free Gospel Chapels
104 St. James's Church
110 The Mormons
116 St. Walburge's Catholic Church
122 Unitarian Chapel
127 All Saints Church
132 United-Methodist Free Church and Pole-street Baptist Chapel
137 Church of the English Martyrs
142 St. Saviour's Church
148 Christian Brethren and Brook-street Primitive Methodists
153 St. Thomas's Church
158 Croft-street Wesleyans & Parker-street United Methodists
164 Grimshaw-street Independent Chapel
169 St. Paul's Church
175 St. Mary's-street and Marsh End Wesleyan Chapels, and
the Tabernacle of the Revivalists
181 St. Mary's and St. Joseph's Catholic Chapels
187 St. Mark's Church
192 Zoar Particular Baptist Chapel
196 St. Luke's Church
201 Emmanuel Church and Bairstow Memorial Chapel
207 St. Mary's Church
OUR CHURCHES AND CHAPELS: THEIR PARSONS, PRIESTS, AND
CONGREGATIONS.
It is important that something should be known about our churches
and chapels; it is more important that we should be acquainted with
their parsons and priests; it is most important that we should have
a correct idea of their congregations, for they show the
consequences of each, and reflect the character and influence of
all. We have a wide field before us. The domain we enter upon is
unexplored. Our streets, with their mid-day bustle and midnight sin;
our public buildings, with their outside elaboration and inside
mysteries; our places of amusement, with their gilded fascinations
and shallow delusions; our clubs, bar parlours, prisons, cellars,
and workhouses, with their amenities, frivolities, and severities,
have all been commented upon; but the most important of our
institutions, the best, the queerest, the solemnest, the oddest--the
churches and chapels of the town--have been left out in the cold
entirely. All our public functionaries have been viewed round,
examined closely, caressed mildly, and sometimes genteely
maltreated; our parochial divinities, who preside over the fate of
the poor; our municipal Gogs and Magogs who exhibit the extreme
points of reticence and garrulity in the council chamber; our brandy
drinkers, chronic carousers, lackered swells, pushing shopkeepers,
otiose policemen, and dim-looking cab-drivers have all been
photographed, framed, and hung up to dry long ago; our workshops and
manufactories, our operatives and artisans, have likewise been duly
pictured and exhibited; the Ribble has had its praises sung in
polite literary strains; the parks have had their beauties depicted
in rhyme and blank verse; nay--but this is hardly necessary--the old
railway station, that walhallah of the gods and paragon of the five
orders of architecture, has had its delightful peculiarities set
forth; all our public places and public bodies have been thrown upon
the canvas, except those of the more serious type--except places of
worship and those belonging them. These have been neglected; nobody
has thought it worth while to give them either a special blessing or
a particular anathema.
There are about 45 churches and chapels and probably 60 parsons and
priests in Preston; but unto this hour they have been treated, so
far as they are individually concerned, with complete silence. We
purpose remedying the defect, supplying the necessary criticism, and
filling up the hiatus. The whole lot must have either something or
nothing in them, must be either useful or useless; parsons must be
either sharp or stupid, sensible or foolish; priests must be either
learned or illiterate, either good, bad, or indifferent; in all,
from the rector in his silken gown to the back street psalm-singer
in his fustian, there must be something worth praising or
condemning. And the churches and chapels, with their congregations,
must likewise present some points of beauty or ugliness, some traits
of grace or godlessness, some features of excellence, dignity,
piety, or sham. There must be either a good deal of gilded
gingerbread or a great let of the genuine article, at our places of
worship. But whether there is or there is not, we have decided to
say something about the church and the chapel, the parson and the
priest, of each district in the town. This is a mere prologue, and
we shall but hint at the general theme "on this occasion."
Churches and chapels are great institutions in the land. Nobody
knows the exact time when the first was thought of; and it has not
yet transpired when the last will be run up. But this is certain, we
are not improving much in the make of them. The Sunday sanctums and
Sabbath conventicles of today may be mere ornate, may be more
flashy, and show more symptoms of polished bedizenment in their
construction; but three-fourths of them sink into dwarflings and
mediocrities when compared with the rare old buildings of the past.
In strength and beauty, in vastness of design and skill of
workmanship, in nobility of outline and richness of detail, the
religious fabrics of these times fall into insignificance beside
their grand old predecessors; and the manner in which they are cut
up into patrician and plebeian quarters, into fashionable coteries
for the perfumed portion of humanity, and into half-starved benches
with the brand of poverty upon them for the poor, is nothing to the
credit of anybody.
All the churches and chapels of the land may profess Christianity;
but the game of the bulk has a powerful reference to money. Those
who have got the most of the current coin of the realm receive the
blandest smile from the parson, the politest nod from the beadle,
the promptest attention from that strange mixture of piety and pay
called "the chapel-keeper;" those who have not got it must take what
they can get, and accept it with Christian resignation, as St. Paul
tells them. This may be all right; we have not said yet that it is
wrong; but it looks suspicious, doesn't it?--shows that in the arena
of conventional Christianity, as in the seething maelstrom of
ordinary life, money is the winner. Our parsons and priests, like
our ecclesiastical architecture and general church management, do
not seem to have improved upon their ancestors. Priests are not as
jolly as they once were. In olden days "holy fathers" could wear
horse-hair shirts and scarify their epidermis with a finer cruelty
than their modern successors, and they could, after all that, make
the blithest songs, sing the merriest melodies, and quaff the oldest
port with an air of jocund conscientiousness, making one slyly like
them, however much inclined to dispute the correctness of their
theology. And the parsons of the past were also a blithesome set of
individuals. They were perhaps rougher than those mild and refined
gentlemen who preach now-a-days; but they were straightforward,
thorough, absolutely English, well educated, and stronger in the
brain than many of them. In each Episcopalian, Catholic, and
Dissenting community there are new some most erudite, most useful
men; but if we take the great multitude of them, and compare their
circumstances--their facilities for education, the varied channels
of usefulness they have--with those of their predecessors, it will
be found that the latter were the cleverer, often the wiser, and
always the merrier men. Plainness, erudition, blithesomeness, were
their characteristics. Aye, look at our modern men given up largely
to threnody-chiming and to polishing off tea and muffin with elderly
females, and compare them, say, for instance, with--
The poet Praed's immortal Vicar,
Who wisely wore the cleric gown,
Sound in theology and liquor;
Quite human, though a true divine,
His fellow-men he would not libel;
He gave his friends good honest wine,
And drew his doctrine from the Bible.
Institute a comparison, and then you will say that whilst modern men
may be very aesthetic and neatly dressed, the ancient apostolic
successors, though less refined, had much more metal in them, were
more kindly, genial; and told their followers to live well, to eat
well, and to mind none of the hair-splitting neological folly which
is now cracking up Christendom. In old times the Lord did not "call"
so many parsons from one church to another as it is said He does
now; in the days which have passed the bulk of subordinate parsons
did not feel a sort of conscientious hankering every three years for
an "enlarged sphere of usefulness," where the salary was
proportionately increased. We have known multitudes of parsons, in
our time, who have been "called" to places where their salaries were
increased; we know of but few who have gravitated to a church where
the salary was less than the one left. "Business" enters largely
into the conceptions of clergymen. As a rule, no teachers of
religion, except Catholic priests and Methodist ministers, leave one
place for another where less of this world's goods and chattels
predominate; and THEY are COMPELLED to do so, else the result might
be different. When a priest gets his mittimus he has to budge; it is
not a question of "he said or she said," but of--go; and when a
Wesleyan is triennially told to either look after the interests of a
fresh circuit or retire into space, he has to do so. It would be
wrong to say that lucre is at the bottom of every parsonic change;
but it is at the foundation of the great majority--eh? If it isn't,
just make an inquiry, as we have done. This may sound like a
deviation from our text--perhaps it is; but the question it refers
to is so closely associated with the subject of parsons and priests,
that we should have scarcely been doing justice to the matter if we
had not had a quiet "fling" at the money part of it. In the letters
which will follow this, we shall deal disinterestedly with all--
shall give Churchmen, Catholics, Quakers, Independents, Baptists,
Wesleyans, Ranters, and Calathumpians, fair play. Our object will be
to present a picture of things as they are, and to avoid all
meddling with creeds. People may believe what they like, so far as
we are concerned, if they behave themselves, and pay their debts. It
is utterly impossible to get all to be of the same opinion; creeds,
like faces, must differ, have differed, always will differ; and the
best plan is to let people have their own way so long as it is
consistent with the general welfare of social and civil life. It
being understood that "the milk of human kindness is within the PALE
of the Church," we shall begin there. The Parish Church of Preston
will constitute our first theme.
No. I.
PRESTON PARISH CHURCH.
It doesn't particularly matter when the building we call our Parish
Church was first erected; and, if it did, the world would have to
die of literary inanition before it got the | 2,385.993026 |
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Produced by Bill Tozier, Barbara Tozier and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Note: This version preserves the irregular chapter numbering scheme of
the original printing; ignoring the first and last chapters, the rest
are numbered I-II, IV, XI, XV-XXIII, XXVI-XXVII, XXIX-XXXV. Also, many
variant and alternative spellings have been preserved, except where
obviously misspelled in the original.
LIFE GLEANINGS
Compiled by
T. J. MACON
RICHMOND, VA.
1913
W. H. ADAMS, Publisher
Richmond, Virginia
PREFACE
My Life's Gleanings is not intended to be a technical history
chronologically arranged, but a reproduction of events that my memory
recalls. By retrospecting to occurrences that happened during my
journey of life. To those who were contemporaneous with the gleanings
alluded to they will recognize them. To the younger reader he will
glean what happened in the past. The incident and anecdote is founded
on facts. I launch the book on the highway of public approval, hoping
the reader will not be disappointed. THE AUTHOR.
MY LIFE'S GLEANINGS
COMPILED BY T. J. MACON
CHAPTER I.
The author of these pages first saw the light of day at the family
home of his father, Mr. Miles Gary Macon, called "Fairfield," situated
on the banks of that historic river, the "Chicahominy," in the good
old County of Hanover, in Virginia. My grandfather, Colonel William
Hartwell Macon, started each of his sons on the voyage of life with a
farm, and the above was allotted to my respected parent. Belonging to
the place, about one or two miles from the dwelling, was a grist mill
known as "Mekenses," and how the name of "Macon" could have been
corrupted to "Mekenses," is truly unaccountable, yet such is the case.
The City of Richmond was distant about eight miles to the South. This
old homestead passed out of the Macon family possession about seventy
years ago, and a Mr. Overton succeeded my father in the ownership of
"Fairfield" and the mill. Later a Doctor Gaines purchased it. My
highly respected parents were the fortunate possessors of a large and
flourishing family of ten children, all of whom were born at
"Fairfield."
The Macon manor house was situated just on the edge of the famous
trucking section of Hanover County, which agricultural characteristic
gave its soil an extensive reputation for the production of the
celebrated and highly-prized melons and sweet potatoes of Hanover,
known to Eastern Virginia for their toothsomeness and great size. This
fine old plantation was surrounded by country estates belonging to
Virginia families, who were very sociable, cultured and agreeable
people. My father and mother were thoroughly imbued with the spirit of
that old-time genial country hospitality, which was never found
anywhere in this country more cordial, nor probably even equal, to it.
It afforded them infinite pleasure to visit and to receive the calls
of their neighbors. It was then the invariable custom, when guests
were entertained, for the host to set out refreshments, always the
best the larder afforded, and to insist upon a liberal partaking of
it, for a refusal of the good cheer was indeed a rare thing, and it
was not considered polite to decline joining in wishing good health
and prosperity to your friends and neighbors, always of course in
moderate bumpers, not in excess, and then the viands bountifully
spread out were truly tempting, real old Virginia style of cooking,
such as beaten biscuits that would almost melt in one's mouth, and
other dishes almost too numerous to mention, and then such a hearty
welcome accompanied the feast and "flow of soul," and when the parting
came there was always an appealing invitation for a "speedy coming
again"--a wish for another visit.
Now there was no sham-pretence in these old Virginia manners, but
genuine heartfelt hospitality, which sprang from kind hearts. A
striking habit or custom at that happy period in the "Old Dominion"
life in the country was the intrusting of the white children of the
family to the care of a good old nurse, or "Mammy," as they
were affectionately called by them; their mothers turned the children
over to their watchful supervision and they were truly faithful and
proud of their control of the little young masters and mistresses,
thus relieving their "old mistress" of all care in rearing them. Well
do I remember my "old Mammy," whose kindness and affectionate
treatment, not only won my heart, but my prompt obedience to her
commands and my cheerful recognition of the authority delegated her by
my fond mother. I was the youngest of the family, and as time was
welding each link in the chain of my life, it was passing like, as in
all families at that period, situated as my parents were, smoothly and
unruffled by excitement or troubles abroad. My mother owned a number
of slaves, or servants, as Virginians generally termed them, whom she
treated with kindness, and when sick she nursed them with the skill
and tender consideration accorded members of her own family, and in
return they looked up to, and respected, her; indeed revered "Old
Missus," as they often called her.
CHAPTER II.
At the time I am writing about, the life of the Virginia farmer was
one to be much desired, for he was a baron in his realm, was lord of
all he surveyed, and yielded no obeisance to any one, but to his Maker
and his country. The dark shadows of coming dire events had not then
cast their war-like omens ahead. The question of the Missouri
Compromise, the admission of Kansas into the sisterhood of the States
under the Lecompton Convention, the decision in the Dred Scott case,
the political issues and measures which were the precursors of the
great war between the States had not yet reached Congress. Everything
that could render life pleasant was vouchsafed the country gentleman
and planter, and his family about three-quarters of a century ago.
What was to happen in the near future no one at this early period
could Cassandra-like predict, and yet there was in the political
horizon a small pillar of portentous appearance, which was destined to
cover the whole heavens with gloom and bring death to thousands of
peaceful citizens in this country, through the clash of arms and
fratricidal strife in which brothers were arrayed against brothers,
and fathers against sons.
My father was an old line Whig and believed in the theory of
government advocated by Alexander Hamilton, yet he recognized the
autonomy of the States and approved some of the tenets of Mr. Thomas
Jefferson, but did not agree with him generally, being in favor of a
strong central government at Washington, though disagreeing with the
extremists of both sections.
Being a close student of the political history of our country he
subscribed to, and carefully read every page of, the National
Intelligencer, owned and published by the Seaton brothers, which was
the best exponent of the legislation of the time that has ever been
issued; the editorials were clear and forcible and the reports of the
debates in Congress were correct and complete. The political disputes
on the floor of Congress began to be warm, and indeed acrimonious
between the Northern and Southern members, which brought out the great
efforts for peace of Henry Clay, of Kentucky, and prevented at that
time a clash of arms between the sections. The admission of Kansas
into the Union under the Lecompton Convention was but a link in the
chain of events leading to the great Civil War. Well do I recall my
respected parent's remark that the trend of the speeches by the
Free-Soil, or Abolition, party in the North and those of the
Secessionists of the South, would certainly bring about a disruption
of the United States if persisted in; and alas! his children lived to
see his remark verified in the year 1861.
Our family moved from old Fairfield to Magnolia farm, only about two
miles north of Richmond, which place was then owned by the Nortons,
and it was a quiet, pleasant home "far away from the madding crowd" in
a sociable and agreeable neighborhood; it is at the present time owned
by the "Hartshorne" Female Institute and now is included
within the corporate limits of the city of Richmond, Va. How rapidly
the wheel of time brings changes in our surroundings. My father's
children are advancing in years, the older ones are sent off to
boarding schools, my oldest brother had just returned from
Philadelphia, where he had attended the Jefferson Medical College as
an office student of Dr. Thomas C. Mutter, the president of the
college, who was first cousin of my mother--her maiden name was
Frances Mutter.
From Magnolia we moved to "Rose Cottage," owned by a Mr. Richardson,
the object in this move being to be near "Washington and Henry"
Academy, a boarding and day school carried on by a Mr. and Mrs.
Dunton; she was in charge of the small boys and the girls, while her
husband taught the large boys. I was in Mrs. Dunton's department,
being but a small chap, and as to whether I learned anything at this
time it is a matter of considerable doubt. My mother furnished six
pupils to this institution. The principals would come over to "Rose
Cottage" two or three times per month, bringing their boarders with
them, which visits they appeared to enjoy greatly as a good supper,
with a large and shady yard to play in, was certainly well calculated
to afford mirth and pleasure to both old and young. A Mr. Osborne, a
Presbyterian minister, boarded at the academy, being a unique
character and one of the best men to be found anywhere; he formed the
plan of teaching the scholars, young and old, the catechism of the
Presbyterian Church, and all those who committed it to memory received
a nice book as a prize. The climax of the scheme was an offer of a
grand prize to any scholar that would repeat the whole of it without a
hitch or halt. The children were thoroughly inoculated with
Presbyterianism. The final trial of reciting, or memorizing, the
catechism came off at the residence of Mr. Thomas Gardner. The contest
was one long to be remembered, a Miss Fannie Shelton scoring the first
honor, and Miss Newell Gardner the second. The supper provided for
this happy occasion was a first class one in every respect. The best
that a well-stocked farm house could produce, both in substantials and
nicknacks, such for instance, as broiled chicken, roast lamb and
barbecued pig, with dessert of ice cream, yellow cake and pies in
abundance; it was in short one of the finest "lay-outs" that I ever
saw, and being an appreciative youngster I did ample justice to it
indeed, and fairly revelled in the many good eatables so generously
spread before us, and to this day I remember it with pleasure. "Rose
Cottage" was truly a delightful home. The never-failing wheel of time
was turning fast, and the water of life that once passed over it will
never again turn it. We were all growing fast as we advanced in years.
At this time my father bought a place on Nine Mile Road, about two and
a half miles from the city, it was named "Auburn," and to it we moved
bag and baggage.
Just as with "Fairfield" and "Magnolia," we found hospitable
neighbors, and genial intercourse was conspicuous. Among them were
Colonel Sherwin McRae and family, a Mrs. Gibson, Mr. Tinsley Johnson,
Mr. Galt Johnson, and many other well known families, nearly all of
whom have now moved away or have passed to the other side of the
river. Mr. William Galt Johnson lived about a quarter of a mile from
us, and there was a considerable intercourse between the two families.
"Galt," as he was called, was a character of renown and possessed of
much personality; one of his traits was never to give a word its
correct pronunciation and yet he thought he was right always. I was
visiting there one evening, and as supper was placed on the table the
bell rang; Galt arose from his seat and in a clear voice said "the
bell has pronounced supper ready, let's go." His wife, who was a
cultivated lady, attempted to correct him by saying "announce,
William," but she could never get him to change his mode of speech.
Another of his peculiarities was his lack of fondness of church-going.
Mrs. Johnson, his wife, was a regular attendant to the church and
naturally desired her husband to accompany her, a most reasonable
wish, but Galt made several excuses for not complying, and finally he
urged as a last resort that he could not sit in a pew unless he could
whittle a stick, and could not collect his thoughts sufficiently to
listen to the sermon; so she told him that should not be a good
excuse, and that he could take a stick along and trim it as much as he
chose, and he consented to go with her, but did not receive much
benefit from the sermon.
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Produced by David Widger
THE SEVEN GREAT MONARCHIES
OF THE
ANCIENT EASTERN WORLD;
OR,
THE HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY, AND ANTIQUITIES OF CHALDAEA, ASSYRIA
BABYLON, MEDIA, PERSIA, PARTHIA, AND SASSANIAN,
OR NEW PERSIAN EMPIRE.
BY
GEORGE RAWLINSON, M.A.,
CAMDEN PROFESSOR OF ANCIENT HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOLUME II.
WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
THE FOURTH MONARCHY
BABYLONIA.
[Illustration: MAP]
CHAPTER I. EXTENT OF THE EMPIRE.
"Behold, a tree in the midst of the earth, and the height thereof was
great; the tree grew and was strong: and the height thereof reached unto
heaven, and the sight thereof to the end of all the earth."--Dan. iy.
10, 11.
The limits of Babylonia Proper, the tract in which the dominant power
of the Fourth Monarchy had its abode, being almost identical with those
which have been already described under the head of Chaldaea, will not
require in this place to be treated afresh, at any length. It needs
only to remind the reader that Babylonia Proper is that alluvial tract
towards the mouth of the two great rivers of Western Asia--the Tigris
and the Euphrates--which intervenes between the Arabian Desert on the
one side, and the more eastern of the two streams on the other. Across
the Tigris the country is no longer Babylonia, but Cissia, or Susiana--a
distinct region, known to the Jews as Elam--the habitat of a distinct
people. Babylonia lies westward of the Tigris, and consists of two vast
plains or flats, one situated between the two rivers, and thus forming
the lower portion of the "Mesopotamia" of the Greeks and Romans--the
other interposed between the Euphrates and Arabia, a long but narrow
strip along the right bank of that abounding river. The former of these
two districts is shaped like an ancient amphora, the mouth extending
from Hit to Samarah, the neck lying between Baghdad and Ctesiphon on the
Tigris, Mohammed and Mosaib on the Euphrates, the full expansion of
the body occurring between Serut and El Khithr, and the pointed base
reaching down to Kornah at the junction of the two streams. This tract,
the main region of the ancient Babylonia, is about 320 miles long, and
from 20 to 100 broad. It may be estimated to contain about 18,000 square
miles. The tract west of the Euphrates is smaller than this. Its length,
in the time of the Babylonian Empire, may be regarded as about 350
miles, its average width is from 25 to 30 miles, which would give an
area of about 9000 square miles. Thus the Babylonia of Nabopolassar
and Nebuchadnezzar may be regarded as covering a space of 27,000 square
miles--a space a little exceeding the area of the Low countries.
The small province included within these limits--smaller than Scotland
or Ireland, or Portugal or Bavaria--became suddenly, in the latter half
of the seventh century B.C., the mistress of an extensive empire. On the
fall of Assyria, about B.C. 625, or a little later, Media and Babylonia,
as already observed, divided between them her extensive territory. It
is with the acquisitions thus made that we have now to deal. We have to
inquire what portion exactly of the previous dominions of Assyria fell
to the lot of the adventurous Nabopolassar, when Nineveh ceased to
be--what was the extent of the territory which was ruled from Babylon in
the latter portion of the seventh and the earlier portion of the sixth
century before our era?
Now the evidence which we possess on this point is threefold. It
consists of certain notices in the Hebrew Scriptures, contemporary
records of first-rate historical value; of an account which strangely
mingles truth with fable in one of the books of the Apocrypha; and of a
passage of Berosus preserved by Josephus in his work against Apion.
The Scriptural notices are contained in Jeremiah, in Daniel, and in
the books of Kings and Chronicles. From these sources we learn that the
Babylonian Empire of this time embraced on the one hand the important
country of Susiana or Elymais (Elam), while on the other it ran up the
Euphrates at least as high as Carchemish, from thence extending westward
to the Mediterranean, and southward to, or rather perhaps into, Egypt.
The Apocryphal book of Judith enlarges these limits in every direction.
That the Nabuchodonosor of that work is a reminiscence of the real
Nebuchadnezzar there can be no doubt. The territories of that monarch
are made to extend eastward, beyond Susiana, into Persia; northward to
Nineveh; westward to Cilicia in Asia Minor; and southward to the very
borders of Ethiopia. Among the countries under his sway are enumerated
Elam, Persia, Assyria, Cilicia, Coele-Syria, Syria of Damascus,
Phoenicia, Galilee, Gilead, Bashan, Judsea, Philistia, Goshen, and Egypt
generally. The passage of Berosus is of a more partial character. It
has no bearing on the general question of the extent of the Babylonian
Empire, but, incidentally, it confirms the statements of our other
authorities as to the influence of Babylon in the West. It tells us that
Coele-Syria, Phoenicia, and Egypt, were subject to Nabopolassar, and
that Nebuchadnezzar ruled, not only over these countries, but also over
some portion of Arabia.
From these statements, which, on the whole, are tolerably accordant, we
may gather that the great Babylonian Empire of the seventh century
B.C. inherited from Assyria all the southern and western portion of her
territory, while the more northern and eastern provinces fell to the
share of Media. Setting aside the statement of the book of Judith
(wholly unconfirmed as it is by any other authority), that Persia was at
this time subject to Babylon, we may regard as the most eastern portion
of the Empire the district of Susiana, which corresponded nearly with
the modern Khuzistan and Luristan. This acquisition advanced the eastern
frontier of the Empire from the Tigris to the Bakhtiyari Mountains, a
distance of 100 or 120 miles. It gave to Babylon an extensive tract
of very productive territory, and an excellent strategic boundary.
Khuzistan is one of the most valuable provinces of modern Persia. It
consists of a broad tract of fertile alluvium, intervening between the
Tigris and the mountains, well watered by numerous large streams, which
are capable of giving an abundant irrigation to the whole of the low
region. Above this is Luristan, a still more pleasant district, composed
of alternate mountain, valley, and upland plain, abounding in beautiful
glens, richly wooded, and full of gushing brooks and clear rapid rivers.
Much of this region is of course uncultivable mountain, range succeeding
range, in six or eight parallel lines, as the traveller advances to the
north-east; and most of the ranges exhibiting vast tracts of bare
and often precipitous rock, in the clefts of which snow rests till
midsummer. Still the lower flanks of the mountains are in general
cultivable, while the valleys teem with orchards and gardens, and the
plains furnish excellent pasture. The region closely resembles Zagros,
of which it is a continuation. As we follow it, however, towards the
south-east into the Bakhtiyari country, where it adjoins upon the
ancient Persia, it deteriorates in character; the mountains becoming
barer and more arid, and the valleys narrower and less fertile.
All the other acquisitions of Babylonia at this period lay towards the
west. They consisted of the Euphrates valley, above Hit; of Mesopotamia
Proper, or the country about the two streams of the Bilik and the
Khabour; of Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine, Idumasa, Northern Arabia, and
part of Egypt. The Euphrates valley from Hit to Balis is a tract of no
great value, except as a line of communication. The Mesopotamian Desert
presses it closely upon the one side, and the Arabian upon the other.
The river flows mostly in a deep bed between cliffs of marl, gypsum, and
limestone, or else between bare hills producing only a few dry sapless
shrubs and a coarse grass; and there are but rare places where, except
by great efforts, the water can be raised so as to irrigate, to any
extent, the land along either bank. The course of the stream is fringed
by date-palms as high as Anah, and above is dotted occasionally with
willows, poplars, sumacs, and the unfruitful palm-tree. Cultivation
is possible in places along both banks, and the undulating country on
either side affords patches of good pasture. The land improves as we
ascend. Above the junction of the Khabour with the main stream, the left
bank is mostly cultivable. Much of the land is flat and well-wooded,
while often there are broad stretches of open ground, well adapted for
pasturage. A considerable population seems in ancient times to have
peopled the valley, which did not depend wholly or even mainly on its
own products, but was enriched by the important traffic which was always
passing up and down the great river.
Mesopotamia Proper, or the tract extending from the head streams of the
Khabour about Mardin and Nisibin to the Euphrates at Bir, and thence
southwards to Karkesiyeh or Circesium, is not certainly known to have
belonged to the kingdom of Babylon, but may be assigned to it on grounds
of probability. Divided by a desert or by high mountains from the valley
of the Tigris, and attached by means of its streams to that of the
Euphrates, it almost necessarily falls to that power which holds the
Euphrates under its dominion. The tract is one of considerable extent
and importance. Bounded on the north by the range of hills which Strabo
calls Mons Masius, and on the east by the waterless upland which lies
directly west of the middle Tigris, it comprises within it all the
numerous affluents of the Khabour and Bilik, and is thus better supplied
with water than almost any country in these regions. The borders of the
streams afford the richest pasture, and the whole tract along the flank
of Masius is fairly fertile. Towards the west, the tract between the
Khabour and the Bilik, which is diversified by the Abd-el-Aziz hills,
is a land of fountains. "Such," says Ibn Haukal, "are not to be found
elsewhere in all the land of the Moslems, for there are more than three
hundred pure running brooks." Irrigation is quite possible in this
region; and many remains of ancient watercourses show that large tracts,
at some distance from the main streams, were formerly brought under
cultivation.
Opposite to Mesopotamia Proper, on the west or right bank of the
Euphrates, lay Northern Syria, with its important fortress of
Carchemish, which was undoubtedly included in the Empire. This tract is
not one of much value. Towards the north it is mountainous, consisting
of spurs from Amanus and Taurus, which gradually subside into the desert
a little to the south of Aleppo. The bare, round-backed, chalky or rocky
ranges, which here continually succeed one another, are divided only by
narrow tortuous valleys, which run chiefly towards the Euphrates or
the lake of Antioch. This mountain tract is succeeded by a region of
extensive plains, separated from each other by low hills, both equally
desolate. The soil is shallow and stony; the streams are few and of
little volume; irrigation is thus difficult, and, except where it can be
applied, the crops are scanty. The pistachio-nut grows wild in places;
Vines and olives are cultivated with some success; and some grain is
raised by the inhabitants; but the country has few natural advantages,
and it has always depended more upon its possession of a carrying trade
than on its home products for prosperity.
West and south-west of this region, between it and the Mediterranean,
and extending southwards from Mount Amanus to the latitude of Tyre, lies
Syria Proper, the Coele-Syria of many writers, a long but comparatively
narrow tract of great fertility and value. Here two parallel ranges of
mountains intervene between the coast and the desert, prolific parents
of a numerous progeny of small streams. First, along the line of the
coast, is the range known as Libanusin the south, from lat. 33 deg. 20' to
lat. 34 deg. 40', and as Bargylus in the north, from lat. 34 deg. 45' to the
Orontes at Antioch, a range of great beauty, richly wooded in places,
and abounding in deep glens, foaming brooks, and precipices of a
fantastic form. [PLATE VII., Fig 2.] More inland is Antilibanus,
culminating towards the south in Hermon, and prolonged northward in the
Jebel Shashabu, Jebel Biha, and Jebel-el-Ala, which extends from near
Hems to the latitude of Aleppo. More striking than even Lebanon at its
lower extremity, where Hermon lifts a snowy peak into the air during
most of the year, it is on the whole inferior in beauty to the coast
range, being bleaker, more stony, and less broken up by dells and
valleys towards the south, and tamer, barer, and less well supplied with
streams in its more northern portion. Between the two parallel ranges
lies the "Hollow Syria," a long and broadish valley, watered by the
two streams of the Orontes and the "Litany" which, rising at no great
distance from one another, flow in opposite directions, one hurrying
northwards nearly to the flanks of Amanus, the other southwards to the
hills of Galilee. Few places in the world are more, remarkable, or have
a more stirring history, than this wonderful vale. Extending for above
two hundred miles from north to south, almost in a direct line, and
without further break than an occasional screen of low hills, it
furnishes the most convenient line of passage between Asia and Africa,
alike for the journeys of merchants and for the march of armies. Along
this line passed Thothines and Barneses, Sargon, and Sennacherib,
Neco and Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander and his warlike successors, Pompey,
Antony, Kaled, Godfrey of Bouillon; along this must pass every great
army which, starting from the general seats of power in Western Asia,
seeks conquests in Africa, or which, proceeding from Africa, aims at the
acquisition of an Asiatic dominion. Few richer tracts are to be found
even in these most favored portions of the earth's surface. Towards the
south the famous El-Bukaa is a land of cornfields and vineyards, watered
by numerous small streams which fall into the Litany. Towards the
north El-Ghab is even more splendidly fertile, with a dark rich soil,
luxuriant vegetation, and water in the utmost abundance, though at
present it is cultivated only in patches immediately about the towns,
from fear of the Nusairiyeh and the Bedouins.
[Illustration: PLATE VII.]
Parallel with the southern part of the Coele-Syrian valley, to the west
and to the east, were two small but important tracts, usually regarded
as distinct states. Westward, between the heights of Lebanon and the
sea, and extending somewhat beyond Lebanon, both up and down the coast,
was Phoenicia, a narrow strip of territory lying along the shore, in
length from 150 to 180 miles, and in breadth varying from one mile to
twenty. This tract consisted of a mere belt of sandy land along the sea,
where the smiling palm-groves grew from which the country derived its
name, of a broader upland region along the flank of the hills, which
was cultivated in grain, and of the higher <DW72>s of the mountains
which furnished excellent timber. Small harbors, sheltered by rocky
projections, were frequent along the coast. Wood cut in Lebanon was
readily floated down the many streams to the shore, and then conveyed
by sea to the ports. A narrow and scanty land made commerce almost a
necessity. Here accordingly the first great maritime nation of antiquity
grew up. The Phoenician fleets explored the Mediterranean at a time
anterior to Homer, and conveyed to the Greeks and the other inhabitants
of Europe, and of Northern and Western Africa, the wares of Assyria,
Babylon, and Egypt. Industry and enterprise reaped their usual harvest
of success; the Phoenicians grew in wealth, and their towns became great
and magnificent cities. In the time when the Babylonian Empire came
into being, the narrow tract of Phoenicia--smaller than many an
English county--was among the most valuable countries of Asia; and its
possession was far more to be coveted than that of many a land whose
area was ten or twenty times as great.
Eastward of Antilibanus, in the tract between that range and the great
Syrian desert, was another very important district--the district which
the Jews called "Aram-Dammesek," and which now forms the chief part of
the Pashalik of Damascus. From the eastern flanks of the Antilibanus two
great and numerous smaller streams flow down into the Damascene plain,
and, carrying with them that strange fertilizing power which water
always has in hot climates, convert the arid sterility of the desert
into a garden of the most wonderful beauty. The Barada and Awaaj,
bursting by narrow gorges from the mountain chain, scatter themselves in
numerous channels over the great flat, intermingling their waters, and
spreading them out so widely that for a circle of thirty miles the
deep verdure of Oriental vegetation replaces the red hue of the Hauran.
Walnuts, planes, poplars, cypresses, apricots, orange-trees, citrons,
pomegranates, olives, wave above; corn and grass of the most luxuriant
growth, below. In the midst of this great mass of foliage the city of
Damascus "strikes out the white arms of its streets hither and thither"
among the trees, now hid among them, now overtopping them with its domes
and minarets, the most beautiful of all those beautiful towns which
delight the eye of the artist in the East. In the south-west towers
the snow-clad peak of Hermon, visible from every part of the Damascene
plain. West, north-west, and north, stretches the long Antilibanus
range, bare, gray, and flat-topped, except where about midway in its
course, the rounded summit of Jebel Tiniyen breaks the uniformity of the
line. Outside the circle of deep verdure, known to the Orientals as El
Merj ("the Meadow"), is a setting or framework of partially cultivable
land, dotted with clumps of trees and groves, which extend for many
miles over the plain. To the Damascus country must also be reckoned
those many charming valleys of Hermon and Antilibanus which open out
into it, sending their waters to increase its beauty and luxuriance,
the most remarkable of which are the long ravine of the Barada, and the
romantic Wady Halbon, whose vines produced the famous beverage which
Damascus anciently supplied at once to the Tyrian merchant-princes and
to the voluptuous Persian kings.
Below the Coelo-Syrian valley, towards the south, came Palestine, the
Land of Lands to the Christian, the country which even the philosopher
must acknowledge to have had a greater influence on the world's
history than any other tract which can be brought under a single
ethnic designation. Palestine--etymologically the country of the
Philistines--was somewhat unfortunately named. Philistine influence may
possibly have extended at a very remote period over the whole of it; but
in historical times that warlike people did but possess a corner of
the tract, less than one tenth of the whole--the low coast region
from Jamnia to Gaza. Palestine contained, besides this, the regions of
Galilee, Samaria, and Judaea, to the west of the Jordan, and those of
Ituraea, Trachonitis, Bashan, and Gilead, east of that river. It was a
tract 140 miles long, by from 70 to 100 broad, containing probably about
11,000 square miles. It was thus about equal in size to Belgium, while
it was less than Holland or Hanover, and not much larger than the
principality of Wales, with which it has been compared by a recent
writer.
The great natural division of the country is the Jordan valley. This
remarkable depression, commencing on the west flank of Hermon, runs with
a course which is almost due south from lat. 33 deg. 25' to lat. 31 deg. 47',
where it is merged in the Dead Sea, which may be viewed, however, as a
continuation of the valley, prolonging it to lat. 31 deg. 8'. This valley is
quite unlike any other in the whole world. It is a volcanic rent in
the earth's surface, a broad chasm which has gaped and never closed
up. Naturally, it should terminate at Merom, where the level of the
Mediterranean is nearly reached. By some wonderful convulsion, or at any
rate by some unusual freak of Nature, there is a channel opened out from
Merom, which rapidly sinks below the sea level, and allows the stream to
flow hastily, down and still down, from Merom to Gennesareth, and from
Gennesareth to the Dead Sea, where the depression reaches its lowest
point, and the land, rising into a ridge, separates the Jordan valley
from the upper end of the Gulf of Akabah. The Jordan valley divides
Palestine, strongly and sharply, into two regions. Its depth, its
inaccessibility (for it can only be entered from the highlands on either
side down a few steep watercourses), and the difficulty of passing
across it (for the Jordan has but few fords), give it a separating power
almost equal to that of an arm of the sea. In length above a hundred
miles, in width varying from one mile to ten, and averaging some five
miles, or perhaps six, it must have been valuable as a territory,
possessing, as it does, a rich soil, abundant water, and in its lower
portion a tropical climate.
On either side of the deep Jordan cleft lies a highland of moderate
elevation, on the right that of Galilee, Samaria, and Judsea, on the
left that of Ituraea, Bashan, and Gilead. The right or western highland
consists of a mass of undulating hills, with rounded tops, composed of
coarse gray stone, covered, or scarcely covered, with a scanty soil, but
capable of cultivation in corn, olives, and figs. This region is
most productive towards the north, barer and more arid as we proceed
southwards towards the desert. The lowest portion, Judaea, is
unpicturesque, ill-watered, and almost treeless; the central, Samaria,
has numerous springs, some rich plains, many wooded heights, and in
places quite a sylvan appearance; the highest, Galilee, is a land of
water-brooks, abounding in timber, fertile and beautiful. The average
height of the whole district is from 1500 to 1800 feet above the
Mediterranean. Main elevations within it vary from 2500 to 4000 feet.
The axis of the range is towards the East, nearer, that is, to the
Jordan valley than to the sea. It is a peculiarity of the highland that
there is one important break in it. As the Lowland mountains of Scotland
are wholly separated from the mountains of the Highlands by the low
tract which stretches across from the Frith of Forth to the Frith of
Clyde, or as the ranges of St. Gall and Appenzell are divided off from
the rest of the Swiss mountains by the flat which extends from the Rhine
at Eagatz to the same river at Waldshut, so the western highland of
Palestine is broken in twain by the famous "plain of Esdraelon,"
which runs from the Bay of Acre to the Jordan valley at Beth-Shean or
Scythopolis.
East of the Jordan no such depression occurs, the highland there being
continuous. It differs from the western highland chiefly in this--that
its surface, instead of being broken up into a confused mass of rounded
hills, is a table-land, consisting of a long succession of slightly
undulating plains. Except in Trachonitis and southern Ituraea, where the
basaltic rock everywhere crops out, the soil is rich and productive, the
country in places wooded with fine trees, and the herbage luxuriant. On
the west the mountains rise almost precipitously from the Jordan valley,
above which they tower to the height of 3000 or 4000 feet. The outline
is singularly uniform; and the effect is that of a huge wall guarding
Palestine on this side from the wild tribes of the desert. Eastward the
tableland <DW72>s gradually, and melts into the sands of Arabia. Here
water and wood are scarce; but the soil is still good, and bears the
most abundant crops.
Finally, Palestine contains the tract from which it derives its
name, the low country of the Philistines, which the Jews called the
_Shephelah_, together with a continuation of this tract northwards to
the roots of Carmol, the district known to the Jews as "Sharon," or "the
smooth place." From Carmol to the Wady Sheriah, where the Philistine
country ended, is a distance of about one hundred miles, which gives the
length of the region in question. Its breadth between the shore and the
highland varies from about twenty-five miles, in the south, between Gaza
and the hills of Dan, to three miles, or less, in the north, between
Dor and the border of Manasseh. Its area is probably from 1400 to 1500
square miles, This low strip is along its whole course divided into two
parallel belts or bands-the first a flat sandy tract along the shore,
the Ramleh of the modern Arabs; the second, more undulating, a region
of broad rolling plains rich in corn, and anciently clothed in part with
thick woods, watered by reedy streams, which flow down from the great
highland. A valuable tract is this entire plain, but greatly exposed to
ravage. Even the sandy belt will grow fruit-trees; and the towns which
stand on it, as Gaza, Jaffa, and Ashdod, are surrounded with huge groves
of olives, sycamores, and palms, or buried in orchards and gardens,
bright with pomegranates and orange-trees. The more inland region is
of marvellous fertility. Its soil is a rich loam, containing scarcely a
pebble, which yields year after year prodigious crops of grain--chiefly
wheat--without manure or irrigation, or other cultivation than a light
ploughing. Philistia was the granary of Syria, and was important doubly,
first, as yielding inexhaustible supplies to its conqueror, and secondly
as affording the readiest passage to the great armies which contended in
these regions for the mastery of the Eastern World.
South of the region to which we have given the name of Palestine,
intervening between it and Egypt, lay a tract, to which it is difficult
to assign any political designation. Herodotus regarded it as a portion
of Arabia, which he carried across the valley of the Arabah and
made abut on the Mediterranean. To the Jews it was "the land of the
south"--the special country of the Amalekites. By Strabo's time it had
come to be known as Idumsea, or the Edomite country; and under this
appellation it will perhaps be most convenient to describe it here.
Idumasa, then, was the tract south and south-west of Palestine from
about lat. 31 deg. 10'. It reached westward to the borders of Egypt, which
were at this time marked by the Wady-el-Arish, southward to the range of
Sinai and the Elanitic Gulf, and eastward to the Great Desert. Its
chief town was Petra, in the mountains east of the Arabah valley. The
character of the tract is for the most part a hard gravelly and rocky
desert; but occasionally there is good herbage, and soil that admits of
cultivation; brilliant flowers and luxuriantly growing shrubs bedeck the
glens and terraces of the Petra range; and most of the tract produces
plants and bushes on which camels, goats, and even sheep will browse,
while occasional palm groves furnish a grateful shade and an important
fruit. The tract divides itself into four regions--first, a region of
sand, low and flat, along the Mediterranean, the Shephelah without
its fertility; next, a region of hard gravelly plain intersected by
limestone ridges, and raised considerably above the sea level, the
Desert of El-Tin, or of "the Wanderings;" then the long, broad, low
valley of the Arabah, which rises gradually from the Dead Sea to an
imperceptible watershed, and then falls gently to the head of the
Gulf of Akabah, a region of hard sand thickly dotted with bushes, and
intersected by numerous torrent courses; finally a long narrow region
of mountains and hills parallel with the Arabah, constituting Idumsea
Proper, or the original Edom, which, though rocky and rugged, is full
of fertile glens, ornamented with trees and shrubs, and in places
cultivated in terraces. In shape the tract was a rude square or oblong,
with its sides nearly facing the four cardinal points, its length from
the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Akabah being 130 miles, and its width
from the Wady-el-Arish to the eastern side of the Petra mountains 120
miles. The area is thus about 1560 square miles.
Beyond the Wady-el-Arish was Egypt, stretching from the Mediterranean
southwards a distance of nearly eight degrees, or more than 550 miles.
As this country was not, however, so much a part of the Babylonian
Empire as a dependency lying upon its borders, it will not be necessary
to describe it in this place.
One region, however, remains still unnoticed which seems to have been
an integral portion of the Empire. This is Palmyrene, or the Syrian
Desert--the tract lying between Coelo-Syria on the one hand and the
valley of the middle Euphrates on the other, and abutting towards the
south on the great Arabian Desert, to which it is sometimes regarded
as belonging. It is for the most part a hard sandy or gravelly plain,
intersected by low rocky ranges, and either barren or productive only
of some sapless shrubs and of a low thin grass. Occasionally, however,
there are oases, where the fertility is considerable. Such an oasis is
the region about Palmyra itself, which derived its name from the palm
groves in the vicinity; here the soil is good, and a large tract is
even now under cultivation. Another oasis is that of Karyatein, which
is watered by an abundant stream, and is well wooded, and productive of
grain. The Palmyrene, however, as a whole possesses but little value,
except as a passage country. Though large armies can never have
traversed the desert even in this upper region, where it is
comparatively narrow, trade in ancient times found it expedient to
avoid the long detour by the Orontes Valley, Aleppo, and Bambuk, and
to proceed directly from Damascus by way of Palymra to Thapsaeus on the
Euphrates. Small bands of light troops also occasionally took the same
course; and the great saving of distance thus effected made it important
to the Babylonians to possess an authority over the region in question.
Such, then, in its geographical extent, was the great Babylonian Empire.
Reaching from Luristan on the one side to the borders of Egypt on the
other, its direct length from east to west was nearly sixteen | 2,386.354428 |
2023-11-16 18:56:50.6077530 | 151 | 126 |
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, S. R. Ellison, Ted Garvin,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
A DOG OF FLANDERS
By Louisa De La Rame
(Ouida)
_Illustrated In Color By_ Maria L. Kirk
ILLUSTRATIONS
NELLO, AWAKENED FROM HIS SLEEP, RAN TO HELP WITH THE REST
THEN LITTLE NELLO TOOK HIS PLACE BESIDE THE CART
NELLO DREW THEIR LIKENESS WITH A STICK OF CHARCOAL
THE PORTALS OF THE CATHEDRAL WERE UNCLOSED AFTER THE MIDNIGHT MASS
A DOG OF FLANDERS
A STORY OF NOe | 2,386.627793 |
2023-11-16 18:56:50.7444960 | 347 | 10 |
Produced by Rachael Schultz, John Campbell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
The editor and his printer made every effort to reproduce
Washington's journal precisely and without any corrections, noting
in the Preface "with that literal exactness as to text which can
only be assured by the careful efforts of an experienced copyist
and expert proof reader having access to and comparing in every
possible case the copies with the originals."
This etext preserves that intent, and no corrections of spelling or
punctuation have been made to the journal text (Washington's words
as found in the printed book). A few corrections have been made to
the editor's Footnotes and to the Index; more detail of that can be
found at the end of the book.
Footnotes have been left in-line whenever possible, following the
format of the original text. Some that were placed mid-paragraph
have been moved to the end of the paragraph.
Footnotes in the original text were identified by a smaller font,
so to clearly identify where Footnotes begin and end in this etext,
each Footnote begins with "[Footnote x:" where x is the footnote
number, and ends with "]" followed by two blank lines.
Representation of italic markup, of superscripts etc in this etext,
is described below:--
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Whitespace within a journal line is indicated by @@ | 2,386.764536 |
2023-11-16 18:56:50.7735120 | 6,594 | 20 |
Produced by Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders
MARJORIE'S NEW FRIEND
BY
CAROLYN WELLS
Author of the "Patty" Books
[Illustration: "'HERE'S THE BOOK', SAID MISS HART.... 'HOW MANY LEAVES
HAS IT!'"]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. A BOTHERSOME BAG
II. A WELCOME CHRISTMAS GIFT
III. MERRY CHRISTMAS!
IV. HAPPY NEW YEAR!
V. A TEARFUL TIME
VI. THE GOING OF GLADYS
VII. THE COMING OF DELIGHT
VIII. A VISIT TO CINDERELLA
IX. A STRAW-RIDE
X. MAKING VALENTINES
XI. MARJORIE CAPTIVE
XII. MISS HART HELPS
XIII. GOLDFISH AND KITTENS
XIV. A PLEASANT SCHOOL
XV. A SEA TRIP
XVI. A VALENTINE PARTY
XVII. A JINKS AUCTION
XVIII. HONEST CONFESSION
XIX. A VISIT FROM GLADYS
XX. CHESSY CATS
CHAPTER I
A BOTHERSOME BAG
"Mother, are you there?"
"Yes, Marjorie; what is it, dear?"
"Nothing. I just wanted to know. Is Kitty there?"
"No; I'm alone, except for Baby Rosy. Are you bothered?"
"Yes, awfully. Please tell me the minute Kitty comes. I want to see her."
"Yes, dearie. I wish I could help you."
"Oh, I _wish_ you could! You'd be just the one!"
This somewhat unintelligible conversation is explained by the fact that
while Mrs. Maynard sat by a table in the large, well-lighted living-room,
and Rosy Posy was playing near her on the floor, Marjorie was concealed
behind a large folding screen in a distant corner.
The four Japanese panels of the screen were adjusted so that they
enclosed the corner as a tiny room, and in it sat Marjorie, looking very
much troubled, and staring blankly at a rather hopeless-looking mass of
brocaded silk and light-green satin, on which she had been sewing. The
more she looked at it, and the more she endeavored to pull it into shape,
the more perplexed she became.
"I never saw such a thing!" she murmured, to herself. "You turn it
straight, and then it's wrong side out,--and then you turn it back, and
still it's wrong side out! I wish I could ask Mother about it!"
The exasperating silk affair was a fancy work-bag which Marjorie was
trying to make for her mother's Christmas present. And that her mother
should not know of the gift, which was to be a surprise, of course,
Marjorie worked on it while sitting behind the screen. It was a most
useful arrangement, for often Kitty, and, sometimes, even Kingdon, took
refuge behind its concealing panels, when making or wrapping up gifts for
each other that must not be seen until Christmas Day.
Indeed, at this hour, between dusk and dinner time, the screened off
corner was rarely unoccupied.
It was a carefully-kept rule that no one was to intrude if any one else
was in there, unless, of course, by invitation of the one in possession.
Marjorie did not like to sew, and was not very adept at it, but she had
tried very hard to make this bag neatly, that it might be presentable
enough for her mother to carry when she went anywhere and carried her
work.
So <DW40> had bought a lovely pattern of brocaded silk for the outside,
and a dainty pale green satin for the lining. She had seamed up the two
materials separately, and then had joined them at the top, thinking that
when she turned them, the bag would be neatly lined, and ready for the
introduction of a pretty ribbon that should gather it at the top. But,
instead, when she sewed her two bags together, they did not turn into
each other right at all. She had done her sewing with both bags wrong
side out, thinking they would turn in such a way as to conceal all the
seams. But instead of that, not only were all the seams on the outside,
but only the wrong sides of the pretty materials showed, and turn and
twist it as she would, Marjorie could not make it come right.
Her mother could have shown her where the trouble lay, but Marjorie
couldn't consult her as to her own surprise, so she sat and stared at the
exasperating bag until Kitty came.
"Come in here, Kit," called <DW40>, and Kitty carefully squeezed herself
inside the screen.
"What's the matter, Mopsy? Oh, is it Mother's--"
"Sh!" said Marjorie warningly, for Kitty was apt to speak out
thoughtlessly, and Mrs. Maynard was easily within hearing.
"I can't make it turn right," she whispered; "see if you can."
Kitty obligingly took the bag, but the more she turned and twisted it,
the more obstinately it refused to get right side out.
"You've sewed it wrong," she whispered back.
"I know that,--but what's the way to sew it right. I can't see where I
made the mistake."
"No, nor I. You'd think it would turn, wouldn't you?"
Kitty kept turning the bag, now brocaded side out, now lining side out,
but always the seams were outside, and the right side of the materials
invisible.
"I never saw anything so queer," said Kitty; "it's bewitched! Maybe King
could help us."
Kingdon had just come in, so they called him to the consultation.
"It is queer," he said, after the situation was noiselessly explained to
him. "It's just like my skatebag, that Mother made, only the seams of
that don't show."
"Go get it, King," said Marjorie hopefully. "Maybe I can get this right
then. Don't let Mother see it."
So King went for his skatebag, and with it stuffed inside his jacket,
returned to his perplexed sisters.
"No; I don't see how she did it," declared Marjorie, at last, after a
close inspection of the neatly-made bag, with all its seams properly out
of sight, and its material and lining both showing their right sides.
"I'll have to give it to her this way"
"You can't!" said Kitty, looking at the absurd thing.
"But what can I do, Kit? It's only a week till Christmas now, and I can't
begin anything else for Mother. I've lots of things to finish yet."
"Here's Father," said Kitty, as she heard his voice outside; "perhaps he
can fix it."
"Men don't know about fancy work," said Marjorie, but even as she spoke
hope rose in her heart, for Mr. Maynard had often proved knowing in
matters supposed to be outside his ken.
"Oh, Father, come in here, please; in behind the screen. You go out, King
and Kitty, so there'll be room."
Those invited to leave did so, and Mr. Maynard came in and smiled at his
eldest daughter's despairing face.
"What's the trouble, Mopsy <DW40>? Oh, millinery? You don't expect me to
hemstitch, do you? What's that you're making, a young sofa-cushion?"
"Don't speak so loud, Father. It's a Christmas present I'm making for
Mother, and it won't go right. If you can't help me, I don't know what
I'll do. I've tried every way, but it's always wrong side out!"
"What a hateful disposition it must have! But what _is_ it?"
Marjorie put her lips to her father's ear, and whispered; "It's a bag; I
mean it's meant to be one, for Mother to carry to sewing society. I can
sew it well enough, but I can't make it get right side out!"
"Now, Mopsy, dear, you know I'd do anything in the world to help you that
I possibly can; but I'm afraid this is a huckleberry above my
persimmons!"
"But, Father, here's King's skatebag. Mother made it, and can't you see
by that how it's to go?"
"H'm,--let me see. I suppose if I must pull you out of this slough of
despond, I must. Now all these seams are turned in, and all yours are
outside."
"Yes; and how can we get them inside? There's no place to turn them to."
Mr. Maynard examined both bags minutely.
"Aha!" he said at last; "do you know how they put the milk in the
coconut, Marjorie?"
"No, sir."
"Well, neither do I. But I see a way to get these seams inside and let
your pretty silks put their best face foremost. Have you a pair of
scissors?"
"Yes, here they are."
Mr. Maynard deftly ripped a few stitches, leaving an opening of a couple
of inches in one of the seams of the lining. Through this opening he
carefully pulled the whole of both materials, thus reversing the whole
thing. When it had all come through, he pulled and patted it smooth, and,
behold! the bag was all as it should be, and there remained only the
tiny opening he had ripped in the lining to be sewed up again.
"That you must cat-stitch, or whatever you call it," he said, "as neatly
as you can. And it will never show, on a galloping horse on a dark
night."
"Blindstitch, you mean," said Marjorie; "yes, I can do that. Oh, Father,
how clever you are! How did you know how to do it?"
"Well, to be honest, I saw a similar place in the lining of the skate
bag. So I concluded that was the most approved way to make bags. Can you
finish it now?"
"Oh, yes; I've only to stitch a sort of casing and run a ribbon in for
the strings. Thank you lots, Father dear. You always help me out. But I
was afraid this was out of your line."
"It isn't exactly in my day's work, as a rule; but I'm always glad to
assist a fair lady in distress. Any other orders, mademoiselle?"
"Not to-night, brave sir. But you might call in, any time you're
passing."
"Suppose I should pop in when you're engaged on a token of regard and
esteem for my noble self?"
"No danger! Your Christmas present is all done and put away. I had
Mother's help on that."
"Well, then it's sure to be satisfactory. Then I will bid you adieu,
trusting to meet you again at dinner."
"All right," said Marjorie, who had neatly; blindstitched the little
ripped place, and was now making the casing for the ribbons.
By dinner time the bag was nearly done, and she went to the table with a
light heart, knowing that she could finish her mother's present that
evening.
"Who is the dinner for this year?" asked Mr. Maynard, as the family sat
round their own dinner table.
"Oh, the Simpsons," said Marjorie, in a tone of decision. "You know Mr.
Simpson is still in the hospital, and they're awfully poor."
It was the Maynards' habit to send, every Christmas, a generous dinner to
some poor family in the town, and this year the children had decided on
the Simpsons. In addition to the dinner, they always made up a box of
toys, clothing, and gifts of all sorts. These were not always entirely
new, but were none the less welcome for that.
"A large family, isn't it?" said Mr. Maynard.
"Loads of 'em," said King. "All ages and assorted sizes."
"Well, I'll give shoes and mittens all round, for my share. Mother, you
must look out for the dinner and any necessities that they need.
Children, you can make toys and candies for them! can't you?"
"Yes, indeed," said Marjorie; "we've lovely things planned. We're going
to paste pictures on wood, and King is going to saw them up into
picture-puzzles. And we're going to make scrap books, and dress dolls,
and heaps of things."
"And when are you going to take these things to them?"
"I think we'd better take them the day before Christmas," said Mrs.
Maynard. "Then Mrs. Simpson can prepare her turkey and such things over
night if she wants to. I'm sure she'd like it better than to have all the
things come upon her suddenly on Christmas morning."
"Yes, that's true," said Mr. Maynard. "And then we must find something to
amuse ourselves all day Christmas."
"I rather guess we can!" said King. "Well have our own tree Christmas
morning, and Grandma and Uncle Steve are coming, and if there's snow,
we'll have a sleigh-ride, and if there's ice, we'll have skating,--oh, I
just love Christmas!"
"So do I," said Marjorie. "And we'll have greens all over the house, and
wreaths tied with red ribbon,--"
"And mince pie and ice cream, both!" interrupted Kitty; "oh, won't it be
gorgeous!"
"And then no school for a whole week!" said Marjorie, rapturously. "More
than a week, for Christmas is on Thursday, so New Year's Day's on
Thursday, too, and we have vacation on that Friday, too."
"But Christmas and New Year's Day don't come on the same day of the week
this year, Marjorie," said her father.
"They don't! Why, Father, they _always_ do! It isn't leap year, is it?"
"Ho, Mops, leap year doesn't matter," cried King. "Of course, they always
come on the same day of the week. What do you mean, Father?"
"I mean just what I say; that Christmas Day and New Year's Day do not
fall on the same day of the week this year."
"Why, Daddy, you're crazy!" said Marjorie, "Isn't Christmas coming on
Thursday?"
"Yes, my child."
"Well, isn't New Year's Day the following Thursday?"
"Yes, but that's _next_ year. New Year's Day of _this_ year was nearly
twelve months ago and was on Wednesday."
"Oh, Father, what a sell! of course I meant this _winter_."
"Well, you didn't say so. You said this _year_."
"It's a good joke," said King, thinking it over. "I'll fool the boys with
it, at school."
The Maynards were a busy crowd during the short week that intervened
before Christmas.
From Mr. Maynard, who was superintending plans for his own family and for
many beneficiaries, down to the cook, who was making whole shelves full
of marvelous dainties, everybody was hurrying and skurrying from morning
till night.
The children had completed their gifts for their parents and for each
other, and most of them were already tied in dainty tissue papers and
holly ribbons awaiting the festal day.
Now they were making gifts for the poor family of Simpsons, and they
seemed to enjoy it quite as much as when making the more costly presents
for each other.
Marjorie came home from school at one o'clock, and as Mrs. Maynard had
said she needn't practise her music any more until after the holidays,
she had all her afternoons and the early part of the evenings to work at
the Christmas things.
She was especially clever with scissors and paste, and made lovely
scrap-books by cutting large double leaves of heavy brown paper. On these
she pasted post-cards or other pictures, also little verses or
stories cut from the papers. Eight of these sheets were tied together by
a bright ribbon at the back, and made a scrap-book acceptable to any
child. Then, Marjorie loved to dress paper dolls. She bought a dozen of
the pretty ones that have movable arms and feet, and dressed them most
picturesquely in crinkled paper and lace paper. She made little hats,
cloaks and muffs for them, and the dainty array was a fine addition to
the Simpson's box.
Kitty, too, made worsted balls for the Simpson babies, and little lace
stockings, worked around with worsted, which were to be filled with
candies.
With Mrs. Maynard's help, they dressed a doll for each Simpson girl, and
King sawed out a picture puzzle for each Simpson boy.
Then, a few days before Christmas they all went to work and made candies.
They loved to do this, and Mrs. Maynard thought home-made confectionery
more wholesome than the bought kind. So they spent one afternoon, picking
out nuts and seeding raisins, and making all possible beforehand
preparations, and the next day they made the candy. As they wanted enough
for their own family as well as the Simpsons, the quantity, when
finished, was rather appalling.
Pan after pan of cream chocolates, coconut balls, caramels, cream dates,
cream nuts, and chocolate-dipped dainties of many sorts filled the
shelves in the cold pantry.
And Marjorie also made some old-fashioned molasses candy with peanuts in
it, because it was a favorite with Uncle Steve.
The day before Christmas the children were all allowed to stay home from
school, for in the morning they were to pack the Christmas box for the
Simpsons and, in the afternoon, take it to them.
CHAPTER II
A WELCOME CHRISTMAS GIFT
The day before Christmas was a busy one in the Maynard household.
The delightful breakfast that Ellen sent to the table could scarcely be
eaten, so busily talking were all the members of the family.
"Come home early, won't you, Father?" said Marjorie, as Mr. Maynard rose
to go away to his business. "And don't forget to bring me that big
holly-box I told you about."
"As I've only thirty-seven other things to remember, I won't forget that,
chickadee. Any last orders, Helen?"
"No; only those I've already told you. Come home as early as you can, for
there's lots to be done, and you know Steve and Grandma will arrive at
six."
Away went Mr. Maynard, and then the children scattered to attend to their
various duties.
Both James the gardener and Thomas the coachman were handy men of all
work, and, superintended by Mrs. Maynard, they packed the more
substantial portions of the Simpson's Christmas donations.
It took several large baskets to hold the dinner, for there was a big,
fat turkey, a huge roast of beef, and also sausages and vegetables of
many sorts.
Then other baskets held bread and pie and cake, and cranberry jelly and
celery, and all the good things that go to make up a Christmassy sort of
a feast. Another basket held nuts and raisins and oranges and figs, and
in this was a big box of the candies the children had made. The baskets
were all decked with evergreen and holly, and made an imposing looking
row.
Meantime King and <DW40> and Kitty were packing into boxes the toys and
pretty trifles that they had made or bought. They added many books and
games of their own, which, though not quite new, were as good as new.
A barrel was packed full of clothing, mostly outgrown by the Maynard
children, but containing, also, new warm caps, wraps and underwear for
the little Simpsons.
Well, all the things together made a fair wagon-load, and when Mr.
Maynard returned home about two o'clock that afternoon, he saw the
well-filled and evergreen trimmed wagon on the drive, only waiting for
his coming to have the horse put to its shafts.
"Hello, Maynard maids and men!" he cried, as he came in, laden with
bundles, and found the children bustling about, getting ready to go.
"Oh, Father," exclaimed Kitty, "you do look so Santa Claus-y! What's in
all those packages?"
"Mostly surprises for you to-morrow, Miss Curiosity; so you can scarcely
expect to see in them now."
"I do love a bundly Christmas," said Marjorie. "I think half the fun is
tying things up with holly ribbons, and sticking sprigs of holly in the
knots."
"Well, are we all aboard now for the Simpsons?" asked her father, as he
deposited his burdens in safe places.
"Yes, we'll get our hats, and start at once; come on, Kitty," and
Marjorie danced away, drawing her slower sister along with her.
Nurse Nannie soon had little Rosamond ready, and the tot looked like a
big snowball in her fleecy white coat and hood, and white leggings.
"Me go to Simpson's," she cried, in great excitement, and then Mrs.
Maynard appeared, and they all crowded into the roomy station-wagon that
could be made, at a pinch, to hold them all. James drove them, and Thomas
followed with the wagon-load of gifts.
The visit was a total surprise to the Simpson family, and when the
Maynards knocked vigorously at the shaky old door, half a dozen little
faces looked wonderingly from the windows.
"What is it?" said Mrs. Simpson, coming to the door, with a baby in her
arms, and other small children clinging to her dress.
"Merry Christmas!" cried <DW40> and King, who were ahead of the others.
But the cry of "Merry Christmas" was repeated by all the Maynards, until
an answering smile appeared on the faces of the Simpson family and most
of them spoke up with a "Merry Christmas to you, too."
"We've brought you some Christmas cheer," said Mr. Maynard, as the whole
six of them went in, thereby greatly crowding the small room where they
were received. "Mr. Simpson is not well, yet, I understand."
"No, sir," said Mrs. Simpson. "They do say he'll be in the hospital for a
month yet, and it's all I can do to keep the youngsters alive, let alone
gettin' Christmas fixin's for 'em."
"That's what we thought," said Mr. Maynard, pleasantly; "and so my wife
and children are bringing you some goodies to make a real Christmas feast
for your little ones."
"Lord bless you, sir," said Mrs. Simpson, as the tears came to her eyes.
"I didn't know how much I was missin' all the Christmas feelin', till I
see you all come along, with your 'Merry Christmas,' and your evergreen
trimmin's."
"Yes," said Mrs. Maynard, gently, "at this season, we should all have the
'Christmas feeling,' and though I'm sorry your husband can't be with you,
I hope you and the children will have a happy day."
"What you got for us?" whispered a little Simpson, who was patting Mrs.
Maynard's muff.
"Well, we'll soon show you." said Mr. Maynard, overhearing the child.
Then he opened the door and bade his two men bring in the things.
So James and Thomas brought them in, box after box and basket after
basket, until the Simpsons were well-nigh speechless at the sight.
"How kin we pay for it, Ma?" said one of the boys, who was getting old
enough to know what lack of funds meant.
"You're not to pay for it, my boy," said Mr. Maynard, "except by having a
jolly, happy day to-morrow, and enjoying all the good things you find in
these baskets." Then the Maynard children unwrapped some of the pretty
things they had made, and gave them to the little Simpsons.
One little girl of about six received a doll with a cry of rapture, and
held it close to her, as if she had never had a doll before. Then
suddenly she said, "No, I'll give it to sister, she never had a doll. I
did have one once, but a bad boy stole it."
"You're an unselfish little dear," cried Marjorie; "and here's another
doll for you. There's one for each of you girls."
As there were four girls, this caused four outbursts of joy, and when
Marjorie and Kitty saw the way the little girls loved the dollies, they
felt more than repaid for the trouble it had been to dress them. The
boys, too, were delighted with their gifts. Mr. Maynard had brought real
boys' toys for them, such as small tool chests, and mechanical
contrivances, not to mention trumpets and drums. And, indeed, the
last-named ones needed no mention, for they were at once put to use and
spoke for themselves.
"Land sakes, children! stop that hullabaloo-lam!" exclaimed Mrs. Simpson.
"How can I thank these kind people if you keep up that noise! Indeed, I
can't thank you, anyway," she added, as the drums were quiet for a
moment. "It's so kind of you,--and so unexpected. We had almost nothing
for,--for to-morrow's dinner, and I didn't know which way to turn."
Overcome by her emotion, Mrs. Simpson buried her face in her apron, but
as Mrs. Maynard touched her shoulder and spoke to her gently, she looked
up, smiling through her tears.
"I can't rightly thank you, ma'am," she went on, "but the Lord will bless
you for your goodness. I'm to see Mr. Simpson for a few moments
to-morrow, and when I tell him what you've done for us he'll have the
happiest Christmas of us all, though his sufferings is awful. But he was
heartsick because of our poor Christmas here at home, and the news will
cure him of that, anyway."
"I put in some jelly and grapes especially for him," said Mrs. Maynard,
smiling, though there were tears in her own eyes. "So you take them to
him, and give him Christmas greetings from us. And now we must go, and
you can begin at once to make ready your feast."
"Oh, yes, ma'am. And may all Christmas blessing's light on you and
yours."
"Merry Christmas!" cried all the Maynards as they trooped out, and the
good wish was echoed by the happy Simpsons.
"My!" said King, "it makes a fellow feel sober to see people as poor as
that!"
"It does, my boy," said his father; "and it's a pleasure to help those
who are truly worthy and deserving. Simpson is an honest, hard-working
man, and I think we must keep an eye on the family until he's about
again. And now, my hearties, we've done all we can for them for the
present; so let's turn our attention to the celebration of the Maynard's
Christmastide. Who wants to go to the station with me to meet Grandma and
Uncle Steve?"
"I!" declared the four children, as with one voice.
"Yes, but you can't all go; and, too, there must be some of the nicest
ones at home to greet the travellers as they enter. I think I'll decide
the question myself. I'll take Kitty and King with me, and I'll leave my
eldest and youngest daughters at home with Motherdy to receive the guests
when they come."
Mr. Maynard's word was always law, and though Marjorie wanted to go, she
thought, too, it would be fun to be at home and receive them when they
come.
So they all separated as agreed, and Mrs. Maynard said they must make
haste to get dressed for the company.
Marjorie wore a light green cashmere, with a white embroidered _guimpe_,
which was one of her favorite frocks. Her hair was tied with big white
bows, and a sprig of holly was tucked in at one side.
She flew down to the living-room, to find baby Rosamond and her mother
already there. Rosy Posy was a Christmas baby indeed, all in white, with
holly ribbons tying up her curls, and a holly sprig tied in the bow. The
whole house was decorated with ropes and loops of evergreen, and stars
and wreaths, with big red bows on them, were in the windows and over the
doorways.
The delicious fragrance of the evergreens pervaded the house, and the
wood fires burned cheerily. Mrs. Maynard, in her pretty rose-
house gown, looked about with the satisfied feeling that everything was
in readiness, and nothing had been forgotten.
At last a commotion was heard at the door, and Marjorie flew to open it.
They all seemed to come in at once, and after an embrace from Grandma,
Marjorie felt herself lifted up in Uncle Steve's strong arms.
"That's the last time, <DW40>," he said as he set her down again.
"There's too much of you for me to toss about as I used to. My! what a
big girl you are!"
"Toss me, Uncle Teve," said Rosy Posy, and she was immediately swung to
Uncle Steve's shoulder.
"You're only a bit of thistle-down. I could toss you up in the sky, and
you could sit on the edge of a star. How would you like that?"
"I'd ravver stay here," said Rosy Posy, nestling contentedly on her
perch. "'Sides, I _must_ be here for Kismus to-morrow."
"Oh, _is_ Christmas to | 2,386.793552 |
2023-11-16 18:56:51.0501190 | 7,436 | 7 |
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In the Valley
By
Harold Frederic
Copyright 1890
Dedication.
_When, after years of preparation, the pleasant task of writing this tale
was begun, I had my chief delight in the hope that the completed book
would gratify a venerable friend, to whose inspiration my first idea of
the work was due, and that I might be allowed to place his honored name
upon this page. The ambition was at once lofty and intelligible. While he
was the foremost citizen of New York State, we of the Mohawk Valley
thought of him as peculiarly our own. Although born elsewhere, his whole
adult life was spent among us, and he led all others in his love for the
Valley, his pride in its noble history, and his broad aspirations for the
welfare and progress in wise and good ways of its people. His approval ef
this book would have been the highest honor it could possibly have won.
Long before it was finished, he had been laid in his last sleep upon the
bosom of the hills that watch over our beautiful river. With reverent
affection the volume is brought now to lay as a wreath upon his
grave--dedicated to the memory of Horatio Seymour._
London, _September 11_, 1890
Contents.
Chapter I. "The French Are in the Valley!"
Chapter II. Setting Forth How the Girl Child Was Brought to Us.
Chapter III. Master Philip Makes His Bow--And Behaves Badly
Chapter IV. In Which I Become the Son of the House.
Chapter V. How a Stately Name Was Shortened and Sweetened.
Chapter VI. Within Sound of the Shouting Waters.
Chapter VII. Through Happy Youth to Man's Estate.
Chapter VIII. Enter My Lady Berenicia Cross.
Chapter IX. I See My Sweet Sister Dressed in Strange Attire.
Chapter X. The Masquerade Brings Me Nothing but Pain.
Chapter XI. As I Make My Adieux Mr. Philip Comes In.
Chapter XII. Old-Time Politics Pondered under the Starlight.
Chapter XIII. To the Far Lake Country and Home Again.
Chapter XIV. How I Seem to Feel a Wanting Note in the Chorus of Welcome.
Chapter XV. The Rude Awakening from My Dream.
Chapter XVI. Tulp Gets a Broken Head to Match My Heart.
Chapter XVII. I Perforce Say Farewell to My Old Home.
Chapter XVIII. The Fair Beginning of a New Life in Ancient Albany.
Chapter XIX. I Go to a Famous Gathering at the Patroon's Manor House.
Chapter XX. A Foolish and Vexatious Quarrel Is Thrust upon Me.
Chapter XXI. Containing Other News Besides that from Bunker Hill.
Chapter XXII. The Master and Mistress of Cairncross.
Chapter XXIII. How Philip in Wrath, Daisy in Anguish, Fly Their Home.
Chapter XXIV. The Night Attack Upon Quebec--And My Share in It.
Chapter XXV. A Crestfallen Return to Albany.
Chapter XXVI. I See Daisy and the Old Home Once More.
Chapter XXVII. The Arrest of Poor Lady Johnson.
Chapter XXVIII. An Old Acquaintance Turns Up in Manacles.
Chapter XXIX. The Message Sent Ahead from the Invading Army.
Chapter XXX. From the Scythe and Reaper to the Musket.
Chapter XXXI. The Rendezvous of Fighting Men at Fort Dayton.
Chapter XXXII. "The Blood Be on Your Heads."
Chapter XXXIII. The Fearsome Death-Struggle in the Forest.
Chapter XXXIV. Alone at Last with My Enemy.
Chapter XXXV. The Strange Uses to Which Revenge May Be Put.
Chapter XXXVI. A Final Scene in the Gulf which My Eyes Are Mercifully
Spared.
Chapter XXXVII. The Peaceful Ending of It All.
In The Valley
Chapter I.
"The French Are in the Valley!"
It may easily be that, during the many years which have come and gone
since the eventful time of my childhood, Memory has played tricks upon me
to the prejudice of Truth. I am indeed admonished of this by study of my
son, for whose children in turn this tale is indited, and who is now able
to remember many incidents of his youth--chiefly beatings and like
parental cruelties--which I know very well never happened at all. He is
good enough to forgive me these mythical stripes and bufferings, but he
nurses their memory with ostentatious and increasingly succinct
recollection, whereas for my own part, and for his mother's, our enduring
fear was lest we had spoiled him through weak fondness. By good fortune
the reverse has been true. He is grown into a man of whom any parents
might be proud--tall, well-featured, strong, tolerably learned, honorable,
and of influence among his fellows. His affection for us, too, is very
great. Yet in the fashion of this new generation, which speaks without
waiting to be addressed, and does not scruple to instruct on all subjects
its elders, he will have it that he feared me when a lad--and with cause!
If fancy can so distort impressions within such short span, it does not
become me to be too set about events which come back slowly through the
mist and darkness of nearly threescore years.
Yet they return to me so full of color, and cut in such precision and
keenness of outline, that at no point can I bring myself to say, "Perhaps
I am in error concerning this," or to ask, "Has this perchance been
confused with other matters?" Moreover, there are few now remaining who of
their own memory could controvert or correct me. And if they essay to do
so, why should not my word be at least as weighty as theirs? And so to
the story:
* * * * *
I was in my eighth year, and there was snow on the ground.
The day is recorded in history as November 13, A.D. 1757, but I am afraid
that I did not know much about years then, and certainly the month seems
now to have been one of midwinter. The Mohawk, a larger stream then by far
than in these days, was not yet frozen over, but its frothy flood ran very
dark and chill between the white banks, and the muskrats and the beavers
were all snug in their winter holes. Although no big fragments of ice
floated on the current, there had already been a prodigious scattering of
the bateaux and canoes which through all the open season made a thriving
thoroughfare of the river. This meant that the trading was over, and that
the trappers and hunters, white and red, were either getting ready to go
or had gone northward into the wilderness, where might be had during the
winter the skins of dangerous animals--bears, wolves, catamounts, and
lynx--and where moose and deer could be chased and yarded over the crust,
not to refer to smaller furred beasts to be taken in traps.
I was not at all saddened by the departure of these rude, foul men, of
whom those of Caucasian race were not always the least savage, for they
did not fail to lay hands upon traps or nets left by the heedless within
their reach, and even were not beyond making off with our boats, cursing
and beating children who came unprotected in their path, and putting the
women in terror of their very lives. The cold weather was welcome not only
for clearing us of these pests, but for driving off the black flies,
mosquitoes, and gnats which at that time, with the great forests so close
behind us, often rendered existence a burden, particularly just
after rains.
Other changes were less grateful to the mind. It was true I would no
longer be held near the house by the task of keeping alight the smoking
kettles of dried fungus, designed to ward off the insects, but at the same
time had disappeared many of the enticements which in summer oft made this
duty irksome. The partridges were almost the sole birds remaining in the
bleak woods, and, much as their curious ways of hiding in the snow, and
the resounding thunder of their strange drumming, mystified and attracted
me, I was not alert enough to catch them. All my devices of horse-hair
and deer-hide snares were foolishness in their sharp eyes. The water-fowl,
too--the geese, ducks, cranes, pokes, fish-hawks, and others--had flown,
sometimes darkening the sky over our clearing by the density of their
flocks, and filling the air with clamor. The owls, indeed, remained, but I
hated them.
The very night before the day of which I speak, I was awakened by one of
these stupid, perverse birds, which must have been in the cedars on the
knoll close behind the house, and which disturbed my very soul by his
ceaseless and melancholy hooting. For some reason it affected me more than
commonly, and I lay for a long time nearly on the point of tears with
vexation--and, it is likely, some of that terror with which uncanny noises
inspire children in the darkness. I was warm enough under my fox-robe,
snuggled into the husks, but I was very wretched. I could hear, between
the intervals of the owl's sinister cries, the distant yelping of the
timber wolves, first from the Schoharie side of the river, and then from
our own woods. Once there rose, awfully near the log wall against which I
nestled, a panther's shrill scream, followed by a long silence, as if the
lesser wild things outside shared for the time my fright. I remember that
I held my breath.
It was during this hush, and while I lay striving, poor little fellow, to
dispel my alarm by fixing my thoughts resolutely on a rabbit-trap I had
set under some running hemlock out on the side hill, that there rose the
noise of a horse being ridden swiftly down the frosty highway outside. The
hoofbeats came pounding up close to our gate. A moment later there was a
great hammering on the oak door, as with a cudgel or pistol handle, and I
heard a voice call out in German (its echoes ring still in my old ears):
"The French are in the Valley!"
I drew my head down under the fox-skin as if it had been smitten sharply,
and quaked in solitude. I desired to hear no more.
Although so very young a boy, I knew quite well who the French were, and
what their visitations portended. Even at that age one has recollections.
I could recall my father, peaceful man of God though he was, taking down
his gun some years before at the rumor of a French approach, and my mother
clinging to his coat as he stood in the doorway, successfully pleading
with him not to go forth. I had more than once seen Mrs. Markell of
Minden, with her black knit cap worn to conceal the absence of her scalp,
which had been taken only the previous summer by the Indians, who sold it
to the French for ten livres, along with the scalps of her murdered
husband and babe. So it seemed that adults sometimes parted with this
portion of their heads without losing also their lives. I wondered if
small boys were ever equally fortunate. I felt softly of my hair and wept.
How the crowding thoughts of that dismal hour return to me! I recall
considering in my mind the idea of bequeathing my tame squirrel to
Hendrick Getman, and the works of an old clock, with their delightful
mystery of wooden cogs and turned wheels, which was my chief treasure, to
my <DW64> friend Tulp--and then reflecting that they too would share my
fate, and would thus be precluded from enjoying my legacies. The whimsical
aspect of the task of getting hold upon Tulp's close, woolly scalp was
momentarily apparent to me, but I did not laugh. Instead, the very
suggestion of humor converted my tears into vehement sobbings.
When at last I ventured to lift my head and listen again, it was to hear
another voice, an English-speaking voice which I knew very well, saying
gravely from within the door:
"It is well to warn, but not to terrify. There are many leagues between us
and danger, and many good fighting men. When you have told your tidings to
Sir William, add that I have heard it all and have gone back to bed."
Then the door was closed and barred, and the hoofbeats died away down the
Valley.
These few words had sufficed to shame me heartily of my cowardice. I ought
to have remembered that we were almost within hail of Fort Johnson and its
great owner the General; that there was a long Ulineof forts between us and
the usual point of invasion with many soldiers; and--most important of
all--that I was in the house of Mr. Stewart.
If these seem over-mature reflections for one of my age, it should be
explained, that, while a veritable child in matters of heart and impulse,
I was in education and association much advanced beyond my years. The
master of the house, Mr. Thomas Stewart, whose kind favor had provided me
with a home after my father's sad demise, had diverted his leisure with
my instruction, and given me the great advantage of daily conversation
both in English and Dutch with him. I was known to Sir William and to Mr.
Butler and other gentlemen, and was often privileged to listen when they
conversed with Mr. Stewart. Thus I had grown wise in certain respects,
while remaining extremely childish in others. Thus it was that I trembled
first at the common hooting of an owl, and then cried as if to die at
hearing the French were coming, and lastly recovered all my spirits at the
reassuring sound of Mr. Stewart's voice, and the knowledge that he was
content to return to his sleep.
I went soundly to sleep myself, presently, and cannot remember to have
dreamed at all.
Chapter II.
Setting Forth How the Girl Child Was Brought to Us.
When I came out of my nest next morning--my bed was on the floor of a
small recess back of the great fireplace, made, I suspect, because the
original builders lacked either the skill or the inclination, whichever it
might be, to more neatly skirt the chimney with the logs--it was quite
late. Some meat and corn-bread were laid for me on the table in Mr.
Stewart's room, which was the chief chamber of the house. Despite the big
fire roaring on the hearth, it was so cold that the grease had hardened
white about the meat in the pan, and it had to be warmed again before I
could sop my bread.
During the solitary meal it occurred to me to question my aunt, the
housekeeper, as to the alarm of the night, which lay heavily once more
upon my mind. But I could hear her humming to herself in the back room,
which did not indicate acquaintance with any danger. Moreover, it might as
well be stated here that my aunt, good soul though she was, did not
command especial admiration for the clearness of her wits, having been
cruelly stricken with the small-pox many years before, and owing her
employment, be it confessed, much more to Mr. Stewart's excellence of
heart than to her own abilities. She was probably the last person in the
Valley whose judgment upon the question of a French invasion, or indeed
any other large matter, I would have valued.
Having donned my <DW53>-skin cap, and drawn on my thick pelisse over my
apron, I put another beech-knot on the fire and went outside. The stinging
air bit my nostrils and drove my hands into my pockets. Mr. Stewart was at
the work which had occupied him for some weeks previously--hewing out logs
on the side hill. His axe strokes rang through the frosty atmosphere now
with a sharp reverberation which made it seem much colder, and yet more
cheerful. Winter had come, indeed, but I began to feel that I liked it. I
almost skipped as I went along the hard, narrow path to join him.
He was up among the cedars, under a close-woven net of boughs, which,
themselves heavily capped with snow, had kept the ground free. He nodded
pleasantly to me when I wished him good-morning, then returned to his
labor. Although I placed myself in front of him, in the hope that he would
speak, and thus possibly put me in the way to learn something about this
French business, he said nothing, but continued whacking at the deeply
notched trunk. The temptation to begin the talk myself came near mastering
me, so oppressed with curiosity was I; and finally, to resist it the
better, I walked away and stood on the brow of the knoll, whence one could
look up and down the Valley.
It was the only world I knew--this expanse of flats, broken by wedges of
forest stretching down from the hills on the horizon to the very water's
edge. Straight, glistening lines of thin ice ran out here and there from
the banks of the stream this morning, formed on the breast of the flood
through the cold night.
To the left, in the direction of the sun, lay, at the distance of a mile
or so, Mount Johnson, or Fort Johnson, as one chose to call it. It could
not be seen for the intervening hills, but so important was the fact of
its presence to me that I never looked eastward without seeming to behold
its gray stone walls with their windows and loopholes, its stockade of
logs, its two little houses on either side, its barracks for the guard
upon the ridge back of the gristmill, and its accustomed groups of
grinning black slaves, all eyeballs and white teeth, of saturnine Indians
in blankets, and of bold-faced fur-traders. Beyond this place I had never
been, but I knew vaguely that Schenectady was in that direction, where the
French once wrought such misery, and beyond that Albany, the great town of
our parts, and then the big ocean which separated us from England and
Holland. Civilization lay that way, and all the luxurious things which,
being shown or talked of by travellers, made our own rough life seem ruder
still by contrast.
Turning to the right I looked on the skirts of savagery. Some few
adventurous villages of poor Palatine-German farmers and traders there
were up along the stream, I knew, hidden in the embrace of the wilderness,
and with them were forts and soldiers But these latter did not prevent
houses being sacked and their inmates tomahawked every now and then.
It astonished me, that, for the sake of mere furs and ginseng and potash,
men should be moved to settle in these perilous wilds, and subject their
wives and families to such dangers, when they might live in peace at
Albany, or, for that matter, in the old countries whence they came. For my
part, I thought I would much rather be oppressed by the Grand Duke's
tax-collectors, or even be caned now and again by the Grand Duke himself,
than undergo these privations and panics in a savage land. I was too
little then to understand the grandeur of the motives which impelled men
to expatriate themselves and suffer all things rather than submit to
religious persecution or civil tyranny. Sometimes even now, in my old age,
I feel that I do not wholly comprehend it. But that it was a grand thing,
I trust there can be no doubt.
While I still stood on the brow of the hill, my young head filled with
these musings, and my heart weighed down almost to crushing by the sense
of vast loneliness and peril which the spectacle of naked marsh-lands and
dark, threatening forests inspired, the sound of the chopping ceased, and
there followed, a few seconds later, a great swish and crash down
the hill.
As I looked to note where the tree had fallen, I saw Mr. Stewart lay down
his axe, and take into his hands the gun which stood near by. He motioned
to me to preserve silence, and himself stood in an attitude of deep
attention. Then my slow ears caught the noise he had already heard--a
mixed babel of groans, curses, and cries of fear, on the road to the
westward of us, and growing louder momentarily.
After a minute or two of listening he said to me, "It is nothing. The
cries are German, but the oaths are all English--as they generally are."
All the same he put his gun over his arm as he walked down to the
stockade, and out through the gate upon the road, to discover the cause of
the commotion.
Five red-coated soldiers on horseback, with another, cloaked to the eyes
and bearing himself proudly, riding at their heels; a <DW64> following on,
also mounted, with a huge bundle in his arms before him, and a shivering,
yellow-haired lad of about my own age on a pillion behind him; clustering
about these, a motley score of poor people, young and old, some bearing
household goods, and all frightened out of their five senses--this is what
we saw on the highway.
What we heard it would be beyond my power to recount. From the chaos of
terrified exclamations in German, and angry cursing in English, I gathered
generally that the scared mob of Palatines were all for flying the Valley,
or at the least crowding into Fort Johnson, and that the troopers were
somewhat vigorously endeavoring to reassure and dissuade them.
Mr. Stewart stepped forward--I following close in his rear--and began
phrasing in German to these poor souls the words of the soldiers, leaving
out the blasphemies with which they were laden. How much he had known
before I cannot guess, but the confidence with which he told them that the
French and Indian marauders had come no farther than the Palatine Village
above Fort Kouarie, that they were but a small force, and that Honikol
Herkimer had already started out to drive them back, seemed to his simple
auditors born of knowledge. They at all events listened to him, which they
had not done to the soldiers, and plied him with anxious queries, which he
in turn referred to the mounted men and then translated their sulky
answers. This was done to such good purpose that before long the wiser of
the Palatines were agreed to return to their homes up the Valley, and the
others had become calm.
As the clamor ceased, the soldier whom I took to be an officer removed his
cloak a little from his face and called out gruffly:
"Tell this fellow to fetch me some brandy, or whatever cordial is to be
had in this God-forgotten country, and stir his bones about it, too!"
To speak to Mr. Thomas Stewart in this fashion! I looked at my protector
in pained wrath and apprehension, knowing his fiery temper.
With a swift movement he pushed his way between the sleepy soldiers
straight to the officer. I trembled in every joint, expecting to see him
cut down where he stood, here in front of his own house!
He plucked the officer's cloak down from his face with a laugh, and then
put his hands on his hips, his gun under his arm, looked the other square
in the face, and laughed again.
All this was done so quickly that the soldiers, being drowsy with their
all-night ride, scarcely understood what was going forward. The officer
himself strove to unwrap the muffled cloak that he might grasp his sword,
puffing out his cheeks with amazement and indignation meanwhile, and
staring down fiercely at Mr. Stewart. The fair-haired boy on the horse
with the <DW64> was almost as greatly excited, and cried out, "Kill him,
some one! Strike him down!" in a stout voice. At this some of the soldiers
wheeled about, prepared to take part in the trouble when they should
comprehend it, while their horses plunged and reared into the others.
The only cool one was Mr. Stewart, who still stood at his ease, smiling at
the red-faced, blustering officer, to whom he now said:
"When you are free of your cloak, Tony Cross, dismount and let us
embrace."
The gentleman thus addressed peered at the speaker, gave an exclamation or
two of impatience, then looked again still more closely. All at once his
face brightened, and he slapped his round, tight thigh with a noise like
the rending of an ice-gorge.
"Tom Lynch!" he shouted. "Saints' breeches! 'tis he!" and off his horse
came the officer, and into Mr. Stewart's arms, before I could catch
my breath.
It seemed that the twain were old comrades, and had been like brothers in
foreign wars, now long past. They walked affectionately, hand in hand, to
the house. The <DW64> followed, bringing the two horses into the stockade,
and then coming inside with the bundle and the boy, the soldiers being
despatched onward to the fort.
While my aunt, Dame Kronk, busied herself in bringing bottles and glasses,
and swinging the kettle over the fire, the two gentlemen could not keep
eyes off each other, and had more to say than there were words for. It was
eleven years since they had met, and, although Mr. Stewart had learned
(from Sir William) of the other's presence in the Valley, Major Cross had
long since supposed his friend to be dead. Conceive, then, the warmth of
their greeting, the fondness of their glances, the fervor of the
reminiscences into which they straightway launched, sitting wide-kneed by
the roaring hearth, steaming glass in hand.
The Major sat massively upright on the bench, letting his thick cloak fall
backward from his broad shoulders to the floor, for, though the heat of
the flames might well-nigh singe one's eyebrows, it would be cold behind.
I looked upon his great girth of chest, upon his strong hands, which yet
showed delicately fair when they were ungloved, and upon his round,
full-, amiable face with much satisfaction. I seemed to swell with
pride when he unbuckled his sword, belt and all, and handed it to me, I
being nearest, to put aside for him. It was a ponderous, severe-looking
weapon, and I bore it to the bed with awe, asking myself how many people
it was likely to have killed in its day. I had before this handled other
swords--including Sir William's--but never such a one as this. Nor had I
ever before seen a soldier who seemed to my boyish eyes so like what a
warrior should be.
It was not our habit to expend much liking upon English officers or
troopers, who were indeed quite content to go on without our friendship,
and treated us Dutch and Palatines in turn with contumacy and roughness,
as being no better than their inferiors. But no one could help liking
Major Anthony Cross--at least when they saw him under his old friend's
roof-tree, expanding with genial pleasure.
For the yellow-haired boy, who was the Major's son, I cared much less. I
believe truly that I disliked him from the very first moment out on the
frosty road, and that when I saw him shivering there with the cold, I was
not a whit sorry. This may be imagination, but it is certain that he did
not get into my favor after we came inside.
Under this Master Philip's commands the <DW64> squatted on his haunches and
unrolled the blankets from the bundle I had seen him carrying. Out of this
bundle, to my considerable amazement, was revealed a little child, perhaps
between three and four years of age.
This tiny girl blinked in the light thus suddenly surrounding her, and
looked about the room piteously, with her little lips trembling and her
eyes filled with tears. She was very small for her years, and had long,
tumbled hair. Her dress was a homespun frock in a single piece, and her
feet were wrapped for warmth in wool stockings of a grown woman's measure.
She looked about the room, I say, until she saw me. No doubt my Dutch face
was of the sort she was accustomed to, for she stretched out her hands to
me. Thereupon I went and took her in my arms, the <DW64> smiling upon
us both.
I had thought to bear her to the fire-place, where Master Philip was
already toasting himself, standing between Mr. Stewart's knees, and boldly
spreading his hands over the heat. But when he espied me bringing forward
the child he darted to us and sharply bade me leave the girl alone.
"Is she not to be warmed, then?" I asked, puzzled alike at his rude
behavior and at his words.
"I will do it myself," he answered shortly, and made to take the child.
He alarmed her with his imperious gesture, and she turned from him,
clinging to my neck. I was vexed now, and, much as I feared discourtesy to
one of Mr. Stewart's guests, felt like holding my own. Keeping the little
girl tight in my arms, I pushed past him toward the fire. To my great
wrath he began pulling at her shawl as I went, shouting that he would have
her, while to make matters worse the babe herself set up a loud wail. Thus
you may imagine I was in a fine state of confusion and temper when I stood
finally at the side of the hearth and felt Mr. Stewart's eyes upon me. But
I had the girl.
"What is the tumult?" he demanded, in a vexed tone. "What are you doing,
Douw, and what child is this?"
"It is my child, sir!" young Philip spoke up, panting from his exertions,
and red with color.
The two men broke out in loud laughter at this, so long sustained that
Philip himself joined it, and grinned reluctantly. I was too angry to even
feel relieved that the altercation was to have no serious consequences for
me--much less to laugh myself. I opened the shawl, that the little one
might feel the heat, and said nothing.
"Well, the lad is right, in a way," finally chuckled the Major. "It's as
much his child as it is anybody's this side of heaven."
The phrase checked his mirth, and he went on more seriously:
"She is the child of a young couple who had come to the Palatine Village
only a few weeks before. The man was a cooper or wheelwright, one or the
other, and his name was Peet or Peek, or some such Dutch name. When
Belletre fell upon the town at night, the man was killed in the first
attack. The woman with her child ran with the others to the ford. There in
the darkness and panic she was crushed under and drowned; but strange
enough--who can tell how these matters are ordered?--the infant was in
some way got across the river safe, and fetched to the Fort. But there, so
great is the throng, both of those who escaped and those who now, alarmed
for their lives, flock in from the farms round about, that no one had time
to care for a mere infant. Her parents were new-comers, and had no
friends. Besides, every one up there is distracted with mourning or
frantic with preparation for the morrow. The child stood about among the
cattle, trying to get warm in the straw, when we came out last night to
start. She looked so beseechingly at us, and so like my own little
Cordelia, by God! I couldn't bear it! I cursed a trifle about their
brutality, and one of 'em offered at that to take her in; but my boy here
said, 'Let's bring her with us, father,' and up she came on to Bob's
saddle, and off we started. At Herkimer's I found blankets for her, and
one of the girls gave us some hose, big enough for Bob, which we
bundled her in."
"There! said I not truly she was mine?" broke in the boy, shaking his
yellow hair proudly, and looking Mr. Stewart confidently in the eye.
"Rightly enough," replied Mr. Stewart, kindly. "And so you are my old
friend Anthony Cross's son, eh? A good, hearty lad, seeing the world
young. Can you realize easily, Master Philip, looking at us two old
people, that we were once as small as you, and played together then on the
Galway hills, never knowing there could be such a place as America? And
that later we slept together in the same tent, and thanked our stars for
not being bundled together into the same trench, | 2,387.070159 |
2023-11-16 18:56:51.2341430 | 7,424 | 13 |
Produced by Nick Wall, David K. Park and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
book was produced from scanned images of public domain
material from the Google Books project.)
FERN VALE
OR THE
QUEENSLAND SQUATTER.
A NOVEL.
BY COLIN MUNRO.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL II.
LONDON:
T. C. NEWBY,
30 WELBECK STREET, CAVENDISH SQUARE.
MDCCCLXII.
EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY THE CALEDONIAN PRESS,
"The National Institution for Promoting the Employment of Women in the
Art of Printing."
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I 1
CHAPTER II 32
CHAPTER III 48
CHAPTER IV 77
CHAPTER V 105
CHAPTER VI 128
CHAPTER VII 146
CHAPTER VIII 180
CHAPTER IX 205
CHAPTER X 232
CHAPTER XI 253
CHAPTER XII 287
CHAPTER XIII 325
FERN VALE.
CHAPTER I.
"What are these,
So withered, and so wild in their attire,
That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth,
And yet are on't?"
MACBETH, _Act 1, Sc. 3_.
"Those fellows have been up to some mischief I am certain," said Tom
when the blacks departed, as described in the last chapter. "I am
confident my brother has not given them anything; and if they have got
any rations at Strawberry Hill, they must have stolen them. However, if
you intend going over to their corroboree, I'll accompany you."
"I do intend going," said John, "for I have never seen them in such
force as they'll be to-night, and I am curious to see the effect. Do
you know what is the nature of the ceremony of their kipper corroboree?"
"I can't exactly say," replied Tom, "their ordinary corroborees are
simply feasts to commemorate some event; but the kipper corroboree has
some mystery attached to it, which they do not permit strangers to
witness. I believe it is held once a year, to admit their boys into the
communion of men; and to give 'gins' to the neophytes, if they desire to
add to their importance by assuming a marital character. I believe it is
simply a ceremony, in which they recognise the transition of their
youths from infancy to manhood; though they keep the proceedings veiled
from vulgar eyes."
"When, then," continued John, "the kippers are constituted men, and get
their gins, are their marriage engagements of a permanent nature; I mean
does their nuptial ceremony, whatever it may be, effectually couple
them; and is it considered by them inviolable?"
"I believe," replied Tom, "the ceremony is binding on the gins, but
their lords are permitted to exercise a supreme power over the liberty
and destiny of their spouses. The gins are merely looked upon as so many
transferable animals, and they are frequently stolen and carried off by
adventurous lovers from their lawful lords and masters; and as
frequently made over with the free consent of their husbands, the same
as we should do with flocks and herds. Most of the quarrels among the
tribes arise from such thefts; and the wills and inclinations of the
gins are never for a moment considered."
After this remark the conversation of the young men turned into other
channels. About sundown they prepared themselves for their visit, and
mounting their horses started off to the Gibson river; which, owing to
the darkness of the night, and the difficulty they experienced in
threading the bush, and avoiding the fallen logs, they did not reach so
quickly as they had anticipated. They, however, crossed by the flats,
and guided by the noise of the blacks, and the light from their fires in
the scrub, they soon came upon the "camp;" where they found Dugingi,
true to his promise, waiting for them.
The camp was composed of about fifty "gunyas" or huts, formed in a
circle; in the midst of which were several of the natives, talking and
gesticulating most vociferously and wildly. The gunyas were small
conical structures of about five or six feet in diameter; formed by
pieces of cane being fixed into the ground in an arched shape, so as to
make ribs, which were covered with the flakey sheets of the tea tree
bark, and laid perfectly close and compact, in which position they were
fixed by an outer net-work of reedy fibre; making, though primitive and
meagre in accommodation, a dwelling perfectly impervious to the weather.
Into these burrow-like domiciles, crowd, sometimes, as many as five or
six human beings, who coil themselves into a mass to economize space,
and generate caloric in cold nights; when they have a fire in front of
the opening which serves for a door. In warmer weather, however, they
generally stretch themselves under heaven, with only a blanket to cover
them; and, with their feet towards the fire, a party may frequently be
seen radiating in a circle from the centre of heat.
When the camp was approached by the young men, the host of dogs, which
are the usual concomitants of a black's tribe, gave warning of the
visitors' presence; and Dugingi, who was by that means attracted, first
removing their horses to a place of safety, led them within the
mysterious periphery. As they emerged suddenly from the obscurity of the
scrub into the open space where the corroboree was in full progress,
they were not a little startled at the scene before them. In the centre
was an immense fire; and around it, about one hundred and fifty men were
assembled in a circle, except at a gap at the side from which the
visitors approached. Here sat, or rather squatted, the gins, the
piccaninies, and the males incapacitated from senescence or infirmities.
The blacks having ceased their exertions as our friends arrived, the
latter had a good opportunity of surveying the picture at their leisure.
In the spot where the blacks had made their camp the ground was
naturally clear, and was covered with a smooth sward; while immediately
beyond the circumscribed limits of the natural clearance, the thick
scrub was, to any but a black fellow, perfectly impenetrable; thus
presenting to the eye of the beholder, the appearance of an umbrageous
amphitheatre especially created for those savage orgies. The men were
all more or less bedecked and besmeared; and, at the moment of our
friends' contemplation of them, stood taking breath preparatory to the
repetition of fresh exertions. The immense fire was being continually
replenished by the gins, and threw a fitful glance over the whole scene
that struck the mind with an indescribable sensation of mingled awe,
dread, and disgust. While those sensations were traversing the minds of
John and Tom Rainsfield Jemmy Davis stepped forward from amidst the
group, and saluted them with the greatest urbanity. But such was his
metamorphosis that our friends did not, until he had declared himself by
speech, recognise in the painted savage before them an educated and
civilized black.
His hair was drawn up to a tuft on the top of his head, and into it had
been thrust numerous of the most gaudy parrot and cockatoo feathers.
When he walked this top knot acquired an eccentric oscillation, which
gave his head the appearance of a burlesque on the plumed cranium of a
dignified hearse horse; and was the only part of his ornature that was
of a ludicrous character. His forehead was painted a deep yellow; from
his eyes to a line parallel to his nose his skin shone with a bright
red; while the rest of his face showed its natural dirty brown colour.
His body was fancifully marked in white, delineating his ribs; with
grotesque devices on his breast and back. His legs and arms were as
black as charcoal could make them; and with a necklace of bones and
shells, his toilet was complete. It has been facetiously stated that the
New Zealander's full dress consists of a shirt collar and a pair of
spurs; but Jemmy Davis had no such useless appendages; and, as he stood
before his guests in the conviction of his costume being complete, and
in the pride of conscious adornment, he never dreamt but that his own
self-gratulation was also shadowing their admiration and delight.
In a few minutes John and his companion were left alone; and the
corroboree commenced afresh by the resumption of the musical
accompaniments, which, as they were peculiar, we may as well describe.
We have already said, the gins were squatted on the ground near the
circle; and, we may now add, they had composed their ungraceful forms
in the oriental fashion. Some of them had their hands half open, or
rather their fingers were kept close together, while the palms were made
to assume a concave shape, as if for the purpose of holding water. With
them in this form they struck them simultaneously on their supine
thighs, with a metrical regularity, which made an unearthly hollow
noise, and formed the base of their orchestral display. Others of them
beat a similar measure on their waddies, or sticks; while the whole
burst into a discordant vocal accompaniment, in which they were joined
by the men and piccaninies in a dull and monotonous cadence. This was
their song; which, to adequately describe, would be impossible. Some
idea, however, may possibly be formed of it, when we say that they all
commenced in a high mournful key, in which they unintelligibly mumbled
their bucolic. On this first note they dwelt for about half a minute;
and descended the gamut in the same metre, resting only on the flats,
and expending their breath in a prolongation of the last, and deepest,
note they could utter; terminating in one eructation something between a
grunt and a sigh, or a concentration of the idiosyncratic articulation
of the London paviers. And as they dwelt upon this note for about a
minute, the combined effects of their mutterings, and the noise of their
feet, were not unlike the distant fulmination of thunder.
Their dance too, was conducted totally different to the wild gestures of
other savages. The participators in the ceremony, as we have already
explained, stood in a semi-circular line. Slightly stooping, they swung
their arms backwards and forwards before their bodies, and with their
feet beat a measured tread on the ground; while they continued to
contract their frames, almost into a sitting posture, and to accelerate
their pendulous and stamping motions; until, with an universal
convulsion, the last sigh or grunt was expatriated from their carcasses.
After a dead stop of some few seconds, with a recommencement of their
femoral accompaniment, they erected their bodies with their voices, and
proceeded _de capo_; presenting a scene more like a festival in
pandemonium than a congregation of human beings in "this huge rotundity
on which we tread."
The feelings of the young men, as they stood and watched this
performance, were varied; neither of them had seen a corroboree on so
grand a scale before; and they were for a time lost in wonder at an
exhibition, which no description can truthfully depict. John was
dreaming of the emancipation and improvement of a race, which he
believed, could be made to ameliorate their condition; and felt
sorrowful that, in the midst of civilisation (with its examples before
their eyes, and the inculcations which had been instilled into the
nature of one of their number), the blacks should be still perpetuating
the emblems of their barbarity and degradation. Tom's meditations were
of a different nature; though he advocated kind treatment to them in
the intercourses of life, he still believed them an inferior race of
sentient beings; if not altogether devoid of the mental attributes of
man. He, moreover, thought he read in their manner, despite all the
suavity of Jemmy Davis and Dugingi, something that portended evil; and
fancied he heard more than once, his own name uttered by them in their
song. It might have been only fancy, he thought; but an idea of
something premeditated had seized upon his mind, and he could not divest
himself of it.
Our young friends by this time, having seen quite enough to satisfy
them, and being unnoticed in their position, quietly left the spot;
and, having procured their horses, retraced their steps to the river.
They there mounted, and having crossed the stream, returned almost
silently to Fern Vale, and retired to rest. On the following morning Tom
took his leave of his friend; while, almost contemporary with his
departure, John's black boys, Billy and Jemmy, presented themselves to
resume their former life on the station. We may remark that Billy had by
this time perfectly recovered from his castigation, though he, and also
his companion, did not fail to stigmatize in very strong, if not in very
elegant, or pure English, phraseology, the conduct of Mr. Rainsfield;
and as much as insinuated that the tribe were in no very friendly way
disposed towards him.
This, John Ferguson was seriously grieved to learn; for he dreaded the
consequence of an open rupture between the aborigines and his neighbour.
He knew, if the blacks became more than ordinarily troublesome, that
Rainsfield would enlist the sympathies of his friends, and his class
generally; when blood would inevitably be shed, and the poor natives
hunted from the face of the earth. He therefore determined, if he should
not see Tom in a day or two, to ride over and call upon Mr. Rainsfield;
and while adverting to the treatment received by his black boy from
him, warn him of the danger, not only to himself, but to all the
settlers in his neighbourhood, by his persisting in his stringent
course. With this intention, a few days after the corroboree, not having
seen his friend in the interval, he rode over to Strawberry Hill.
As he approached the residence of the Rainsfields, despite his struggles
to suppress it, he felt his heart beat high with the anticipation of
seeing Eleanor, for the first time since his meeting with Bob Smithers.
John had, of late, striven hard to wean himself from what he attempted
to believe was his wild infatuation; and thought that he had
sufficiently schooled his mind, so as to meet her without the slightest
perturbation. But he had deceived himself; and as he approached the
house, and felt a consciousness of her proximity, he experienced that
strange agitation over which mortals have no control. He, however,
determined to avoid giving any outward indication of his mental
disquietude, so as not to cause any uneasiness to Eleanor from his
visit; and for that purpose he stopped his horse in the bush, before he
came within sight, and collected himself into a settled calmness. Having
performed this little piece of training he proceeded, and was passing
the huts on his way to the house, when he was accosted by Mr. Billing;
who informed him that Mr. Rainsfield had desired him to intimate, that
if he, Mr. Ferguson, desired to see that gentleman, he would meet him at
Mr. Billing's cottage in a few minutes. This request John thought rather
singular; but he turned his horse's head to the direction of the
cottage, at the door of which he alighted; and, after fastening his
horse to the fence, he entered.
"You will no doubt think it exceedingly rude in me, Mr. Ferguson,"
exclaimed the little man, "to intercept you in your road to the house.
Though you perceive me, sir, in a menial capacity, I am perfectly
conversant with, as I am also possessed of the feelings of a gentleman;
therefore I feel a repugnance, sir, in wounding those feelings in
another. You are doubtless aware, sir, we have had another marauding
visitation from those insolent savages; and Mr. Rainsfield is not only
greatly enraged at them, but has become, sir, extremely irascible and
truculent towards myself; and has conceived a notion that you are in
some way influencing and encouraging them in their depredations. The
pertinacity with which they annoy him, sir, is certainly marvellous; and
he is confirmed in the belief that it is in a great measure owing to
your instigations; therefore he gave instructions that, in the event of
your calling, I should request you to step under my humble roof, while I
sent him notice of your presence. This, sir, I have done, so you may
expect to see him in a few minutes. I merely mention these
circumstances, sir, not in disparagement of my employer; but to account
to you for my rudeness, and exonerate myself from the imputation of any
voluntary violation of good breeding."
"Pray, don't mention it, Mr. Billing," replied John; "I don't imagine
for a moment that you would intentionally commit any breach of decorum,
even if the interruption of my passage could be termed such; but I must
confess, I can't understand why Mr. Rainsfield should wish to prevent me
from calling upon him in his own house." Though John said this, his
heart whispered a motive for such interruption.
"I am flattered, sir, by your good opinion," said Mr. Billing, "and I
thank you. I believe, sir, you're a native of the colony, and have not
visited Europe; but you are a man of the world, sir, I can perceive, and
will readily understand the anomalies of my position. I, who have been
bred, sir, in the mercantile community of the cosmopolitan metropolis,
being subjected to the petty tyrannies of a man, whom I consider
mentally my inferior. I am disgusted, sir, with the incongruities of my
situation, and harassed by the thought of my trials being shared by
Mrs. Billing (who, I assure you, sir, is an ornament to her sex); and
the total absence, sir, of all those comforts, which a man who has been
in the position I have been in, sir, and who has come to my years,
naturally expects, tends to make this occupation distasteful to me."
John, we are ashamed to say (at the moment forgetful of his own) felt
amused at the sorrows of the little man; though he smilingly assured him
that he thought a man of his evident abilities was thrown away in the
bush, and that he believed it would be considerably more to his
advantage, if he forsook so inhospitable a pursuit, as that in which he
was engaged, for something more congenial to his nature and compatible
with his education.
"My dear sir," replied the enthusiastic storekeeper, "I again thank you.
I perceive, sir, by your judicious remarks, you are a gentleman of no
ordinary discernment. The same idea has often struck me, sir; in fact, I
may say the 'wish is father to the thought;' but, unfortunately,
'thereby hangs a tale.' If you have no objection to listen to me, sir,
for a few minutes, I will explain the peculiarities of my position."
John having expressed himself desirous of hearing the explanation, Mr.
Billing proceeded. "You must know, sir, that after finishing a sound
general education at one of the public schools of London (you will
forgive me, sir, for commencing at the normal period of my career), my
father, who was a medical man of good practice but large family, sent
me, sir, to the desk. I, in fact, entered the counting-house of my
relatives, Messrs. Billing, Barlow, & Co., of Upper Thames Street, in
the city of London, a firm extensively engaged in the comb and brush
line, and enjoying a wide celebrity, sir, in the city and provinces. I
continued at my post, sir, for years, until I obtained the situation of
provincial traveller, which place I continued to fill for a lengthy
period. I need hardly say, sir, that in my peregrinations my name was
sufficient to command respect from our friends and constituents, who
naturally imagined that I must have been a partner in the firm I
represented; consequently, sir, my vicissitudes were almost imaginary,
and my comfort superior to the generality of commercial travellers. I
did not, of course, sir, enlighten the minds of our constituents on
their error, the effects of which I every day enjoyed; more especially
as the firm, from my long services, had solemnly pledged themselves to
receive me into their corporate body as a partner. The mutations of even
our nearest relatives, sir, are not to be depended upon; for I found in
my experience, that the word of a principal is not always a guarantee.
Upon urging the recognition of my claims, I found a spirit of
equivocation to exist in my friends; and such conduct not agreeing, sir,
with my views of integrity, I uttered some severe strictures on their
scandalous behaviour, and withdrew, sir, from the connexion.
"I must remark, sir, that about three years before this event (ah, sir!
that was a soft period of my life), I took unto myself an accomplished
lady as the wife of my bosom. I had been at great pains and expense,
sir, to consolidate our comfort in a nice little box at Brixton; and had
been blessed, sir, with two of our dear children. About this time the
fame of the Australian _El Dorado_ had spread far and wide; and, after
my rupture with my relatives, I was easily allured, sir, from my
peaceful hearth to seek my fortune in this land of promise; I say a land
of promise, sir, but I impugn not its fair name when I add that if it
ever was one to me, it failed to fulfil its obligations. I fear, sir, I
am tedious," said Mr. Billing, breaking off in his discourse, "for this
is a theme I feel I can dilate on;" but being assured by his companion
that he was by no means tiresome, he continued: "I told you, sir, that I
had taken great pains and expense to furnish my house at Brixton; and I
felt a reluctance to submit it to the hammer, and to sever myself and
family from the blissful fireside of our English home. However, sir,
avarice is strong in the minds of mortals; and visions of antipodean
wealth decided my fate, and caused the sacrifice of my contented home on
the altar of Plutus. I had heard that the difficulties of the diggings
were insuperable to genteel aspirants after gold; and I, therefore,
determined, sir, to be wise in my own generation, and, instead of
digging for the precious metal, to open an establishment where I could
procure it, sir, by vending articles of every-day use. For this purpose,
sir, I invested my capital in stock of which I had had practical
experience, that is, in combs and brushes; conjecturing, sir, that they
would be articles which most speculators would overlook, and,
consequently, be in great demand. In due time, sir, I arrived in the
colony with my goods, and lost not a moment unnecessarily in repairing
to the diggings. I need not recount, sir, the many difficulties which
beset my path; I believe they were common to all in similar
circumstances; and you, are no doubt, sir, sufficiently acquainted with
such scenes yourself. Suffice it to say, sir, that eventually I reached
my destination, and discovered, as we would say in mercantile parlance,
that my goods had arrived to a bad market. I assure, you, sir, the
horrid creatures who congregated at those diggings, notwithstanding that
their heads were perfect masses of hair, disdained, yes, absolutely
disdained, sir, the use of my wares.
"I then asked myself what was to be done; and while meditating on a
reply, sir, a viper was at hand to tempt me to my ruin. A plausible,
well-spoken gentleman, sir, introduced himself to me as a Mr. Black;
and proposed that as my goods were of no value on the diggings, but
were very saleable in Melbourne, I should take them back and commence
business there. He at the same time remarked, sir, that to commence
business it would be essential for me to have 'colonial experience;'
and doubting if I possessed such an acquirement, he, therefore, begged,
sir, to offer his services. He, in fact proposed that he should join
me in the undertaking; stating, sir, that through his general knowledge
of business, he was convinced that the speculation would succeed;
and suggested that we should at once proceed to Melbourne, sir, with
my goods. He would embark, he said, his capital in the concern, and
purchase an assortment of goods for a general business, which we were
to carry on under the name and style of 'Black and Billing.' This
he facetiously made the subject of a witticism, by remarking that
it would be rendered into 'Black Billy'[A] by the diggers when they
visited town; and would of a certainty ensure our success. I must
confess, sir, I was taken in by the scoundrel's wiles, and readily
entered into his scheme; the result of which is easily related. With
the expense of carrying my goods and myself backwards and forwards from
the diggings, my spare cash was all but expended; and when, sir, I
rejoined Mrs. Billing, whom I had left behind me, sir, in Melbourne,
until I should have become settled, I found myself almost penniless.
However, sir, although I'm a man of small stature, I am possessed of
considerable energy and, therefore, sir, set myself earnestly to work.
I soon procured a shop, though with miserable accommodation, and at
an enormous rental; but my partner assured me it was no matter, as we
would soon reap our harvest. I got my goods, sir, into the place, and
shortly afterwards my partner procured an extensive assortment also;
when we commenced our business, as I thought, under very favourable
auspices. But I soon discovered my mistake; for one fine morning
I found Mr. Black had decamped with all the money of the concern,
after converting as many of the goods into gold as he could. I then
discovered, sir, that the stock he had procured was upon credit, on the
strength of that which I had in the place at the time; and finding his
defalcations were greater than I could possibly meet, and my creditors
being fearful that I would follow his example, I was compelled to
relinquish my property to liquidate their claims. I then, sir, found
myself not only destitute, but homeless; with my wife and children
dependent upon me for their subsistence.
[Footnote A: A name applied by the diggers to the tin pot in which they
boil their water, as also to black hats.]
"I managed, sir, however, to procure employment by driving a cart; and,
after saving sufficient money, succeeded in getting round to Sydney,
where my wife, sir, had relations. They, sir, promised me assistance,
and after a short interval fulfilled their promise by establishing me in
a store at Armidale; where I got on, sir, pretty well, and would have
succeeded, but for the chicanery of some scoundrels, sir, by whom I lost
considerably, and was a second time reduced to labour for a support.
Through various vicissitudes, sir, I have come to this, and, you may
well imagine, that a man of my sensitive feeling and appreciation of
honour, in this menial capacity meets with nothing but disgust and
mortification. But, sir, I do not repine; however dark is the horizon
of my fate, despair does not enter my mind; the clouds of depression
must necessarily some day be removed; and then, sir, the sun of my
future will burst forth with a refulgence, the more resplendent from its
previous concealment. I desire, sir, in fact it is the fondest wish of
my heart, to return to Old England; but at present that cannot be, for
means, sir, are wanting; the all potent needful is required; money, sir.
But things must improve, they cannot last for ever thus; to think that
I, a gentleman, and Mrs. Billing a gentlewoman, should waste our very
existence, sir, in this wilderness; banished, sir, from the very
intercourse of man; expatriated, sir, from all we hold most dear, and,
forsaken, sir, by the society whence we are ostracized. The thought,
sir, is harrowing; yes, sir, harrowing beyond measure."
Mr. Billing was now getting pathetic and rather lachrymose; and his
confessions might have become of a confidential, and a painful nature,
had they not, very much to the relief of our hero, been cut short by the
opportune entrance of Mr. Rainsfield, who, when Mr. Billing had left the
room, addressed himself to John:
"I must apologize for keeping you waiting, Mr. Ferguson, but I was
engaged at the moment I heard of your call; and I thought by your
meeting me here it would save you from that pain which, otherwise, your
visit might have occasioned you, after the circumstances which
transpired when you last favoured us with your company."
"I am particularly indebted to you for your solicitation," replied John;
"but I may remark, I had sufficient confidence in myself to feel assured
that I would have neither received, nor given any pain in the manner in
which I presume you mean. And I may also state that, but for the desire
I had to give you some information that may be of vital importance to
you, I would have disdained your bidding."
"Then, may I beg to know the object of your call," enquired Rainsfield.
"I have two," replied John, "first I have been informed by one of my
black boys that you severely maltreated him; and considering myself
aggrieved by the act, as it was the means of depriving me of his
services, I beg you to explain the cause for so unwarrantable a
procedure."
"I justify my acts to no man," exclaimed Rainsfield, "and recognise no
blacks as others than members of their general community; who take upon
themselves to perform various acts of aggression. The laws of our
country not being potent enough to protect us from their marauding, we
do it ourselves; and if you think fit to gainsay our right, you know
what course to pursue; and now, sir, for your second object."
"I might with equal justice," said John, "decline to afford you the
information I by accident obtained, but I have no desire to show such
churlishness, and I believe that by judiciously acting upon it, you may
save yourself from some calamity; which I have good cause to believe is
impending. My two black boys who left me after your assault on one of
them, and who were only persuaded to return after their great corroboree
by my conciliating their chief, have informed me, in an imperfect
manner, that some overt act of aggression, on the part of the tribe, is
meditated; and it is to put you on your guard against this that I have
ventured to trouble you with my presence."
"Then it was at that corroboree on the spoliation of my property that
you heard this?" exclaimed Rainsfield. "My goods were purloined to feast
those imps of darkness, and you lent your presence to grace their
proceedings? I always thought you encouraged the villains in their
infamies, and I now perceive my suspicions were well founded. However,
sir, I am perfectly independent of you, and your so called information.
I have decided upon my course of action, and will not therefore trouble
you further to interest yourself in my behalf. You will no doubt
readily perceive that your presence here at any time would be extremely
unpleasant; and I must therefore request that you absent yourself from
my house as much as possible. I shall now wish you good day;" saying
which Rainsfield quitted the room.
John Ferguson was so taken by surprise at the violent tirade he had just
listened to, that he had had no idea of defending himself from an
accusation, the manifest absurdity of which merely struck him as
contemptuous. But he felt a source of grief at being summarily estranged
from the other members of the family; and whatever his feelings | 2,387.254183 |
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Produced by David Garcia, Sam W. and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Kentuckiana Digital Library)
THE HOUSE OF
FULFILMENT
By GEORGE MADDEN MARTIN
AUTHOR OF EMMY LOU
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
MCMIV
_Copyright, 1904, by_
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
Published, September, 1904
Second Impression
Copyright, 1904, by The S. S. McClure Co.
[Illustration: "WHAT IS YOUR NAME, DEAR?"]
To A. R. M.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PART ONE 1
CHAPTER ONE 3
CHAPTER TWO 18
CHAPTER THREE 27
CHAPTER FOUR 35
CHAPTER FIVE 53
CHAPTER SIX 65
CHAPTER SEVEN 78
PART TWO 85
CHAPTER ONE 87
CHAPTER TWO 106
CHAPTER THREE 115
CHAPTER FOUR 147
CHAPTER FIVE 163
CHAPTER SIX 173
CHAPTER SEVEN 187
CHAPTER EIGHT 207
PART THREE 227
CHAPTER ONE 229
CHAPTER TWO 244
CHAPTER THREE 261
CHAPTER FOUR 278
CHAPTER FIVE 286
CHAPTER SIX 297
CHAPTER SEVEN 304
CHAPTER EIGHT 321
CHAPTER NINE 328
CHAPTER TEN 337
CHAPTER ELEVEN 341
CHAPTER TWELVE 350
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 354
CHAPTER FOURTEEN 368
PART ONE
"Love is enough: ho ye who seek saving,
Go no further: come hither: there have been who have found it,
And these know the House of Fulfilment of craving;
These know the Cup with the roses around it;
These know the World's Wound and the balm that hath bound it."
WILLIAM MORRIS.
--"Elements, breeds, adjustments...
A new race dominating previous ones."
WALT WHITMAN.
CHAPTER ONE
Harriet Blair was seventeen when she went with her father and mother
and her brother Austen to New Orleans, to the marriage of an older
brother, Alexander, the father's business representative at that
place. It was characteristic of the Blairs that they declined the
hospitality of the bride's family, and from the hotel attended,
punctiliously and formally, the occasions for which they had come. It
takes ease to accept hospitality.
Alexander Blair, the father, banker and capitalist, of Vermont stock,
now the richest man in Louisville, was of a stern ruggedness
unsoftened by a long and successful career in the South, while his
wife, the daughter of a Scotch schoolmaster settled in Pennsylvania,
was the possessor of a thrifty closeness and strong, practical sense.
Alexander, their oldest son, a man of thirty, to whose wedding they
had come, was what was natural to expect, a literal, shrewd man, with
a strong sense of duty as he saw it. His long, clean-shaven upper lip,
above a beard, looked slightly grim, and his straight-gazing,
blue-grey eyes were stern.
The second son, Austen, was clean-featured, handsome and blond, but he
was also, by report, the shrewd and promising son of his father, even
as his brother was reported before him.
Harriet, the daughter, was a silent, cold-looking girl, who wrapped
herself in reserve as a cover for self-consciousness but, observing
closely, thought to her own conclusions. She had a disillusioning way
of baring facts in these communings, which showed life to her very
honestly but without romance or glamour.
At the wedding, sitting in her white dress by her father and mother in
the flower-bedecked parlours of the Randolphs, Harriet looked at her
brother, standing by the girl of seventeen whom he had just married,
and saw things much as they were. In Molly, the bride | 2,387.304968 |
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Produced by David Widger, Dagny, and John Bickers
DOCTOR PASCAL
By Emile Zola
Translated By Mary J. Serrano
I.
In the heat of the glowing July afternoon, the room, with blinds
carefully closed, was full of a great calm. From the three windows,
through the cracks of the old wooden shutters, came only a few scattered
sunbeams which, in the midst of the obscurity, made a soft brightness
that bathed surrounding objects in a diffused and tender light. It
was cool here in comparison with the overpowering heat that was felt
outside, under the fierce rays of the sun that blazed upon the front of
the house.
Standing before the press which faced the windows, Dr. Pascal was
looking for a paper that he had come in search of. With doors wide
open, this immense press of carved oak, adorned with strong and handsome
mountings of metal, dating from the last century, displayed within its
capacious depths an extraordinary collection of papers and manuscripts
of all sorts, piled up in confusion and filling every shelf to
overflowing. For more than thirty years the doctor had thrown into it
every page he wrote, from brief notes to the complete texts of his great
works on heredity. Thus it was that his searches here were not always
easy. He rummaged patiently among the papers, and when he at last found
the one he was looking for, he smiled.
For an instant longer he remained near the bookcase, reading the note by
a golden sunbeam that came to him from the middle window. He himself,
| 2,387.361718 |
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Produced by Frank van Drogen, Julia Neufeld and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by the Bibliotheque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at
http://gallica.bnf.fr)
THE
DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE
OF THE
AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
VOL. III.
THE
DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE
OF THE
AMERICAN REVOLUTION;
BEING
THE LETTERS OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, SILAS DEANE, JOHN
ADAMS, JOHN JAY, ARTHUR LEE, WILLIAM LEE, RALPH
IZARD, FRANCIS DANA, WILLIAM CARMICHAEL, HENRY
LAURENS, JOHN LAURENS, M. DE LAFAYETTE, M.
DUMAS AND OTHERS, CONCERNING THE FOREIGN
RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES DURING
THE WHOLE REVOLUTION;
TOGETHER WITH
THE LETTERS IN REPLY FROM THE SECRET COMMITTEE OF
CONGRESS AND THE SECRETARY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS.
ALSO,
THE ENTIRE CORRESPONDENCE OF THE FRENCH MINISTERS,
GERARD AND LUZERNE, WITH CONGRESS.
Published under the Direction of the President of the United States, from
the original Manuscripts in the Department of State, conformably
to a Resolution of Congress of March 27th, 1818.
EDITED
BY JARED SPARKS.
VOL. III.
BOSTON:
NATHAN HALE AND GRAY & BOWEN;
G. & C. & H. CARVILL, NEW YORK; P. THOMPSON, WASHINGTON.
1829.
HALE'S STEAM PRESS.
No. 6 Suffolk Buildings, Congress Street, Boston
CONTENTS
OF THE
THIRD VOLUME.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN'S CORRESPONDENCE.
* * * * *
Page.
To John Hancock, President of Congress. Nantes,
December 8th, 1776, 5
Announces his arrival in France.--Does not assume
a public character.--Military stores destined for
America.
To the Committee of Secret Correspondence. Nantes,
December 8th, 1776, 7
The Committee of Secret Correspondence to Benjamin
Franklin. Baltimore, January 1st, 1777, 9
Announcing his appointment as Commissioner to Spain.
To the Committee of Secret Correspondence. Paris,
January 4th, 1777, 9
Arrives in Paris.--Has an audience with Count de
Vergennes.--Interview with the Spanish Ambassador.--The
nation favorable to the American cause.
To the President of Congress. Paris, January 20th,
1777, 10
Recommending Captain Balm.
To the Count d'Aranda, Spanish Ambassador to the
Court of France. Passy, April 7th, 1777, 11
Communicates the propositions of the United States
to Spain.--Congress will also assist France and
Spain in the conquest of the English sugar islands.
To General Washington. Paris, June 13th, 1777, 12
Recommending Count Kotkouski.--Count Pulaski.
To General Washington. Paris, June 13th, 1777, 13
Recommending Baron de Frey.
M. Dubourg to B. Franklin. Paris, September
8th, 1777, 14
Requesting a letter of recommendation for M. Gerard,
who wishes to settle in America.
To Richard Peters. Passy, September 12th, 1777, 15
Recommending M. Gerard.
Remarks on a Loan for the United States, 15
America a safer debtor than Britain, from her general
industry, frugality, prudence, ability, and virtue.
To David Hartley, member of Parliament. Passy,
October 14th, 1777, 23
The conduct of Great Britain has rendered submission
impossible.--Cruel treatment of the American prisoners
in England.--Propositions for their relief.
To James Lovell. Paris, December 21st, 1777, 27
Mr Deane's recommendations of officers.--Numerous
and vexatious applications, with high recommendations.
To James Hutton. Passy, February 1st, 1778, 29
Means of reconciling America.
To David Hartley. Passy, February 12th, 1778, 31
Alienation of America from Great Britain.--Kindness
and cordiality of France.--Change of Ministry necessary
for conciliation.--Subscriptions in England
for the relief of American prisoners.--Mr Hutton.
To David Hartley. Passy, February 26th, 1778, 34
Lord North's conciliatory bills.--Advice to the English
whigs.
To James Hutton. Passy, March 24th, 1778, 37
The Commissioners are ready to treat.
Note from William Pultney to B. Franklin. March
29th, 1778, 37
Desires an interview with Dr Franklin.
To William Pultney. Passy, March 30th, 1778, 38
America cannot treat on any terms short of independence--
will not treat at all in case of a war against France.
To Dr Bancroft. Passy, April 16th, 1778, 40
British Commissioners cannot succeed in America on
their terms.
David Hartley to B. Franklin. Paris, April 23d, 1778, 40
Advises him to take care of his own safety.
To Count de Vergennes. Passy, April 24th, 1778, 41
Giving an account of his conversations with Mr Hartley;
of the visit of Mr Chapman, an agent of Lord
Shelburne.--The Quebec fleet.
Count de Vergennes to B. Franklin. Versailles,
April 25th, 1778, 44
Policy of the English to excite divisions and distrust.
James Lovell to B. Franklin. Yorktown, June 20th, 1778, 45
Answer to a letter from Brussels. Passy, July 1st, 1778, 45
Reply to insinuations against the faith of France.--Future
prospects of America.--Acknowledgment of
the independency of little consequence to America.--The
King's political studies.--Peace is to be obtained
only on equal terms.--Ridicules the offers
of rewards.
To James Lovell. Passy, July 22d, 1778, 52
Proceedings relative to Mr Deane.--Beaumarchais.--Eleventh
and twelfth articles of the treaty.--Mr
Izard.--Inconvenience and expense of maintaining
several Commissioners instead of one.--War between
England and France; war in Germany.--Difficulty
of raising loans.--Drafts of Congress on the
Commissioners.
Instructions to B. Franklin, as Minister Plenipotentiary
to the Court of France, 59
Committee of Foreign Affairs to B. Franklin. Philadelphia,
October 28th, 1778, 62
Forwarding his new credentials.
James Lovell to B. Franklin. Philadelphia, December
8th, 1778, 63
Depreciation of the currency.
Dr Price to B. Franklin. London, Jan. 18th, 1779, 64
Declines removing to America.
James Lovell to B. Franklin. Philadelphia, January
29th, 1779, 65
English successes in Georgia.
James Lovell to B. Franklin. Philadelphia, February
8th, 1779, 66
To David Hartley. Passy, February 22d, 1779, 66
America cannot relinquish her alliance with France
to treat with Britain.
Letter respecting Captain Cook. Passy, March 10th, 1779, 67
Recommending to afford Captain Cook all the assistance
he may need.
To David Hartley. Passy, March 21st, 1779, 68
Delay in the exchange of prisoners.--Losses of the
English.--Growth of America.
David Hartley to B. Franklin. London, April 22d, 1779, 70
Proposing a truce.--Interests of France.--Advantages
of adopting some preliminaries.
Observations by Mr Hartley, 74
Enclosed in the preceding.
Instructions to John Paul Jones, Commander of the
American Squadron in the service of the United
States, now in the port of L'Orient, 77
To David Hartley. Passy, May 4th, 1779, 78
Relative to Mr Hartley's propositions.
To the Committee of Foreign Affairs. Passy, May
26th, 1779, 81
Receives his credentials.--Presented to the King.--American
prisoners in France released.--Captain
Jones's squadron.--Exchange of prisoners with
England.--American prisoners there committed for
high treason.--Necker unfavorably disposed towards
America.--Accounts of the Commissioners.--Difficulty
of raising a loan.--Charges of William Lee and Ralph
Izard.--Recommends the appointment of consuls.--Agents
and applications of the separate States.--Barbary
Powers.--Disposition | 2,387.557159 |
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Produced by Doug Levy.
LITTLE LUCY'S WONDERFUL GLOBE
by Charlotte M. Yonge
"Young fingers idly roll
The mimic earth or trace
In picture bright of blue and gold
Each other circling chase"--KEBLE
CONTENTS.
Chapter I. Mother Bunch.
Chapter II. Visitors from the South Seas.
Chapter III. Italy.
Chapter IV. Greenland.
Chapter V. Tyrol.
Chapter VI. Africa.
Chapter VII. Laplanders.
Chapter VIII. China.
Chapter IX. Kamschatka.
Chapter X. The Turk.
Chapter XI. Switzerland.
Chapter XII. The Cossack.
Chapter XIII. Spain.
Chapter XIV. Germany.
Chapter XV. Paris in the Siege.
Chapter XVI. The American Guest.
Chapter XVII. The Dream of all Nations.
LITTLE LUCY'S WONDERFUL GLOBE
CHAPTER I.
MOTHER BUNCH.
There was once a wonderful fortnight in little Lucy's life. One
evening she went to bed very tired and cross and hot, and in the
morning when she looked at her arms and legs they were all covered
with red spots, rather pretty to look at, only they were dry and
prickly.
Nurse was frightened when she looked at them. She turned all the
little sisters out of the night nursery, covered Lucy up close, and
ordered her not to stir, certainly not to go into her bath. Then
there was a whispering and a running about, and Lucy was half
alarmed, but more pleased at being so important, for she did not
feel at all ill, and quite enjoyed the tea and toast that Nurse
brought up to her. Just as she was beginning to think it rather
tiresome to lie there with nothing to do, except to watch the flies
buzzing about, there was a step on the stairs and up came the
doctor. He was an old friend, very good-natured, and he made fun
with Lucy about having turned into a spotted leopard, just like
the cowry shell on Mrs. Bunker's mantel-piece. Indeed, he said
he thought she was such a curiosity that Mrs. Bunker would come
for her and set her up in the museum, and then he went away.
Suppose, oh, suppose she did!
Mrs. Bunker, or Mother Bunch, as Lucy and her brothers and sisters
called her, was housekeeper to their Uncle Joseph. He was really
their great uncle, and they thought him any age you can imagine.
They would not have been much surprised to hear that he sailed with
Christopher Columbus, though he was a strong, hale, active man, much
less easily tired than their own papa. He had been a ship's surgeon
in his younger days, and had sailed all over the world, and
collected all sorts of curious things, besides which he was a very
wise and learned man, and had made some great discovery. It was
_not_ America. Lucy knew that her elderly brother understood what
it was, but it was not worth troubling her head about, only somehow
it made ships go safer, and so he had had a pension given him as a
reward. He had come home and bought a house about a mile out of
town, and built up a high room from which to look at the stars with
his telescope, and to try his experiments in, and a long one besides
for his museum; yet, after all, he was not much there, for whenever
there was anything wonderful to be seen, he always went off to look
at it, and, whenever there was a meeting of learned men--scientific
men was the right word--they always wanted him to help them make
speeches and show wonders. He was away now. He had gone away to
wear a red cross on his arm, and help to take care of the wounded
in the sad war between the French and the Germans.
But he had left Mother Bunch behind him. Nobody knew exactly what
was Mrs. Bunker's nation; indeed she could hardly be said to have
any, for she had been born at sea, and had been a sailor's wife;
but whether she was mostly English, Dutch or Spanish, nobody knew
and nobody cared. Her husband had been lost at sea, and Uncle
Joseph had taken her to look after his house, and always said she
was the only woman who had sense and discretion enough ever to go
into his laboratory or dust his museum.
She was very kind and good natured, and there was nothing that the
children liked better than a walk to Uncle Joseph's, and, after a
play in the garden, tea with her. And such quantities of sugar
there were in her room! such curious cakes made in the fashion of
different countries! such funny preserves from all parts of the
world! And still more delightful, such cupboards and drawers full
of wonderful things, and such stories about them! The younger ones
liked Mrs. Bunker's room better than Uncle Joseph's museum, where
there were some big stuffed beasts with glaring eyes that frightened
them; and they had to walk round with hands behind, that they might
not touch anything, or else their uncle's voice was sure to call out
gruffly, "Paws off!"
Mrs. Bunker was not a bit like the smart house-keepers at other
houses. To be sure, on Sundays she came out in a black silk gown
with a little flounce at the bottom, a scarlet crape shawl with a
blue dragon on it--his wings over her back, and a claw over each
shoulder, so that whoever sat behind her in church was terribly
distracted by trying to see the rest of him--and a very big yellow
Tuscan bonnet, trimmed with sailor's blue ribbon.
But during the week and about the house she wore a green gown, with
a brown holland apron and bib over it, quite straight all the way
down, for she had no particular waist, and her hair, which was of
a funny kind of flaxen grey, she bundled up and tied round, without
any cap or anything else on her head. One of the little boys had
once called her Mother Bunch, because of her stories; and the name
fitted her so well that the whole family, and even Uncle Joseph,
took it up.
Lucy was very fond of her; but when about an hour after the doctor's
visit she was waked by a rustling and a lumbering on the stairs, and
presently the door opened, and the second best big bonnet--the
go-to-market bonnet with the turned ribbons--came into the room with
Mother Bunch's face under it, and the good-natured voice told her
she was to be carried to Uncle Joseph's and have oranges and
tamarinds, she did begin to feel like the spotted cowry-shell to
think about being set on the chimney-piece, to cry, and say she
wanted Mamma.
The Nurse and Mother Bunch began to comfort her, and explain that
the doctor thought she had the scarlatina; not at all badly; but
that if any of the others caught it, nobody could guess how bad they
would be; especially Mamma, who had just been ill; and so she was
to be rolled up in her blankets, and put into a carriage, and taken
to her uncle's; and there she would stay till she was not only well,
but could safely come home without carrying infection about with her.
Lucy was a good little girl, and knew that she must bear it; so,
though she could not help crying a little when she found she must
not kiss any one, nay not even see them, and that nobody might go
with her but Lonicera, her own china doll, she made up her mind
bravely; and she was a good deal cheered when Clare, the biggest
and best of all the dolls, was sent into her, with all her clothes,
by Maude, her eldest sister, to be her companion,--it was such an
honor and so very kind of Maude that it quite warmed the sad little
heart.
So Lucy had her little scarlet flannel dressing gown on, and her
shoes and stockings, and a wonderful old knitted hood with a tippet
to it, and then she was rolled round and round in all her
bed-clothes, and Mrs. Bunker took her up like a very big baby, not
letting any one else touch her. How Mrs. Bunker got safe down all
the stairs no one can tell, but she did, and into the carriage,
and there poor Lucy looked back and saw at the windows Mamma's face,
and Papa's, and Maude's and all the rest, all nodding and smiling
to her, but Maude was crying all the time, and perhaps Mamma was too.
The journey seemed very long; and Lucy was really tired when she
was put down at last in a big bed, nicely warmed for her, and with
a bright fire in the room. As soon as she had had some beef-tea,
she went off soundly to sleep and only woke to drink tea, give the
dolls their supper, and put them to sleep.
The next evening she was sitting up by the fire, and the fourth day
she was running about the house as if nothing had ever been the
matter with her, but she was not to go home for a fortnight; and
being wet, cold, dull weather, it was not always easy to amuse
herself. She had her dolls, to be sure, and the little dog Don,
to play with, and sometimes Mr. Bunker would let her make funny
things with the dough, or stone the raisins, or even help make a
pudding; but still there was a good deal of time | 2,387.657419 |
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{93}
NOTES AND QUERIES:
A MEDIUM OF INTER-COMMUNICATION FOR LITERARY MEN, ARTISTS, ANTIQUARIES,
GENEALOGISTS, ETC.
"When found, make a note of."--CAPTAIN CUTTLE.
* * * * *
No. 196.]
SATURDAY, JULY 30. 1853..
[Price Fourpence. Stamped Edition | 2,387.778879 |
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MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
THE HALL OF FANTASY
It has happened to me, on various occasions, to find myself
in a certain edifice which would appear to have some of the
characteristics of a public exchange. Its interior is a spacious
hall, with a pavement of white marble. Overhead is a lofty dome,
supported by long rows of pillars of fantastic architecture, the
idea of which was probably taken from the Moorish ruins of the
Alhambra, or perhaps from some enchanted edifice in the Arabian
tales. The windows of this hall have a breadth and grandeur of
design and an elaborateness of workmanship that have nowhere been
equalled, except in the Gothic cathedrals of the Old World. Like
their prototypes, too, they admit the light of heaven only through
stained and pictured glass, thus filling the hall with many-colored
radiance and painting its marble floor with beautiful or grotesque
designs; so that its inmates breathe, as it were, a visionary
atmosphere, and tread upon the fantasies of poetic minds. These
peculiarities, combining a wilder mixture of styles than even an
American architect usually recognizes as allowable,--Grecian,
Gothic, Oriental, and nondescript,--cause the whole edifice to give
the impression of a dream, which might be dissipated and shattered
to fragments by merely stamping the foot upon the pavement. Yet,
with such modifications and repairs as successive ages demand, the
Hall of Fantasy is likely to endure longer than the most substantial
structure that ever cumbered the earth.
It is not at all times that one can gain admittance into this
edifice, although most persons enter it at some period or other of
their lives; if not in their waking moments, then by the universal
passport of a dream. At my last visit I wandered thither unawares
while my mind was busy with an idle tale, and was startled by the
throng of people who seemed suddenly to rise up around me.
"Bless me! Where am I?" cried I, with but a dim recognition of the
place.
"You are in a spot," said a friend who chanced to be near at hand,
"which occupies in the world of fancy the same position which the
Bourse, the Rialto, and the Exchange do in the commercial world.
All who have affairs in that mystic region, which lies above, below,
or beyond the actual, may here meet and talk over the business of
their dreams."
"It is a noble hall," observed I.
"Yes," he replied. "Yet we see but a small portion of the edifice.
In its upper stories are said to be apartments where the inhabitants
of earth may hold converse with those of the moon; and beneath our
feet are gloomy cells, which communicate with the infernal regions,
and where monsters and chimeras are kept in confinement and fed with
all unwholesomeness."
In niches and on pedestals around about the hall stood the statues
or busts of men who in every age have been rulers and demigods in
the realms of imagination and its kindred regions. The grand old
countenance of Homer; the shrunken and decrepit form but vivid face
of AEsop; the dark presence of Dante; the wild Ariosto; Rabelais's
smile of deep-wrought mirth, the profound, pathetic humor of
Cervantes; the all-glorious Shakespeare; Spenser, meet guest for an
allegoric structure; the severe divinity of Milton; and Bunyan,
moulded of homeliest clay, but instinct with celestial fire,--were
those that chiefly attracted my eye. Fielding, Richardson, and
Scott occupied conspicuous pedestals. In an obscure and shadowy
niche was deposited the bust of our countryman, the author of Arthur
Mervyn.
"Besides these indestructible memorials of real genius," remarked my
companion, "each century has erected statues of its own ephemeral
favorites in wood."
"I observe a few crumbling relics of such," said I. "But ever and
anon, I suppose, Oblivion comes with her huge broom and sweeps them
all from the marble floor. But such will never be the fate of this
fine statue of Goethe."
"Nor of that next to it,--Emanuel Swedenborg," said he. "Were ever
two men of transcendent imagination more unlike?"
In the centre of the hall springs an ornamental fountain, the water
of which continually throws itself into new shapes and snatches the
most diversified lines from the stained atmosphere around. It is
impossible to conceive what a strange vivacity is imparted to the
scene by the magic dance of this fountain, with its endless
transformations, in which the imaginative beholder may discern what
form he will. The water is supposed by some to flow from the same
source as the Castalian spring, and is extolled by others as uniting
the virtues of the Fountain of Youth with those of many other
enchanted wells long celebrated in tale and song. Having never
tasted it, I can bear no testimony to its quality.
"Did you ever drink this water?" I inquired of my friend.
"A few sips now and then," answered he. "But there are men here who
make it their constant beverage,--or, at least, have the credit of
doing so. In some instances it is known to have intoxicating
qualities."
"Pray let us look at these water-drinkers," said I.
So we passed among the fantastic pillars till we came to a spot
where a number of persons were clustered together in the light of
one of the great stained windows, which seemed to glorify the whole
group as well as the marble that they trod on. Most of them were
men of broad foreheads, meditative countenances, and thoughtful,
inward eyes; yet it required but a trifle to summon up mirth,
peeping out from the very midst of grave and lofty musings. Some
strode about, or leaned against the pillars of the hall, alone and
in silence; their faces wore a rapt expression, as if sweet music
were in the air around them, or as if their inmost souls were about
to float away in song. One or two, perhaps, stole a glance at the
bystanders, to watch if their poetic absorption were observed.
Others stood talking in groups, with a liveliness of expression, a
ready smile, and a light, intellectual laughter, which showed how
rapidly the shafts of wit were glancing to and fro among them.
A few held higher converse, which caused their calm and melancholy
souls to beam moonlight from their eyes. As I lingered near
them,--for I felt an inward attraction towards these men, as if the
sympathy of feeling, if not of genius, had united me to their
order,--my friend mentioned several of their names. The world has
likewise heard those names; with some it has been familiar for
years; and others are daily making their way deeper into the
universal heart.
"Thank Heaven," observed I to my companion, as we passed to another
part of the hall, "we have done with this techy, wayward, shy, proud
unreasonable set of laurel-gatherers. I love them in their works,
but have little desire to meet them elsewhere."
"You have adopted all old prejudice, I see," replied my friend, who
was familiar with most of these worthies, being himself a student of
poetry, and not without the poetic flame. "But, so far as my
experience goes, men of genius are fairly gifted with the social
qualities; and in this age there appears to be a fellow-feeling
among them which had not heretofore been developed. As men, they
ask nothing better than to be on equal terms with their fellow-men;
and as authors, they have thrown aside their proverbial jealousy,
and acknowledge a generous brotherhood."
"The world does not think so," answered I. "An author is received
in general society pretty much as we honest citizens are in the Hall
of Fantasy. We gaze at him as if he had no business among us, and
question whether he is fit for any of our pursuits."
"Then it is a very foolish question," said he. "Now, here are a
class of men whom we may daily meet on 'Change. Yet what poet in
the hall is more a fool of fancy than the sagest of them?"
He pointed to a number of persons, who, manifest as the fact was,
would have deemed it an insult to be told that they stood in the
Hall of Fantasy. Their visages were traced into wrinkles and
furrows, each of which seemed the record of some actual experience
in life. Their eyes had the shrewd, calculating glance which
detects so quickly and so surely all that it concerns a man of
business to know about the characters and purposes of his fellow-men.
Judging them as they stood, they might be honored and trusted
members of the Chamber of Commerce, who had found the genuine secret
of wealth and whose sagacity gave them the command of fortune.
There was a character of detail and matter of fact in their talk
which concealed the extravagance of its purport, insomuch that the
wildest schemes had the aspect of everyday realities. Thus the
listener was not startled at the idea of cities to be built, as if
by magic, in the heart of pathless forests; and of streets to be
laid out where now the sea was tossing; and of mighty rivers to be
stayed in their courses in order to turn the machinery of a
cotton-mill. It was only by an effort, and scarcely then, that the
mind convinced itself that such speculations were as much matter of
fantasy as the old dream of Eldorado, or as Mammon's Cave, or any
other vision of gold ever conjured up by the imagination of needy
poet or romantic adventurer.
"Upon my word," said I, "it is dangerous to listen to such dreamers
as these. Their madness is contagious."
"Yes," said my friend, "because they mistake the Hall of Fantasy
for actual brick and mortar, and its purple atmosphere for
unsophisticated sunshine. But the poet knows his whereabout, and
therefore is less likely to make a fool of himself in real life."
"Here again," observed I, as we advanced a little farther, "we see
another order of dreamers, peculiarly characteristic, too, of the
genius of our country."
These were the inventors of fantastic machines. Models of their
contrivances were placed against some of the pillars of the hall,
and afforded good emblems of the result generally to be anticipated
from an attempt to reduce day-dreams to practice. The analogy may
hold in morals as well as physics; for instance, here was the model
of a railroad through the air and a tunnel under the sea. Here was
a machine--stolen, I believe--for the distillation of heat from
moonshine; and another for the condensation of morning mist into
square blocks of granite, wherewith it was proposed to rebuild the
entire Hall of Fantasy. One man exhibited a sort of lens whereby he
had succeeded in making sunshine out of a lady's smile; and it was
his purpose wholly to irradiate the earth by means of this wonderful
invention.
"It is nothing new," said I; "for most of our sunshine comes from
woman's smile already."
"True," answered the inventor; "but my machine will secure a
constant supply for domestic use; whereas hitherto it has been very
precarious."
Another person had a scheme for fixing the reflections of objects in
a pool of water, and thus taking the most life-like portraits
imaginable; and the same gentleman demonstrated the practicability
of giving a permanent dye to ladies' dresses, in the gorgeous clouds
of sunset. There were at least fifty kinds of perpetual motion, one
of which was applicable to the wits of newspaper editors and writers
of every description. Professor Espy was here, with a tremendous
storm in a gum-elastic bag. I could enumerate many more of these
Utopian inventions; but, after all, a more imaginative collection is
to be found in the Patent Office at Washington.
Turning from the inventors we took a more general survey of the
inmates of the hall. Many persons were present whose right of
entrance appeared to consist in some crotchet of the brain, which,
so long as it might operate, produced a change in their relation to
the actual world. It is singular how very few there are who do not
occasionally gain admittance on such a score, either in abstracted
musings, or momentary thoughts, or bright anticipations, or vivid
remembrances; for even the actual becomes ideal, whether in hope or
memory, and beguiles the dreamer into the Hall of Fantasy. Some
unfortunates make their whole abode and business here, and contract
habits which unfit them for all the real employments of life.
Others--but these are few--possess the faculty, in their occasional
visits, of discovering a pur | 2,388.164959 |
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Richard Rogers Bowker
COPYRIGHT: ITS HISTORY AND ITS LAW.
THE ARTS OF LIFE.
OF BUSINESS.
OF POLITICS.
OF RELIGION.
OF EDUCATION.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT
ITS HISTORY AND ITS LAW
BEING A SUMMARY OF THE
PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF COPYRIGHT
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO
THE AMERICAN CODE OF 1909 AND
THE BRITISH ACT OF 1911
BY
RICHARD ROGERS BOWKER
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1912
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY R. R. BOWKER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
FOR ALL COUNTRIES
_Published March 1912_
FOREWORD
{Sidenote: Copyright progress}
The American copyright code of 1909, comprehensively replacing all previous
laws, a gratifying advance in legislation despite its serious restrictions
and minor defects, places American copyright practice on a new basis. The
new British code, brought before Parliament in 1910, and finally adopted in
December, 1911, to be effective July 1, 1912, marks a like forward step for
the British Empire, enabling the mother | 2,388.175226 |
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Produced by Annie R. McGuire
[Illustration: HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE
AN ILLUSTRATED WEEKLY.]
* * * * *
VOL. II.--NO. 73. PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. PRICE FOUR
CENTS.
Tuesday, March 22, 1881. Copyright, 1881, by HARPER & BROTHERS. $1.50
per Year, in Advance.
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE LUCK OF THE HORSESHOE.--DRAWN BY W. R. YEAGER.]
TOMMY TUCKER'S HORSESHOE.
BY MRS. FRANK McCARTHY.
Tommy Tucker lives on a "farm" in the city of New York, near the Central
Park. Some people make fun of Tommy's way of living, and call his place
the "sunken lots," and say his family are squatters; but it makes very
little difference to Tommy what remarks were made about his home or his
people, so long as they were happy. And they were happy for a very long
time, so happy that they didn't know what it was to be miserable, and it
makes a wonderful difference to be able to tell one from the other. Up
to the beginning of this winter they had the longest run of luck on
record in any family in that neighborhood. A long while since, a horse
had been turned out to die in a lot near the Tucker's. It wasn't such a
very old horse, but it was dreadfully sick, and something was the
matter with its windpipe, so that Mr. Tucker heard it wheezing away
while he was at work on the farm. He had a very kind heart, and always
did what he could for poor dumb creatures, as well as those that could
tell what was the matter with them; and what with kind treatment and a
wonderful skill Mr. Tucker had with animals, that horse came around so
that you'd hardly know it from a spirited charger of Mr. Croesus--a
gentleman who lives up in that neighborhood. It grew so strong that it
was able to drag a cart-load of vegetables down town to Mr. Tucker's
customers, and Mr. Tucker was able to put another lot or two under
cultivation. And if the lots were a little rough and sunken, it was very
pretty to see them full of "green things a-growing." Up to this last
winter there was almost always something to sell, and pretty soon after
Mr. Tucker cured his horse he got a cow. She wasn't a first-class cow
when Mr. Tucker first traded off some pigs for her, and gave some silver
to boot out of Mother Tucker's stocking. What little milk she had seemed
to be turned to gall, and even that couldn't be got from her until she
was tied to the side of the house; then she would have kicked the whole
mansion down if it hadn't been founded on a rock, like the wise man's
house Mr. Tucker read about in the Bible. Mr. Tucker and Tommy think
there are only two books worth reading in the whole world: one is the
Bible, and the other is _Robinson Crusoe_. Tommy hadn't minded depending
on his goats for milk, because it seemed so much like Crusoe's way of
living; but Mrs. Tucker and Tommy's three little brothers liked cow's
milk the best; for one thing, there was so much more of it, and Tommy's
three little brothers had such excellent appetites. For Mr. Tucker's
wisdom extended to the udders of the cow, and pretty soon she was almost
as good as an Alderney cow around the corner, so called, Mr. Tucker
said, because she belonged to an Alderman.
Tommy Tucker's family prospered exceedingly. The horse drew more and
more vegetables to market, the cow gave more and more milk, the hens
laid more and more eggs, and the cheery chink in Mother Tucker's
stocking became more and more musical to the ear, until the last winter
set in. Then the Tucker luck, which was proverbial in that neighborhood,
suddenly took an evil turn.
First, and worst, Mr. Tucker fell on the ice and broke his leg. You may
know it was a particular kind of ice that could bring Mr. Tucker down.
It was about a dozen layers thick, and very treacherous. The winter had
closed in some time before in a very unusual way. It was bitter cold,
day in and day out; the heavens opened, and the snow fell, and opened
again, and more snow came down, and kept on opening, and more snow kept
falling, until the familiar gullies were all filled up, and the country
around there grew white and level and changed, so that Tommy wondered
sometimes if the world had lost its reckoning, and stopped turning when
it reached the north pole.
And it gave Tommy a dreadful sickly feeling to know that his father's
leg _could_ break. It wasn't natural to see him lying on the bed in the
corner, when he had always been up and doing. Nothing ever seemed so far
gone that his father couldn't fetch it around, and it shook Tommy's
confidence considerably to see the obstinacy of that leg. Tommy had
always gone to bed before his father, and his father had always got up
before Tommy, so that it was a new experience to Tommy to see his father
down.
It took the heart out of all of them, and everything went wrong. It went
on freezing, snowing, and blowing outside; and do what Tommy could, the
live stock began to give out. That charity waif of a horse yielded to
the weakness in his windpipe again, and sprawled his legs and hung his
head in the most ungrateful way; the cow went dry; two of the best pigs
got frost-bitten, so that their squeal mingled with the melancholy
soughing of the north wind around the Tucker mansion; and the hens
wouldn't lay an egg for Mr. Tucker, though the doctor had particularly
ordered it.
And about that doctor: Tommy used to dread to see him come, for instead
of brightening things up, he made them gloomier. He took some of the
cheery chink out of Mother Tucker's stocking every time he came, and Mr.
Tucker seemed none the better for it, but lay with his face to the wall
for hours together, and wouldn't read any book in the Bible but Job; and
Tommy's three little brothers went on eating just the same as when milk
was plenty and times were good.
The music in Mother Tucker's stocking got away down to the toe; and one
morning, when Mr. Tucker had no appetite for anything, and Tommy's three
little brothers had an appetite for everything, even their mother's poor
share of what was left, Tommy saw the shadow of a big wolf called Hunger
prowling around the door-sill, and out he ran and down the road,
frightened, and sobbing as if his heart would break. He thought nothing
of the poor shivering brutes that were left to his care, or thought they
might as well all starve together. Luck was against them; there was no
use trying any more; when all at once, over in the middle of the road,
he saw through his blinding tears something round and shining. It wasn't
a gold piece, nor one of silver, but he plunged through a snow-bank and
over a ditch to get it. He dug it out of a chunk of ice, and cut his
hands and tore his finger-nails; and his honest little face took the
keen and hungry exultation of a miner's just then, though it was neither
silver nor gold, but an old battered-out horseshoe.
For all the music in Mother Tucker's stocking hadn't helped his father's
leg, but Tommy had heard say that a horseshoe honestly found was the
best bit of luck to stumble on in the world.
He warmed the cold bit of metal against his heart, and ran home with it
as fast as he could, never stopping until he reached his father's bed.
"Cheer up, Pop!" he cried. "See! Everything'll come right now. I've
found a horseshoe."
Poor Mr. Tucker turned to look at it with a sickly sort of smile, but
the hope that illumined his boy's face lent a feeble glow to his own.
"Heaven bless the boy!" he said. "I'm very weak, I suppose. But hang it
up where I can see it."
Mother Tucker fastened it to a beam over the foot of the bed, having the
good cry over it she'd been longing for, and out Tommy ran to see to the
live stock.
He rubbed that horse into such a glow that before he left him the wheeze
in his windpipe wasn't worth mentioning, and he held his head and legs
up in the style of Mr. Croesus' steed; then he fed the cow, and drove
the hens around to the manure heap, where they could keep warm in the
steaming side next the sun; and while he was hard at work he heard a
terrible racket up the road, and he thought it must be Mr. Croesus
himself shouting and screaming for dear life, while his charger was
flying along on the wings of the wind. Tommy dropped his pitchfork, and
got there just in time to feel the hot breath from the runaway's
nostrils, and make a spring for the bridle. They all went plunging along
together a bit, then came to a stand-still, trembling all over, all of
them. What was Tommy's delight to find that instead of Mr. Croesus, it
was only their old doctor! He trembled more than his horse, and puffed
like a grampus.
"Well done, sonny," he said. "I might have been in a worse plight than
your father, if it hadn't been for you. My horse never cut up such a
tantrum before."
Tommy knew what it was; it was the horseshoe. Something had to be done
to soften that doctor's heart. Tommy plucked up courage to beg of him to
take no more music from his mother's stocking, seeing it was away down
to the toe.
"Why, no, sonny," said the doctor; "I'll take none out, but I'll put
some in."
After that scare with the horse, nothing would do but Tommy must go
around with the doctor to take care of it, and the doctor made a bargain
with Tommy that paid him handsomely for three or four hours every day.
When Tommy reached home that night he found his father propped up in bed
making a supper off of new-laid eggs. His father said it was driving the
hens round on the sunny side of the farm, but Tommy stuck to it that it
was the horseshoe. After that it was like the house that Jack built. The
hens began to lay; Pop began to eat and get well, and read the Psalms
instead of Job; the cow had a pretty calf, and began to give lots of
milk; the winter began to break; and the doctor began telling the Tucker
family of a noble way of squatting out West that beat their way all to
nothing, and how there was lots of land out there considerably better
than the sunken lots, and how, instead of watching one lazy horse, that
wouldn't run away without there was a providence in it, Tommy might have
a whole drove of chargers like Mr. Croesus', and Mr. Tucker might
raise millions of bushels of golden grain, and he shouldn't wonder if
Tommy would be President yet, and his three little brothers feeding away
at a public crib that never gives out.
Tommy says it's all the horseshoe, but the doctor's made a sum of it in
this way:
PXP=P.
Pluck multiplied by Perseverance equals Prosperity. The doctor says the
example is to be followed in a general sort of way, but principally by
stopping a runaway horse when there's an old coward of a doctor behind
him.
SOMETHING ABOUT SHIPS.
BY LIEUTENANT J. A. LOCKWOOD.
After the hull of a ship is built, she is launched before her spars are
put in. This launching is usually done stern foremost; sometimes bow
foremost, and, in very narrow rivers, side foremost. The _Great Eastern_
was launched side foremost in the river Thames.
Under the general name of spars are included the masts, bowsprit, yards,
booms, and gaffs of a ship. It will not be necessary to inform the boys
who live near our seaports what masts and yards are; but perhaps some of
America's future admirals, who have yet to see their first ship, will be
interested in knowing that a mast is a stick perpendicular to the deck,
and yards are sticks to which sails are bent, and are at right angles
with the masts; the bowsprit is a stick projecting over the bow to carry
sail forward.
Each of the three masts of all but very small vessels consists of a
number of sticks one above another. The "heel" of the topmast comes a
little below the "head" of the lower mast, and is secured by a "cap," a
sort of iron band, and a bar, called a "fid." Above the topmast comes
the top-gallant-mast, and above that the royal-mast.
At the head of the lower mast of a ship is a platform called the "top."
Tops have usually holes in them, called the "lubbers' hole," large
enough to permit a man to crawl through. Jack, however, scorns to make
use of this hole, preferring to climb over outside by the
futtock-shrouds.
Vessels derive their names from the number of their masts and their rig.
While all vessels are often included under the general term _ships_,
more properly a ship has always three masts, and is square-rigged; that
is, she has tops and yards on all three of her masts. The three masts
are designated by the names fore, main, and mizzen.
A bark is square-rigged at her fore and main masts, but, unlike a ship,
at her mizzenmast has no top, and only fore-and-aft sails.
A brig has but two masts, both of which are square-rigged.
A schooner may have either two or three masts, but carries fore-and-aft
sails only.
A sloop has one mast, fore-and-aft rigged.
A vessel's masts are "stepped"--_i. e._, put in--by means of shears.
Shears consist of a couple of spars lashed together at one end and
spread apart at the other. They are raised to a nearly upright position,
and furnished with tackle for lifting masts in and out of ships.
After the masts are stepped and the bowsprit put in, the standing
rigging is "set up." The standing rigging consists of strong ropes,
called stays, to support the masts fore and aft, and other ropes, called
back-stays and shrouds, to lend support sideways. The shrouds on each
mast are connected by little ropes placed crosswise, called ratlines,
which the sailors use when ordered to "lay aloft." A good sailor is as
nimble as a cat on these ratlines.
The running rigging consists of the ropes used in handling the yards and
sails, and every rope has a distinguishing name. Halyards are ropes used
to hoist yards and sails. Braces are ropes used to swing the yards round
by.
To the beginner the names of ropes are apt to be very confusing. Old
salts are fond of spinning a yarn about a lad who wanted to go to sea,
until he heard that the fore-top-gallant-studding-sail-boom-tricing-line-
thimble-block-mousing was the name of about the smallest bit of rope on
board ship, when he at once concluded that, such being the case, he
could never expect to master the name of the largest rope, and
consequently decided to become a farmer.
A SONG OF APOLLO.
A LEGEND OF ANCIENT GREECE.
BY LILLIE E. BARR.
After the burning of Troy, to Argos there came
A soldier aged and weary:
Naught had he gained in the contest, treasure nor fame,
So now he lifted his lyre, and day after day
Stood in the streets or the market, and strove to play.
No one gave him a lepton, no one waited to hear
A song so ancient and simple;
Hungry and hopeless, he ceased: then a youth drew near--
A youth with a beautiful face--and he said, "Old man,
Now strike on thy lyre and sing, for I know thou can."
"O Greek," said old Akeratos, "I have lost the power,
With handling of swords and lances."
"Then here's a didrachmon--lend me thy lyre an hour;
Thou hold out the cap in thine hand, and I will play:
Surely these men that are deaf shall listen to-day."
Then, with a mighty hand sweeping the trembling strings,
Over the tumult and chatting,
Like the call of a clear sweet trumpet, the young voice rings;
For he sings of the taking of Troy, and the chords
Sound like the tramping of hoofs, and clashing of swords.
There, in the market of Argos, is Hector slain,
There, in their midst, is Achilles.
Breathless, they listen again and again,
Fill up the cap with coins, and shout in the crowded street,
"Strike up thy lyre once more, O Singer strange and sweet!"
Ah! then came magical notes, soft melodies low;
The air grew purple and amber,
Scented with honey, and spices, and roses a-blow:
And there in the glory sat Love--Mother and Queen--
And eyes grew misty with tears for days that had been.
Eyes grew misty, hearts grew tender, tender and free:
Every one gave to the soldier
Bracelets, and ring, and perfumes from over the sea.
Then said the Singer, "Now, soldier, gather thy store,
The hands that have fought for Greece need never beg more.
"Greeks, dwelling in Argos, this is a shameful sight--
A soldier wounded and begging."
The Singer grew splendid and godlike, and rose in unbearable light:
Then they knew it was Phoebus Apollo, and said,
"Never again in Argos shall the brave beg bread."
[Illustration: ACCIDENT ON A MOUNTAIN ROAD, INDIA.]
AN INCIDENT OF INDIAN TRAVEL.
Although there are about ten thousand miles of railroad in Hindostan,
the country is so vast, and in many portions of it so mountainous, that
much of the travelling is yet performed by old-fashioned methods. We see
one of them in the accompanying sketch, and perhaps our young readers
will think that there is sometimes as much danger attaching to the "old
slow coach" as to the swift-rushing iron horse. The conveyance in our
sketch is what is known as a "hill cart," a curious kind of vehicle,
with a seat before and behind covered with a leathern hood, hung very
low, and possessing two strong wheels. It is drawn by two ponies, whose
general pace is a hand-gallop.
The hill roads are narrow and uneven, with sharp curves bordering
unpleasantly close to the edge of the "khuds," or precipices, over one
of which the ponies in the sketch have taken a flying leap, having been
frightened into shying at the remnants of a previous accident on the
same spot.
At the best, the occupants of these hill carts have but a sorry time of
it. The cart having only two wheels, the pole is supported by a chain
fastened to a longitudinal bar across the backs of the animals, after
the manner of an old-fashioned curricle, this method of harnessing
causing a lurching, bumping motion, sometimes amounting to a perfect
series of jumps when passing over a rough bit of ground, the occupants
of the vehicle holding on by the rails to maintain their seats, from
which, however, they are perpetually being jerked.
There is sometimes a good deal of fun in getting these hill carts set in
motion for a start, the ponies generally having a will of their own, and
sometimes not agreeing; one is prepared to start, the other objects, so
he is thrashed by the driver; but to make things equal, so is the
willing fellow. This unjust infliction causes him to make such a sudden
and violent plunge that a trace breaks, which begets much hard language
and delay. However, the trace gets mended somehow, and then there is
another attempt to start. The cart is pushed on to the heels of the
ponies, of which proceeding they show their disapproval by a series of
most vigorous kicks. After an interval varying from five to fifteen
minutes, the driver, with assistance from behind, finally triumphs, and
the start is made, the balky animal having entirely altered his previous
views of resistance, and taken it into his head to run madly away with
himself, his quieter fellow, the cart, and its contents.
This scene is generally repeated at every stage with each fresh pair of
ponies, so the fun of the thing becomes before long rather tiresome.
[Illustration: GIVING THANKS.]
[Begun in No. 58 of HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE, December 7.]
TOBY TYLER;
OR, TEN WEEKS WITH A CIRCUS.
BY JAMES OTIS.
CHAPTER XV.
TOBY'S FRIENDS PRESENT HIM WITH A COSTUME.
During this time Toby's funds had accumulated rather slower than on the
first few days he was in the business, but he had saved eleven dollars,
and Mr. Lord had paid him five dollars of his salary, so that he had the
to him enormous sum of sixteen dollars, and he had about made up his
mind to make one effort for liberty, when the news came that he was to
ride in public.
He had, in fact, been ready to run away any time within the past week;
but, as if they had divined his intentions, both Mr. Castle and Mr. Lord
had kept a very strict watch over him, one or the other keeping him in
sight from the time he got through with his labors at night until they
saw him on the cart with old Ben.
[Illustration: ELLA AND TOBY.]
"I was just gettin' ready to run away," said Toby to Ella, on the day
Mr. Castle gave his decision as to their taking part in the performance,
and while they were walking out of the tent, "an' I shouldn't wonder now
if I got away to-night."
"Oh, Toby!" exclaimed the girl, as she looked reproachfully at him,
"after all the work we've had to get ready, you won't go off and leave
me before we've had a chance to see what the folks will say when they
see us together."
It was impossible for Toby to feel any delight at the idea of riding in
public, and he would have been willing to have taken one of Mr. Lord's
most severe whippings if he could have escaped from it; but he and Ella
had become such firm friends, and he had conceived such a boyish
admiration for her, that he felt as if he were willing to bear almost
anything for the sake of giving her pleasure. Therefore he said, after a
few moments' reflection: "Well, I won't go to-night, anyway, even if I
have the best chance that ever was. I'll stay one day more, anyhow, an'
perhaps I'll have to stay a good many."
"That's a nice boy," said Ella, positively, as Toby thus gave his
decision, "and I'll kiss you for it."
Before Toby fully realized what she was about, almost before he had
understood what she said, she had put her arms around his neck, and
given him a good sound kiss right on his freckled face.
Toby was surprised, astonished, and just a little bit ashamed. He had
never been kissed by a girl before, very seldom by any one, save the fat
lady, and he hardly knew what to do or say. He blushed until his face
was almost as red as his hair, and this color had the effect of making
his freckles stand out with startling distinctness. Then he looked
carefully around to see if any one had seen them.
"I never had a girl kiss me before," said Toby, hesitatingly, "an' you
see it made me feel kinder queer to have you do it out here where
everybody could see."
"Well, I kissed you because I like you very much, and because you are
going to | 2,388.311031 |
2023-11-16 18:56:52.8014780 | 5,522 | 13 |
Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Chris Curnow and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: Ruffed Grouse.]
BIRD GUIDE
Water Birds, Game Birds and Birds of Prey
BY
CHESTER A. REED
Author of
North American Birds' Eggs, and, with Frank M. Chapman, of Color Key to
North American Birds. Curator in Ornithology, Worcester Natural History
Society
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1921
Copyrighted 1906.
Copyrighted, 1910, CHAS. K. REED,
Worcester, Mass.
PREFACE
While strolling through a piece of woodland, or perhaps along the marsh
or seashore, we see a bird, a strange bird--one we never saw before.
Instantly, our curiosity is aroused, and the question arises, "What is
it?" There is the bird! How can we find out what kind it is? The
Ornithologist of a few years ago had but one course open to him, that is
to shoot the bird, take it home, then pore through pages of
descriptions, until one was found to correspond with the specimen.
Obviously, such methods cannot be pursued today, both humane and
economical reasons prohibiting. We have but one alternative left us: We
must make copious notes of all the peculiarities and markings of the
bird that is before us. On our return home, we get down our bird books,
and there are many excellent ones. After carefully looking through the
whole library, we find that, although many of our books are well
illustrated, none of them has the picture of what we seek, so we adopt
the tactics of the "Old-time" Ornithologist, before mentioned, and pore
over pages of text, until finally we know what our bird was. It is for
just such emergencies as this--to identify a bird when you see it, and
where you see it, that this little pocket "Bird Guide" is prepared. May
it be the medium for saving many of today's seekers for "bird truths"
from the many trials and tribulations willingly encountered, and hard
and thorny roads gladly traveled by the author in his quest for
knowledge of bird ways.
CHESTER A. REED.
Worcester, Mass.
1906.
INTRODUCTION
The study of the birds included in this book is much more difficult than
that of the small land birds. Many of the birds are large; some are very
rare; all are usually shy and have keen eyesight, trained to see at a
distance; in fact, many of them have to depend upon their vigilance for
their very existence. Therefore, you will find that the majority of
these birds will have to be studied at long range. Sometimes, by
exercising care and forethought, you may be able to approach within a
few feet of the bird you seek, or induce him to come to you. It is this
pitting your wits against the cunning of the birds that furnishes
one-half of the interest in their study. Remember that a quick motion
will always cause a bird to fly. If you seek a flock of plover on the
shore, or a heron in the marsh, try to sneak up behind cover if
possible; if not, walk very slowly, and with as little motion as
possible, directly towards them; by so doing you often will get near,
for a bird is a poor judge of distance, while a single step sideways
would cause him to fly. Shore birds can usually be best observed from a
small "blind," near the water's edge, where they feed. Your powers of
observation will be increased about tenfold if you are equipped with a
good pair of field glasses; they are practically indispensable to the
serious student and add greatly to the pleasures of anyone. Any good
glass, that has a wide field of vision and magnifies three or four
diameters, is suitable; we can recommend the ones described in the back
of this book.
WHAT TO MAKE NOTE OF.--What is the nature of the locality where seen;
marsh, shore, woods, etc? If in trees does it sit upright or horizontal?
If on the ground, does it run or walk, easily or with difficulty? If in
the water, can it swim well, can it dive, does it swim under water, can
it fly from the water easily, or does it have to patter over the surface
before flying? What does it seem to be eating? Does it have any notes?
Does it fly rapidly; with rapid wing beats or not; in a straight line or
otherwise? Does it sail, or soar? In flocks or singly? These and
hundreds of other questions that may suggest themselves, are of great
interest and importance.
A PLEA TO SPORTSMEN.--Many of the birds shown in this book are Game
Birds, that is, birds that the law allows you to shoot at certain
seasons of the year. Some of these are still abundant and will be for
numbers of years; others are very scarce and if they are further hunted,
will become entirely exterminated in two or three years. Bob-whites are
very scarce in New England; Prairie Hens are becoming scarce in parts of
the west; the small Curlew is practically extinct, while the larger ones
are rapidly going. In behalf of all bird lovers, we ask that you refrain
from killing those species that you know are rare, and use moderation in
the taking of all others. We also ask that you use any influence that
may be yours to further laws prohibiting all traffic in birds. The man
who makes his living shooting birds will make more, live longer and die
happier tilling the soil than by killing God's creatures. We do not,
now, ask you to refrain from hunting entirely, but get your sport at
your traps. It takes more skill to break a clay pigeon than to kill a
quail.
[Illustration: TOPOGRAPHY OF A BIRD]
THINGS TO REMEMBER
Characteristics of Form or Habit That Will Determine to What Order or
Family Birds Belong.
ORDER 1. DIVING BIRDS--Pygopodes.
[Illustration: ORDER 1. DIVING BIRDS--Pygopodes.]
GREBES; Colymbidae:--Form, duck-like; bill pointed and never flattened;
no tail; legs at extreme end of body; each flattened toe with an
individual web; wings small. Flies rapidly, but patters along the water
before taking wing. Expert divers, using wings as well as feet, to
propel them, under water.
LOONS. Family Gaviidae:--Larger than Grebes; bill long, heavy, and
pointed; tail very short; feet webbed like a duck's, but legs thin and
deep; form and habits, grebe-like.
AUKS, MURRES, PUFFINS. Family Alcidae:--Bills very variable; tail short;
usually takes flight when alarmed, instead of diving as do grebes and
loons. With the exception of puffins, which stand on their feet, all
birds of this order sit upon their whole leg and tail. They are awkward
on land; some can hardly walk.
ORDER 2. LONG-WINGED SWIMMERS.--Longipennes.
[Illustration: ORDER 2. LONG-WINGED SWIMMERS.--Longipennes.]
SKUAS, JAEGERS. Family Stercorariidae:--Marine birds of prey; bill
strongly hooked, with long scaly shield, or cere, at the base; claws
strong and curved, hawk-like; flight hawk-like; plumage often entirely
sooty-black, and always so on the back.
GULLS, TERNS. Family Laridae:--Gulls have hooked bills, usually
yellowish, yellow eyes and pale, webbed feet. Heap, underparts and
square tail are white in adults; back, pearl-grey; exceptions are the
four small black-headed gulls, which also have reddish legs. Gulls fly
with the bill straight in front, and often rest on the water. Terns have
forked tails, black caps, and their slender, pointed bills and small
webbed feet are usually red. They fly with bill pointed down, and dive
upon their prey.
ORDER 3. TUBE-NOSED SWIMMERS.--Tubinares.
[Illustration: ORDER 3. TUBE-NOSED SWIMMERS.--Tubinares.]
FULMARS, SHEARWATERS, PETRELS. Family Procellariidae:--Nostrils opening
in a tube on top of the hooked bill. Plumage of fulmars, gull-like;
shearwaters entirely sooty black, or white below; petrels blackish, with
white rumps,--very small birds. All seabirds.
ORDER 4. TOTIPALMATE SWIMMERS.--Steganopodes.
[Illustration: ORDER 4. TOTIPALMATE SWIMMERS.--Steganopodes.]
All four toes joined by webs.
TROPIC BIRDS. Family Phaethontidae:--Bill and form tern-like; middle tail
feathers very long.
GANNETS. Family Sulidae:--Bill heavy and pointed; face and small throat
pouch, bare.
SKAKE-BIRDS. Family Anhingidae:--Bill slender and pointed; neck and tail
very long, the latter rounded; habits like those of the following.
CORMORANTS. Family Phalacrocoracidae:--Bill slender, but hooked at the
tip; plumage glossy black and brown; eyes green. They use their wings as
well as feet when pursuing fish under water.
PELICANS. Family Pelecanidae:--Bill very long and with a large pouch
suspended below.
MAN-O'-WAR BIRDS. Family Fregatidae:--very long and strongly hooked; tail
long and forked; wholly maritime, as are all but the preceding three.
ORDER 5. DUCKS, GEESE AND SWANS. Anseres.
[Illustration: ORDER 5. DUCKS, GEESE AND SWANS. Anseres.]
Mergansers, with slender, toothed bills with which to catch the fish
they pursue under water.
Other ducks have rather broad bills, more or less resembling those of
the domestic duck. Their flight is rapid and direct. River ducks have no
web, or flap, on the hind toe; they get their food without going
entirely under water, by tipping up. Sea ducks have a broad flap on the
hind toe.
ORDER 6. FLAMINGOES. Odontoglossae.
[Illustration: ORDER 6. FLAMINGOES. Odontoglossae.]
Family Phoenicopteridae:--Large, long-necked, pink birds with a crooked
box-like bill, long legs and webbed feet.
ORDER 7. HERONS, IBISES, ETC. Herodiones.
[Illustration: ORDER 7. HERONS, IBISES, ETC. Herodiones.]
Long-legged, wading birds, with all four toes long, slender and without
webs. Usually found about the muddy edges of ponds, lakes or creeks, and
less often on the sea shore. Wings large and rounded.
SPOONBILL. Family Plataleidae:--Bill long, thin and much broadened at the
end; head bare.
IBISES. Family Ibididae:--Bill long, slender and curved down. Ibises and
Spoonbills fly with the neck fully extended.
STORKS. Family Ciconiidae:--Bill long, heavy, and curved near the end;
head and upper neck bare.
HERONS, BITTERNS, EGRETS. Family Ardeidae:--Bill long, straight and
pointed; head usually crested, and back often with plumes. Herons fly
with a fold in the neck, and the back of the head resting against the
shoulders.
ORDER 8. MARSH BIRDS. Paludicolae.
[Illustration: ORDER 8. MARSH BIRDS. Paludicolae.]
Birds of this order, vary greatly in size and appearance, but all agree
in having the hind toe elevated, whereas that of the members of the last
order leaves the foot on a level with the front toes; neck extended in
flight.
CRANES. Family Grudidae:--Very large and heron-like, but with plumage
close feathered; top of head bare; bill long, slender and obtusely
pointed.
COURLANS. Family Aramidae:--Size mid-way between the cranes and rails;
bill long and slender.
RAILS, ETC. Family Rallidae:--Bills are variable, but toes and legs long;
wings short; flight slow and wavering; marsh skulkers, hiding in rushes.
Gallinules have a frontal shield on the forehead, Coots have
lobate-webbed feet, short, whitish bills.
ORDER 9. SHORE BIRDS. Limicolae.
[Illustration: ORDER 9. SHORE BIRDS. Limicolae.]
Comparatively small, long legged, slender-billed birds seen running
along edges of ponds or beaches.
PHALAROPES. Phalaropodidae.--Toes with lobed webs.
AVOCETS, STILTS. Recurvirostridae:--Avocet, with slender recurved bill,
and webbed feet; stilt, with straight bill, very long legs, toes not
webbed.
SNIPES, SANDPIPERS, ETC. Family Scolopacidae:--Bills very variable but
slender, and all, except the Woodcock, with long pointed wings; flight
usually swift and erratic.
PLOVERS. Family Charadriidae:--Bill short and stout; three toes.
TURNSTONES. Family Aphrizidae:--Bill short, stout and slightly up-turned;
four toes.
OYSTER-CATCHERS. Family Haematopodidae:--Bill long, heavy and compressed;
legs and toes stout; three toes slightly webbed at base.
JACANAS. Family Jacanidae:--Bill with leaf-like shield at the base; legs
and toes extremely long and slender; sharp spur on wing.
ORDER 10. FOWLS. Gallinae.
[Illustration: ORDER 10. FOWLS. Gallinae.]
Ground birds of robust form; bill hen-like; wings short and rounded;
feet large and strong.
PARTRIDGES, GROUSE. Family Tetraonidae:--Legs bare in the partridges,
feathered in grouse.
TURKEYS, PHEASANTS. Family Phasianidae:--Legs often spurred, or head with
wattles, etc.
GUANS. Family Cracidae:--Represented by the Chachalaca of Texas.
ORDER 11. PIGEONS AND DOVES. Columbae.
[Illustration: ORDER 11. PIGEONS AND DOVES. Columbae.]
Family Columbidae:--Bill slender, hard at the tip, and with the nostrils
opening in a fleshy membrane at the base. Plumage soft grays and browns.
ORDER 12. BIRDS OF PREY. Raptores.
[Illustration: ORDER 12. BIRDS OF PREY. Raptores.]
VULTURES. Cathartidae:--Head bare; feet hen-like.
HAWKS, EAGLES. Falconidae:--Bill and claws strongly hooked; nostrils in a
cere at base of bill.
BARN OWLS. Aluconidae:--Black eyes in triangular facial disc; middle
toe-nail serrated.
HORNED OWLS, ETC. Bubonidae:--Facial disc round; some species with ears,
others without.
BIRD GUIDE
PART 1
Water Birds, Game Birds and Birds of Prey
[Illustration: ]
DIVING BIRDS--Order Pygopodes
GREBES--Family Colymbidae
WESTERN GREBE
1. AEchmophorus occidentalis. 25 to 29 inches.
All grebes have lobate-webbed feet, that is each toe has its individual
web, being joined to its fellow only for a short distance at the base.
This, the largest of our grebes, is frequently known as the "Swan Grebe"
because of its extremely long, thin neck. In summer the back of the neck
is black, but in winter it is gray like the back.
Notes.--Loud, quavering and cackling.
Nest.--A floating mass of decayed rushes, sometimes attached to upright
stalks. The 2 to 5 eggs are pale, bluish white, usually stained (2.40 x
1.55). They breed in colonies.
Range.--Western North America, from the Dakotas and Manitoba to the
Pacific, and north to southern Alaska. Winters in the Pacific coast
states and Mexico.
[Illustration: ]
HOLBOELL GREBE
2. Colymbus holboelli. 19 inches.
This is next to the Western Grebe in size, both being much larger than
any of our others. In summer, they are very handsomely marked with a
reddish brown neck, silvery white cheeks and throat, and black crown and
crest, but in winter they take on the usual grebe dress of grayish above
and glossy white below. Because of their silky appearance and firm
texture, grebe breasts of all kinds have been extensively used in the
past to adorn hats of women, who were either heedless or ignorant of the
wholesale slaughter that was carried on that they might obtain them.
Nest.--Of decayed rushes like that of the last. Not in as large
colonies; more often single pairs will be found nesting with other
varieties. Their eggs average smaller than those of the last species
(2.35 x 1.25).
Range.--North America, breeding most abundantly in the interior of
Canada, and to some extent in the Dakotas. Winters in the U. S., chiefly
on the coasts.
[Illustration: ]
HORNED GREBE
3. Colymbus auritus. 14 inches.
As is usual with grebes, summer brings a remarkable change in the dress
of these birds. The black, puffy head is adorned with a pair of buffy
white ear tufts and the foreneck is a rich chestnut color. In winter,
they are plain gray and white but the secondaries are always largely
white, as they are in the two preceding and the following species. The
grebe diet consists almost wholly of small fish, which they are very
expert at pursuing and catching under water. One that I kept in
captivity in a large tank, for a few weeks, would never miss catching
the shiners, upon which he was fed, at the first lightning-like dart of
his slender neck. They also eat quantities of shell fish, and I doubt if
they will refuse any kind of flesh, for they always have a keen
appetite.
Nest.--A slovenly built pile of vegetation floating in the "sloughs" of
western prairies. The 3 to 7 eggs are usually stained brownish yellow
(1.70 x 1.15).
Range.--Breeds from Northern Illinois and So. Dakota northward; winters
from northern U. S. to the Gulf of Mexico.
[Illustration: ]
AMERICAN EARED GREBE
4. Colymbus nigricollis californicus. 13 inches.
This is a western species rarely found east of the Mississippi. In
summer, it differs from the last in having the entire neck black; in
winter it can always be distinguished from the Horned Grebe by its
slightly upcurved bill, while the upper mandible of the last is convex.
In powers of swimming and diving, grebes are not surpassed by any of our
water birds. They dive at the flash of a gun and swim long distances
before coming to the surface; on this account they are often called
"devil divers." They fly swiftly when once a-wing, but their concave
wings are so small that they have to patter over the water with their
feet in order to rise.
Nest.--They nest in colonies, often in the same sloughs with Horned and
Western Grebes, laying their eggs early in June. The 4 to 7 eggs are
dull white, usually stained brownish, and cannot be separated from those
of the last.
Range.--Western N. A., breeding from Texas to Manitoba and British
Columbia; winters in western U. S. and Mexico.
[Illustration: ]
LEAST OR ST. DOMINGO GREBE
5. Colymbus dominions brachypterus. 10 inches.
This is much smaller than any others of our grebes; in breeding plumage
it most nearly resembles the following species, but the bill is black
and sharply pointed. It has a black patch on the throat, and the crown
and back of the head are glossy blue black; in winter, the throat and
sides of the head are white.
Nest.--Not different from those of the other grebes. Only comparatively
few of them breed in the U. S. but they are common in Mexico and Central
America. Their eggs, when first laid, are a pale, chalky, greenish
white, but they soon become discolored and stained so that they are a
deep brownish, more so than any of the others; from 3 to 6 eggs is a
full complement (1.40 x.95).
Range.--Found in the United States, only in the Lower Rio Grande Valley
in Southern Texas, and southwards to northern South America.
[Illustration: ]
PIED-BILLED GREBE
6. Podilymbus podiceps. 13.5 inches.
In any plumage this species cannot be mistaken for others, because of
its stout compressed bill and brown iris; all the others have red eyes.
In summer the bill is whitish with a black band encircling it; the
throat is black; the eye encircled by a whitish ring; the breast and
sides are brownish-gray. In winter they are brownish-black above and
dull white below, with the breast and sides washed with brown. Young
birds have more or less distinct whitish stripes on the head.
Notes.--A loud, ringing "kow-kow-kow-kow (repeated many times and ending
in) kow-uh, kow-uh."
Nest.--Of decayed rushes floating in reed-grown ponds or edges of lakes.
The pile is slightly hollowed and, in this, the 5 to 8 eggs are laid;
the bottom of the nest is always wet and the eggs are often partly in
the water; they are usually covered with a wet mass when the bird is
away. Brownish-white (1.70 x 1.15).
Range.--Whole of N. A., breeding locally and usually in pairs or small
colonies.
[Illustration: ]
LOONS--Family Gavidae
LOON; GREAT NORTHERN DIVER
7. Gavia immer. 31 to 35 inches.
In form, loons resemble large grebes, but their feet are full webbed
like those of a duck; they have short, stiff tails and long, heavy,
pointed bills. They have no tufts or ruffs in breeding season, but their
plumage changes greatly. The common loon is very beautifully and
strikingly marked with black and white above, and white below; the head
is black, with a crescent across the throat and a ring around the neck.
In winter, they are plain gray above and white below.
Loons are fully as expert in diving and swimming as are the grebes. They
are usually found in larger, more open bodies of water.
Notes.--A loud, quavering, drawn-out "wah-hoo-o-o."
Nest.--Sometimes built of sticks, and sometimes simply a hollow in the
sand or bank under overhanging bushes, usually on an island. The 2 eggs
are brownish with a few black specks (3.50 x 2.25).
Range.--N. A., breeding from northern U. S. northwards; winters from
northern U. S. southwards.
[Illustration: ]
BLACK-THROATED LOON
9. Gavia arctica. 28 inches.
This loon lives in the Arctic regions and only rarely is found, in
winter, in Northern United States. In summer, it can readily be
distinguished from the common loon by the gray crown and hind-neck, as
well as by different arrangement of the black and white markings. In
winter, they are quite similar to the last species but can be recognized
by their smaller size, and can be distinguished from the winter plumaged | 2,388.821518 |
2023-11-16 18:56:52.8582810 | 2,235 | 8 |
E-text prepared by Camille Bernard and Marc D'Hooghe
(http://www.freeliterature.org) from page images generously made available
by HathiTrust Digital Library (http://www.hathitrust.org/digital_library)
Note: Images of the original pages are available through
HathiTrust Digital Library. See
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3750786;view=1up;seq=495
THE MISSOURI OUTLAWS
by
GUSTAVE AIMARD
Author of "Prairie Flower," "Indian Scout," etc., etc.
Translated by Percy B. St. John
London
John And Robert Maxwell
Milton House, Shoe Lane, Fleet Street
and
35, St. Bride Street, Ludgate Circus.
1877
NOTICE.
Gustave Aimard was the adopted son of one of the most powerful Indian
tribes, with whom he lived for more than fifteen years in the heart of
the prairies, sharing their dangers and their combats, and accompanying
them everywhere, rifle in one hand and tomahawk in the other. In turn
squatter, hunter, trapper, warrior, and miner, Gustave Aimard has
traversed America from the highest peaks of the Cordilleras to the
ocean shores, living from hand to mouth, happy for the day, careless
of the morrow. Hence it is that Gustave Aimard only describes his
own life. The Indians of whom he speaks he has known--the manners he
depicts are his own.
PREFACE
Very few of the soul-stirring narratives written by GUSTAVE AIMARD
are equal in freshness and vigour to "The Missouri Outlaws," hitherto
unpublished in this country. The characters of the Squatter, the real,
restless, unconquerable American, who is always going ahead, and of
his wife and daughter, are admirably depicted, while his eccentric
brother is a perfect gem of description. The great interest, however,
of the narrative is centred in Tom Mitchell, the mysterious outlaw,
whose fortunes excite the readers' imagination to the utmost. There
can be no doubt he is one of the most original characters depicted by
the versatile pen of the great French novelist. In addition to being
a story of adventure, "The Missouri Outlaws" is also a love tale, and
abounds in tender pathos, the interest of which is well sustained in
"The Prairie Flower" and in its sequel, "The Indian Scout."
PERCY B. ST. JOHN.
London: _February, 1877._
CONTENTS
I. THE GOOD SHIP PATRIOT
II. SAMUEL DICKSON GIVES ADVICE TO HIS BROTHER
III. A QUEER CUSTOMER
IV. AN ALLIANCE OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE
V. A GREAT MEDICINE COUNCIL
VI. SAMUEL DICKSON HUNTS A MOOSE DEER
VII. JOSHUA DICKSON BECOMES MASTER OF THE VALLEY
VIII. DIANA DICKSON AND HER FOE
IX. THEY MAKE AN ACQUAINTANCE
X. WHO THE STRANGER WAS
XI. EXPLANATIONS
XII. HOW THE THREE TRAVELLERS WENT TO GEORGE CLINTON'S
XIII. TOM MITCHELL
XIV. SAMUEL AND JOSHUA
XV. NEW CHARACTERS
XVI. TOM MITCHELL AS REDRESSER OF WRONGS
XVII. A DIPLOMATIC CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO RASCALS
XVIII. THE PRISONER
XIX. IN WHICH TOM MITCHELL DISCOVERS THAT HONESTY
IS A GOOD SPECULATION
XX. A STRANGE CHASE
XXI. CAPTAIN TOM MITCHELL, THE AVENGER
XXII. A DESPERATE STRUGGLE
THE MISSOURI OUTLAWS
CHAPTER I.
THE GOOD SHIP PATRIOT.
On the 4th of August, 1801, a little after eight o'clock at night, just
as the last rays of the setting sun disappeared behind the heights
of Dorchester, gilding as they did so the summits of certain islands
scattered at the entrance to Boston Bay, some idlers of both sexes,
collected on Beacon Hill, at the foot of the lighthouse, saw a large
vessel making for the harbour.
At first it seemed as if the ship would be compelled to desist from her
design, as the wind was slightly contrary; but, by a series of skilful
manoeuvres, it at last passed by the danger which threatened, the sails
were one by one taken in and furled, and finally the anchor was cast
beside one of the many vessels in port.
A few minutes later nothing was to be seen on deck save one man walking
up and down doing duty as watch for the time being.
The vessel had, under cover of a dense fog, escaped from Brest, slipped
past the English cruisers, and finally, after many dangers, reached its
destination.
Descending into the cabin, we find two men seated at a table upon which
were glasses, bottles, pipes, and tobacco, conversing and smoking.
These were Captain Pierre Durand, a young man, with regular but rather
effeminate features, and yet a look of frank honesty, to which his
sparkling eyes, his broad forehead, his long waving hair, gave an
appearance of singular energy. Though every inch a sailor, there was a
refinement about him not generally found in his class.
His companion was a handsome and haughty young man, of about
two-and-twenty, of moderate height, but with very broad shoulders; he
was evidently of powerful make, with nerves of steel. His complexion
was olive; his hair long wavy black; his eyes were large and bold; the
expression of his countenance sombre and thoughtful, while at this
early age many a wrinkle caused by thought or suffering was to be
observed.
There had evidently been a warm discussion, for the captain was walking
up and down, a frown upon his brow. Suddenly, however, he reseated
himself and held out his hand across the table.
"I was wrong. Do not be vexed," he said.
"I am not angry, my good Pierre," he answered.
"Then why sulk with your friend?"
"I do not sulk, heaven knows; I am simply sad. You have reopened a
wound I thought forever closed," the other added with a sigh.
"Well, then, in heaven's name, if it be so," cried the captain, "let us
talk about something else--and above all, let us drink. This old rum is
a sovereign remedy for the blues. Your health, my friend."
Both drank after touching glasses, and then silence again ensued.
"Now, my dear Oliver," resumed the captain, "at last we are safe in
Boston. We leave tomorrow. What do you intend to do?"
"You remember our conversation at Brest?"
"I have not forgotten it, but I never seriously entertained the idea.
We had dined rather copiously."
"We were very sober. There were two bottles on the table, one empty
and the other nearly full. I then told you that though I had only just
returned to France after an absence of ten years, I was compelled to
leave at a moment's notice, and to leave without raising any suspicion.
I wanted to depart without anyone being able to obtain the slightest
clue; you remember," he added.
"I do, and I told you that I would run the blockade that very night, if
the weather turned out as bad as I expected. Did I keep my promise?"
"With all the loyalty of your honest heart. I also told you I intended
remaining in America."
"It is to that madcap resolution I object," said the captain
emphatically. "Why not stay with me? You are an excellent sailor--you
shall be my chief officer."
"No, my friend. I can accept nothing which can ever tempt me to return
to France," he answered.
"How you suffer!" sighed his friend.
"Horribly. Come, my friend, as we shall part for ever tomorrow, I will
tell you my history."
"Not if it makes you suffer."
"I will be brief. Sad as my story is, it is not very long."
"Go on," replied Captain Durand, filling up two more glasses of rum,
and lighting a fresh cigar for himself.
"I will not sermonise, but begin at the beginning. I was born in Paris,
but might be English, German, or even Russian, for all I know. I am
simply aware that my birthplace was Paris, in the house of a doctor,
where my mother took refuge. It was in the Rue St. Honore I first
saw the light but, as soon as I could be removed, was sent to the
Foundling. There I remained four years, until a loving young couple,
who had lost their only child, adopted me. They were poor, and lived on
the third floor of a wretched old house, in the Rue Plumet, where, I
must own, I had enough, but of very coarse, food."
"One day, however, fortune knocked at the door. My adopted mother was,
and still is, one of the handsomest women in Paris. By accident an old
friend, a distant relation, a man of high position, found her out. He
at once procured a lucrative appointment for my supposed parent, and
we moved to a splendid residence in the Faubourg du Roule. The friend,
who lived close by, at once began to visit us every evening, and, by a
curious coincidence, the husband always found business which required
his absence. He never returned until a quarter of an hour after the
other had left."
"Accommodating husband," sneered Durand.
"Just so. But, unfortunately for me, I became older, curious, was
always turning up when not wanted, and saying things which were not
required. It was decided that I was an incorrigible scamp, and must be
sent away."
"My adopted mother had relations at Dunkirk, and I was packed off to
them to be sent to sea as cabin boy. Then only did I discover that
| 2,388.878321 |
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Produced by James Rusk
"I SAY NO"
By Wilkie Collins
BOOK THE FIRST--AT SCHOOL.
CHAPTER I. THE SMUGGLED SUPPER.
Outside the bedroom the night was black and still.
The small rain fell too softly to be heard in the garden; not a leaf
stirred in the airless calm; the watch-dog was asleep, the cats were
indoors; far or near, under the murky heaven, not a sound was stirring.
Inside the bedroom the night was black and still.
Miss Ladd knew her business as a schoolmistress too well to allow
night-lights; and Miss Ladd's young ladies were supposed to be fast
asleep, in accordance with the rules of the house. Only at intervals the
silence was faintly disturbed, when the restless turning of one of
the girls in her bed betrayed itself by a gentle rustling between the
sheets. In the long intervals of stillness, not even the softly audible
breathing of young creatures asleep was to be heard.
The first sound that told of life and movement revealed the mechanical
movement of the clock. Speaking from the lower regions, the tongue of
Father Time told the hour before midnight.
A soft voice rose wearily near the door of the room. It counted the
strokes of the clock--and reminded one of the girls of the lapse of
time.
"Emily! eleven o'clock."
There was no reply. After an interval the weary voice tried again, in
louder tones:
"Emily!"
A girl, whose bed was at the inner end of the room, sighed under
the heavy heat of the night--and said, in peremptory tones, "Is that
Cecilia?"
"Yes."
"What do you want?"
"I'm getting hungry, Emily. Is the new girl asleep?"
The new girl answered promptly and spitefully, "No, she isn't."
Having a private object of their own in view, the five wise virgins of
Miss Ladd's first class had waited an hour, in wakeful anticipation
of the falling asleep of the stranger--and it had ended in this way!
A ripple of laughter ran round the room. The new girl, mortified and
offended, entered her protest in plain words.
"You are treating me shamefully! You all distrust me, because I am a
stranger."
"Say we don't understand you," Emily answered, speaking for her
schoolfellows; "and you will be nearer the truth."
"Who expected you to understand me, when I only came here to-day? I have
told you already my name is Francine de Sor. If want to know more, I'm
nineteen years old, and I come from the West Indies."
Emily still took the lead. "Why do you come _here?_" she asked. "Who
ever heard of a girl joining a new school just before the holidays? You
are nineteen years old, are you? I'm a year younger than you--and I have
finished my education. The next big girl in the room is a year younger
than me--and she has finished her education. What can you possibly have
left to learn at your age?"
"Everything!" cried the stranger from the West Indies, with an outburst
of tears. "I'm a poor ignorant creature. Your education ought to have
taught you to pity me instead of making fun of me. I hate you all. For
shame, for shame!"
Some of the girls laughed. One of them--the hungry girl who had counted
the strokes of the clock--took Francine's part.
"Never mind their laughing, Miss de Sor. You are quite right, you have
good reason to complain of us."
Miss de Sor dried her eyes. "Thank you--whoever you are," she answered
briskly.
"My name is Cecilia Wyvil," the other proceeded. "It was not, perhaps,
quite nice of you to say you hated us all. At the same time we have
forgotten our good breeding--and the least we can do is to beg your
pardon."
This expression of generous sentiment appeared to have an irritating
effect on the peremptory young person who | 2,389.171115 |
2023-11-16 18:56:53.2341790 | 223 | 12 |
Produced by David Widger
SAILORS' KNOTS
By W.W. Jacobs
1909
"THE TOLL-HOUSE"
"It's all nonsense," said Jack Barnes. "Of course people have died in the
house; people die in every house. As for the noises--wind in the chimney
and rats in the wainscot are very convincing to a nervous man. Give me
another cup of tea, Meagle."
"Lester and White are first," said Meagle, who was presiding at the
tea-table of the Three Feathers Inn. "You've had two."
Lester and White finished their cups with irritating slowness, pausing
between sips to sniff the aroma, and to discover the sex and dates of
arrival of the "strangers" which floated in some numbers in the beverage.
Mr. Meagle served them to the brim, and then, turning to the grimly
expectant Mr. Barnes, blandly requested him to ring for hot water.
"We'll try and keep your | 2,389.254219 |
2023-11-16 18:56:53.3444620 | 1,495 | 14 | PASQUIN TURN'D DRAWCANSIR***
E-text prepared by Louise Hope, Joseph Cooper, Alex Buie, The Type-In
Addicts, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes illustrative images of portions
of the original text.
See 30584-h.htm or 30584-h.zip:
(http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30584/30584-h/30584-h.htm)
or
(http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30584/30584-h.zip)
Transcriber's note:
The primary text was handwritten, probably by a professional
copyist. All line-endings were regularized by added dashes of
variable length; some "real" dashes are therefore conjectural.
Instead of typographic variants such as italics or boldface,
some words are distinguished by _underlining_ or #smaller
writing#. Abbreviations such as "Mr." were written with
superscripts as M^r.; they have been simplified for
readability.
Unless otherwise noted, all spelling, punctuation and
capitalization--including I/J variation and comma/period
errors--are as in the original. Errors and uncertainties are
listed at the end of the e-text.
The Augustan Reprint Society
CHARLES MACKLIN
_THE COVENT GARDEN_
_THEATRE,_
OR
_Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir_
(1752)
_INTRODUCTION_
by
JEAN B. KERN
[Decoration]
Publication Number 116
WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY
University of California, Los Angeles
1965
GENERAL EDITORS
Earl R. Miner, _University of California, Los Angeles_
Maximillian E. Novak, _University of California, Los Angeles_
Lawrence Clark Powell, _Wm. Andrews Clark Memorial Library_
ADVISORY EDITORS
Richard C. Boys, _University of Michigan_
John Butt, _University of Edinburgh_
James L. Clifford, _Columbia University_
Ralph Cohen, _University of California, Los Angeles_
Vinton A. Dearing, _University of California, Los Angeles_
Arthur Friedman, _University of Chicago_
Louis A. Landa, _Princeton University_
Samuel H. Monk, _University of Minnesota_
Everett T. Moore, _University of California, Los Angeles_
James Sutherland, _University College, London_
H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., _University of California, Los Angeles_
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY
Edna C. Davis, _Clark Memorial Library_
EDITORS' NOTE
Although of considerable interest in itself, this hitherto unpublished
manuscript play is reprinted in facsimile in response to requests by
members of the Society for a manuscript facsimile of use in graduate
seminars.
INTRODUCTION
The Larpent collection of the Huntington Library contains the
manuscript copy of Charles Macklin's COVENT GARDEN THEATRE, OR
PASQUIN TURN'D DRAWCANSIR in two acts (Larpent 96) which is here
reproduced in facsimile.[1] It is an interesting example of that
mid-eighteenth-century phenomenon, the afterpiece, from a period when
not only Shakespearean stock productions but new plays as well were
accompanied by such farcical appendages.[2] This particular afterpiece
is worth reproducing not only for its catalogue of the social foibles of
the age, but as an illustration of satirical writing for the stage at a
time when dramatic taste often wavered toward the sentimental. It
appears that it has not been previously printed.
As an actor Charles Macklin is remembered for his Scottish dress in the
role of Macbeth, for his realistic portrayal of Shylock, for his quarrel
with Garrick in 1743, and for his private lectures on acting at the
Piazza in Covent Garden. He is less well known than he deserves as a
dramatist although there has been a recent revival of interest in his
plays stimulated by a biography by William W. Appleton, _Charles
Macklin: An Actor's Life_ (Harvard University Press, 1960) and evidenced
in "A Critical Study of the Extant Plays of Charles Macklin" by Robert
R. Findlay (PhD. Thesis at the State University of Iowa, 1963). Appleton
mentions that Macklin lost books and manuscripts in a shipwreck in 1771
(p. 150) and that play manuscripts may also have disappeared in the sale
of his books and papers at the end of his long life at the turn of the
eighteenth century. It is possible that more of Macklin's work may come
to light, like _The Fortune Hunters_ which appeared in the National
Library in Dublin. Until a complete critical edition of Macklin's plays
appears, making possible better assessment of his merit, such farces as
THE COVENT GARDEN THEATRE will have to stand as an example of one genre
of eighteenth-century theatrical productions.
There are many reasons why Macklin's plays are less well known than is
warranted by his personality and acting ability during his long
association with the British stage. His first play, _King Henry VII_,
a tragedy hastily put together to capitalize on the anti-Jacobite
sentiment following the invasion attempt of 1745, was an ambitious
failure. After this discouragement, he also had trouble with the
Licenser so that his comedy _Man of the World_ was not presented until
1781, twenty years after a portion of it first appeared at Covent
Garden.[3] Nor were censorship and a bad start his only problems as a
playwright. He also, and apparently with good reason,[4] was fearful
of piracy and was thus reluctant to have his plays printed. His
eighteenth-century biographer Kirkman mentions Macklin's threats to "put
the law against every offender of it, respecting my property, in full
force."[5] His biographers also mention his practice of giving each
actor only his own role at rehearsals while keeping the manuscript copy
of the whole play under lock, but this did not prevent whole acts from
being printed in such magazines as _The Court Miscellany_, where Act I
of _Love-a-la-Mode_ was printed as it was taken down in shorthand by the
famous shorthand expert Joseph Gurney. If Macklin had not been required
to submit copies of his plays to the Licenser, it is doubtful that as
much would have survived. The contentious Macklin had reason for
zealously guarding his manuscripts, with such provincial theatre
managers as Tate Wilkinson at York | 2,389.364502 |
2023-11-16 18:56:53.3636170 | 947 | 6 |
Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
THE
LAKE DWELLINGS
OF
IRELAND.
[Illustration: _Frontispiece._
IRISH LAKE DWELLING OF THE ISOLATED TYPE.
_Ideally restored from inspection of numerous sites._]
THE
LAKE DWELLINGS
OF
IRELAND:
OR ANCIENT
LACUSTRINE HABITATIONS OF ERIN,
_COMMONLY CALLED CRANNOGS_.
BY
W. G. WOOD-MARTIN, M.R.I.A., F.R.H.A.A.I.,
LIEUT.-COLONEL 8TH BRIGADE NORTH IRISH DIVISION, R.A.;
_Author of “Sligo and the Enniskilleners”;
“History of Sligo, from the Earliest Ages
to the close of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth.”_
“There, driving many an oaken stake
Into the shallow, skilful hands
A steadfast island-dwelling make,
Seen from the hill-tops like a fleet
Of wattled houses.…”
“The footprints of an elder race are here,
And memories of an heroic time,
And shadows of the old mysterious faith.”
_DUBLIN_:
HODGES, FIGGIS & CO., GRAFTON STREET.
PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.
_LONDON_:
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., PATERNOSTER ROW.
1886.
_ALL RIGHTS RESERVED._
DUBLIN: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
[Illustration]
PREFACE.
The object the writer has in view in this Publication is to place on
record the remarkable discoveries made in a department of Archæology
hitherto almost unnoticed in Ireland, except in the Proceedings,
Catalogues, and Journals of various learned Societies. So far back
as 1861 a writer remarked that such a work would be “a real boon to
archæology,” yet in the interval none has appeared. The cause is
not far to seek. A publication treating of the habits and social
economy of long-forgotten generations is little calculated to gain
a rapid foothold with the general public, by whom the study of the
past may probably be considered dull as well as useless reading. To
many, however, it proves most interesting to observe--despite widest
variations of climatic conditions--the great similarity of the ways and
habits of man while in a rude uncultivated state--acting as it were
by a common instinct--and again to trace his upward progress towards
civilization. A wide tract in this field of archæological research
is fortunately opened up by a comparison of the Irish Lake Dwellings
and their “finds” with those of other countries, more especially
with the discoveries brought into such prominent notice by Keller in
Switzerland, and Munro in Scotland.
To the late Sir William Wilde belongs the honour of first drawing
general attention to the water habitations of Erin; his labours have
been ably followed up by W. F. Wakeman, who has so largely contributed
to the _Journal of the Royal Historical and Archæological Association
of Ireland_ both Papers and Drawings illustrative of the subject.
In the present work, Kinahan, Reeves, Graves, Wilde, and other
specialists, have been freely quoted, as evidenced in the text; in
short, the observations of every author have been utilized, provided
they touched on points that could tend in any degree to elucidate
the subject under consideration. “A dwarf on a giant’s shoulders
sees further of the two”: thus the writer, standing in this line of
investigation on the eminence created by his predecessors, may perhaps
be enabled to lay before his readers a distinct and comprehensive view
of the Ancient Lake Dwellings in Ireland. Recent discoveries and new
matter will be found in these pages; but the special intention has
been to collect carefully all the information hitherto furnished by
the explorers of Irish Lake Dwellings, and to present that information
in a condensed form, “an abridgment of all that is pleasant,” so as to | 2,389.383657 |
2023-11-16 18:56:53.5341520 | 5,732 | 63 |
Produced by Julia Miller, Donna M. Ritchey and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
[Illustration: _Insultare solopet gressus glomerare superbos._]
A
NEW SYSTEM
OF
HORSEMANSHIP:
From the French of
Monsieur Bourgelat.
BY
RICHARD BERENGER, Esq;
_Content, if hence th' Unlearn'd their Wants may view,
The Learn'd reflect on what before they knew._
Pope's Essay on Crit.
_LONDON_:
Printed by Henry Woodfall,
For Paul Vaillant in the _Strand_, facing _Southampton-Street_.
M.DCC.LIV.
THE TRANSLATOR's PREFACE.
_IT is not my Design, in the Task I undertake of giving some
Account of this Work, as well as of the Art which is the Subject of
it, to trace its Origin back into past Times, or to wander in search
of it in the Darkness and Confusion of remote Antiquity. Let it
suffice to say, that though its Beginning, as well as that of other
Arts, was imperfect, yet its Use, and the Entertainment it affords,
have been known and tasted in all Ages. But however distinguish'd it
may be by the Notice of the Great, who have at all Times deign'd to
profess and practise it; it is yet less entitled to our Regard for
these Distinctions, than for the real Advantages we derive from it.
Riding consists of two Parts, the_ useful _and the_ ornamental. _That
the latter of these may be dispensed with, is most readily granted;
but that it behoves every one who puts himself upon a Horse to have
some Knowledge of the first, is most evident.--For who would trust to
the Mercy of an Animal that may prove wild and ungovernable, who knows
himself to be incapable of controuling him, and of acting for his own
Safety? Who would venture alone into a Vessel, that can neither row,
nor manage a Sail, but must trust entirely to the Winds and Tide?
Yet is this the Case with the Generality of Mankind, who are carried
upon the Back of a Horse, and think they_ ride. _The_ Utility _of
this Art consists then in knowing how to guide and direct your Horse
as you please, and in reducing him to Obedience, so as to make him
execute readily what you require of him. Thus far it is to be wish'd
every Person who is conversant with Horses, would endeavour to attain.
The_ ornamental _Part, I have already said, is not so requisite
to be known: It can only be called an Accomplishment, and placed
among the superfluous but refin'd Pleasures of Life. In what Esteem
and Honour however it has constantly been held, abundantly appears
from the Schools and Academies every where erected for teaching its
Elements, as well as from the Number of Books, ancient and modern,
given to the World by eminent and accomplished Persons who have
studied and practis'd it. Among these our illustrious Countryman_,
William Cavendish, _Duke of_ Newcastle, _has the highest Claim to
our Praise and Acknowledgments. It would be needless to describe his
Excellencies; his Character, as a Horseman, is universally known, and
universally admir'd. The Truth and Soundness of his Principles, and
the Extensiveness of his Knowledge, have opened to us an easier, a
shorter, and more certain Way to Perfection in the Art, than was known
before. His Precepts have accordingly been adopted by all succeeding
Professors, and his Writings consider'd as the Oracle of Horsemanship,
notwithstanding a Want of Method and Exactness, which has been objected
to them. To remedy these Imperfections, is the Design of the present
Undertaking, and the Labours of a judicious and experienced Foreigner,
must consummate in the Knowledge of the Art he professes. He has
presented us with a new System of Horsemanship, extracted from the
Rules of that great Master. The Method and Conciseness with which he
has digested the Whole, have made the Copy much less than the Original,
but it is a small well-polished Gem. To speak truth, he has made
the Subject so much his own by the Refinement of his Remarks, the
Justness of his Reasoning, and the Light he has diffused through it,
that it must have the Merit of an Original; at least the Reader will
be divided to whom he shall render most Thanks, whether to him who has
given the Food, or to him who has prepar'd and set it before us with so
much Elegance and Order. This at least is our Author's Praise.----The
Translator has endeavoured to do him as much Justice, in the following
Sheets, as he has done his great Original; sensible of the Danger of
so difficult an Enterprize, but prompted to it in hopes of making
his Merit more known. He translated the Work, that the Treasures it
contains may be gathered by those who are so unfortunate as to want
this Assistance to obtain them. He has been as faithful to his Author,
as the Languages will allow, judging that to be the surest way of doing
him Justice. In some Places however he has used (as all Translators
must) a discretionary Power. Every Art has technical terms, or Words
of its own; these he has preserved in the Translation, the_ English
_affording none adequate to them. He has given no Notes or Comments,
imagining the Original can, and hoping the Translation will, want
none. Of this however his Readers will be the best Judges; he will say
no more of himself, but that he has endeavoured to make the Work as
perfect as he could; and for this Reason will be very ready to own any
Faults that may be pointed out; for, though desirous of Approbation, he
is not vain enough to think, there may not be room for Censure._
TABLE of CHAPTERS.
I. _Of the Horseman's Seat_ page 1
II. _Of the Hand, and its Effects_ 10
III. _Of Disobedience in Horses, and the Means to correct it_ 19
IV. _Of the Trot_ 33
V. _Of the Stop_ 43
VI. _Of teaching a Horse to go backward_ 50
VII. _Of the uniting or putting a Horse together_ 54
VIII. _Of the Pillars_ 60
IX. _Of Aids and Corrections_ 64
X. _Of the Passage_ 75
XI. _Of working with the Head and Croupe to the Wall_ 79
XII. _Of Changes of the Hand, large and narrow, and of Voltes
and Demi-voltes_ 82
XIII. _Of the Aids of the Body_ 92
XIV. _Of the Gallop_ 98
XV. _Of Passades_ 107
XVI. _Of Pesades_ 111
XVII. _Of the Mezair_ 115
XVIII. _Of Curvets_ 117
XIX. _Of Croupades and Balotades_ 129
XX. _Of Caprioles_ 132
XXI. _Of the Step and Leap_ 142
TO
SIDNEY MEDOWS, Esq;
The Following SHEETS,
Eminently due to Him from their Subject,
And not Less so
From the AUTHOR's sincere Regard
TO
His Person and Character,
Are Inscrib'd,
By his Faithful and Obedient Servant,
RICHARD BERENGER.
ERRATA.
Page 36. _for_ Remingue _read_ Ramingue. p. 38. _dele_ and. p. 66.
_for_ in _read_ it. p. 79. _for_ Care _read_ Ease. p. 80. _for_ acting
_read_ aiding. p. 85. _dele_ so. p. 116. _for_ Lines _read_ Times.
A
NEW SYSTEM
OF
HORSEMANSHIP.
CHAP. I.
_Of the Horseman's Seat._
THE Principles and Rules which have hitherto been given for the
Horseman's Seat, are various, and even opposite, according as they have
been adopted by different Masters, and taught in different Countries;
almost each Master, in particular, and every Nation, having certain
Rules and Notions of their own. Let us see, however, if Art can
discover nothing to us that is certain and invariably true.
THE _Italians_, the _Spaniards_, the _French_, and, in a word, every
Country, where Riding is in repute, adopt each a Posture which is
peculiar to themselves; the Foundation of their general Notions, is, if
I may so say, the same, but yet each Country has prescribed Rules for
the Placing of the Man in the Saddle.
THIS Contrariety of Opinions, which have their Origin more in
Prejudice, than in Truth and Reality, has given rise to many vain
Reasonings and Speculations, each System having its Followers; and,
as if Truth was not always the same and unchangeable, but at liberty
to assume various, and even opposite Appearances; sometimes one
Opinion prevailed, sometimes another dazzled; insomuch, that those who
understand nothing of the Subject, but yet are desirous of informing
themselves, by searching it to the Bottom, have hitherto been lost in
Doubt and Perplexity.
THERE is nevertheless a sure and infallible Method, by the Assistance
of which it would be very easy to overturn all these Systems: But not
to enter into a needless Detail, of the extravagant Notions which the
Seat alone has given rise to, let us trace it from Principles by so
much the more solid, as their Authority will be supported by the most
convincing and self-evident Reasons.
IN order to succeed in an Art where the Mechanism of the Body is
absolutely necessary, and where each Part of the Body has proper
Functions, which are peculiar to it, it is most certain, that all and
every Part of the Body should be in a natural Posture; were they in
an imperfect Situation, they would want that Ease and Freedom which
is inseparable from Grace; and as every Motion which is constrained,
being false in itself, is incapable of Justness; it is clear that the
Part so constrained and forced would throw the whole into Disorder,
because each Part belonging to, and depending upon the whole Body, and
the Body partaking of the Constraint of its Parts, can never feel that
fix'd Point, that just Counterpoise and Equilibre in which alone a fine
and just Execution consists.
IT is not therefore sufficient in giving Directions for the Seat, to
keep altogether to trivial and common Rules which may be followed or
left at pleasure; we ought to weigh and examine them with Skill and
Judgment, in order to know how to apply them properly and suitably
as the Shape and Figure of the Person to whom we undertake to give a
Seat will allow; for many Motions and Attitudes that appear easy and
natural in one Man, in another are awkward and ungraceful; whence all
those Faults and Difficulties which in many Persons have been thought
insuperable; whereas a little more Knowledge, a closer Attention, and a
more serious Examination into the Principles of the Art, would convert
in the same Subject an awkward and displeasing Appearance, into an
easy, natural, and graceful Figure, capable of drawing the Eyes even of
Judges themselves.
INDEED the Objects, to which a Master, anxious for the Advancement
of his Pupil, should attend, are infinite. To little Purpose will
it be to keep the strictest Eye upon all the Parts and Limbs of his
Pupil's Body; in vain will he endeavour to remedy all the Defects and
Faults which are found in the Posture of almost every Scholar in the
Beginning; unless he is intimately acquainted with, and apprized of,
the close Dependance and Connection that there is between the Motions
of each Part of the Body, and all the Rest; a Correspondence caused
by the reciprocal Action of the Muscles which govern and direct them;
unless therefore he is Master of this Secret, and has this Clue to the
Labyrinth, he will never attain the End he proposes, particularly in
his first Lessons, upon which the Success of the rest always depends.
THESE Principles being established, let us reason in consequence of
them; we shall display them with great Force and Clearness.
THE Body of a Man is divided into three Parts, two of which are
moveable, the other immoveable.
THE First of the two moveable Parts is the Trunk or Body, down to the
Waist; the Second is from the Knees to the Feet; so that the remaining
immoveable Part is that between the Waist and the Knees.
THE Parts then which ought to be without Motion, are the Fork or Twist
of the Horseman, and his Thighs: Now, that these Parts may be kept
without Motion, they ought to have a certain Hold and Center, if I may
so say, to rest upon, which no Motion that the Horse can make, can
disturb or loosen; this Point or Center is the Basis of the Hold which
the Horseman has upon his Horse, and is what is called the _Seat_.
Now, if the Seat is nothing else but this Point or Center, it must
follow, that not only the Grace, but the Symmetry and true Proportion
of the whole Attitude depends upon those Parts of the Body that are
immoveable.
LET the Horseman then place himself at once upon his Twist, sitting
exactly in the Middle of the Saddle, let him support this Posture, in
which the Twist alone seems to sustain the Weight of the whole Body, by
moderately leaning upon the Buttocks; let his Thighs be turned inward,
and rest flat upon the Sides of the Saddle, and in order to this, let
the Turn of the Thighs proceed directly from the Hips, and let him
employ no Force or Strength to keep himself in the Saddle, but trust to
the Weight of his Body and Thighs; this is the exact Equilibre; in this
consists the Firmness of the whole Building; a Firmness which young
Beginners are never sensible of at first, but which is to be acquired,
and will always be attained by Exercise and Practice.
I demand but a moderate Stress upon the Buttocks, because a Man that
sits full upon them, can never turn his Thighs flat upon the Saddle;
and the Thighs should always lay flat, because the fleshy Part of the
Thigh being insensible, the Horseman would not otherwise be able to
feel the Motions of his Horse. I insist that the Turn of the Thigh
should be from the Hip, because this Turn can never be natural, but as
it proceeds from the Hollow of the Hip-bone. I insist further, that the
Horseman never avail himself of the Strength or Help of his Thighs;
because, besides that he would then be not only less steady, but the
closer he prest them to the Saddle, the more would he be lifted above
it; and with respect to his Buttocks and Thighs, he ought always to be
in the Middle of the Saddle, and sit down full and close upon it.
HAVING thus firmly placed the immoveable Parts, let us pass on to the
first of the Moveable; which is, as I have already observed, the Body
or Trunk, as far as to the Waist: I comprehend in the Body or Trunk,
the Head, the Shoulders, the Breast, the Arms, the Hands, the Loins,
and the Waist, of the Horseman.
THE Head should be free, firm, and easy, in order to be ready for all
the natural Motions that the Horseman may make, in turning it to one
Side or the other: It should be firm, that is to say strait, without
leaning to the Right or Left, neither advanced, nor thrown back; it
should be easy, because if otherwise, it would occasion a Stiffness,
and that Stiffness affecting the different Parts of the Body,
especially the Back-bone, they would be without Ease, and constrained.
THE Shoulders alone influence by their Motion the Breast, the Reins,
and the Waist.
THE Horseman should present or advance his Breast; by this his whole
Figure opens and displays itself: He should have a small Hollow in his
Loins, and should push his Waist forward to the Pommel of the Saddle,
because this Position corresponds and unites him to all the Motions
of the Horse. Now, only throwing the Shoulders back produces all these
Effects, and gives them exactly in the Degree that is requisite;
whereas, if we were to look for the particular Position of each Part
separately, and by itself, without examining the Connection that there
is between the Motions of one Part with those of another, there would
be such a Bending in the Loins, that the Horseman would be, if I may
so say, _hollow-back'd_; and as from that he would force his Breast
forward, and his Waist towards the Pommel of the Saddle, he would be
flung back, and must sit upon the Rump of the Horse.
THE Arms should be bent at the Elbows, and the Elbows should rest
equally upon the Hips; if the Arms were strait, the Consequence would
be, that the Hands would be infinitely too low, or at much too great a
Distance from the Body; and if the Elbows were not kept steady, they
would of consequence give an Uncertainty and Fickleness to the Hand,
sufficient to ruin it for ever.
IT is true, that the Bridle-hand is that which absolutely ought to be
steady and immoveable, and one might conclude from hence, that the
Left-elbow only ought to rest upon the Hip, but Grace consists in the
exact Proportion and Symmetry of all the Parts of the Body, and to
have the Arm on one Side raised and advanced, and that of the other
kept down and close to the Body, would present but an awkward and
disagreeable Appearance.
IT is this which determines the Situation of the Hand, which holds
the Switch. The Left-hand being of an equal Height with the Elbow, so
that the Knuckle of the Little-finger, and the Tip of the Elbow, be
both in a Line; this Hand then being rounded neither too much nor too
little, but just so that the Wrist may direct all its Motions; place
your Right-hand, or the Switch-hand, lower and more forward than the
Bridle-hand; it should be lower than the other Hand, because if it
was upon a Level with it, it would restrain or obstruct its Motions;
and were it to be higher, as it cannot take so great a Compass as the
Bridle-hand, which must always be kept over against the Horseman's
Body, it is absolutely necessary to keep the Proportion of the Elbows,
that it should be lower than the other.
THE Legs and Feet make up the second Division, of what I call the
moveable Parts of the Body.
THE Legs serve for two Purposes; they may be used as Aids, or
Corrections, to the Animal. They should then be kept near the Sides of
the Horse, and in a Line with the Man's Body; for being near the Part
of the Horse's Body where his Feeling is most delicate, they are ready
to do their Office in the Instant they are wanted. Moreover, as they
are an Appendix of the Thighs, if the Thigh is upon its Flat in the
Saddle, they will, by a necessary Consequence, be turned just as they
ought, and will infallibly give the same Turn to the Feet; because the
Feet depend upon them, as they depend upon the Thighs.
THE Toe should be held a little higher than the Heel, for the lower
the Toe is, the nearer the Heel will be to the Sides of the Horse, and
must be in danger of touching his Flank. Many Persons, notwithstanding,
when they raise their Toe, bend and twist their Ankle, as if they were
lame in that Part. The Reason of this is very plain; it is because they
make use of the Muscles in their Legs and Thighs; whereas, they should
employ only the Joint of the Foot for this Purpose; a Joint, given by
Nature to facilitate all the Motions of the Foot, and to enable it to
turn to the Right or Left, upwards or downwards.
SUCH is, in short, the mechanical Disposition of all the Parts of the
Horseman's Body. I will enlarge no further upon a Subject treated on
already so amply by every Writer; as it is needless to write what has
been already handled. I have had no other Design in this Chapter,
than to give an Idea of the Correspondence that there is between all
the Parts of the Body, because it is only by a just Knowledge of this
mutual Relation of all the different Parts, that we can be enabled to
prescribe Rules for giving that true and natural Seat, which is not
only the Principle of Justness, but likewise the Foundation of all
Grace in the Horseman.
CHAP. II.
_Of the Hand, and its Effects._
THE Knowledge of the different Characters, and the different Nature
of Horses, together with the Vices, and Imperfections, as well as the
exact and just Proportions of the Parts of a Horse's Body, is the
Foundation upon which is built the Theory of our Art; but this Theory
will be unnecessary and even useless, it we are not able likewise to
carry it into Execution.
THIS depends chiefly upon the Goodness and Quickness of Feeling in the
Hand, a Delicacy which Nature alone can give, and which she does not
always bestow. The first Sensation of the Hand consists in a greater or
less Degree of Fineness in the Touch or Feeling; all of us are equally
furnished with Nerves, from which we have the Sense of Feeling, but
as this Sense is much more subtle and quick in some Persons than in
others, it is impossible to give a precise Definition of the exact
Degree of Feeling in the Hand, which ought to communicate and answer to
the same Degree of Feeling in the Horse's Mouth; because there is as
much difference in the Degrees of Feeling in Men, as there is in the
Mouths of Horses.
I SUPPOSE then a Man, who is not only capable to judge of the Qualities
of a Horse's Mouth from a Knowledge of the Theory, but who has likewise
by Nature that Fineness of Touch, which helps to form a good Hand; let
us see then what the Rules are that we must follow, in order to make it
perfect, and by which we must direct all its Operations.
A HORSE can move four different Ways, he can advance, go back, turn
to the Right, and to the Left; but he can never make these different
Motions, unless the Hand of the Rider permits him by making four
other Motions which answer to them: So that there are five different
Positions for the Hand.
THE first is that general Position, from which proceed, and indeed
ought to proceed, the other four.
HOLD your Hand three Fingers breadth from your Body, as high as your
Elbow, in such a Manner that the Joint of your Little-finger be upon a
right Line with the Tip of the Elbow; let your Wrist be sufficiently
rounded, so that your Knuckles may be kept directly above the Neck
of your Horse; let your Nails be exactly opposite your Body, the
Little-finger nearer to it than the others, your Thumb quite flat upon
the Reins, which you must separate, by putting your Little-finger
between them, the right Rein lying upon it; this is the first and
general Position.
DOES your Horse go forward, or rather would you have him go forward?
Yield to him your Hand, and for that Purpose turn your Nails downwards,
in such a Manner as to bring your Thumb near your Body, remove your
Little-finger from it, and bring it into the Place where your Knuckles
were in the first Position, keeping your Nails directly above your
Horse's Neck; this is the second.
WOULD you make your Horse go backwards? quit the first Position, let
your Wrist be quite round, let your Thumb be in the Place of the
Little-finger in the second Position, and the Little-finger in that of
the Thumb, turn your Nails quite upwards, and towards your Face, and
your Knuckles will be towards your Horse's Neck; this is the third.
WOULD you turn your Horse to the Right, leave the first Position,
carry your Nails to the Right, turning your Hand upside down, in
such a manner, that your Thumb be carried out to the Left, and the
Little-finger brought in to the Right; this is the fourth Position.
LASTLY, Would you turn to the Left, quit again the first Position,
carry the Back of your Hand a little to the Left, so that the Knuckles
come under a little, but that your Thumb incline to the Right, and the
Little-finger to the Left; this makes the fifth.
THESE different Positions however alone are not sufficient; we must be
able to pass from one to another with Readiness and Order.----Three | 2,389.554192 |
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NEW IRELAND PAMPHLETS. NUMBER THREE
PRICE TWOPENCE
THE ISSUE
The Case for Sinn Fein
BY LECTOR
AS PASSED BY CENSOR.
NEW IRELAND PUBLISHING COMPANY, Limited
13 FLEET STREET, DUBLIN
1918
THE ISSUE
=INDEPENDENCE.=
Does Ireland wish to be free? Do we alone among the ancient Nations of
Europe desire to remain slaves? That, and that | 2,389.75507 |
2023-11-16 18:56:53.7400280 | 5,523 | 10 |
Produced by David Widger
SAILORS' KNOTS
By W.W. Jacobs
1909
SELF-HELP
The night-watchman sat brooding darkly over life and its troubles. A
shooting corn on the little toe of his left foot, and a touch of liver,
due, he was convinced, to the unlawful cellar work of the landlord of the
Queen's Head, had induced in him a vein of profound depression. A
discarded boot stood by his side, and his gray-stockinged foot protruded
over the edge of the jetty until a passing waterman gave it a playful rap
with his oar. A subsequent inquiry as to the price of pigs' trotters
fell on ears rendered deaf by suffering.
"I might 'ave expected it," said the watchman, at last. "I done that
man--if you can call him a man--a kindness once, and this is my reward
for it. Do a man a kindness, and years arterwards 'e comes along and
hits you over your tenderest corn with a oar."
[Illustration: "''E comes along and hits you over your tenderest corn
with a oar.'"]
He took up his boot, and, inserting his foot with loving care, stooped
down and fastened the laces.
Do a man a kindness, he continued, assuming a safer posture, and 'e tries
to borrow money off of you; do a woman a kindness and she thinks you want
tr marry 'er; do an animal a kindness and it tries to bite you--same as a
horse bit a sailorman I knew once, when 'e sat on its head to 'elp it get
up. He sat too far for'ard, pore chap.
Kindness never gets any thanks. I remember a man whose pal broke 'is leg
while they was working together unloading a barge; and he went off to
break the news to 'is pal's wife. A kind-'earted man 'e was as ever you
see, and, knowing 'ow she would take on when she 'eard the news, he told
her fust of all that 'er husband was killed. She took on like a mad
thing, and at last, when she couldn't do anything more and 'ad quieted
down a bit, he told 'er that it was on'y a case of a broken leg, thinking
that 'er joy would be so great that she wouldn't think anything of that.
He 'ad to tell her three times afore she understood 'im, and then,
instead of being thankful to 'im for 'is thoughtfulness, she chased him
'arf over Wapping with a chopper, screaming with temper.
I remember Ginger Dick and Peter Russet trying to do old Sam Small a
kindness one time when they was 'aving a rest ashore arter a v'y'ge.
They 'ad took a room together as usual, and for the fust two or three
days they was like brothers. That couldn't last, o' course, and Sam was
so annoyed one evening at Ginger's suspiciousness by biting a 'arf-dollar
Sam owed 'im and finding it was a bad 'un, that 'e went off to spend the
evening all alone by himself.
He felt a bit dull at fust, but arter he had 'ad two or three 'arf-pints
'e began to take a brighter view of things. He found a very nice, cosey
little public-'ouse he hadn't been in before, and, arter getting two and
threepence and a pint for the 'arf-dollar with Ginger's tooth-marks on,
he began to think that the world wasn't 'arf as bad a place as people
tried to make out.
There was on'y one other man in the little bar Sam was in--a tall, dark
chap, with black side-whiskers and spectacles, wot kept peeping round the
partition and looking very 'ard at everybody that came in.
"I'm just keeping my eye on 'em, cap'n," he ses to Sam, in a low voice.
"Ho!" ses Sam.
"They don't know me in this disguise," ses the dark man, "but I see as
'ow you spotted me at once. Anybody 'ud have a 'ard time of it to
deceive you; and then they wouldn't gain nothing by it."
"Nobody ever 'as yet," ses Sam, smiling at 'im.
"And nobody ever will," ses the dark man, shaking his 'cad; "if they was
all as fly as you, I might as well put the shutters up. How did you twig
I was a detective officer, cap'n?"
Sam, wot was taking a drink, got some beer up 'is nose with surprise.
"That's my secret," he ses, arter the tec 'ad patted 'im on the back and
brought 'im round.
"You're a marvel, that's wot you are," ses the tec, shaking his 'ead.
"Have one with me."
Sam said he didn't mind if 'e did, and arter drinking each other's
healths very perlite 'e ordered a couple o' twopenny smokes, and by way
of showing off paid for 'em with 'arf a quid.
"That's right, ain't it?" ses the barmaid, as he stood staring very 'ard
at the change. "I ain't sure about that 'arf-crown, now I come to look
at it; but it's the one you gave me."
Pore Sam, with a tec standing alongside of 'im, said it was quite right,
and put it into 'is pocket in a hurry and began to talk to the tec as
fast as he could about a murder he 'ad been reading about in the paper
that morning. They went and sat down by a comfortable little fire that
was burning in the bar, and the tec told 'im about a lot o' murder cases
he 'ad been on himself.
"I'm down 'ere now on special work," he ses, "looking arter sailormen."
"Wot ha' they been doing?" ses Sam.
"When I say looking arter, I mean protecting 'em," ses the tec. "Over
and over agin some pore feller, arter working 'ard for months at sea,
comes 'ome with a few pounds in 'is pocket and gets robbed of the lot.
There's a couple o' chaps down 'ere I'm told off to look arter special,
but it's no good unless I can catch 'em red-'anded."
"Red-'anded?" ses Sam.
"With their hands in the chap's pockets, I mean," ses the tec.
Sam gave a shiver. "Somebody had their 'ands in my pockets once," he
ses. "Four pun ten and some coppers they got."
"Wot was they like?" ses the tee, starting.
Sam shook his 'ead. "They seemed to me to be all hands, that's all I
know about 'em," he ses. "Arter they 'ad finished they leaned me up agin
the dock wall an' went off."
"It sounds like 'em," ses the tec, thoughtfully. "It was Long Pete and
Fair Alf, for a quid; that's the two I'm arter."
He put his finger in 'is weskit-pocket. "That's who I am," he ses,
'anding Sam a card; "Detective-Sergeant Cubbins. If you ever get into
any trouble at any time, you come to me."
Sam said 'e would, and arter they had 'ad another drink together the tec
shifted 'is seat alongside of 'im and talked in his ear.
"If I can nab them two chaps I shall get promotion," he ses; "and it's a
fi'-pun note to anybody that helps me. I wish I could persuade you to."
"'Ow's it to be done?" ses Sam, looking at 'im.
"I want a respectable-looking seafaring man," ses the tec, speaking very
slow; "that's you. He goes up Tower Hill to-morrow night at nine
o'clock, walking very slow and very unsteady on 'is pins, and giving my
two beauties the idea that 'e is three sheets in the wind. They come up
and rob 'im, and I catch them red-'anded. I get promotion, and you get a
fiver."
"But 'ow do you know they'll be there?" ses Sam, staring at 'im.
Mr. Cubbins winked at 'im and tapped 'is nose.
[Illustration: "Mr. Cubbins winked at 'im and tapped 'is nose."]
"We 'ave to know a good deal in our line o' business," he ses.
"Still," ses Sam, "I don't see----"
"Narks," says the tec; "coppers' narks. You've 'eard of them, cap'n?
Now, look 'ere. Have you got any money?"
"I got a matter o' twelve quid or so," ses Sam, in a of hand way.
"The very thing," says the tec. "Well, to-morrow night you put that in
your pocket, and be walking up Tower Hill just as the clock strikes nine.
I promise you you'll be robbed afore two minutes past, and by two and a
'arf past I shall 'ave my hands on both of 'em. Have all the money in
one pocket, so as they can get it neat and quick, in case they get
interrupted. Better still, 'ave it in a purse; that makes it easier to
bring it 'ome to 'em."
"Wouldn't it be enough if they stole the purse?" ses Sam. "I should feel
safer that way, too."
Mr. Cubbins shook his 'ead, very slow and solemn. "That wouldn't do at
all," he ses. "The more money they steal, the longer they'll get; you
know that, cap'n, without me telling you. If you could put fifty quid in
it would be so much the better. And, what-ever you do, don't make a
noise. I don't want a lot o' clumsy policemen interfering in my
business."
"Still, s'pose you didn't catch 'em," ses Sam, "where should I be?"
"You needn't be afraid o' that," ses the tec, with a laugh. "Here, I'll
tell you wot I'll do, and that'll show you the trust I put in you."
He drew a big di'mond ring off of 'is finger and handed it to Sam.
"Put that on your finger," he ses, "and keep it there till I give you
your money back and the fi'-pun note reward. It's worth seventy quid
if it's worth a farthing, and was given to me by a lady of title for
getting back 'er jewellery for 'er. Put it on, and wotever you do,
don't lose it"
He sat and watched while Sam forced it on is finger.
"You don't need to flash it about too much," he ses, looking at 'im
rather anxious. "There's men I know as 'ud cut your finger off to get
that."
Sam shoved his 'and in his pocket, but he kept taking it out every now
and then and 'olding his finger up to the light to look at the di'mond.
Mr. Cubbins got up to go at last, saying that he 'ad got a call to make
at the police-station, and they went out together.
"Nine o'clock sharp," he ses, as they shook hands, "on Tower Hill."
"I'll be there," ses Sam.
"And, wotever you do, no noise, no calling out," ses the tec, "and don't
mention a word of this to a living soul."
Sam shook 'ands with 'im agin, and then, hiding his 'and in his pocket,
went off 'ome, and, finding Ginger and Peter Russet wasn't back, went off
to bed.
He 'eard 'em coming upstairs in the dark in about an hour's time, and,
putting the 'and with the ring on it on the counterpane, shut 'is eyes
and pretended to be fast asleep. Ginger lit the candle, and they was
both beginning to undress when Peter made a noise and pointed to Sam's
'and.
"Wot's up?" ses Ginger, taking the candle and going over to Sam's bed.
"Who've you been robbing, you fat pirate?"
Sam kept 'is eyes shut and 'eard 'em whispering; then he felt 'em take
'is hand up and look at it. "Where did you get it, Sam?" ses Peter.
"He's asleep," ses Ginger, "sound asleep. I b'lieve if I was to put 'is
finger in the candle he wouldn't wake up."
"You try it," ses Sam, sitting up in bed very sharp and snatching his
'and away. "Wot d'ye mean coming 'ome at all hours and waking me up?"
"Where did you get that ring?" ses Ginger. "Friend o' mine," ses Sam,
very short.
"Who was it?" ses Peter.
"It's a secret," ses Sam.
"You wouldn't 'ave a secret from your old pal Ginger, Sam, would you?"
ses Ginger.
"Old wot?" ses Sam. "Wot did you call me this arternoon?"
"I called you a lot o' things I'm sorry for," ses Ginger, who was
bursting with curiosity, "and I beg your pardin, Sam."
"Shake 'ands on it," ses Peter, who was nearly as curious as Ginger.
They shook hands, but Sam said he couldn't tell 'em about the ring; and
several times Ginger was on the point of calling 'im the names he 'ad
called 'im in the arternoon, on'y Peter trod on 'is foot and stopped him.
They wouldn't let 'im go to sleep for talking, and at last, when 'e was
pretty near tired out, he told 'em all about it.
"Going--to 'ave your--pocket picked?" ses Ginger, staring at 'im, when
'e had finished.
"I shall be watched over," ses Sam.
"He's gorn stark, staring mad," ses Ginger. "Wot a good job it is he's
got me and you to look arter 'im, Peter."
"Wot d'ye mean?" ses Sam.
"_Mean?_" ses Ginger. "Why, it's a put-up job to rob you, o' course. I
should ha' thought even your fat 'ead could ha' seen that':"
"When I want your advice I'll ask you for it," ses Sam, losing 'is
temper. "Wot about the di'mond ring--eh?"
"You stick to it," ses Ginger, "and keep out o' Mr. Cubbins's way.
That's my advice to you. 'Sides, p'r'aps it ain't a real one."
Sam told 'im agin he didn't want none of 'is advice, and, as Ginger
wouldn't leave off talking, he pretended to go to sleep. Ginger woke 'im
up three times to tell 'im wot a fool 'e was, but 'e got so fierce that
he gave it up at last and told 'im to go 'is own way.
Sam wouldn't speak to either of 'em next morning, and arter breakfast he
went off on 'is own. He came back while Peter and Ginger was out, and
they wasted best part o' the day trying to find 'im.
"We'll be on Tower Hill just afore nine and keep 'im out o' mischief, any
way," ses Peter.
Ginger nodded. "And be called names for our pains," he ses. "I've a
good mind to let 'im be robbed."
"It 'ud serve 'im right," ses Peter, "on'y then he'd want to borrer off
of us. Look here! Why not--why not rob 'im ourselves?"
"Wot?" ses Ginger, starting.
"Walk up behind 'im and rob 'im," ses Peter. "He'll think it's them two
chaps he spoke about, and when 'e comes 'ome complaining to us we'll tell
'im it serves 'im right. Arter we've 'ad a game with 'im for a day or
two we'll give 'im 'is money back."
"But he'd reckernize us," ses Ginger.
"We must disguise ourselves," ses Peter, in a whisper. "There's a
barber's shop in Cable Street, where I've seen beards in the winder. You
hook 'em on over your ears. Get one o' them each, pull our caps over our
eyes and turn our collars up, and there you are."
Ginger made a lot of objections, not because he didn't think it was a
good idea, but because he didn't like Peter thinking of it instead of
'im; but he gave way at last, and, arter he 'ad got the beard, he stood
for a long time in front o' the glass thinking wot a difference it would
ha' made to his looks if he had 'ad black 'air instead o' red.
Waiting for the evening made the day seem very long to 'em; but it came
at last, and, with the beards in their pockets, they slipped out and went
for a walk round. They 'ad 'arf a pint each at a public-'ouse at the top
of the Minories, just to steady themselves, and then they came out and
hooked on their beards; and wot with them, and pulling their caps down
and turning their coat-collars up, there wasn't much of their faces to be
seen by anybody.
It was just five minutes to nine when they got to Tower Hill, and they
walked down the middle of the road, keeping a bright lookout for old Sam.
A little way down they saw a couple o' chaps leaning up agin a closed
gate in the dock wall lighting their pipes, and Peter and Ginger both
nudged each other with their elbows at the same time. They 'ad just got
to the bottom of the Hill when Sam turned the corner.
Peter wouldn't believe at fust that the old man wasn't really the worse
for liquor, 'e was so lifelike. Many a drunken man would ha' been proud
to ha' done it 'arf so well, and it made 'im pleased to think that Sam
was a pal of 'is. Him and Ginger turned and crept up behind the old man
on tiptoe, and then all of a sudden he tilted Sam's cap over 'is eyes and
flung his arms round 'im, while Ginger felt in 'is coat-pockets and took
out a leather purse chock full o' money.
It was all done and over in a moment, and then, to Ginger's great
surprise, Sam suddenly lifted 'is foot and gave 'im a fearful kick on the
shin of 'is leg, and at the same time let drive with all his might in 'is
face. Ginger went down as if he 'ad been shot, and as Peter went to 'elp
him up he got a bang over the 'cad that put 'im alongside o' Ginger,
arter which Sam turned and trotted off down the Hill like a dancing-bear.
[Illustration: "Let drive with all his might in 'is face. "]
For 'arf a minute Ginger didn't know where 'e was, and afore he found out
the two men they'd seen in the gateway came up, and one of 'em put his
knee in Ginger's back and 'eld him, while the other caught hold of his
'and and dragged the purse out of it. Arter which they both made off up
the Hill as 'ard as they could go, while Peter Russet in a faint voice
called "Police!" arter them.
He got up presently and helped Ginger up, and they both stood there
pitying themselves, and 'elping each other to think of names to call Sam.
"Well, the money's gorn, and it's 'is own silly fault," ses Ginger. "But
wotever 'appens, he mustn't know that we had a 'and in it, mind that."
"He can starve for all I care," ses Peter, feeling his 'ead. "I won't
lend 'im a ha'penny--not a single, blessed ha'penny."
"Who'd ha' thought 'e could ha' hit like that?" says Ginger. "That's wot
gets over me. I never 'ad such a bang in my life--never. I'm going to
'ave a little drop o' brandy--my 'ead is fair swimming."
Peter 'ad one, too; but though they went into the private bar, it wasn't
private enough for them; and when the landlady asked Ginger who'd been
kissing 'im, he put 'is glass down with a bang and walked straight off
'ome.
Sam 'adn't turned up by the time they got there, and pore Ginger took
advantage of it to put a little warm candle-grease on 'is bad leg. Then
he bathed 'is face very careful and 'elped Peter bathe his 'ead. They
'ad just finished when they heard Sam coming upstairs, and Ginger sat
down on 'is bed and began to whistle, while Peter took up a bit o'
newspaper and stood by the candle reading it.
"Lor' lumme, Ginger!" ses Sam, staring at 'im. "What ha' you been
a-doing to your face?"
"Me?" ses Ginger, careless-like. "Oh, we 'ad a bit of a scrap down
Limehouse way with some Scotchies. Peter got a crack over the 'ead at
the same time."
"Ah, I've 'ad a bit of a scrap, too," ses Sam, smiling all over, "but I
didn't get marked."
"Oh!" ses Peter, without looking up from 'is paper. "Was it a little
boy, then?" ses Ginger.
"No, it wasn't a little boy neither, Ginger," ses Sam; "it was a couple
o' men twice the size of you and Peter here, and I licked 'em both. It
was the two men I spoke to you about last night."
"Oh!" ses Peter agin, yawning.
"I did a bit o' thinking this morning," ses Sam, nodding at 'em, "and I
don't mind owning up that it was owing to wot you said. You was right,
Ginger, arter all."
"Fust thing I did arter breakfast," ses Sam, "I took that di'mond ring to
a pawnshop and found out it wasn't a di'mond ring. Then I did a bit more
thinking, and I went round to a shop I know and bought a couple o'
knuckle-dusters."
"Couple o' wot?" ses Ginger, in a choking voice.
"Knuckle-dusters," ses Sam, "and I turned up to-night at Tower Hill with
one on each 'and just as the clock was striking nine. I see 'em the
moment I turned the corner--two enormous big chaps, a yard acrost the
shoulders, coming down the middle of the road--You've got a cold,
Ginger!"
"No, I ain't," ses Ginger.
"I pretended to be drunk, same as the tec told me," ses Sam, "and then I
felt 'em turn round and creep up behind me. One of 'em come up behind
and put 'is knee in my back and caught me by the throat, and the other
gave me a punch in the chest, and while I was gasping for breath took my
purse away. Then I started on 'em."
"Lor'!" ses Ginger, very nasty.
"I fought like a lion," ses Sam. "Twice they 'ad me down, and twice I
got up agin and hammered 'em. They both of 'em 'ad knives, but my blood
was up, and I didn't take no more notice of 'em than if they was made of
paper. I knocked 'em both out o' their hands, and if I hit 'em in the
face once I did a dozen times. I surprised myself."
"You surprise me," ses Ginger.
"All of a sudden," ses Sam, "they see they 'ad got to do with a man wot
didn't know wot fear was, and they turned round and ran off as hard as
they could run. You ought to ha' been there, Ginger. You'd 'ave enjoyed
it."
Ginger Dick didn't answer 'im. Having to sit still and listen to all
them lies without being able to say anything nearly choked 'im. He sat
there gasping for breath.
"O' course, you got your purse back in the fight, Sam?" ses Peter.
"No, mate," ses Sam. "I ain't going to tell you no lies--I did not."
| 2,389.760068 |
2023-11-16 18:56:53.7652610 | 7,435 | 6 |
Produced by Barbara Tozier, Douglas L. Alley, III, Bill
Tozier and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net
ZOOLOGICAL MYTHOLOGY
OR
THE LEGENDS OF ANIMALS
BY
ANGELO DE GUBERNATIS
PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE IN THE ISTITUTO DI STUDII
SUPERIORI E DI PERFEZIONAMENTO, AT FLORENCE
FOREIGN MEMBER OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF PHILOLOGY AND ETHNOGRAPHY
OF THE DUTCH INDIES
_IN TWO VOLUMES_
VOL. I.
LONDON
TRUeBNER & CO., 60 PATERNOSTER ROW
1872
[_All rights reserved_]
PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
TO
MICHELE AMARI AND MICHELE COPPINO
This Work
IS DEDICATED
AS A TRIBUTE OF LIVELY GRATITUDE AND
PROFOUND ESTEEM
BY
THE AUTHOR.
ZOOLOGICAL MYTHOLOGY;
OR
THE LEGENDS OF ANIMALS.
First Part.
THE ANIMALS OF THE EARTH.
CHAPTER I.
THE COW AND THE BULL.
SECTION I.--THE COW AND THE BULL IN THE VEDIC HYMNS.
SUMMARY.
Prelude.--The vault of Heaven as a luminous cow.--The gods and
goddesses, sons and daughters of this cow.--The vault of Heaven as a
spotted cow.--The sons and daughters of this cow, _i.e._ the winds,
Marutas, and the clouds, Pricnayas.--The wind-bulls subdue the
cloud-cows.--Indras, the rain-sending, thundering, lightening,
radiant sun, who makes the rain fall and the light return, called
the bull of bulls.--The bull Indras drinks the water of
strength.--Hunger and thirst of the heroes of mythology.--The
cloud-barrel.--The horns of the bull and of the cow are
sharpened.--The thunderbolt-horns.--The cloud as a cow, and even as
a stable or hiding-place for cows.--Cavern where the cows are shut
up, of which cavern the bull Indras and the bulls Marutas remove the
stone, and force the entrance, to reconquer the cows, delivering
them from the monster; the male Indras finds himself again with his
wife.--The cloud-fortress, which Indras destroys and Agnis sets on
fire.--The cloud-forest, which the gods destroy.--The cloud-cow; the
cow-bow; the bird-thunderbolts; the birds come out of the cow.--The
monstrous cloud-cow, the wife of the monster.--Some phenomena of
the cloudy sky are analogous to those of the gloomy sky of night and
of winter.--The moment most fit for an epic poem is the meeting of
such phenomena in a nocturnal tempest.--The stars, cows put to
flight by the sun.--The moon, a milk-yielding cow.--The ambrosial
moon fished up in the fountain, gives nourishment to Indras.--The
moon as a male, or bull, discomfits, with the bull Indras, the
monster.--The two bulls, or the two stallions, the two horsemen, the
twins.--The bull chases the wolf from the waters.--The cow
tied.--The aurora, or ambrosial cow, formed out of the skin of
another cow by the Ribhavas.--The Ribhavas, bulls and wise
birds.--The three Ribhavas reproduce the triple Indras and the
triple Vishnus; their three relationships; the three brothers,
eldest, middle, youngest; the three brother workmen; the youngest
brother is the most intelligent, although at first thought stupid;
the reason why.--The three brothers guests of a king.--The third of
the Ribhavas, the third and youngest son becomes Tritas the third,
in the heroic form of Indras, who kills the monster; Tritas, the
third brother, after having accomplished the great heroic
undertaking, is abandoned by his envious brothers in the well; the
second brother is the son of the cow.--Indras a cowherd, parent of
the sun and the aurora, the cow of abundance, milk-yielding and
luminous.--The cow Sita.--Relationship of the sun to the
aurora.--The aurora as cow-nurse of the sun, mother of the cows; the
aurora cowherd; the sun hostler and cowherd.--The riddle of the
wonderful cowherd; the sun solves the riddle proposed by the
aurora.--The aurora wins the race, being the first to arrive at the
barrier, without making use of her feet.--The chariot of the
aurora.--She who has no feet, who leaves no footsteps; she who is
without footsteps of the measure of the feet; she who has no slipper
(which is the measure of the foot).--The sun who never puts his foot
down, the sun without feet, the sun lame, who, during the night,
becomes blind; the blind and the lame who help each other, whom
Indra helps, whom the ambrosia of the aurora enables to walk and to
see.--The aurora of evening, witch who blinds the sun; the sun
Indras, in the morning, chases the aurora away; Indras subdues and
destroys the witch aurora.--The brother sun follows, as a seducer,
the aurora his sister, and wishes to burn her.--The sun follows his
daughter the aurora.--The aurora, a beautiful young girl, deliverer
of the sun, rich in treasure, awakener of the sleepers, saviour of
mankind, foreseeing; from small becomes large, from dark becomes
brilliant, from infirm, whole, from blind, seeing and protectress of
sight.--Night and aurora, now mother and daughter, now
sisters.--The luminous night a good sister; the gloomy night gives
place to the aurora, her elder or better sister, working, purifying,
cleansing.--The aurora shines only when near the sun her husband,
before whom she dances splendidly dressed; the aurora Urvaci.--The
wife of the sun followed by the monster.--The husband of the aurora
subject to the same persecution.
We are on the vast table-land of Central Asia; gigantic mountains send
forth on every side their thousand rivers; immense pasture-lands and
forests cover it; migratory tribes of pastoral nations traverse it;
the _gopatis_, the shepherd or lord of the cows, is the king; the
gopatis who has most herds is the most powerful. The story begins with
a graceful pastoral idyll.
To increase the number of the cows, to render them fruitful in milk
and prolific in calves, to have them well looked after, is the dream,
the ideal of the ancient Aryan. The bull, the _foecundator_, is the
type of every male perfection, and the symbol of regal strength.
Hence, it is only natural that the two most prominent animal figures
in the mythical heaven should be the cow and the bull.
The cow is the ready, loving, faithful, fruitful Providence of the
shepherd.
The worst enemy of the Aryan, therefore, is he who carries off the
cow; the best, the most illustrious, of his friends, he who is able to
recover it from the hands of the robber.
The same idea is hence transferred to heaven; in heaven there is a
beneficent, fruitful power, which is called the cow, and a beneficent
_foecundator_ of this same power, which is called the bull.
The dewy moon, the dewy aurora, the watery cloud, the entire vault of
heaven, that giver of the quickening and benignant rain, that
benefactress of mankind,--are each, with special predilection,
represented as the beneficent cow of abundance. The lord of this
multiform cow of heaven, he who makes it pregnant and fruitful and
milk-yielding, the spring or morning sun, the rain-giving sun (or
moon) is often represented as a bull.
Now, to apprehend all this clearly, we ought to go back, as nearly as
possible, to that epoch in which such conceptions would arise
spontaneously; but as the imagination so indulged is apt to betray us
into mere fantastical conceits, into an _a priori_ system, we shall
begin by excluding it entirely from these preliminary researches, as
being hazardous and misleading, and content ourselves with the humbler
office of collecting the testimonies of the poets themselves who
assisted in the creation of the mythology in question.
I do not mean to say anything of the Vedic myths that is not taken
from one or other of the hymns contained in the greatest of the Vedas,
but only to arrange and connect together the links of the chain as
they certainly existed in the imagination of the ancient Aryan people,
and which the _Rigvedas_, the work of a hundred poets and of several
centuries, presents to us as a whole, continuous and artistic. I shall
indeed suppose myself in the valley of Kacmira, or on the banks of the
Sindhus, under that sky, at the foot of these mountains, among these
rivers; but I shall search in the sky for that which I find in the
hymns, and not in the hymns for that which I may imagine I see in the
sky. I shall begin my voyage with a trusty chart, and shall consult it
with all the diligence in my power, in order not to lose any of the
advantages that a voyage so full of surprises has to offer. Hence the
notes will all, or nearly all, consist of quotations from my guide, in
order that the learned reader may be able to verify for himself every
separate assertion. And as to the frequent stoppages we shall have to
make by the way, let me ask the reader not to ascribe these to
anything arbitrary on my part, but rather to the necessities of a
voyage, made, as it is, step by step, in a region but little known,
and by the help of a guide, where nearly everything indeed is to be
found, but where, as in a rich inventory, it is easier to lose one's
way than to find it again.
The immense vault of heaven which over-arches the earth, as the eternal
storehouse of light and rain, as the power which causes the grass to
grow, and therefore the animals which pasture upon it, assumes in the
Vedic literature the name of Aditis, or the infinite, the inexhaustible,
the fountain of ambrosia (_amritasya nabhis_). Thus far, however, we
have no personification, as yet we have no myth. The _amritas_ is simply
the immortal, and only poetically represents the rain, the dew, the
luminous wave. But the inexhaustible soon comes to mean that which can
be milked without end--and hence also, a celestial cow, an inoffensive
cow, which we must not offend, which must remain intact.[1] The whole
heavens being thus represented as an infinite cow, it was natural that
the principal and most visible phenomena of the sky should become, in
their turn, children of the cow, or themselves cows or bulls, and that
the _foecundator_ of the great mother should also be called a bull.
Hence we read that the wind (_Vayus_ or _Rudras_) gave birth, from the
womb of the celestial cow, to the winds that howl in the tempest
(_Marutas_ and _Rudras_), called for this reason children of the cow.[2]
But, since this great celestial cow produces the tempestuous, noisy
winds, she represents not only the serene, tranquil vault of the shining
sky, but also the cloudy and tenebrous mother of storms. This great
cow, this immense cloud, that occupies all the vault of heaven and
unchains the winds, is a brown, dark, spotted (_pricnis_) cow; and so
the winds, or Marutas, her sons, are called the children of the spotted
one.[3] The singular has thus become a plural; the male sons of the
cloud, the winds, are 21; the daughters, the clouds themselves, called
the spotted ones (_pricnayas_) are also three times seven, or 21: 3 and
7 are sacred numbers in the Aryan faith; and the number 21 is only a
multiple of these two great legendary numbers, by which either the
strength of a god or that of a monster is often symbolised. If
_pricnis_, or the variegated cow, therefore, is the mother of the
Marutas, the winds, and of the variegated ones (_pricnayas_), the
clouds, we may say that the clouds are the sisters of the winds. We
often have three or seven sisters, three or seven brothers in the
legends. Now, that 21, in the _Rigvedas_ itself, involves a reference to
3, is evident, if we only observe how one hymn speaks of the 3 times 7
spotted cows who bring to the god the divine drink, while another speaks
of the spotted ones (the number not being specified) who give him three
lakes to drink.[4] Evidently here the 3, or 7, or 21 sister cows that
yield to the god of the eastern heavens their own nutritious milk, and
amidst whose milky humours the winds, now become invulnerable,
increase,[5] fulfil the pious duties of benevolent guardian fates.
But if the winds are sons of a cow, and the cows are their nurses,
the winds, or Marutas, must, as masculine, be necessarily represented
as bulls. In reality the Wind (_Vayus_), their father, is borne by
bulls--that is, by the winds themselves, who hurry, who grow, are
movable as the rays of the sun, very strong, and indomitable;[6] the
strength of the wind is compared to that of the bull or the bear;[7]
the winds, as lusty as bulls, overcome and subdue the dark ones.[8]
Here, therefore, the clouds are no longer represented as the cows that
nurse, but with the gloomy aspect of a monster. The Marutas, the winds
that howl in the tempest, are as swift as lightning, and surround
themselves with lightning. Hence they are celebrated for their
luminous vestments; and hence it is said that the reddish winds are
resplendent with gems, as some bulls with stars.[9] As such--that is,
as subduers of the clouds, and as they who run impetuously through
them--these winds, these bulls, are the best friends, the most
powerful helpers, of the great bellowing bull; of the god of thunder
and rain; of the sun, the dispeller of clouds and darkness; of the
supreme Vedic god, Indras, the friend of light and ambrosia--of
Indras, who brings with him daylight and fine weather, who sends us
the beneficent dew and the fertilising rain. Like the winds his
companions, the sun Indras--the sun (and the luminous sky) hidden in
the dark, who strives to dissipate the shadows, the sun hidden in the
cloud that thunders and lightens, to dissolve it in rain--is
represented as a powerful bull, as the bull of bulls, invincible son
of the cow, that bellows like the Marutas.[10]
But in order to become a bull, in order to grow, to develop the strength
necessary to kill the serpent, Indras must drink; and he drinks the
water of strength, the _somas_.[11] "Drink and grow,"[12] one of the
poets says to him, while offering the symbolical libation of the cup of
sacrifice, which is a type of the cup of heaven, now the heavenly vault,
now the cloud, now the sun, and now the moon. From the sweet food of the
celestial cow, Indras acquires a swiftness which resembles that of the
horse;[13] and he eats and drinks at one time enough to enable him to
attain maturity at once. The gods give him three hundred oxen to eat,
and three lakes of ambrosial liquor[14] to drink, in order that he may
be able to kill the monster serpent. The hunger and thirst of the heroes
is always proportioned to the miracle they are called upon to perform;
and for this reason the hymns of the _Rigvedas_ and of the
_Atharvavedas_ often represent the cloud as an immense great-bellied
barrel (_Kabandhas_), which is carried by the divine _bull_.[15]
But when and how does the hero-bull display his extraordinary
strength? The terrible bull bellows, and shows his strength, as he
sharpens his horns:[16] the splendid bull, with sharpened horns, who
is able of himself to overthrow all peoples.[17] But what are the
horns of the bull Indras, the god of thunder? Evidently the
thunderbolts; Indras is, in fact, said to sharpen the thunderbolts as
a bull sharpens his horns;[18] the thunderbolt of Indras is said to be
thousand-pointed;[19] the bull Indras is called the bull with the
thousand horns, who rises from the sea[20] (or from the cloudy ocean
as a thunder-dealing sun, from the gloomy ocean as a radiant sun--the
thunderbolt being supposed to be rays from the solar disc). Sometimes
the thunderbolt of Indras is itself called a bull,[21] and is
sharpened by its beloved refulgent cows,[22] being used, now to
withdraw the cows from the darkness, now to deliver them from the
monster of darkness that envelops them,[23] and now to destroy the
monster of clouds and darkness itself. Besides the name of Indras,
this exceedingly powerful horned bull, who sharpens his horns to
plunge them into the monster, assumes also, as the fire which sends
forth lightning, as that which sends forth rays of light from the
clouds and the darkness, the name of Agnis; and, as such, has two
heads, four horns, three feet, seven hands, teeth of fire, and wings;
he is borne on the wind, and blows.[24]
Thus far, then, we have heavenly cows which nurture heavenly bulls,
and heavenly bulls and cows which use their horns for a battle that is
fought in heaven.
Let us now suppose ourselves on the field of battle, and let us visit
both the hostile camps. In one we find the sun (and sometimes the moon),
the bull of bulls Indras, with the winds, Marutas, the radiant and
bellowing bulls; in the other, a multiform monster, in the shape of
wolves, serpents, wild boars, owls, mice, and such like. The bull Indras
has cows with him, who help him; the monster has also cows, either such
as he has carried off from Indras, and which he imprisons and secretes
in gloomy caverns, towers, or fortresses, or those which he caresses as
his own wives. In the one case, the cows consider the bull Indras as
their friend and liberating hero; in the other, those with the monster
are themselves monsters and enemies of Indras, who fights against them.
The clouds, in a word, are regarded at one time as the friends of the
rain-giving sun, who delivers them from the monster that keeps back the
rain, and at another as attacked by the sun, as they who wickedly
envelop him, and endeavour to destroy him. Let us now go on to search,
in the _Rigvedas_, the proofs of this double battle.
To begin with the first phase of the conflict, where in the sky does
Indras fight the most celebrated of all his battles?
The clouds generally assume the aspect of mountains; the words _adris_
and _parvatas_, in the Vedic language, expressing the several ideas of
stone, mountain, and cloud.[25] The cloud being compared to a stone, a
rock, or a mountain, it was natural,--1st, To imagine in the rock or
mountain dens or caverns, which, as they imprisoned cows, might be
likened to stables;[26] 2d, To pass from the idea of a rock to that of
citadel, fortress, fortified city, tower; 3d, To pass from the idea of
a mountain, which is immovable, to that of a tree which, though it
cannot move from its place, yet rears itself and expands in the air;
and from the idea of the tree of the forest to the shadowy and
awe-inspiring grove. Hence the bull, or hero, or god Indras, or the
sun of thunder, lightning, and rain, now does battle within a cavern,
now carries a fortified town by assault, and now draws forth the cow
from the forest, or unbinds it from the tree, destroying the
_rakshas_, or monster, that enchained it.
The Vedic poetry celebrates, in particular, the exploit of Indras
against the cavern, enclosure, or mountain in which the monster
(called by different names and especially by those of Valas, Vritras,
Cushnas, of enemy, black one, thief, serpent, wolf, or wild boar)
conceals the herds of the celestial heroes, or slaughters them.
The black bull bellows; the thunderbolt bellows, that is, the thunder
follows the lightning, as the cow follows its calf;[27] the Marutas
bulls ascend the rock--now, by their own efforts, moving and making
the sonorous stone, the rock mountain, fall;[28] now, with the iron
edge of their rolling chariots violently splitting the mountain;[29]
the valiant hero, beloved by the gods, moves the stone;[30] Indras
hears the cows: by the aid of the wind-bulls he finds the cows hidden
in the cavern; he himself, furnished with an arm of stone, opens the
grotto of Valas, who keeps the cows; or, opens the cavern to the cows;
he vanquishes, kills, and pursues the thieves in battle; the bulls
bellow; the cows move forward to meet them; the bull, Indras, bellows
and leaves his seed in the herd; the thunder-dealing male, Indras, and
his spouse are glad and rejoice.[31]
In this fabled enterprise, three moments must be noted: 1st, The
effort to raise the stone; 2d, The struggle with the monster who
carried off the cows; 3d, The liberation of the prisoners. It is an
entire epic poem.
The second form of the enterprise of Indras in the cloudy heavens is
that which has for its object the destruction of the celestial
fortresses, of the ninety, or ninety-nine, or hundred cities of
Cambaras, of the cities which were the wives of the demons; and from
this undertaking Indras acquired the surname of _puramdaras_
(explained as destroyer of cities); although he had in it a most
valuable companion-in-arms, Agnis, that is, Fire, which naturally
suggests to our thoughts the notion of destruction by fire.[32]
In a hymn to Indras, the gods arrive at last, bring their axes, and with
their edges destroy the woods, and burn the monsters who restrain the
milk in the breasts of the cows.[33] The clouded sky here figures in the
imagination as a great forest inhabited by _rakshasas_, or monsters,
which render it unfruitful--that is, which prevent the great celestial
cow from giving her milk. The cow that gives the honey, the ambrosial
cow of the Vedas, is thus replaced by a forest which hides the honey,
the ambrosia beloved by the gods. And although the Vedic hymns do not
dwell much upon this conception of the cloudy-sky, preferring as they do
to represent the darkness of night as a gloomy forest, the above passage
from the Vedas is worthy of notice as indicating the existence at least
during the Vedic period of a myth which was afterwards largely amplified
in zoological legend.[34]
In this threefold battle of Indras, we must, moreover, remark a curious
feature. The thunder-dealing Indras overpowers his enemies with arrows
and darts; the same cloud which thunders, bellows, and therefore is
called a cow, becomes, as throwing darts, a bow: hence we have the
cow-bow, from which Indras hurls the iron stone, the thunderbolt; and
the cord itself of that bellowing bow is called a cow; from the bow-cow,
from the cord-cow, come forth the winged darts, the thunderbolts, called
birds, that eat men; and when they come forth, all the world
trembles.[35] We shall come upon the same idea again further on.
Thus far we have considered the cow-cloud as a victim of the monster
(that Indras comes to subdue). But it is not uncommon to see the cloud
itself or the darkness, that is, the cow, the fortress, or the forest
represented as a monster. Thus, a Vedic hymn informs us that the monster
Valas had the shape of a cow;[36] another hymn represents the cloud as
the cow that forms the waters, and that has now one foot, now four, now
eight, now nine, and fills the highest heaven with sounds;[37] still
another hymn sings that the sun hurls his golden disc in the variegated
cow;[38] they who have been carried off, who are guarded by the monster
serpent, the waters, the cows, are become the wives of the demons;[39]
and they must be malignant, since a poet can use as a curse the wish
that the malign spirits, the demons, may drink the poison of those
cows.[40] We have already seen that the fortresses are wives of demons,
and that the demons possessed the forests.[41]
It is in the beclouded and thundering heavens that the warrior hero
displays his greatest strength; but it cannot be denied that the great
majority of the myths, and the most poetical, exemplify or represent the
relation between the nocturnal sky (now dark, tenebrous, watery, horrid,
wild, now lit up by the ambrosial moon-beams, and now bespangled with
stars) and the two glowing skies--the two resplendent ambrosial
twilights of morning and evening (of autumn and spring). We have here
the same general phenomenon of light and darkness engaged in strife;
here, again, the sun Indras is hidden, as though in a cloud, to prepare
the light, to recover from the monster of darkness the waters of youth
and light, the riches, the cows, which he keeps concealed; but this
conquest is only made by the hero after long wandering amidst many
dangers, and is finally accomplished by battles, in which the principal
credit is often due to a heroine; except in those cases, not frequent
but well worthy of remark, in which the clouds, hurricanes, tempests of
lightning and thunderbolts, coincide with the end of the night (or of
winter), and the sun Indras, by tearing the clouds, at the same time
disperses the darkness of night and brings dawn (or spring) back to the
sky. In such coincidences, the sun Indras, besides being the greatest of
the gods, reveals himself to be also the most epic of the heroes; the
two skies, the dark and the clouded, with their relative monsters, and
the two suns, the thundering and the radiant, with their relative
companions, are confounded, and the myth then assumes all its poetical
splendour. And the most solemn moments of the great national Aryan epic
poems, the _Ramayanam_ and the _Mahabharatam_, the _Book of Kings_, as
well as those of the _Iliad_, the _Song of Roland_ and the _Nibelungen_,
are founded upon this very coincidence of the two solar actions--the
cloudy and shadowy monster thunderstruck, and the dawn (or spring)
delivered and resuscitated. In truth, the _Rigvedas_ itself, in a
passage already quoted,[42] tells us that the clouds--the three times
seven spotted cows--cause their milk to drop to a god (whom, from
another similar passage,[43] we know to be Indras, the sun) in the
eastern sky (_purve vyomani_), that is, towards the morning, and
sometimes towards the spring, many of the phenomena of which correspond
to those of the aurora. The _Pricnayas_, or spotted ones, are beyond
doubt the clouds, as the Marutas, sons of Pricnis, or the spotted one,
are the winds that howl and lighten in the storm cloud. It is therefore
necessary to carry back the cloudy sky towards the morning, to
understand the Pricnayas feeding the sun Indras in the eastern heavens
and the seven _Angirasas_, the seven sunbeams, the seven wise men, who
also sing hymns in the morning;--it seems to me that the hymn of these
fabled wise men can be nothing else than the crash of the thunderbolts,
which, as we have already seen, are supposed to be detached from the
solar rays. Allusions to Indras thundering in the morning are so
frequent in the Vedic hymns, that I hope to be excused for this short
digression, from which I must at once return, because my sole object
here is to treat in detail of the mythical animals, and because the road
we have to take will be a long one.
Even the luminous night has its cows; the stars, which the sun puts to
flight with his rays,[44] are cows: the cows themselves, whose
dwellings the dwellings of the sun's cows must adjoin, are called the
many-horned ones.[45] These dwellings seem to me worthy of passing
remark, they are the celestial houses that move, the enchanted huts
and palaces that appear, disappear, and are transformed so often in
the popular stories of the Aryans.
The moon is generally a male, for its most popular names, _Candras_,
_Indus_, and _Somas_ are masculine; but as Somas signifies ambrosia,
the moon, as giver of ambrosia, soon came to be considered a
milk-giving cow; in fact, moon is one among the various meanings given
in Sanskrit to the word _gaus_ (cow). The moon, Somas, who illumines
the nocturnal sky, and the pluvial sun, Indras, who during the night,
or the winter, prepares the light of morn, or spring, are represented
as companions; a young girl, the evening, or autumnal, twilight, who
goes to draw water towards night, or winter, finds in the well, and
takes to Indras, the ambrosial moon, that is, the Somas whom he loves.
Here are the very words of the Vedic hymn:--"The young girl,
descending towards the water, found the moon in the fountain, and
said: 'I will take you to Indras, I will take you to Cakras; flow, O
moon, and envelop Indras.'"[46] The moon and ambrosia in the word
indus, as well as somas, are confounded with one another; hence,
Indras, the drinker _par excellence_ of _somas_ (somapatamas), is also
the best friend and companion of the ambrosial or pluvial moon, and so
the sun and moon (as also Indras and Vishnus) together come to suggest
to us the idea of two friends, two brothers (Indus and Indras), two
twins, the two Acvinau; often the two twilights, properly speaking,
the morning and the evening, the spring and the autumn, twilights, the
former, however, being especially associated with the red sun which
appears in the morning (or in the spring), and the latter with the
pale moon which appears in the evening (or in the autumn, as a
particular regent of the cold season). Indras and Somas (_Indrasomau_)
are more frequently represented as two bulls who together discomfit
the monster (_rakshohanau_), who destroy by fire the monsters that
live in darkness.[47] The word _vrishanau_ properly means the two who
pour out, or fertilise. Here it means the two bulls; but as the word
_vrishan_ signifies stallion as well as bull, the two stallions, the
vrishanau Indras and Somas, | 2,389.785301 |
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Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer
REFLECTIONS; OR SENTENCES AND MORAL MAXIMS
By Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marsillac
Translated from the Editions of 1678 and 1827 with introduction, notes,
and some account of the author and his times.
By J. W. Willis Bund, M.A. LL.B and J. Hain Friswell
Simpson Low, Son, and Marston, 188, Fleet Street.
1871.
{TRANSCRIBERS NOTES: spelling variants are preserved (e.g. labour
instead of labor, criticise instead of criticize, etc.); the
translators' comments are in square brackets [...] as they are in the
text; footnotes are indicated by * and appear immediately following the
passage containing the note (in the text they appear at the bottom of
the page); and, finally, corrections and addenda are in curly brackets
{...}.}
ROCHEFOUCAULD
"As Rochefoucauld his maxims drew From Nature--I believe them true. They
argue no corrupted mind In him; the fault is in mankind."--Swift.
"Les Maximes de la Rochefoucauld sont des proverbs des gens
d'esprit."--Montesquieu.
"Maxims are the condensed good sense of nations."--Sir J. Mackintosh.
"Translators should not work alone; for good Et Propria Verba do not
always occur to one mind."--Luther's Table Talk, iii.
CONTENTS
Preface (translator's)
Introduction (translator's)
Reflections and Moral Maxims
First Supplement
Second Supplement
Third Supplement
Reflections on Various Subjects
Index
Preface.
{Translators'}
Some apology must be made for an attempt "to translate the
untranslatable." Notwithstanding there are no less than eight English
translations of La Rochefoucauld, hardly any are readable, none are free
from faults, and all fail more or less to convey the author's meaning.
Though so often translated, there is not a complete English edition
of the Maxims and Reflections. All the translations are confined
exclusively to the Maxims, none include the Reflections. This may be
accounted for, from the fact that most of the translations are taken
from the old editions of the Maxims, in which the Reflections do
not appear. Until M. Suard devoted his attention to the text of
Rochefoucauld, the various editions were but reprints of the preceding
ones, without any regard to the alterations made by the author in the
later editions published during his life-time. So much was this the
case, that Maxims which had been rejected by Rochefoucauld in his last
edition, were still retained in the body of the work. To give but one
example, the celebrated Maxim as to the misfortunes of our friends, was
omitted in the last edition of the book, published in Rochefoucauld's
life-time, yet in every English edition this Maxim appears in the body
of the work.
M. Aime Martin in 1827 published an edition of the Maxims and
Reflections which has ever since been the standard | 2,389.854267 |
2023-11-16 18:56:53.9341690 | 87 | 17 |
E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Project Gutenberg Online
Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustration.
See 23304-h.htm or 23304-h.zip:
(http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/3/3/0/23304/23304-h/ | 2,389.954209 |
2023-11-16 18:56:54.2173330 | 7,435 | 6 |
Produced by sp1nd and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
MASTERPIECES IN COLOUR
EDITED BY--T. LEMAN HARE
BERNARDINO LUINI
IN THE SAME SERIES
ARTIST. AUTHOR.
VELAZQUEZ. S. L. BENSUSAN.
REYNOLDS. S. L. BENSUSAN.
TURNER. C. LEWIS HIND.
ROMNEY. C. LEWIS HIND.
GREUZE. ALYS EYRE MACKLIN.
BOTTICELLI. HENRY B. BINNS.
ROSSETTI. LUCIEN PISSARRO.
BELLINI. GEORGE HAY.
FRA ANGELICO. JAMES MASON.
REMBRANDT. JOSEF ISRAELS.
LEIGHTON. A. LYS BALDRY.
RAPHAEL. PAUL G. KONODY.
HOLMAN HUNT. MARY E. COLERIDGE.
TITIAN. S. L. BENSUSAN.
MILLAIS. A. LYS BALDRY.
CARLO DOLCI. GEORGE HAY.
GAINSBOROUGH. MAX ROTHSCHILD.
TINTORETTO. S. L. BENSUSAN.
LUINI. JAMES MASON.
FRANZ HALS. EDGCUMBE STALEY.
_In Preparation_
VAN DYCK. PERCY M. TURNER.
WHISTLER. T. MARTIN WOOD.
LEONARDO DA VINCI. M. W. BROCKWELL.
RUBENS. S. L. BENSUSAN.
BURNE-JONES. A. LYS BALDRY.
J. F. MILLET. PERCY M. TURNER.
CHARDIN. PAUL G. KONODY.
FRAGONARD. C. HALDANE MACFALL.
HOLBEIN. S. L. BENSUSAN.
BOUCHER. C. HALDANE MACFALL.
VIGEE LE BRUN. C. HALDANE MACFALL.
WATTEAU. C. LEWIS HIND.
MURILLO. S. L. BENSUSAN.
AND OTHERS.
[Illustration: PLATE I.--MADONNA AND CHILD. Frontispiece
(In the Wallace Collection)
This is another admirably painted study of the artist's favourite
subject. The attitude of the child is most engaging, the painting of
the limbs is full of skill, and the background adds considerably to
the picture's attractions. It will be noted that Luini appears to have
employed the same model for most of his studies of the Madonna.]
Bernardino LUINI
BY JAMES MASON
ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR
[Illustration]
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Plate
I. Madonna and Child Frontispiece
In the Wallace Collection
Page
II. Il Salvatore 14
In the Ambrosiana, Milan
III. Salome and the Head of St. John the Baptist 24
In the Uffizi Gallery, Florence
IV. The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine 34
In the Brera, Milan
V. The Madonna of the Rose 40
In the Brera, Milan
VI. Detail of Fresco 50
In the Brera, Milan
VII. Head of Virgin 60
In the Ambrosiana, Milan
VIII. Burial of St. Catherine 70
In the Brera, Milan
[Illustration]
I
A RETROSPECT
In the beginning of the long and fascinating history of Italian Art we
see that the spirit of the Renaissance first fluttered over the minds
of men much as the spirit of life is said have moved over the face of
the waters before the first chapter of creation's marvellous story was
written. Beginnings were small, progress was slow, and the lives of
the great artists moved very unevenly to their appointed end.
There were some who rose to fame and fortune during their life, and
then died so completely that no biography can hope to rouse any
interest in their work among succeeding generations.
There were others who worked in silence and without _reclame_ of any
sort, content with the respect and esteem of those with whom they came
into immediate contact, indifferent to the plaudits of the crowd or
the noisy praises of those who are not qualified to judge. True
servants of the western world's religion, they translated work into
terms of moral life, and moral life into terms of work. Merit like
truth will out, and when time has sifted good work from bad and
spurious reputations from genuine ones, many men who fluttered the
dovecotes of their own generation disappear from sight altogether;
some others who wrought unseen, never striving to gain the popular ear
or eye, rise on a sudden to heights that might have made them giddy
had they lived to be conscious of their own elevation. They were
lowly, but their fame inherits the earth.
Bernardino Luini, the subject of this little study, calls us away from
the great art centres--from Venice and Florence and Rome; his record
was made and is to be found to-day amid the plains of Lombardy. Milan
is not always regarded as one of the great art centres of Italy in
spite of the Brera, the Ambrosiana, and the Poldi Pezzoli Palace
collections, but no lover of pictures ever went for the first time to
the galleries of Milan in a reverent spirit and with a patient eye
without feeling that he had discovered a painter of genius. He may not
even have heard his name before, but he will come away quite
determined to learn all he may about the man who painted the wonderful
frescoes that seem destined to retain their spiritual beauty till the
last faint trace of the design passes beyond the reach of the eye, the
man who painted the panel picture of the "Virgin of the Rose Trees,"
reproduced with other of his master-works in these pages.
[Illustration: PLATE II.--IL SALVATORE
(In the Ambrosiana, Milan)
This picture, one of the treasures of the beautiful collection in the
Pinacoteca of Ambrosiana in the Piazza della Rosa, hangs by the same
artist's picture of "John the Baptist as a Child." The right hand of
Christ is raised in the attitude of benediction, and the head has a
curiously genuine beauty. The preservation of this picture is
wonderful, the colouring retains much of its early glow. The head is
almost feminine in its tenderness and bears a likeness to Luini's
favourite model.]
To go to the Brera is to feel something akin to hunger for the history
of Bernardino Luini or Luino or Luvino as he is called by the few
who have found occasion to mention him, although perhaps Luini is the
generally accepted and best known spelling of the name. Unfortunately
the hungry feeling cannot be fully satisfied. Catalogues or guide
books date the year of Luini's birth at or about 1470, and tell us
that he died in 1533, and as this is a period that Giorgio Vasari
covers, we turn eagerly to the well-remembered volumes of the old
gossip hoping to find some stories of the Lombard painter's life and
work. We are eager to know what manner of man Luini was, what forces
influenced him, how he appeared to his contemporaries, whether he had
a fair measure of the large success that attended the leading artists
of his day. Were his patrons great men who rewarded him as he
deserved--how did he fare when the evening came wherein no man may
work? Surely there is ample scope for the score of quaint comments and
amusing if unreliable anecdotes with which Vasari livens his pages. We
are confident that there will be much to reward the search, because
Bernardino Luini and Giorgio Vasari were contemporaries after a
fashion. Vasari would have been twenty-one years old when Luini died,
the writer of the "Lives" would have seen frescoes and panel pictures
in all the glory of their first creation. He could not have failed to
be impressed by the extraordinary beauty of the artist's conceptions,
the skill of his treatment of single figures, the wealth of the
curious and elusive charm that we call atmosphere--a charm to which
all the world's masterpieces are indebted in varying degrees--the
all-pervading sense of a delightful and refined personality, leaves
us eager for the facts that must have been well within the grasp of
the painter's contemporaries.
Alas for these expectations! Vasari dismisses Bernardino del Lupino,
as he calls him, in six or eight sentences, and what he says has no
biographical value at all. The reference reads suspiciously like what
is known in the world of journalism as padding. Indeed, as Vasari was
a fair judge, and Bernardino Luini was not one of those Venetians whom
Vasari held more or less in contempt, there seems to be some reason
for the silence. Perhaps it was an intimate and personal one, some
unrecorded bitterness between the painter and one of Vasari's friends,
or between Vasari himself and Luini or one of his brothers or
children. Whatever the cause there is no mistake about the result. We
grumble at Vasari, we ridicule his inaccuracies, we regret his
limitations, we scoff at his prejudices, but when he withholds the
light of his investigation from contemporary painters who did not
enjoy the favour of popes and emperors, we wander in a desert land
without a guide, and search with little or no success for the details
that would serve to set the painter before us.
Many men have taken up the work of investigation, for Luini grows
steadily in favour and esteem, but what Vasari might have done in a
week nobody has achieved in a decade.
A few unimportant church documents relating to commissions given to
the painter are still extant. He wrote a few words on his frescoes;
here and there a stray reference appears in the works of Italian
writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but our knowledge
when it has been sifted and arranged is remarkably small and
deplorably incomplete. Dr. J. C. Williamson, a painstaking critic and
a competent scholar, has written an interesting volume dealing with
the painter, and in the making of it he has consulted nearly fifty
authorities--Italian, French, English, and German--only to find it is
impossible to gather a short chapter of reliable and consecutive
biography from them all. Our only hope lies in the discovery of some
rich store of information in the public or private libraries of Milan
among the manuscripts that are the delight of the scholars. Countless
documents lie unread, many famous libraries are uncatalogued, the
archives of several noble Italian houses that played an important part
in fifteenth and sixteenth century Italy have still to be given to the
world. It is not unreasonable to suppose that records of Luini's life
exist, and in these days when scholarship is ever extending its
boundaries there is hope that some scholar will lay the ever growing
circle of the painter's admirers under lasting obligations. Until that
time comes we must be content to know the man through the work that he
has left behind him, through the medium of fading frescoes, stray
altarpieces, and a few panel pictures. Happily they have a definite
and pleasant story to tell.
We must go to Milan for Luini just as we must go to Rome for Raphael
and to Madrid for Velazquez and Titian and to Venice for Jacopo
Robusti whom men still call the Little Dyer (Tintoretto). In London we
have one painting on wood, "Christ and the Pharisees," brought from
the Borghese Palace in Rome. The head of Christ is strangely feminine,
the four Pharisees round him are finely painted, and the picture has
probably been attributed to Leonardo da Vinci at some period of its
career. There are three frescoes in South Kensington and a few panel
pictures in private collections. The Louvre is more fortunate than our
National Gallery, it has several frescoes and two or three panels. In
Switzerland, in the Church of St. Mary and the Angels in Lugano, is a
wonderful screen picture of the "Passion of Christ" with some hundreds
of figures in it, and the rest of Luini's work seems to be in Italy.
The greater part is to be found in Milan, some important frescoes
having been brought to the Brera from the house of the Pelucca family
in Monza, while there are some important works in Florence in the
Pitti and Uffizi Galleries. In the Church of St. Peter at Luino on the
shores of Lake Maggiore, the little town where Benardino was born and
from which he took his name, there are some frescoes but they are in a
very faded condition. The people of the lake side town have much to
say about the master who has made Luino a place of pilgrimage but
their stories are quite unreliable.
[Illustration: PLATE III.--SALOME AND THE HEAD OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST
(In the Uffizi Gallery, Florence)
In this striking and finely preserved picture Bernardino Luini has
contrived to avoid all sense of horror. The head of the dead John the
Baptist is full of beauty, and even Herodias is handled without any
attempt to make her repulsive. Sufficient contrast is supplied by the
executioner on the right.]
It might be held, seeing that the artist's work is scanty, and often
in the last stages of decay, while his life story has faded quite from
the recovered records of his contemporaries, that Luini is hardly fit
subject for discussion here. In a series of little books that
seeks to introduce great artists to new friends through the medium of
reproductions that show the work as it is, and a brief concise
description that aims at helping those who are interested to study the
master for themselves, there is a temptation to deal only with popular
men. These give no trouble to their biographer or his readers, but
after all it is not the number of pictures that an artist paints or
the wealth of detail that his admirers have collected that establishes
his claim to be placed among the immortals. His claim rests upon the
quality of the work done, its relation to the times in which it was
painted, the mood or spirit it reveals, the light it throws upon the
mind that conceived and the hand that executed it.
We know enough and to spare of the more flamboyant personalities of
the Venetian and Florentine schools. Long periods of study will not
exhaust all there is to learn about men like Titian, Michelangelo,
Raphael of Urbino, and the rest, but Luini, though he left no written
record, will not be denied. We dare not pass him by, seeing that we
may introduce him to some admirers who will, in days to come, seek and
find what remains beyond our reach at present. His appeal is so
irresistible, the beauty of his work is so rare and so enduring that
we must endeavour to the best of our ability, however small it be, to
declare his praise, to stimulate inquiry, enlarge his circle, and give
him the place that belongs to him of right. There are painters in
plenty whose work is admired and praised, whose claims we acknowledge
instantly while admitting to ourselves that we should not care to live
with their pictures hanging on round us. The qualities of cleverness
and brilliance pall after a little time, the mere conquest of
technical difficulties of the kind that have been self-inflicted
rouses admiration for a while and then leaves us cold. But the man who
is the happy possessor of a fresco or a panel picture by Luini is to
be envied. Even he who lives in the neighbourhood of some gallery or
church and only sees the rare master's works where, "blackening in the
daily candle smoke, they moulder on the damp wall's travertine," will
never tire of Luini's company. He will always find inspiration,
encouragement, or consolation in the reflection of the serene and
beautiful outlook upon life that gave the work so much of its
enduring merit. Luini, whatever manner of man he may have been, was so
clearly enamoured of beauty, so clearly intolerant of what is ugly and
unrefined, that he shrank from all that was coarse and revolting
either in the life around him or in certain aspects of the Bible
stories that gave him subjects for his brush. Beauty and simplicity
were the objects of his unceasing search, his most exquisite
expression.
Like all other great painters he had his marked periods of
development, his best work was done in the last years of his life, but
there is nothing mean or trivial in any picture that he painted and
this is the more to his credit because we know from the documents
existing to-day that he lived in the world and not in the cloister.
We admire the perennial serenity of Beato Angelico, we rejoice with
him in his exquisite religious visions. The peaceful quality of his
painting and the happy certainty of his faith move us to the deepest
admiration, but we may not forget that Angelico lived from the time
when he was little more than a boy to the years when he was an old man
in the untroubled atmosphere of the monastery of San Marco in
Florence, that whether he was at home in that most favoured city or
working in the Vatican at Rome, he had no worldly troubles. Honour,
peace, and a mind at peace with the world were with him always.
Bernardino Luini on the other hand travelled from one town in Italy to
another, employed by religious houses from time to time, but always as
an artist who could be relied upon to do good work cheaply. He could
not have been rich, he could hardly have been famous, it is even
reasonable to suppose that his circumstances were straitened, and on
this account the unbroken serenity of his work and his faithful
devotion to beauty are the more worthy of our praise. What was
beautiful in his life and work came from within, not from without, and
perhaps because he was a stranger to the cloistered seclusion that
made Fra Angelico's life so pleasantly uneventful his work shows
certain elements of strength that are lacking from the frescoes that
adorn the walls of San Marco to this day. To his contemporaries he was
no more than a little planet wandering at will round those fixed stars
of the first magnitude that lighted all the world of art. Now some of
those great stars have lost their light and the little planet shines
as clear as Hesperus.
II
As we have said already nothing is known of Luini's early life,
although the fact that he was born at Luino on the Lago Maggiore seems
to be beyond dispute. The people of that little lake side town have no
doubt at all about the matter, and they say that the family was one of
some distinction, that Giacomo of Luino who founded a monastery in his
native place was the painter's uncle. Perhaps the wish was father to
the thought, and because every man who sets out to study the life and
work of an artist is as anxious to know as was Miss Rosa Dartle
herself, there are always facts of a sort at his service. He who
seeks the truth can always be supplied with something as much like it
as paste is to diamonds, and can supplement the written word with the
aid of tradition. The early life of the artist is a blank, and the
authorities are by no means in agreement about the year of his birth.
1470 would seem to be a reasonable date, with a little latitude on
either side. Many men writing long years after the painter's death,
have held that he was a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci, indeed several
pictures that were attributed to da Vinci by the authorities of
different European galleries are now recognised as Luini's work, but
the mistake is not at all difficult to explain. If we turn to "La
Joconda," a portrait by da Vinci that hangs in the Louvre to-day, and
is apparently beyond dispute in the eyes of the present generation
of critics, and then go through the Brera in Milan with a photograph
of "La Joconda's" portrait in our hand, it will be impossible to
overlook the striking resemblance between Luini's types and da Vinci's
smiling model. Leonardo had an academy in Milan, and it is reasonable
to suppose that Luini worked in it, although at the time when he is
supposed to have come for the first time to the capital of Lombardy,
Leonardo da Vinci had left, apparently because Louis XII. of France,
cousin and successor of that Charles VIII. who had troubled the peace
of Italy for so long, was thundering at the city gates, and at such a
time great artists were apt to remember that they had good patrons
elsewhere. The school may, however, have remained open because no
great rulers made war on artists, and Luini would have learned
something of the spirit that animated Leonardo's pictures. For other
masters and influence he seems to have gone to Bramantino and Foppa.
Bramantino was a painter of Milan and Ambrosio Foppa known as
Caradosso was a native of Pavia and should not be reckoned among
Milanese artists as he has so often been. He was renowned for the
beauty of his medals and his goldsmith's work; and he was one of the
men employed by the great family of Bentivoglio.
[Illustration: PLATE IV.--THE MYSTIC MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE
(In the Brera, Milan)
This is a singularly attractive picture in which the child Christ may
be seen placing the ring upon the finger of St. Catherine. The little
open background, although free from the slightest suggestion of
Palestine, is very charming, and the head of the Virgin and St.
Catherine help to prove that Luini used few models.]
It may be mentioned in this place that many Italian artists,
particularly those of the Florentine schools, suffered very greatly
from their unceasing devotion to the art of the miniaturist. They
sought to achieve his detail, his fine but cramped handling, and this
endeavour was fatal to them when they came to paint large pictures
that demanded skilled composition, and the subordination of detail to
a large general effect. The influence of the miniature painter and the
maker of medals kept many a fifteenth-century painter in the second
grade and Luini never quite survived his early devotion to their
methods, often making the fatal mistake of covering a large canvas
with many figures of varying size but equal value. It may be remarked
that Tintoretto was the first great painter of the Renaissance who
learned to subordinate parts to the whole, and he had to face a great
deal of unpopularity because he saw with his own eyes instead of using
those of his predecessors.
[Illustration: PLATE V.--THE MADONNA OF THE ROSE
(In the Brera, Milan)
Modern criticism proclaims this picture of the Virgin in a Bower of
Roses to be the finest of the master's paintings. Not only is it
delightfully composed and thought out but the background is painted
with rare skill, and the colour is rich and pleasing to this day.]
It may be suggested, with all possible respect to those who hold
different opinions, that Luini, though he responded to certain
influences, had no master in the generally accepted sense of the term.
One cannot trace the definite relation between him and any older
painter that we find between Titian and Gian Bellini, for example. He
took a certain type from Leonardo, his handling from time to time
recalls the other masters--we have already referred to the most
important of these--but had he studied in the school of one man, had
he served an apprenticeship after the fashion of his contemporaries,
his pictures would surely have been free from those faults of
composition and perspective that detract so much from the value of the
big works. He seems to have been self-taught rather than to have been
a schoolman. While his single figures are wholly admirable whether
on fresco or on panel, his grouping is nearly always ineffective,
one might say childish, and his sense of perspective is by no means
equal to that of his greatest contemporaries. As a draughtsman and a
colourist Luini had little to learn from anybody, and the poetry of
his conceptions is best understood when it is remembered that he was a
poet as well as a painter. He is said to have written poems and
essays, though we are not in a position to say where they are to be
found, and it is clear that he had a singularly detached spirit and
that the hand of a skilled painter was associated with the mind of a
little child. In some aspects he is as simple as those primitive
painters of Umbria whose backgrounds are all of gold. Like so many
other painters of the Renaissance Luini's saints and angels are
peasant folk, the people he saw around him. He may have idealised
them, but they remain as they were made.
A few records of the prices paid for Luini's work exist among the
documents belonging to churches and religious houses, and while they
justify a belief that at the time he came to Milan Luini had achieved
some measure of distinction in his calling, they seem to prove that he
was hardly regarded as a great painter. The prices paid to him are
ridiculously small, no more than a living wage, but he had the
reputation of being a reliable and painstaking artist and he would
seem to have been content with a small reward for work that appealed
to him. His early commissions executed in and around Milan when he
first came from Luini were numerous and consisted very largely of
frescoes which are the work of a young man who has not yet freed his
own individuality from the influence of his elders. One of the most
charming works associated with this period is the "Burial of St.
Catherine," which is reproduced in these pages. The composition is
simple enough, the handling does not touch the summit of the painter's
later achievements, but the sentiment of the picture is quite
delightful. St. Catherine is conceived in a spirit of deepest
reverence and devotion, but the angels are just Lombardy peasant girls
born to labour in the fields and now decorated with wings in honour of
a great occasion. And yet the man who could paint this fresco and
could show so unmistakably his own simple faith in the story it sets
out, was a poet as well as a painter even though he had never written
a line, while the treatment of his other contemporary frescoes and
the fine feeling for appropriate colour suggest a great future for the
artist who had not yet reached middle age. We see that Luini devoted
his brush to mythological and sacred subjects, touching sacred history
with a reverent hand, shutting his eyes to all that was painful,
expressing all that was pitiful or calculated to strengthen the hold
of religion upon the mass in fashion destined to appeal though in
changing fashion for at least four centuries. Where the works have
failed to triumph as expressions of a living faith they have charmed
agnostics as an expression of enduring beauty.
From Milan Luini seems to have gone to Monza, a city a few miles away
from the capital of Lombardy where the rulers of united Italy come
after their coronation to receive the iron crown that has been worn by
the kings of Lombardy for nearly a thousand years. This is the city in
which the late King Umberto, that brave and good man, was foully
murdered by an anarchist. To-day one reaches Monza by the help of a
steam-tram that blunders heavily enough over the wide flat Lombardy
plain. The Milanese go to Monza for the sake of an outing, but most of
the tourists who throng the city stay away, and it is possible to
spend a few pleasant hours in the cathedral and churches with never a
flutter of red-covered guide book to distract one's attention from the
matters to which the hasty tourist is blind. Here Luini painted
frescoes, and it is known that he stayed for a long time at the house
of one of the strong men of Monza and painted a large number of
frescoes there. To-day the fortress, if it was one, has become a
farmhouse, and the frescoes, more than a dozen in all, have been taken
away to the Royal Palace in Milan. Dr. Williamson in his interesting
volume to which the student of Luini must be deeply indebted, says
that there is one left at the Casa Pelucca. The writer in the course
of two days spent in Monza was unfortunate enough to overlook it.
It has been stated that the facts relating to Luini's life are few and
far between. Fiction on the other hand is plentiful, and there is a
story that Luini, shortly after his arrival in Milan, was held
responsible by the populace for the death of a priest who fell from a
hastily erected scaffolding in the church of San Giorgio where the
artist was working. The rest of the legend follows familiar lines that
would serve the life story of any leading artist of the time, seeing
that they all painted altar-pieces and used scaffolding. He is said to
have fled to Monza, to have been received by the chief of the Pelucca
family, to have paid for his protection with the frescoes that have
now been brought from Monza to the Brera, to have fallen violently in
love with the beautiful daughter of the house, to have engaged in
heroic contests against great odds on her behalf, and so on, _ad
absurdum_. If we look at the portraits the painter is said to have
made of himself and to have placed in pictures at Saronna and
elsewhere we shall see that Luini was hardly the type of man to have
engaged in the idle pursuits of chivalry in the intervals of the work
to which his life was given. We have the head of a man of thought not
that of a man of action, and all the character of the face gives the
lie to the suggestions of the storytellers. It is clear, however, that
the painter made a long stay in Monza and when he came back to Milan
he worked for the churches of St. Maurizio, Santa Maria della Pace,
Santa Maria di Brera, and St. Ambrosia.
[Illustration: PLATE VI.--DETAIL OF FRESCO
(In the Brera, Milan)
This prettily posed figure is at the base of a fresco of the Virgin
with Saints in the Brera. Part of the artist's signature (Bernardinus
Louinus) may be seen below. It will be remembered that Carpaccio
painted a very similar subject. The fresco is not too well preserved.]
In Milan he found a great patron, no less a man than Giovanni
Bentivoglio who had been driven from his rule over Bologna by the
"Terrible Pontiff" Julius II., that life-long opponent and bitter
enemy of the Borgia Pope Alexander VI. Alessandro Bentivoglio, the son
of the ruined Giovanni, married Ippolita Sforza, daughter of one
of the house that had done so much to rule Rome until Pope
Alexander VI. broke its power. Alessandro Bentivoglio commissioned
Luini to paint altar-pieces in St. Maurizio where his father was
buried, and the painter included in his work a portrait of Ippolita
Sforza with three female saints. He did much other work in this
church; some of it has faded almost beyond recognition.
At the same time there is no need to think that we have recovered the
last work of Luini or indeed of the great masters even in the churches
of Italy. Only a few months ago the writer was in a small Italian
church that had suffered a few years ago from disastrous floods. The
water unable to find no outlet had risen for a time almost to the top
of the supporting columns. The smooth wall above was plastered, and
when the waters had subsided it was found that the plaster had become
so damaged that it was necessary to remove it. Happily the work was
done carefully, for under the whitewash some excellent frescoes were
discovered. They would seem to have profited by their covering for as
much as has been uncovered is rich and well preserved. It may be that
in days when the State of Italy was seriously disturbed, and Napoleon,
greatest of highwaymen and conquerors, after being crowned in Milan
with the famous Monza crown, was laying his hand on all that seemed
worth carrying away, some one in authority thought of this simple
method of concealment, and obtained expert advice that enabled the
frescoes to be covered without serious damage. Under similar
conditions we may yet discover some of the earlier work of Luini,
because it is clear that the years in which his reputation was in the
making must have been full of achievement of which the greater part
has now been lost. He could hardly have been less | 2,390.237373 |
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https://archive.org/details/charactersoftheo00theorich
THE CHARACTERS OF THEOPHRASTUS
A Translation, with Introduction
by
CHARLES E. BENNETT
and
WILLIAM A. HAMMOND
Professors in Cornell University
Longmans, Green, and Co.
91 and 93 Fifth Avenue, New York
London and Bombay
1902
Copyright, 1902, by
Longmans, Green, and Co.
All rights reserved
[October, 1902]
The University Press
Cambridge, U. S. A.
_To
THOMAS DAY SEYMOUR
In Profound Esteem_
_Preface_
This translation of _The Characters_ of Theophrastus is intended not for
the narrow circle of classical philologists, but for the larger body of
cultivated persons who have an interest in the past.
Within the last century only three English translations of _The
Characters_ have appeared; one by Howell (London, 1824), another by Isaac
Taylor (London, 1836), the third by Professor Jebb (London, 1870). All
of these have long been out of print, a fact that seemed to justify the
preparation of the present work.
The text followed has been, in the main, that of the edition published
in 1897 by the _Leipziger Philologische Gesellschaft_. A few coarse
passages have been omitted, and occasionally a phrase necessary to the
understanding of the context has been inserted. Apart from this the
translators have aimed to render the original with as much precision and
fidelity as is consistent with English idiom.
CHARLES E. BENNETT.
WILLIAM A. HAMMOND.
ITHACA, N.Y., _August, 1902_.
_Contents_
PAGE
INTRODUCTION xi
EPISTLE DEDICATORY 1
THE DISSEMBLER (I.)[1] 4
THE FLATTERER (II.) 7
THE COWARD (XXV.) 11
THE OVER-ZEALOUS MAN (IV.) 14
THE TACTLESS MAN (XII.) 16
THE SHAMELESS MAN (IX.) 18
THE NEWSMONGER (VIII.) 21
THE MEAN MAN (X.) 24
THE STUPID MAN (XIV.) 27
THE SURLY MAN (XV.) 29
THE SUPERSTITIOUS MAN (XVI.) 31
THE THANKLESS MAN (XVII.) 35
THE SUSPICIOUS MAN (XVIII.) 37
THE DISAGREEABLE MAN (XX.) 39
THE EXQUISITE (XXI.) 41
THE GARRULOUS MAN (III.) 46
THE BORE (VII.) 48
THE ROUGH (VI.) 51
THE AFFABLE MAN (V.) 54
THE IMPUDENT MAN (XI.) 56
THE GROSS MAN (XIX.) 58
THE BOOR (IV.) 60
THE PENURIOUS MAN (XXII.) 63
THE POMPOUS MAN (XXIV.) 66
THE BRAGGART (XXIII.) 68
THE OLIGARCH (XXVI.) 71
THE BACKBITER (XXVIII.) 74
THE AVARICIOUS MAN (XXX.) 77
THE LATE LEARNER (XXVII.) 81
THE VICIOUS MAN (XXIX.) 84
[1] Numerals in parenthesis give the corresponding numbers of the
characters as published in the edition of the Leipziger Philologische
Gesellschaft.
_Introduction_
“What stories are new?” asks Thackeray, subtle observer of men.
[Sidenote: _The Antiquity of Modern Character-Types_]
[Sidenote: _Accidental and Essential Types_]
“All types of all characters march through all fables: tremblers and
boasters; victims and bullies: dupes and knaves; long-eared Neddies,
giving themselves leonine airs; Tartuffes wearing virtuous clothing;
lovers and their trials, their blindness, their folly and constancy.
With the very first page of the human story do not love, and lies too,
begin? So the tales were told ages before Æsop; and asses under lions’
manes roared in Hebrew; and sly foxes flattered in Etruscan; and wolves
in sheep’s clothing gnashed their teeth in Sanscrit, no doubt. The sun
shines to-day as he did when he first began shining; and the birds in the
tree overhead, while I am writing, sing very much the same note they have
sung ever since there were finches. There may be nothing new under and
including the sun; but it looks fresh every morning, and we rise with it
to toil, hope, scheme, laugh, struggle, love, suffer, until the night
comes and quiet. And then will wake Morrow and the eyes that look on
it; and so _da capo_.” All this is very true; the changes which may be
observed in human nature are small, and the old types of Theophrastus are
all about us nowadays and really look and act much the same as they did
to the eyes of the ancient Peripatetic. Offices and institutions have
somewhat changed, and many character-types due to new vocations have come
into being since then, _e.g._ the newsboy, the bishop, the reporter,
the hotel-clerk, and the jockey. But these are only accidents of
civilization, and the peculiarities of office or the type or professional
character do not touch the vital essence of human nature, although they
may modify its expression.
When one speaks of a coward, one means an intrinsic quality in human
kind which is essentially the same whether found in a hoplite or in a
modern infantryman, but which may express itself differently in the two
cases. The types described by Theophrastus are types of such intrinsic
qualities, and his pictures of ancient vices and weaknesses show men much
as we see them now. They are not merely types of professions or callings.
[Sidenote: _Similarity between Greek and Modern Types_]
[Sidenote: _The Flatterer_]
[Sidenote: _The Officious Man | 2,391.166218 |
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Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON A HOUSEBOAT
BY
LAURA LEE HOPE
Author Of The "Bobbsey Twins," "The Outdoor Girls Of Deepdale," "The
Outdoor Girls In Florida," "The Moving Picture Girls," "The Moving
Picture Girls At Rocky Ranch," Etc.
ILLUSTRATED
BOOKS BY LAURA LEE HOPE
THE BOBBSEY TWINS SERIES
For Little Men and Women
THE BOBBSEY TWINS
THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN THE COUNTRY
THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT THE SEASHORE
THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT SCHOOL
THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT SNOW LODGE
THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON A HOUSEBOAT
THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT MEADOW BROOK
THE MOVING PICTURE GIRLS SERIES
THE MOVING PICTURE GIRLS
THE MOVING PICTURE GIRLS AT OAK FARM
THE MOVING PICTURE GIRLS SNOWBOUND
THE MOVING PICTURE GIRLS UNDER THE PALMS
THE MOVING PICTURE GIRLS AT ROCKY RANCH
THE MOVING PICTURE GIRLS AT SEA
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS SERIES
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS OF DEEPDALE
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT RAINBOW LAKE
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN A MOTOR CAR
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN A WINTER CAMP
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN FLORIDA
THE OUTDOOR GIRLS AT OCEAN VIEW
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. GOOD NEWS
II. SNAP SAVES FREDDIE
III. DINAH'S UPSET
IV. AT THE HOUSEBOAT
V. THE STRANGE BOY
VI. FREDDIE'S FIRE ENGINE
VII. THE TWO COUSINS
VIII. OFF IN THE "BLUEBIRD"
IX. SNOOP AND SNAP
X. DOWN THE CREEK
XI. THE MEAN MAN
XII. THE WIRE FENCE
XIII. THE RUNAWAY BOY
XIV. OFF AGAIN
XV. OVERBOARD
XVI. THE MISSING SANDWICHES
XVII. IN THE STORM
XVIII. STRANGE NOISES
XIX. SNAP'S QUEER ACTIONS
XX. AT THE WATERFALL
XXI. WHAT BERT SAW
XXII. THE STOWAWAY
CHAPTER I
GOOD NEWS
"What are you doing, Freddie?" asked Bert Bobbsey, leaning over to oil
the front wheel of his bicycle, while he glanced at his little
brother, who was tying strings about the neck of a large, handsome
dog.
"Making a harness," answered Freddie, not taking time to look up.
"A harness?" repeated Bert, with a little laugh. "How can you make a
harness out of bits of string?"
"I'm going to have straps, too," went on Freddie, keeping busily on
with his work. "Flossie has gone in after them. It's going to be a
fine, strong harness."
"Do you mean you are going to harness up Snap?" asked Bert, and he
stood his bicycle against the side of the house, and came over to
where Freddie sat near the big dog.
"Yes. Snap is going to be my horse," explained Freddie. "I'm going to
hitch him to my express wagon, and Flossie and I are going to have a
ride."
"Ha! Ha!" laughed Bert. "You won't get much of a ride with THAT
harness," and he looked at the thin cord which the small boy was
winding about the dog's neck.
"Why not?" asked Freddie, a little hurt at Bert's laughter. Freddie,
like all small boys, did not like to be laughed at.
"Why, Snap is so strong that he'll break that string in no time," said
Bert. "Besides--"
"Flossie's gone in for our booty straps, I tell you!" said Freddie.
"Then our harness will be strong enough. I'm only using string for
part of it. I wish she'd hurry up and come out!" and Freddie glanced
toward the house. But there was no sign of his little sister Flossie.
"Maybe she can't find them," suggested Bert. "You know what you and
Flossie do with your books and straps, when you come home from school
Friday afternoons--you toss them any old place until Monday morning."
"I didn't this time!" said sturdy little Freddie, looking up quickly.
"I--I put 'em--I put 'em--oh, well, I guess Flossie can find 'em!" he
ended, for trying to remember where he had left his books was more
than he could do this bright, beautiful, Saturday morning, when there
was no school.
"I thought so!" laughed Bert, as he turned to go back to his bicycle,
for he intended to go for a ride, and had just cleaned, and was now
oiling, his wheel.
"Well, Flossie can find 'em, so she can," went on Freddie, as he held
his head on one side and looked at a knotted string around the neck of
Snap, the big dog.
"I wonder how Snap is going to like it?" asked Bert. "Did you ever
hitch him to your express wagon before, Freddie?"
"Yes. But he couldn't pull us."
"Why not?"
"'Cause I only had him tied with strings, and they broke. But I'm
going to use our book straps now, and they'll hold."
"Maybe they will--if you can find 'em--or if Flossie can," Bert went
on with a laugh.
Freddie said nothing. He was too busy tying more strings about Snap's
neck. These strings were to serve as reins for the dog-horse. Since
Snap would not keep them in his mouth, as a horse does a bit, they had
to go around his neck, as oxen wear their yokes.
Snap stretched out comfortably on the grass, his big red tongue
hanging out of his mouth. He | 2,391.354253 |
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Produced by Charlene Taylor, David Garcia, Gerard Arthus
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive)
Transcribers Note: The typesetting in the book was poor, all errors
have been retained as printed.
[Illustration: G. L. Brown. S. Schoff.
LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS AT PLIMOUTH 11th. DEC. 1620.]
THE
SIN AND DANGER
OF
SELF-LOVE
DESCRIBED,
IN A
SERMON
PREACHED
AT PLYMOUTH, IN NEW-ENGLAND, 1621,
BY
ROBERT CUSHMAN.
WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR.
BOSTON:
PUBLISHED BY CHARLES EWER,
AND FOR SALE BY CROCKER & BREWSTER, SAMUEL G. DRAKE,
LITTLE | 2,391.359367 |
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Produced by Lois Heiser
THE TURMOIL
A NOVEL
By Booth Tarkington
1915.
To Laurel.
CHAPTER I
There is a midland city in the heart of fair, open country, a dirty and
wonderful city nesting dingily in the fog of its own smoke. The stranger
must feel the dirt before he feels the wonder, for the dirt will be upon
him instantly. It will be upon him and within him, since he must breathe
it, and he may care for no further proof that wealth is here better
loved than cleanliness; but whether he cares or not, the negligently
tended streets incessantly press home the point, and so do the fle | 2,391.454383 |
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Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
GREAT PORTER SQUARE:
A MYSTERY.
BY
B. L. FARJEON,
_Author of "Grif," "London's Heart," "The House of White
Shadows," etc._
_IN THREE VOLUMES._
VOLUME III.
LONDON:
WARD AND DOWNEY,
12, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
1885.
[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]
PRINTED BY
KELLY AND CO., GATE STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS
AND KINGSTON-ON-THAMES.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
XXXI.--Becky gives a description of an interview between
herself and Richard Manx 1
XXXII.--In which Becky narrates how Fanny became acquainted
with Mrs. Lydia Holdfast 15
XXXIII.--In which Becky narrates how Fanny became
acquainted with Mrs. Lydia Holdfast (concluded) 24
XXXIV.--Mr. Pelham makes his appearance once more 31
XXXV.--Fanny discovers who Richard Manx is 45
XXXVI.--Becky and Fanny on the watch 55
XXXVII.--No. 119 Great Porter Square is let to a new Tenant 71
XXXVIII.--The new Tenant takes possession of No. 119 Great
Porter Square 87
XXXIX.--Mrs. Holdfast insists on becoming an active partner 113
XL.--Mrs. Holdfast insists on becoming an active partner
(concluded) 118
XLI.--Frederick Holdfast makes the discovery 134
XLII.--Mr. Holdfast's Diary 147
XLIII.--Mr. Holdfast's Diary (concluded) 177
XLIV.--Caged 207
XLV.--Retribution 218
XLVI.--In which the "Evening Moon" gives a Sequel to its
"Romance in Real Life" 224
GREAT PORTER SQUARE: A MYSTERY.
CHAPTER XXXI.
BECKY GIVES A DESCRIPTION OF AN INTERVIEW BETWEEN HERSELF AND RICHARD
MANX.
MY DEAREST LOVE--How, did you like my little messenger, Fanny? Is she
not steady, and bright, and clever? When she woke this morning I had an
earnest conversation with her, and as far as was necessary I told her my
plans and that I wanted her faithful assistance. She cried for joy. The
few words she managed to get out convinced me that, child as she is,
I could not be better served by a grown-up person. Besides, I want a
child to assist me; a grown-up person might spoil my plans. In what way?
Patience, my dear, patience.
Mrs. Preedy noticed that I looked tired, and I told her that I had been
kept awake all the night with toothache. She expressed great sympathy
with me. It is wonderful the position I hold in the house; I am treated
more like a lady than a servant. That is because I have lent my mistress
forty pounds, and have agreed to pay for little Fanny's board and
lodging. Mrs. Preedy threw out a hint about taking me into partnership,
if I would invest my fancied legacy into the business.
"We could keep on this house," she said, "and take another on the other
side of the Square."
I said it was worth thinking about, but that, of course, I could do
nothing until I received the whole amount of the legacy which would be
in three weeks' time. So the matter rests; during these three weeks Mrs.
Preedy will be very gracious to me, I expect. She said this morning,
when I told her about my toothache,
"You had better lay down, my dear."
Actually! "My dear!"
I did lie down, and I had a good rest, so that my keeping up all night
did not hurt me. I feel now quite refreshed, although it is night, and
eleven o'clock. Mrs. Preedy, as usual, is out gossiping with Mrs. Beale,
and I am writing in the kitchen. When she comes home I shall continue my
letter in my bedroom. I have much to tell you. Things seem to move on
rapidly. I have no doubt that in a very short time something important
will come to light.
After sending Fanny to you this morning, I went up to our bedridden
lady-lodger, Mrs. Bailey. From her I obtained some significant news.
She had passed a bad night; the noise in the next house, as of some one
moving about in the room in which your father met his death, had "come
again," she said, and had continued for at least a couple of hours. She
declared that it did not sound like mice, and that she did not know
really what to think. What she _did_ know was that she was almost
frightened out of her life. I suggested that Fanny should sleep in her
room for a night or two, and I told her about the little girl. "It
will be company for you," I said. The old lady was delighted at the
suggestion, and with the consent of Mrs. Preedy, I made up a bed for
Fanny on the floor, close to the wall, and she is sleeping there now.
I am satisfied she is asleep, because Richard Manx is not in the house.
I have confided in Fanny, and she is so devoted to my service that I
am certain, while she is in her bed, no sound can be made in the room
adjoining without her hearing it. Her faculties have been sharpened by
a life of want, and her nature is a very grateful one.
It was not without reflection that I have taken advantage of the
opportunity to change Fanny's bedroom. It will afford me a better excuse
for going upstairs more frequently than usual, and thus keeping a watch
on the movements of our young man lodger. It will also give Fanny an
opportunity of watching him, for I intend employing her in this way,
and in watching another person, too. Richard Manx has not seen my
little detective yet, nor shall he see her, if it can be prevented. My
instructions to Fanny are to keep herself carefully out of his sight; it
is part of a plan, as yet half formed, that she should be very familiar
with his face, and he not at all familiar with hers. Twice during the
day has she seen him, without being seen, and this evening she gave me
a description of his personal appearance so faithful as to be really
startling. Slight peculiarities in him which had escaped my notice
have not escaped Fanny's; she has found out even that he wears a wig,
and that he paints his face. This poor little child is going to be
invaluable to me. If all goes well with us we must take care of her.
Indeed, I have promised as much.
Now let me tell you what else I have done, and what has occurred. In
the note you sent back by Fanny this morning, you express anxiety
concerning me with reference to Richard Manx. Well, my dear, I intend
to take great care of myself, and in the afternoon I went out shopping
accompanied by Fanny. I paid a visit, being a woman, to a milliner and
dressmaker, and bought some clothes. For myself? No, for Fanny, and with
them a waterproof to cover her dress completely, from top to toe. Then I
made my way to a wig shop in Bow Street, and bought a wig. For myself?
No--again for Fanny. And, after that, where do you think I went? To a
gunsmith, of all places in the world. There I bought a revolver--the
tiniest, dearest little pistol, which I can hold in the palm of my hand
without anyone but myself being the wiser. I learnt how to put in the
cartridges. It is very easy. With that in my pocket, I feel almost as
safe as if you were by my side. Do not be troubled about this, and do
not think I am in any danger. I am perfectly safe, and no harm will
befall me. Of course, there is only one person to whom it might happen
I would show my pretty little pistol--to Richard Manx. And I am
convinced that the merest glimpse of it would be enough for him. You can
tell by looking into a man's face and eyes whether he is brave as well
as bold, and I am satisfied that Richard Manx is a coward.
I saw him this evening. I have not yet had an opportunity to tell you
that he endeavoured to make himself very agreeable to me three days
ago, when he met me, as I was returning to Great Porter Square from the
post-office. He promised to make me a present of some acid drops, of
which he seems to be very fond. He did not keep his word until this
evening, when he presented me with a sweet little packet, which I
put into the fire when I was alone. He spoke of his property and his
expectations.
"I wish," said he, as he offered me the sweets, "that this paper was
filled with diamonds; it would be--a--more agreeable. But I am poor,
miserably poor--as yet. It will be one day that I shall be rich--then
shall I present myself to you, and offer to you what I better wish."
"Why should you do so?" I asked. "You are a gentleman, although you have
no money----"
"Ah, yes," he said, interrupting me, and placing his hand on his heart,
"I am a gentleman. I thank you."
"And," I continued, "I am so much beneath you."
"Never," he said, energetically; "I have said to you before, you are a
lady. Think you I do not know a lady when she presents herself? It is
not station--it is not birth--it is not rank. It is manner. On my honour
I say it--you are a lady."
I gave him a sharp look, doubtful for a moment whether he was in
earnest; but the false ring in his false voice should of itself have
convinced me that he was as insincere as it was possible for any human
being to be.
"It is," he said, with a wave of his hand towards the Square, "still
excitement. People still come to look and see. What do they expect?"
"I suppose," I said, "it is because of that wonderful account in the
newspaper about the poor gentleman who was murdered. Did you read it?"
"Did I read it!" he echoed. "I was the first. It is what you
say--wonderful. What think you of the lady with the pretty name--I
forget it--remind me of it."
"Lydia," I said.
"Ah, yes, Lydia. It is a pretty name--remarkable." ("Then," thought I,
following his words and manner with close attention, "if you think the
name so pretty and remarkable, how comes it that you forget it so soon?"
But I did not say this aloud.) "What think you of her?"
"I think she is to be pitied," I said; "it was a dreadful story she told
the reporter. It is like a romance."
"A romance," he said, "is something that is not true?"
"It _must_ be true," I said. "Do | 2,391.556135 |
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produced from images generously made available by The
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* * * * *
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| Transcriber's Note: |
| |
| Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For |
| a complete list, please see the end of this document. |
| |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
* * * * *
HISTORICAL SKETCH
OF THE
FIFTEENTH REGIMENT
NEW JERSEY VOLUNTEERS.
FIRST BRIGADE, FIRST DIVISION, SIXTH CORPS.
TRENTON, N.J.:
WM. S. SHARP, PRINTER AND STEREOTYPER.
1880.
SKETCH.
Every regiment of soldiers has a character of its own. This
"character" is the sum of the elements of individual character, and
the circumstances affecting its organization and management.
The Fifteenth Regiment New Jersey Volunteers was organized at
Flemington. It was recruited in the "hill country" of the State--three
companies from Sussex, two each from Warren, Hunterdon and Morris, and
one from Somerset. There being no large cities in this district, it
was composed almost wholly of "freeholders" or the sons of
freeholders--young men who were well known in the communities from
which they came, who had a good name at home to adorn or lose, and
friends at home to feel a pride in their good behavior or suffer shame
at the reverse. They were an educated and intelligent class of men,
many of them of liberal education and in course of training for the
higher walks of business or professional life. They were men of a high
tone of moral character and of that sturdy and tenacious patriotism
which the history of every country, and especially of our own, shows
to reside more especially in the fixed population connected with the
soil as its owners or tillers. Reared in the mountain air they were
generally of vigorous and healthy physique. The writer saw much of
Union soldiers during four years of service--regulars, volunteers and
militia--and hopes he may be permitted to say, without invidious
comparison, that this regiment was marked for the high intellectual
and moral character of its enlisted men. Those accustomed to the
management and handling of troops know what this means on the battle
field and in active campaign. It was largely officered with men who
had already seen a year of active service, and who subjected it at
once to a rigid discipline.
It was mustered into service on the 25th of August, 1862. Two days
later it moved to "the front," at the perilous moment when Pope and
Lee were in their death-grapple about Bull Run. Pope being defeated,
and the rebels marching for Pennsylvania, the capital was to be more
completely fortified on the west and north, and prepared for possible
attack. The first duty assigned the regiment was to erect
fortifications at Tenallytown, Md., at which they toiled day and
night for about one month. On the 30th of September it proceeded to
join the victorious Army of the Potomac on the battle-field of
Antietam, and, by special request of the corps, division and brigade
commanders, was assigned to the First Brigade, First Division, Sixth
Corps--the already-veteran "First Jersey Brigade." It afforded much
gratification and a home-like feeling, to be brigaded with five other
regiments of the same State.
Whilst the Army of the Potomac was being re-fitted and supplied for
the fall campaign, the regiment enjoyed, in the midst of picket and
other duties, a much-needed month of opportunity for drill and
discipline at Bakersville, Maryland--a short time, as all experience
will attest, to convert into "soldiers" a thousand men fresh from the
untrammeled freedom of civil life, strangers to the rigor of military
discipline, the profession of arms, and the art of war. How
industriously, willingly, and effectively that month was employed, the
subsequent history of the regiment fully attests.
From this time forward, to the close of the war, its history is that
of the famous "Sixth Corps"--than which, probably, no corps ever did
more hard fighting and effective service, or achieved a more enviable
fame.
Its official fighting record, as made up by the Adjutant-General of
the State, is as follows:
Fredericksburg, Va., Dec. 13 and 14, 1862; Fredericksburg, Va., May 3,
1863; Salem Heights, Va., May 3 and 4, 1863; Franklin's Crossing, Va.,
June 6 to 14, 1863; Gettysburg, Pa., July 2 and 3, 1863; Fairfield,
Pa., July 5, 1863; Funktown, Md., July 10, 1863; Rappahannock Station,
Va., Oct. 12, 1863; Rappahannock Station, Va., Nov. 7, 1863; Mine Run,
Va., Nov. 30, 1863; Wilderness, Va., May 5 to 7, 1864; Spottsylvania,
Va., May 8 to 11, 1864; Spottsylvania C.H., Va., May 12 to 16, 1864;
North and South Anna River, May 24, 1864; Hanover C.H., Va., May 29,
1864; Tolopotomy Creek, Va., May 30 and 31, 1864; Cold Harbor, Va.,
June 1 to 11, 1864; Before Petersburg, Va., June 16 to 22, 1864;
Weldon Railroad, Va., June 23, 1864; Snicker's Gap, Va., July 18,
1864; Strasburg, Va., Aug. 15, 1864; Winchester, Va., Aug. 17, 1864;
Charlestown, Va., Aug. 21, 1864; Opequan, Va., Sept. 19, 1864;
Fisher's Hill, Va., Sept. 21 and 22, 1864; New Market, Va., Sept. 24,
1864; Mount Jackson, Va., Sept. 25, 1864; Cedar Creek and Middletown,
Va., Oct. 19, 1864; Hatcher's Run, Va., Feb. 5, 1865; Fort Steedman,
Va., March 25, 1865; Capture of Petersburg, Va., April 2, 1865;
Sailors' Creek, Va., April 6, 1865; Farmville, Va., April 7, 1865;
Lee's Surrender, (Appomattox, Va.,) April 9, 1865.
In the operations and battles of a large army or corps, a single
regiment is so swallowed up in the general mass; its movements and
conduct, under fire and out of range, are so intermingled with those
of many others, that, to write the history of one is to write that of
the army or corps as a whole. This would take volumes; it cannot be
done in these brief notes. It must be assumed that the glowing pages
which record the battles of the Rebellion are familiar to all; and
surely he is a doubtful patriot who has not followed them with deep
and absorbing interest. We can here only glance at the regiment at
some of those points in its career at which it was in some way
distinguished from the general mass, by position, or by special acts
of endurance and courage.
It received its baptism of fire at the disastrous battle of
Fredericksburg, December 13th, 1862. On the morning of the 12th, the
division crossed the Rappahannock at "Franklin's Crossing," below the
town, and advanced over the broad plain toward the high ground beyond,
under cover of a dense fog, to "find the enemy," whose position, below
the town, could not be seen--the Fifteenth on the right of the line.
Just before reaching "Deep Run," the enemy discovered the advance, and
opened with their heavy guns from the Heights to the right and front.
The long line of a full regiment did not waver in the least, though
new to the field of battle, and saluted suddenly, for the first time,
with the terrifying explosions of shells from guns of large calibre.
Carefully observed, they seemed to be nerved and animated by the
presence of danger. Patriotic resolve and high moral courage--which
had brought them to the field--mantled to their brows. Their commander
then and ever after knew and trusted his command. A few men were
wounded, but none killed, as the writer remembers. Arrived at the
ravine, it was permitted to remain under its cover during the balance
of the day, whilst a large army was getting into position, and plans
of attack matured. Before light on the morning of the 13th, it was
moved out of the ravine and silently deployed as a skirmish line,
under cover of the darkness and fog, so near to the rebel skirmish
line as to distinctly hear their conversation. Such close contact,
face to face with an armed enemy, gave rise to thoughts and emotions
new to them, and the gradual lifting of the darkness and fog was
watched with anxious faces; but not a man showed signs of flinching.
At the coming of light their sharp and obstinate skirmish fire opened
the first battle in which they took part. The memorable conflict of
the day swept chiefly to the right and left of their long line, but
involved four of the left companies, which participated in the charge
at that point with the Fourth and Twenty-third, and suffered serious
loss. During the following night the drum-corps carried rations from
the trains, several miles away, across the river, and distributed them
along the line, replenishing the exhausted haversacks--a hard night's
work, and a kind of drumming for which they felt they had not
enlisted; but they had new lessons in music yet to learn. In the
morning the regiment was relieved from its advanced position by the
One Hundred and Twenty-first New York, under a galling fire. The
battle was over, however, and the army re-crossed the river.
The regiment went into camp near by, at White Oak Church, and, after
participating in the fruitless expedition known as Burnside's "Mud
March," spent a dismal winter. Typhoid fever, the enemy which no army
can conquer, broke out with distressing virulence, and a considerable
number died of disease. In every regiment there is a somewhat uniform
number of constitutions which cannot resist the privations, hardships,
excitements and exposures of vigorous warfare. These must be
eliminated by death and permanent disability. In some cases the
process is gradual; in others, sudden and rapid, as was the case with
the Fifteenth, owing to its being suddenly taken from civil life and
thrust at once into the severest service, sustained by excitements and
courage until the campaign was over, and then dropped into a muddy
camp in very inclement weather. It was ever afterward free from
sickness to a marked degree.
In the May following came the "Chancellorsville" campaign under
Hooker. The part assigned to the Sixth Corps was to take the Heights
of Fredericksburg, and then strike the enemy in flank and rear, and
unite with the main army, which crossed the river at the upper fords.
Crossing the river at the same place as before, on the morning of the
3d of May, the Fifteenth was placed on the extreme left of the corps
line, to support a battery, and, with the balance of the brigade, to
hold in check a large force of the enemy formed on his right, to
strike the corps in flank and rear, as it attacked the Heights, which
was effectively done by a firm stand, though with considerable loss.
The balance of the corps having carried the Heights by a gallant
charge, it marched through the town, over the Heights, and up the
plank road to Salem Church, a few miles from Chancellorsville. Here it
encountered a large part of the rebel army, diverted to its front
after a successful checking of Hooker. A determined assault was
delivered, but failed to drive them from their well-chosen position.
The Fifteenth charged gallantly through a wood, pushed the enemy some
distance before them, and held the position until ordered to retire
about dark, the general attack having failed of its purpose. The night
was spent in caring for and removing the wounded. It is thought the
Fifteenth was one of the very few regiments which succeeded in getting
off all their wounded, which was mainly due here, as afterward, to one
of the most brave and faithful chaplains, who was ever with his men,
in battle as in camp, and serving them with sleepless and tireless
vigilance. The next day was spent in constant manoeuvering before a
rapidly concentrating enemy, and during the night the corps was
ordered to re-cross the river, at Banks' Ford. After another day spent
in drawing the artillery and pontoon trains through the mud to the
high ground, it returned to its old camp, after the loss of many of
its bravest and best men and officers.
At Gettysburg--the decisive victory of the war--during the pursuit of
the flying rebel army through Pennsylvania, Maryland, and down the
Katoctin valley, back to the line of the Rappahannock; again on the
advance up the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, nearly to its crossing
of the Rapidan, (where the Fifteenth reached the farthest point of any
regiment); back to Centreville by a rapid retreat parallel with the
enemy attempting to turn the Union flank; again forward to the battle
| 2,391.594178 |
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Produced by Charles Aldarondo. HTML version by Al Haines.
SKY ISLAND
BEING THE FURTHER EXCITING ADVENTURES
OF TROT AND CAP'N BILL AFTER THEIR
VISIT TO THE SEA FAIRIES
BY
L. FRANK BAUM
TO
MY SISTER
MARY LOUISE BREWSTER
CONTENTS
1. A MYSTERIOUS ARRIVAL
2. THE MAGIC UMBRELLA
3. A WONDERFUL EXPERIENCE
4. THE ISLAND IN THE SKY
5. THE BOOLOOROO OF THE BLUES
6. THE SIX SNUBNOSED PRINCESSES
7. GHIP-GHISIZZLE PROVES FRIENDLY
8. THE BLUE CITY
9. THE TRIBULATION OF TROT
10. THE KING'S TREASURE CHAMBER
11. BUTTON-BRIGHT ENCOUNTERS THE BLUE WOLF
12. THROUGH THE FOG BANK
13. THE PINK COUNTRY
14. TOURMALINE THE POVERTY QUEEN
15. THE SUNRISE TRIBE AND THE SUNSET TRIBE
16. ROSALIE THE WITCH
17. THE ARRIVAL OF POLYCHROME
18. MAYRE, QUEEN OF THE PINK COUNTRY
19. THE WAR OF THE PINKS AND BLUES
20. GHIP-GHISIZZLE HAS A BAD TIME
21. THE CAPTURE OF CAP'N BILL
22. TROT'S INVISIBLE ADVENTURE
23. THE GIRL AND THE BOOLOOROO
24. THE AMAZING CONQUEST OF THE BLUES
25. THE RULER OF SKY ISLAND
26. TROT CELEBRATES THE VICTORY
27. THE FATE OF THE MAGIC UMBRELLA
28. THE ELEPHANT'S HEAD COMES TO LIFE
29. TROT REGULATES THE PINKIES
30. THE JOURNEY HOME
A LITTLE TALK TO MY READERS
WITH "The Sea Fairies," my book for 1911, I ventured into a new field
of fairy literature and to my delight the book was received with much
approval by my former readers, many of whom have written me that they
like Trot "almost as well as Dorothy." As Dorothy was an old, old
friend and Trot a new one, I think this is very high praise for Cap'n
Bill's little companion. Cap'n Bill is also a new character who seems
to have won approval, and so both Trot and the old sailor are again
introduced in the present story, which may be called the second of the
series of adventures of Trot and Cap'n Bill.
But you will recognize some other acquaintances in "Sky Island." Here,
for instance, is Button-Bright, who once had an adventure with Dorothy
in Oz, and without Button-Bright and his Magic Umbrella you will see
that the story of "Sky Island" could never have been written. As
Polychrome, the Rainbow's Daughter, lives in the sky, it is natural
that Trot and Button-Bright meet her during their adventures there.
This story of Sky Island has astonished me considerably, and I think it
will also astonish you. The sky country is certainly a remarkable fair
land, but after reading about it I am sure you will agree with me that
our old Mother Earth is a very good place to live upon and that Trot
and Button-Bright and Cap'n Bill were fortunate to get back to it again.
By the way, one of my little correspondents has suggested that I print
my address in this book, so that the children may know where letters
will reach me. I am doing this, as you see, and hope that many will
write to me and tell me how they like "Sky Island." My greatest
treasures are these letters from my readers and I am always delighted
to receive them.
L. FRANK BAUM.
"OZCOT" at HOLLYWOOD in CALIFORNIA
A MYSTERIOUS ARRIVAL
CHAPTER 1
"Hello," said the boy.
"Hello," answered Trot, looking up surprised. "Where did you come from?"
"Philadelphia," said he.
"Dear me," said Trot, "you're a long way from home, then."
"'Bout as far as I can get, in this country," the boy replied, gazing
out over the water. "Isn't this the Pacific Ocean?"
"Of course."
"Why of course?" he asked.
"Because it's the biggest lot of water in all the world."
"How do you know?"
"Cap'n Bill told me," she said.
"Who's Cap'n Bill?"
"An old sailorman who's a friend of mine. He lives at my house,
too--the white house you see over there on the bluff."
"Oh; is that your home?"
"Yes," said Trot proudly. "Isn't it pretty?"
"It's pretty small, seems to me," answered the boy.
"But it's big enough for mother and me, an' for Cap'n Bill," said Trot.
"Haven't you any father?"
"Yes, 'ndeed. Cap'n Griffith is my father, but he's gone most of the
time, sailin' on his ship. You mus' be a stranger in these parts,
little boy, not to know 'bout Cap'n Griffith," she added, looking at
her new acquaintance intently.
Trot wasn't very big herself, but the boy was not quite as big as Trot.
He was thin, with a rather pale complexion, and his blue eyes were
round and earnest. He wore a blouse waist, a short jacket, and
knickerbockers. Under his arm he held an old umbrella that was as tall
as he was. Its covering had once been of thick, brown cloth, but the
color had faded to a dull drab except in the creases, and Trot thought
it looked very old-fashioned and common. The handle, though, was really
curious. It was of wood and carved to resemble an elephant's head. The
long trunk of the elephant was curved to make a crook for the handle.
The eyes of the beast were small red stones, and it had two tiny tusks
of ivory.
The boy's dress was rich and expensive, even to his fine silk stockings
and tan shoes, but the umbrella looked old and disreputable.
"It isn't the rainy season now," remarked Tot with a smile.
The boy glanced at his umbrella and hugged it tighter. "No," he said,
"but umbrellas are good for other things'sides rain."
"'Fraid of gett'n sun-struck?" asked Trot.
He shook his head, still gazing far out over the water. "I don't
b'lieve this is bigger than any other ocean," said he. "I can't see any
more of it than I can of the Atlantic."
"You'd find out if you had to sail across it," she declared.
"When I was in Chicago I saw Lake Michigan," he went on dreamily, "and
it looked just as big as this water does."
"Looks don't count, with oceans," she asserted. "Your eyes can only see
jus' so far, whether you're lookin' at a pond or a great sea."
"Then it doesn't make any difference how big an ocean is," he replied.
"What are those buildings over there?" pointing to the right, along the
shore of the bay.
"That's the town," said Trot. "Most of the people earn their living by
fishing. The town is half a mile from here, an' my house is almost a
half-mile the other way, so it's 'bout a mile from my house to the
town."
The boy sat down beside her on the flat rock.
"Do you like girls?" asked Trot, making room for him.
"Not very well," the boy replied. "Some of 'em are pretty good fellows,
but not many. The girls with brothers are bossy, an' the girls without
brothers haven't any 'go' to 'em. But the world's full o' both kinds,
and so I try to take 'em as they come. They can't help being girls, of
course. Do you like boys?"
"When they don't put on airs or get roughhouse," replied Trot. "My
'sperience with boys is that they don't know much, but think they do."
"That's true," he answered. "I don't like boys much better than I do
girls, but some are all right, and--you seem to be one of 'em."
"Much obliged," laughed Trot. "You aren't so bad, either, an' if we
don't both turn out worse than we seem, we ought to be friends."
He nodded rather absently and tossed a pebble into the water. "Been to
town?" he asked.
"Yes. Mother wanted some yarn from the store. She's knittin' Cap'n Bill
a stocking."
"Doesn't he wear but one?"
"That's all. Cap'n Bill has one wooden leg," she explained. "That's why
he don't sailor any more. I'm glad of it, 'cause Cap'n Bill knows
ev'rything. I s'pose he knows more than anyone else in all the world."
"Whew!" said the boy. "That's taking a good deal for granted. A
one-legged sailor can't know much."
"Why not?" asked Trot a little indignantly. "Folks don't learn things
with their legs, do they?"
"No, but they can't get around without legs to find out things."
"Cap'n Bill got 'round lively 'nough once, when he had two meat legs,"
she said. "He's sailed to most ev'ry country on the earth, an' found
out all that the people in 'em knew and a lot besides. He was
shipwrecked on a desert island once, and another time a cannibal king
tried to boil him for dinner, an' one day a shark chased him seven
leagues through the water, an'--"
"What's a league?" asked the boy.
"It's a--a distance, like a mile is. But a league isn't a mile, you
know."
"What is it, then?"
"You'll have to ask Cap'n Bill. He knows ever'thing."
"Not ever'thing," objected the boy. "I know some things Cap'n Bill
don't know."
"If you do, you're pretty smart," said Trot.
"No, I'm not smart. Some folks think I'm stupid. I guess I am. But I
know a few things that were wonderful. Cap'n Bill may know more'n I
do--a good deal more--but I'm sure he can't know the same things. Say,
what's your name?"
"I'm Mayre Griffith, but ever'body calls me 'Trot.' I's a nickname I
got when I was a baby, 'cause I trotted so fast when I walked, an' it
seems to stick. What's YOUR name?"
"Button-Bright."
"How did it happen?"
"How did what happen?"
"Such a funny name."
The boy scowled a little. "Just like your own nickname happened," he
answered gloomily. "My father once said I was bright as a button, an'
it made ever'body laugh. So they always call me Button-Bright."
"What's your real name?" she inquired.
"Saladin Paracelsus de Lambertine Evagne von Smith."
"Guess I'll call you Button-Bright," said Trot, sighing. "The only
other thing would be 'Salad,' an' I don't like salads. Don't you find
it hard work to'member all of your name?"
"I don't try to," he said. "There's a lot more of it, but I've
forgotten the rest."
"Thank you," said Trot. "Oh, here comes Cap'n Bill!" as she glanced
over her shoulder.
Button-Bright turned also and looked solemnly at the old sailor who
came stumping along the path toward them. Cap'n Bill wasn't a very
handsome man. He was old, not very tall, somewhat stout and chubby,
with a round face, a bald head, and a scraggly fringe of reddish
whisker underneath his chin. But his blue eyes were frank and merry,
and his smile like a ray of sunshine. He wore a sailor shirt with a
broad collar, a short peajacket and wide-bottomed sailor trousers, one
leg of which covered his wooden limb but did not hide it. As he came
"pegging" along the path--as he himself described his hobbling
walk--his hands were pushed into his coat pockets, a pipe was in his
mouth, and his black neckscarf was fluttering behind him in the breeze
like a sable banner.
Button-Bright liked the sailor's looks. There was something very
winning--something jolly and carefree and honest and sociable--about
the ancient seaman that made him everybody's friend, so the strange boy
was glad to meet him.
"Well, well, Trot," he said, coming up, "is this the way you hurry to
town?"
"No | 2,392.158702 |
2023-11-16 18:56:56.2355150 | 88 | 10 |
Produced by sp1nd, CM, and the Online Distributed
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THE ART OF
LOGICAL THINKING
OR
THE LAWS OF REASONING
By WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON
L.N. FOWLER & COMPANY | 2,392.255555 |
2023-11-16 18:56:56.5355240 | 5,631 | 12 |
Produced by Mardi Desjardins & the online Distributed
Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net from
page images generously made available by the Internet
Archive (https://archive.org)
ITALIAN FANTASIES
[Illustration: AN ITALIAN FANTASY
BY STEFANO DA ZEVIO (VERONA).]
ITALIAN FANTASIES
BY
ISRAEL ZANGWILL
AUTHOR OF
“CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO”
“BLIND CHILDREN” “THE GREY WIG”
ETC. ETC.
[Illustration]
WITH FRONTISPIECE
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1910
_Copyright, London, 1910, by William Heinemann, and_
_Washington, U.S.A., by The Macmillan Company_
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The germ of this book may be found in three essays under the
same title published in “Harper’s Magazine” in 1903 and 1904,
which had the inestimable advantage of being illustrated by the
late Louis Loeb, “the joyous comrade” to whose dear memory this
imperfect half of what was planned as a joint labour of love
must now be dedicated.
I. Z.
ALL ROADS LEAD FROM ROME
CONTENTS
PAGE
OF BEAUTY, FAITH, AND DEATH: A RHAPSODY
BY WAY OF PRELUDE 1
FANTASIA NAPOLITANA: BEING A REVERIE OF
AQUARIUMS, MUSEUMS, AND DEAD CHRISTS 17
THE CARPENTER’S WIFE: A CAPRICCIO 43
THE EARTH THE CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE: OR
THE ABSURDITY OF ASTRONOMY 77
OF AUTOCOSMS WITHOUT FACTS: OR THE
EMPTINESS OF RELIGIONS 84
OF FACTS WITHOUT AUTOCOSMS: OR THE
IRRELEVANCY OF SCIENCE 104
OF FACTS WITH ALIEN AUTOCOSMS: OR THE
FUTILITY OF CULTURE 120
ST. FRANCIS: OR THE IRONY OF
INSTITUTIONS 137
THE GAY DOGES: OR THE FAILURE OF SOCIETY
AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF SOCIALISM 159
THE SUPERMAN OF LETTERS: OR THE
HYPOCRISY OF POLITICS 172
LUCREZIA BORGIA: OR THE MYTH OF HISTORY 186
SICILY AND THE ALBERGO SAMUELE BUTLER:
OR THE FICTION OF CHRONOLOGY 195
INTERMEZZO 205
LACHRYMÆ RERUM AT MANTUA: WITH A
DENUNCIATION OF D’ANNUNZIO 214
OF DEAD SUBLIMITIES, SERENE
MAGNIFICENCES, AND GAGGED POETS 227
VARIATIONS ON A THEME 241
HIGH ART AND LOW 249
AN EXCURSION INTO THE GROTESQUE: WITH A
GLANCE AT OLD MAPS AND MODERN
FALLACIES 259
AN EXCURSION INTO HEAVEN AND HELL: WITH
A DEPRECIATION OF DANTE 280
ST. GIULIA AND FEMALE SUFFRAGE 298
ICY ITALY: WITH VENICE RISING FROM THE
SEA 307
THE DYING CARNIVAL 315
NAPOLEON AND BYRON IN ITALY: OR LETTERS
AND ACTION 320
THE CONSOLATIONS OF PHLEBOTOMY: A
PARADOX AT PAVIA 331
RISORGIMENTO: WITH SOME REMARKS ON SAN
MARINO AND THE MILLENNIUM 337
Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.
OF BEAUTY, FAITH, AND DEATH: A RHAPSODY BY WAY OF PRELUDE
I too have crossed the Alps, and Hannibal himself had no such baggage of
dreams and memories, such fife-and-drum of lyrics, such horns of ivory,
such emblazoned standards and streamered gonfalons, flying and
fluttering, such phalanxes of heroes, such visions of cities to spoil
and riches to rifle—palace and temple, bust and picture, tapestry and
mosaic. My elephants too matched his; my herds of mediæval histories,
grotesque as his gargoyled beasts. Nor without fire and vinegar have I
pierced my passage to these green pastures. “_Ave Italia, regina
terrarum!_” I cried, as I kissed the hem of thy blue robe, starred with
white cities.
There are who approach Italy by other portals, but these be the true
gates of heaven, these purple peaks snow-flashing as they touch the
stainless sky; scarred and riven with ancient fires, and young with jets
of living water. Nature’s greatness prepares the heart for man’s glory.
I too have crossed the Rubicon, and Cæsar gathered no such booty. Gold
and marble and sardonyx, lapis-lazuli, agate and alabaster, porphyry,
jasper and bronze, these were the least of my spoils. I plucked at the
mystery of the storied land and fulfilled my eyes of its loveliness and
colour. I have seen the radiant raggedness of Naples as I squeezed in
the squirming, wriggling ant-heap; at Paestum I have companied the
lizard in the forsaken Temple of Poseidon. (O the soaring Pagan pillars,
divinely Doric!) I have stood by the Leaning Tower in Bologna that gave
a simile to Dante; and by the long low wall of Padua’s university,
whence Portia borrowed her learned plumes, I have stayed to scan a
placarded sonnet to a Doctor of Philology; I have walked along that
delectable Riviera di Levante and left a footprint on those wind-swept
sands where Shelley’s mortal elements found their fit resolution in
flame. I have lain under Boccaccio’s olives, and caressed with my eye
the curve of the distant Duomo and the winding silver of the Arno.
Florence has shown me supreme earth-beauty, Venice supreme water-beauty,
and I have worshipped Capri and Amalfi, offspring of the love-marriage
of earth and water.
O sacredness of sky and sun! Receive me, ye priests of Apollo. I am for
lustrations and white robes, that I may kneel in the dawn to the
Sun-God. Let me wind in the procession through the olive groves. For
what choking Christian cities have we exchanged the lucid Pagan
hill-towns? Behold the idolatrous smoke rising to Mammon from the
factory altars of Christendom. We have sacrificed our glad sense of the
world-miracle to worldly miracles of loaves and fishes. Grasping after
the unseen, we have lost the divinity of the seen. Ah me! shall we ever
recapture that first lyric rapture?
O consecration of the purifying dawn, O flame on the eastern altar, what
cathedral rose-window can replace thee? O trill of the lark, soaring
sunward, O swaying of May boughs and opening of flower chalices, what
tinkling of bells and swinging of censers can bring us nearer the divine
mystery? What are our liturgies but borrowed emotions, grown cold in the
passing and staled by use—an anthology for apes!
But I wrong the ape. Did not an Afric explorer—with more insight than
most, albeit a woman—tell me how even an ape in the great virgin
forests will express by solemn capers some sense of the glory and
freshness of the morning, his glimmering reason struggling towards
spiritual consciousness, and moving him to dance his wonder and
adoration? Even so the Greek danced his way to religion and the drama.
Alas for the ape’s degenerate cousin, the townsman shot to business
through a tube!
I grant him that the shortest distance between two points is a straight
line, yet ’tis with the curve that beauty commences. Your crow is the
scientific flier, and a dismal bird it is. Who would demand an austere,
unbending route ’twixt Sorrento and Amalfi instead of the white road
that winds and winds round that great amphitheatre of hills, doubling on
itself as in a mountain duet, and circumvoluting again and yet again,
till the intertangled melody of peaks becomes a great choral burst, and
all the hills sing as in the Psalmist, crag answering crag! Do you grow
impatient when chines yawn at your feet and to skirt them the road turns
inland half a mile, bringing you back on the other side of the chasm, as
to your mere starting-point? Do you crave for an iron-trestled American
bridge to span the gap? Nay; science is the shortest distance between
two points, but beauty, like art, is long.
What is this haste to arrive? Give me to walk and walk those high paths
hung ’twixt mountain and sea: the green wild grass, with its dots of
daisy and dandelion; cactus and asphodel overhanging from the
mountain-side, figs, olives, vines, sloping in terraced patches to the
sea, which through bronze leafy tunnels shows blue and sparkling at the
base of contorted cliffs. A woman’s singing comes up from the green and
grey tangle of gnarled trunks, and mingles with the sweet piping of the
birds. A brown man moves amid the furrows. A sybil issues from a pass,
leaning on her staff, driving a pair of goats, her head swathed in a
great white handkerchief. I see that the Italian painters have copied
their native landscape as well as their fellow men and women, though
they pictured Palestine or Hellas or the land of faery. Not from inner
fancy did Dosso Dossi create that glamorous background for his Circe.
That sunny enchantment, that redolence of mediæval romaunt, exhales from
many a haunting spot in these castled crags. Not from mere technical
ingenuity did the artists of the Annunciation and other sacred indoor
subjects introduce in their composition the spaces of the outer world
shining through doors or windows or marble porticoes, vistas of earthly
loveliness fusing with the holy beauty. Geology is here the handmaiden
of Art and Theology. The painters found these effects to hand, springing
from the structure of cities set upon ridges, as in a humble smithy of
Siena whose entrance is in a street, but whose back, giving upon a sheer
precipice, admits the wide purpureal landscape; or in that church in
Perugia, dominating the Umbrian valley, where the gloom of the Old
Masters in the dim chapel is suddenly broken by the sunlit spaciousness
of an older Master, framed in a little window. Do you wonder that the
Perugian Pintoricchio would not let his St. Jerome preach to a mere
crowded interior, or that the Umbrian school is from the first alive to
the spirit of space? Such pictures Italy makes for us not only from
interiors, but from wayside peep-holes, from clefts in the rock or gaps
in the greenery. The country, dark with cypresses or gleaming with domes
and campaniles, everywhere composes itself into a beautiful harmony; one
needs not eye-points of vantage. The peep-hole simply fixes one’s point
of view, frames the scene in one’s horizon of vision, and suggests by
its enhancement of Nature the true task of Art in unifying a sprawling
chaos of phenomena. And if to disengage the charm of space, Raphael and
Perugino and Francia and even Mariotto Albertinelli make such noble use
of the arch, was it not that its lovely limitation and definition of the
landscape had from early Roman antiquity been revealed by Architecture?
Arches and perspectives of arches, cloisters and colonnades, were
weaving a rhythm of space round the artists in their daily walks. Where
Nature was beautiful and Art was second Nature, the poets in paint were
made as well as born.
Paradox-mongers have exalted Art above Nature, yet what pen or brush
could reproduce Amalfi—that vibrant atmosphere, that shimmer and
flicker of clouds, sunshine, and water; the ruined tower on the spit,
the low white town, the crescent hills beyond, the blue sky bending over
all as over a great glimmering cup? Beethoven, who wrote always with
visual images in his mind, might have rendered it in another art,
transposing it into the key of music; for is not beauty as mutable as
energy, and what were the music of the spheres but the translation of
their shining infinitude?
Truer indeed such translation into singing sound than into the
cacophonies of speech, particularly of scientific speech.
I saw a great angel’s wing floating over Rimini, its swan-like feathers
spread with airy grace across the blue—but I must call it cirrus
clouds, forsooth—ruffling themselves on a firmament of illusion. We
name a thing and lo! its wonder flies, as in those profound myths where
all goes well till scientific curiosity comes to mar happiness. Psyche
turns the light on Cupid, Elsa must know Lohengrin’s name. With what
subtle instinct the Hebrew refused to pronounce the name of his deity! A
name persuades that the unseizable is seized, that leviathan is drawn
out with a hook. “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without
knowledge?” Primitive man projected his soul into trees and
stones—animism the wise it call—but we would project into man the
soullessness of stones and trees. Finding no soul in Nature, we would
rob even man of his, desperately disintegrating it back to mechanic
atoms. The savage lifted Nature up to himself; we would degrade
ourselves to Nature. For scientific examination read unscientific
ex-animation. And now ’tis the rare poet and artist for whom river and
tree incarnate themselves in nymphs and dryads. Your Böcklin painfully
designs the figures once created by the painless mythopoiesis of the
race; your Kipling strives to breathe back life into ships and engines.
As philosophy is but common sense by a more circuitous route, so may Art
be self-conscious savagery. And herein lies perhaps the true inwardness
of the Psyche legend. The soul exchanges the joys of _naïveté_ for the
travails of self-consciousness, but in the end wins back its simple
happiness, more stably founded. Yet, so read, the myth needs the
supplement of an even earlier phase—it might well have occupied a
spandrel at least in those delicious decorations for the ceiling of the
Villa Farnesina that Raphael drew from the fable of Apuleius—in which
Psyche, innocent of the corporeal Cupid, should dream of Amor. For me at
least the ecstasy of vision has never equalled the enchantment of the
visionary. O palm and citron, piously waved and rustled by my father at
the Feast of Tabernacles, you brought to my grey garret the whisper and
aroma of the sun-land. (Prate not of your Europes and Asias; these be no
true geographic cuts; there is but a sun-life and an ice-life, and the
grey life of the neutral zones.) But the solidities cannot vie with the
airy fantasies. Where is the magic morning-freshness that lay upon the
dream-city? Dawn cannot bring it, though it lay its consecrating gold
upon the still lagoons of a sea-city, or upon the flower-stones of a
Doge’s palace. Poets who have sung best of soils and women have not
always known them: the pine has dreamed of the palm, and the palm of the
pine.
“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard...” Ah, those unheard!
Were it not better done—as poets use—never to sport with Beatrice in
the shade, nor with the tangles of loved Laura’s hair? Shall Don Quixote
learn that Dulcinea del Toboso is but a good, likely country lass? I
would not marry the sea with a ring, no, not for all the gold and purple
of the Bucentaur. What should a Doge of dreams be doing in that galley?
To wed the sea—and know its mystery but petulance, its unfathomed caves
only the haunt of crude polypi; no mermaids, no wild witchery, and
pearls but a disease of the oyster!
Mayhap I had been wiser to keep my Italian castles in Spain than to
render myself obnoxious to the penalties of the actual. Rapacity,
beggary, superstition, hover over the loveliness of the land like the
harpies and evil embodiments in Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s homely _Allegory
of Bad Government_ in the Sala della Pace of Siena. To-day that
fourteenth-century cartoonist would have found many a new episode for
his frescoed morality-play, whereof the ground-plot would run: how, to
be a Great Power with martial pride of place, Italy sacrifices the
substance. Incalculably rich in art, her every village church bursting
with masterpieces beyond the means of millionaires, she hugs her
treasures to her ragged bosom with one skinny hand, the other extended
for alms. Adorable Brother Francis of Assisi, with thy preachment of
“holy poverty,” didst thou never suspect there could be an unholy
poverty? ’Tis parlous, this beatitude of beggary. More bandits bask at
thy shrine than at almost any other spot in Christendom. Where the
pilgrims are, there the paupers are gathered together; there must be
rich prey in those frenzied devotees who crawl up thy chapel, licking
its rough stones smooth. Thou hadst no need of food: if two small loaves
were provided for thy forty days’ Lent in that island in the Lake of
Perugia, one and a half remained uneaten; and even if half a loaf seemed
better to thee than no bread, ’twas merely because the few mouthfuls
chased far from thee the venom of a vainglorious copy of thy Master.
Perchance ’tis from some such humility the beggars of Assisi abstain
from a too emulous copy of thee. Thou didst convert thy brother, the
fierce wolf of Agobio, and give the countryside peace, but what of this
pack of wolves thou hast loosed—in sheep’s clothing! With what joy did
I see in a church at Verona an old barefoot, naked-kneed beggar, who was
crouching against a pillar, turn into marble!
Or shall we figure Italia’s beggars as her mosquitos, inevitable
accompaniment of her beauties? The mosquito-mendicant, come he as
<DW36> or cicerone, buzzes ever in one’s ears, foe to meditation and
enkindlement. Figure me seeking refuge in a Palazzo of once imperial
Genoa; treading pensively the chambers of Youth and Life, the Arts, and
the Four Seasons, through which duchesses and marchese had trailed
silken skirts. With gaze uplifted at the painted ceilings, I ponder on
that magnificence of the world and the flesh which the Church could not
wither—nay, which found consummate expression in the Pope’s own church
in St. Peter’s, where the baldachino of twinkling lights supplies the
one touch of religious poetry. I pass into the quiet library and am
received by the venerable custodian, a Dr. Faustus in black skull-cap
and white beard. He does the honours of his learned office, brings me
precious Aldines. Behold this tome of antique poetry, silver-typed—a
“limited edition,” twenty-four copies made for the great families. He
gloats with me over Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”; over the fantasy of the
title-page, the vignettes of nymphs and flowers, the spacious folio
pages. Here is Homer in eight languages. My heart goes out to the
scholarly figure as we bend over the parallel columns, bookworms both. I
envy the gentle Friar of Letters his seclusion and his treasures. He
lugs out a mediæval French manuscript, a poem on summer—“Saison aussi
utile que belle,” he adds unexpectedly. We discourse on manuscripts: of
the third-century Virgil at Florence and its one missing leaf in the
Vatican; how French manuscripts may be found as early as the tenth
century, while the Italian scarcely precede Dante, and demonstrate his
creation of the language. We laud the Benedictines for their loving
labour in multiplying texts—he is wrought up to produce the apple of
his eye, an illuminated manuscript that had belonged to a princess. It
is bound in parchment, with golden clasps. “Figures de la Bible” I seem
to remember on its ornate title-page. I bend lovingly over the quaint
letters, I see the princess’s white hand turning the polychrome pages,
her lace sleeve ruffled exquisitely as in a Bronzino portrait. Suddenly
Dr. Faustus ejaculates in English: “Give me a drink!”
My princess fled almost with a shriek, and I came back to the sordid
Italy of to-day. Of to-day? Is not yesterday’s glamour equally
illusionary? But perhaps Genoa with her commercial genius is no typical
daughter of Italia. Did not Dante and the Tuscan proverb alike denounce
her? Does not to-day’s proverb say that it takes ten Jews to make one
Genoese? And yet it was Genoa that produced Mazzini and sped Garibaldi.
Would you wipe out this bookish memory by a better? Then picture the
library of a monastery, that looks out on the cypressed hills, whose
cloisters Sodoma and Signorelli frescoed with naïve legends of St.
Benedict and Satan. See under the long low ceiling, propped on the cool
white pillars, those niched rows of vellum bindings guarding the
leisurely Latin lore of the Fathers. Behold me meditating the missals
and pontificals, pageants in manuscript, broidered and illuminated, all
glorious with gold initials and ultramarine and vermilion miniatures; or
those folio processions of sacred music, each note pranked in its
bravery and stepping statelily amid garlands of blue and gold and the
hovering faces of angels; dreaming myself into that mystic peace of the
Church, till the vesper bell calls to paternosters and genuflexions, and
the great organ rolls out to drown this restless, anchorless century.
Now am I for nones and primes, for vigils and sackcloth, for breviaries
and holy obedience. In shady cloisters, mid faded frescoes, round sleepy
rose-gardens, I will pace to papal measures, while the serene sun-dial
registers the movement of the sun round the earth. Who speaks of a
religion as though it were dependent upon its theology? Dogmas are but
its outward show; inwardly and subtly it lives by its beauty, its
atmosphere, its inracination in life, and its creed is but a poor
attempt to put into words a thought too large for syllables, too elusive
for phrases. Language is a net that catches the fish and lets the ocean
stream through. Again that fallacy of the Name.
Beautiful I will call that service I saw at Bologna on Whitsun Sunday,
though you must dive deep to find the beauty. Not in S. Petronio itself
will you find it, in those bulbous pillars swathed in crimson damask,
though there is a touch of it in the vastness, the far altar, the remote
choir and surpliced priests on high, the great wax candle under the big
baldachino, the congregation lost in space. Nor will you easily
recognise it in the universal disorder, in that sense of a church parade
_within_ the church, in the _brouhaha_ that drowns the precentor’s
voice, in the penny chairs planted or stacked as the worshippers ebb or
flow, in the working men and their families sprawling over the
altar-steps, in the old women coifed in handkerchiefs, with
baskets that hold bottles as well as prayer-books; not even in the
pretty women in Parisian hats, or the olive-skinned girls in snoods,
least of all in the child’s red balloon, soaring to the roof at the very
moment of the elevation of the Host, and followed with | 2,392.555564 |
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Produced by John Edward Heaton
TOM CRINGLE'S LOG
By Michael Scott
(1789--1835)
CHAPTER I.--The Launching of the Log.
Dazzled by the glories of Trafalgar, I, Thomas Cringle, one fine morning
in the merry month of May, in the year one thousand eight hundred and so
and so, magnanimously determined in my own mind, that the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Ireland should no longer languish under the want of a
successor to the immortal Nelson, and being then of the great
perpendicular altitude of four feet four inches, and of the mature age of
thirteen years, I thereupon betook myself to the praiseworthy task of
tormenting, to the full extent of my small ability, every man and woman
who had the misfortune of being in any way connected with me, until they
had agreed to exert all their interest, direct or indirect, and
concentrate the same in one focus upon the head and heart of Sir Barnaby
Blueblazes, vice-admiral of the red squadrons a Lord of the Admiralty,
and one of the old plain K.B.'s (for he flourished before the time when a
gallant action or two tagged half of the letters of the alphabet to a
man's name, like the tail of a paper kite), in order that he might be
graciously pleased to have me placed on the quarterdeck of one of his
Majesty's ships of war without delay.
The stone I had set thus recklessly a-rolling, had not been in motion
above a fortnight, when it fell with unanticipated violence, and crushed
the heart of my poor mother, while it terribly bruised that of me, Thomas;
for as I sat at breakfast with the dear old woman, one fine Sunday morning,
admiring my new blue jacket and snow white trowsers, and shining well
soaped face, and nicely brushed hair, in the pier glass over the chimney
piece, I therein saw the door behind me open, and Nicodemus, the waiting
man, enter and deliver a letter to the old lady, with a formidable looking
seal.
I perceived that she first ogled the superscription, and then the seal,
very ominously, and twice made as if she would have broken the missive
open, but her heart seemed as often to fail her. At length she laid it
down-heaved a long deep sigh--took off her spectacles, which appeared
dim-wiped them, put them on again, and making a sudden effort, tore open
the letter, read it hastily over, but not so rapidly as to prevent her hot
tears falling with a small tiny tap tap on the crackling paper.
Presently she pinched my arm, pushed the blistered manuscript under my
nose, and utterly unable to speak to me, rose, covered her face with her
hands, and left the room weeping bitterly. I could hear her praying in a
low, solemn, yet sobbing and almost inarticulate voice, as she crossed the
passage to her own dressing-room.--"Even as thou wilt, oh Lord--not mine,
but thy holy will be done--yet, oh! it is a bitter bitter thing for a
widowed mother to part with her only boy."
Now came my turn--as I read the following epistle three times over, with
a most fierce countenance, before thoroughly understanding whether I was
dreaming or awake--in truth, poor little fellow as I was, I was fairly
stunned.
"Admiralty, such a date.
"DEAR MADAM,
It gives me very great pleasure to say that your son is appointed to the
Breeze frigate, now fitting at Portsmouth for foreign service. Captain
Wigemwell is a most excellent officer, and a good man, and the
schoolmaster on board is an exceedingly decent person I am informed; so I
congratulate you on his good fortune in beginning his career, in which I
wish him all success, under such favourable auspices. As the boy is, I
presume, all ready, you had better send him down on Thursday next, at
latest, as the frigate will go to sea, wind and weather permitting,
positively on Sunday morning."
"I remain, my dear Madam,"
"Yours very faithfully,"
"BARNABY BLUEBLAZES, K.B."
However much I had been moved by my mother's grief, my false pride came to
my assistance, and my first impulse was to chant a verse of some old tune,
in a most doleful manner. "All right--all right," I then exclaimed, as I
thrust half a doubled up muffin into my gob, but it was all chew, chew,
and no swallow--not a morsel could I force down my parched throat, which
tightened like to throttle me.
Old Nicodemus had by this time again entered the room, unseen and unheard,
and startled me confoundedly, as he screwed his words in his sharp cracked
voice into my larboard ear. "Jane tells me your mamma is in a sad taking,
Master Tom. You ben't going to leave us, all on a heap like, be you?
Surely your stay until your sister comes from your uncle Job's? You know
there are only two on ye--You won't leave the old lady all alone, Master
Thomas, win ye?' The worthy old fellow's voice quavered here, and the
tears hopped over his old cheeks through the flour and tallow like peas,
as he slowly drew a line down the forehead of his well-powdered pate,
with his fore-finger.
"No--no--why, yes," exclaimed I, fairly overcome; "that is--oh Nic, Nic
you old fool, I wish I could cry, man--I wish I could cry!" and
straightway I hied me to my chamber, and wept until I thought my very
heart would have burst.
In my innocence and ignorance, child as I was, I had looked forward to
several months preparation; to buying and fitting of uniforms, and dirks,
and cocked hat, and swaggering therein, to my own great glory, and the
envy of all my young relations; and especially I desired to parade my
fire--new honours before the large dark eyes of my darling little creole
cousin, Mary Palma; whereas I was now to be bundled on board, at a few
days warning, out of a ready-made furnishing shop, with lots of ill-made,
glossy, hard mangled duck trowsers, the creases as sharp as the backs of
knives, and--"oh, it never rains, but it pours," exclaimed I; "surely all
this promptitude is a little de plus in Sir Barnaby."
However, away I was trundled at the time appointed, with an aching heart,
to Portsmouth, after having endured the misery of a first parting from a
fond mother, and a host of kind friends; but, miserable as I was,
according to my preconceived determination, I began my journal the very
day I arrived, that nothing connected with so great a man should be lost,
and most weighty did the matters therein related appear to me at the time;
but seen through the long vista of, I won't say how many years, I really
must confess that the Log, for long long after I first went to sea in the
Breeze, and subsequently when removed to the old Kraaken line-of-battle
ship, both of which were constantly part of blockading squadrons, could be
compared to nothing more fitly than a dish of trifle, anciently called
syllabub, with a stray plum here and there scattered at the bottom. But
when, after several weary years, I got away in the dear old Torch, on a
separate cruise, incidents came fast enough with a vengeance--stem,
unyielding, iron events, as I found to my heavy cost, which spoke out
trumpet-tongued and fiercely for themselves, and whose tremendous
simplicity required no adventitious aid in the narration to thrill through
the hearts of others. So, to avoid yarn-spinning, I shall evaporate my
early Logs, and blow off as much of the froth as I can, in order to
present the residuum free of flummery to the reader--just to give him a
taste here and there, as it were, of the sort of animal I was at that
time. Thus:
Thomas Cringle, his log-book.
Arrived in Portsmouth by the Defiance at ten, A.M. on such a day.
Waited on the Commissioner, to whom I had letters, and said I was
appointed to the Breeze. Same day, went on board and took up my berth;
stifling hot; mouldy biscuit; and so on. My mother's list makes it
fifteen shirts, whereas I only have twelve.
Admiral made the signal to weigh, wind at S.W. fresh and squally.
Stockings should be one dozen worsted, three of cotton, two of silk; find
only half a dozen worsted, two of cotton, and one of silk.
Fired a gun and weighed.
Sailed for the Fleet off Vigo, deucidly sea-sick was told that fat pork
was the best specific, if bolted half raw; did not find it much of a tonic
passed a terrible night, and for four hours of it obliged to keep watch,
more dead than alive. The very second evening we were at sea, it came on
to blow, and the night fell very dark, with heavy rain. Towards eight
bells in the middle watch, I was standing on a gun well forward on the
starboard side, listening to the groaning of the main-tack, as the
swelling sail, the foot of which stretched transversely right athwart the
ship's deck in a black arch, struggled to tear it up, like some dark
impalpable spirit of the air striving to burst the chains that held him,
and escape high up into the murky clouds, or a giant labouring to uproot
an oak, and wondering in my innocence how hempen cord could brook such
strain when just as the long waited-for strokes of the bell sounded
gladly in mine ear, and the shrill clear note of the whistle of the
boatswain's mate had been followed by his gruff voice, grumbling hoarsely
through the gale, "Larboard watch, ahoy!" The look-out at the weather
gangway, who had been relieved, and beside whom I had been standing a
moment before, stepped past me, and scrambled up on the booms "Hillo,
Howard, where away, my man?" said I.
"Only to fetch my"--
Crack!--the main tack parted, and up flew the sail with a thundering flap,
loud as the report of a cannon-shot, through which, however, I could
distinctly hear a heavy smash, as the large and ponderous blocks at the
clew of the sail struck the doomed sailor under the ear, and whirled him
off the booms over the fore-yard-arm into the sea, where he perished, as
heaving-to was impossible, and useless if practicable, as his head must
have been smashed to atoms.
This is one of the stray plums of the trifle, what follows is a whisk of
the froth, written when we looked into Corunna, about a week after the
embarkation of the army:--
MONODY ON THE DEATH OF SIR JOHN MOORE.
Farewell, thou pillar of the war,
Warm-hearted soldier, Moore, farewell,
In honour's firmament a star,
As bright as ere in glory fell.
Deceived by weak or wicked men,
How gallantly thou stood'st at bay,
Like lion hunted to his den,
Let France tell, on that bloody day.
No boastful splendour round thy bier,
No blazon'd trophies o'er thy grave;
But thou had'st more, the soldier's tear,
The heart-warm offering of the brave.
On Lusitania's rock-girt coast,
All coffinless thy relics lie,
Where all but honour bright was lost,
Yet thy example shall not die.
Albeit no funeral knell was rung,
Nor o'er thy tomb in mournful wreath
The laurel twined with cypress hung,
Still shall it live while Britons breathe.
What though, when thou wert lowly laid,
Instead of all the pomp of woe,
The volley o'er thy bloody bed
Was thunder'd by an envious foe:--
Inspired by it in after time,
A race of heroes will appear,
The glory of Britannia's clime,
To emulate thy bright career.
And there will be, of martial fire,
Those who all danger will endure;
Their first, best aim, but to aspire
To die thy death--the death of Moore.
To return. On the evening of the second day, we were off Falmouth, and
then got a slant of wind that enabled us to lie our course.
Next morning, at daybreak, saw a frigate in the northeast quarter, making
signals;--soon after we bore up. Bay of Biscay--tremendous swell--Cape
Finisterre--blockading squadron off Cadiz--in-shore squadron--and so on,
all trifle and no plums.
At length the Kraaken, in which I had now served for some time, was
ordered home, and sick of knocking about in a fleet, I got appointed to a
fine eighteen-gun sloop, the Torch, in which we sailed on such a day for
the North Sea--wind foul--weather thick and squally; but towards evening
on the third day, being then off Harwich, it moderated, when we made more
sail, and stood on, and next morning, in the cold, miserable, drenching
haze of an October daybreak, we passed through a fleet of fishing-boats
at anchor. "At anchor," thought I, "and in the middle of the sea,"--but so
it was--all with their tiny cabooses, smoking cheerily, and a solitary
figure, as broad as it was long, stiffly walking to and fro on the
confined decks of the little vessels. It was now that I knew the value of
the saying, "a fisherman's walk, two steps and overboard." With regard to
these same fishermen, I cannot convey a better notion of them, than by
describing one of the two North Sea pilots whom we had on board. This
pilot was a tall, raw-boned subject, about six feet or so, with a blue
face--I could not call it red--and a hawk's-bill nose of the colour of
bronze. His head was defended from the weather by what is technically
called a south-west, pronounced sow-west,--cap, which is in shape like
the thatch of a dustman, composed of canvass, well tarred, with no snout,
but having a long flap hanging down the back to carry the rain over the
cape of the jacket. His chin was embedded in a red comforter that rose to
his ears. His trunk was first of all cased in a shirt of worsted
stocking-net; over this he had a coarse linen shirt, then a thick cloth
waistcoat; a shag jacket was the next layer, and over that was rigged the
large cumbrous pea jacket, reaching to his knees. As for his lower spars,
the rig was still more peculiar;--first of all, he had on a pair of most
comfortable woollen stockings, what we call fleecy hosiery--and the
beauties are peculiarly nice in this respect--then a pair of strong
fearnaught trowsers; over these again are drawn up another pair of
stockings, thick, coarse, rig-and-furrowed as we call them in Scotland,
and above all this were drawn a pair of long, well-greased, and liquored
boots, reaching half-way up the thigh, and altogether impervious to wet.
However comfortable this costume may be in bad weather in board, it is
clear enough that any culprit so swathed, would stand a poor chance of
being saved, were he to fall overboard. The wind now veered round and
round, and baffled, and checked us off, so that it was the sixth night
after we had taken our departure from Harwich before we saw Heligoland
light. We then bore away for Cuxhaven, and I now knew for the first time
that we had a government emissary of some kind or another on board,
although he had hitherto confined himself strictly to the captain's
cabin.
All at once it came on to blow from the north-east, and we were again
driven back among the English fishing boats. The weather was thick as
buttermilk, so we had to keep the bell constantly ringing, as we could not
see the jib-boom end from the forecastle. Every now and then we heard a
small, hard, clanking tinkle, from the fishing-boats, as if an old pot
had been struck instead of a bell, and a faint hollo, "Fishing-smack," as
we shot past them in the fog, while we could scarcely see the vessels at
all. The morning after this particular time to which I allude, was darker
than any which had gone before it; absolutely you could not see the
breadth of the ship from you; and as we had not taken the sun for five
days, we had to grope our way almost entirely by the lead. I had the
forenoon watch, during the whole of which we were amongst a little fleet
of fishing-boats, although we could scarcely see them, but being
unwilling to lose ground by lying to, we fired a gun every half hour, to
give the small craft notice of our vicinity, that they might keep their
bells a-going. Every three or four minutes, the marine drum-boy, or some
amateur performer,--for most sailors would give a glass of grog any day to
be allowed to beat a drum for five minutes on end--beat a short roll, and
often as we drove along, under a reefed foresail, and close reefed
topsails, we could hear the answering tinkle before we saw the craft from
which it proceeded; and when we did perceive her as we flew across her
stern | 2,515.985385 |
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Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
CHRONICLES OF THE SCHOeNBERG-COTTA FAMILY
BY TWO OF THEMSELVES.
NEW YORK:
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY,
PUBLISHERS.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE.
To those unfamiliar with the history of Luther and his times, the title
of this unique work may not sufficiently indicate its character.
The design of the author is to so reproduce the times of the Reformation
as to place them more vividly and impressively before the mind of the
reader than has been done by ordinary historical narratives.
She does this with such remarkable success, that it is difficult to
realize we are not actually hearing Luther and those around him speak.
We seem to be personal actors in the stirring scenes of that eventful
period.
One branch of the Cotta family were Luther's earliest, and ever after,
his most intimate friends. Under the title of "Chronicles" our author
makes the members of this family, (which she brings in almost living
reality before us), to record their daily experiences as connected with
the Reformation age.
This Diary is fictitious, but it is employed with wonderful skill in
bringing the reader face to face with the great ideas and facts
associated with Luther and men of his times, as they are given to us by
accredited history, and is written with a beauty, tenderness and power
rarely equalled.
I.
Else's Story.
Friedrich wishes me to write a chronicle of my life. Friedrich is my
eldest brother. I am sixteen, and he is seventeen, and I have always
been in the habit of doing what he wishes; and therefore, although it
seems to me a very strange idea, I do so now. It is easy for Friedrich
to write a chronicle, or anything else, because he has thoughts. But I
have so few thoughts, I can only write what I see and hear about people
and things. And that is certainly very little to write about, because
everything goes on so much the same always with us. The people around me
are the same I have known since I was a baby, and the things have
changed very little; except that the people are more, because there are
so many little children in our home now, and the things seem to me to
become less, because my father does not grow richer: and there are more
to clothe and feed. However, since Fritz wishes it, I will try;
especially as ink and paper are the two things which are plentiful among
us, because my father is a printer.
Fritz and I have never been separated all our lives until now. Yesterday
he went to the University at Erfurt. It was when I was crying at the
thought of parting with him that he told me his plan about the
chronicle. He is to write one, and I another. He said it would be a help
to him, as our twilight talk has been--when always, ever since I can
remember, we two have crept away in summer into the garden, under the
great pear-tree, and in winter into the deep window of the lumber-room
inside my father's printing-room, where the bales of paper are kept, and
old books are piled up, among which we used to make ourselves a seat.
It may be a help and comfort to Fritz, but I do not see how it ever can
be any to me. He had all the thoughts, and he will have them still. But
I--what shall I have for his voice and his dear face, but cold, blank
paper, and no thoughts at all! Besides, I am so very busy, being the
eldest; and the mother is far from strong, and the father so often wants
me to help him at his types, or to read to him while he sets them.
However, Fritz wishes it, and I shall do it. I wonder what his chronicle
will be like!
But where am I to begin? What is a chronicle? Two of the books in the
Bible are called "Chronicles" in Latin--at least Fritz says that is what
the other long word[1] means--and the first book begins with "Adam," I
know, because I read it one day to my father for his printing. But Fritz
certainly cannot mean me to begin so far back as that. Of course I could
not remember. I think I had better begin with the oldest person I know,
because she is the furthest on the way back to Adam; and that is our
grandmother Von Schoenberg. She is very old--more than sixty--but her
form is so erect, and her dark eyes so piercing, that sometimes she
looks almost younger than her daughter, our precious mother, who is
often bowed down with ill-health and cares.
[Footnote 1: Paralipomenon.]
Our grandmother's father was of a noble Bohemian family, and that is
what links us with the nobles, although my father's family belongs to
the burgher class. Fritz and I like to look at the old seal of our
grandfather Von Schoenberg, with all its quarterings, and to hear the
tales of our knightly and soldier ancestors--of crusader and baron. My
mother, indeed, tells us this is a mean pride, and that my father's
printing-press is a symbol of a truer nobility than any crest of
battle-axe or sword; but our grandmother, I know, thinks it a great
condescension for a Schoenberg to have married into a burgher family.
Fritz feels with my mother, and says the true crusade will be waged by
our father's black types far better than by our great-grandfather's
lances. But the old warfare was so beautiful, with the prancing horses
and the streaming banners! And I cannot help thinking it would have been
pleasanter to sit at the window of some grand old castle like the
Wartburg, which towers above our town, and wave my hand to Fritz, as he
rode, in flashing armour, on his war-horse, down the steep hill side,
instead of climbing up on piles of dusty books at our lumber-room
window, and watching him, in his humble burgher dress, | 2,516.081739 |
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Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
Friends I have made
By George Manville Fenn
Published by Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co, London, Paris, New York.
This edition dated 1883.
Friends I have made, by George Manville Fenn.
________________________________________________________________________
This version was made from a set of scans that were actually defective.
Two sets of sixteen pages were missing, resulting in the absence of
chapters 10, 11 and 16. In addition some text is missing from chapters
15 and 18. Since the book consists of a collection of almost unrelated
anecdotes it was felt worth our while to make available as much as we
can, as it is certain that a better set of scans of this book may become
available, for instance from the microfilmed set held by Cambridge
University. There are 21 chapters, of which we present 16 in full,
and two with a few paragraphs missing.
________________________________________________________________________
FRIENDS I HAVE MADE, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.
CHAPTER ONE.
MY LIFE.
May I ask your patience while I introduce myself--the writer of the
following chapters? I am sitting before the looking-glass at the end of
my room as I write, I not from any vanity, you will readily perceive
that as you read on--but so that I may try and reflect with my ink the
picture that I wish to present to you of a rather sad--I only say
_rather_, for, upon the whole, I am very cheerful,--thin, pale,
careworn-looking woman, with hair that has long been scant and grey--
whiter, perhaps, than that of many people at eight-and-forty.
Eight-and-forty! What a great age that seems to the young; and yet how
few the years, save in one period of my life, have appeared to me! At
times I can hardly realise that I am decidedly elderly, so busy has been
my life, so swiftly has it glided away, thinking so much as I have of
other people and their lives as well as of my own.
I never knew how it was, but, somehow, those with whom I came in contact
| 2,516.180586 |
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Produced by Brian Coe, Robert Tonsing and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
THE
FRENCH IN ALGIERS.
THE
SOLDIER OF THE FOREIGN LEGION;
AND THE
PRISONERS OF ABD-EL-KADER.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN AND FRENCH BY
LADY DUFF GORDON.
_NEW EDITION._
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1855.
PREFACE.
Clemens Lamping, the author of the first part of this little volume,
is a young lieutenant in the Oldenburg service, who, tired of the
monotonous life of a garrison, resigned his commission in July, 1839,
and went to Spain to win his spurs under Espartero. Unfortunately he
was detained by contrary winds, and arrived just as the treaty of
Bergara had put an end to the war.
After spending six months at Madrid in abortive attempts to join
the army in Arragon, then the seat of war, he resolved to go to
Africa, and take part in the French crusade against the infidels.
He accordingly went to Cadiz, encountering many adventures on his
way through La Mancha and Andaluzia, and thence to Algiers, where he
entered the foreign legion as a volunteer.
After two years of danger and hardship, the author returned to
Oldenburg, having lost many illusions, and gained some experience.
His sovereign restored him to his former grade in the service of
Oldenburg, where he sits at his ease by his own fireside, and relates
his adventures to his friends.
Lieutenant Lamping’s Reminiscences are followed by the abridgement
of a narrative of five months’ captivity among the Arabs, by M. de
France, a lieutenant in the French navy. The author modestly assures
his readers that he is better skilled in the management of a ship than
of his pen, and that his book would never have been published but
at the request of his friends. It has nevertheless reached a second
edition in France.
L. D. G.
CONTENTS.
————
THE SOLDIER OF THE FOREIGN LEGION.
CHAPTER I.
Page
Coleah—Arab Coffee-houses—The Hakim’s—Court of Justice—Arab Women
and Domestic Life—Marriages—False alarm—Sofi the Modern
Hâfiz—Grief for the departed glory of the Moors—Abubekr’s piety
rewarded 1
CHAPTER II.
Algiers—The Poetry of the Galleys—Bath—Palace at Mustapha
Superieur—General Von Hulsen—I join the Foreign Legion—French
colonization in Africa—Hassan, the coffee-house keeper 15
CHAPTER III.
Dschigeli—The Foreign Legion—Climate—Attack of the Kabyles on the
Blockhouses—Massacre of a Kabyle Village—Samoom—Homeric Fight—Death
of my Friend—Fort Duquesne—Formidable Starfish—Shipwreck—Engagement
with the Kabyles—Escape of the Prisoners—Burial of their Dead 22
CHAPTER IV.
Budschia—Monkeys—March to Buterback—General Bugeaud—Algiers—Lord
Exmouth and the Dey—Progress of civilization and jollity among the
Arabs of both sexes—Songs 34
CHAPTER V.
March to Delhi Ibrahim—Horrible scene—Blidah—_Colonne
Expéditionnaire_—Dukes of Nemours and Aumale—Pass of the Col de
Mussaia—Medeah—Arab burial-grounds—Marabout in the mountains—Taking
of Callah—March through the Desert—Destruction of Abd-el-Kader’s
castle—Milianah—Night march—Sight of the Sea 41
CHAPTER VI.
Arab Valour—Abd-el-Kader—Snakes—Burning the Crops—Roman Bridge—The
Duke of Aumale falls sick—Plundering of a Kabyle Village—The
Prisoners—The Queen’s Tomb—Her royal crown—Inexpediency of turning
the sword into a ploughshare 64
CHAPTER VII.
Inspection of our Regiment—Military intendants—_Hôpital du Dey_—Its
inmates—Eastern Garden 76
CHAPTER VIII.
Voyage to Mostaganem—Storm—Funeral at sea—Landing—Bivouac
Matamon—Bey of Mostaganem—Arabic music—Captain Lièvre—African
spring—French and Arab Soldiers 79
THE PRISONERS OF ABD-EL-KADER.
CHAPTER I.
Page
Life on board the brig—Expedition up the country—Am noosed by the
Arabs—They contend for the pleasure of cutting off my head—Adda
sends me to Abd-el-Kader—The head—Painful journey—Arrival at
Abd-el-Kader’s camp 93
CHAPTER II.
Reception at Abd-el-Kader’s camp—Description of Abd-el-Kader—His
tent—Unexpected meeting with M. Meurice—Abd-el-Kader’s officers 100
CHAPTER III.
Meurice’s story—The camp and the soldiery—The Adventures of a
German renegade—Arab horses—Prayers—The Sultan’s band of music 106
CHAPTER IV.
French deserters—Sardinian prisoners—Their story—Letter to
Algiers—Raising the camp—Abd-el-Kader—The only cannon—The Bey of
Mostaganem—Return to El-Kaala 113
CHAPTER V.
Method of cooling a tent—Abd-el-Kader’s munificence—Tribute paid
in kind—A good dinner—Coffee—Supplies from Morocco—Letter from
General Létang—Arab foray—Prisoners—The beautiful black slave girl
120
CHAPTER VI.
Revolt of Abd-el-Kader’s uncle—His letter—Jews—Attack on the
Beni-Flitas and Houledscherifs—Horrible execution of a
prisoner—Vermin—Tekedemta—Letter from the Arab prisoners at
Marseilles 127
CHAPTER VII.
Ruins of Tekedemta—Abd-el-Kader’s schemes—Attempt to convert
me—More tribute—Terms of Exchange—Tumblers and Singers—Restoration
of Tekedemta 134
CHAPTER VIII.
Marches—The five marabouts—Cards and chess—Night March—The
Sultan’s arrival at the camp—His wife—Female camp—Raka the
cup-bearer—Abd-el-Kader’s Court of Justice 141
CHAPTER IX.
Offers of exchange—Report of the death of the King of
France—Festivities—Sham fight—Two French soldiers—M.
Lanternier—Meurice gets worse—Baths at Mascara—Lanternier’s
prison—His wife and daughter sent to the Emperor of Morocco—Little
Benedicto 149
CHAPTER X.
Prison at Mascara—Death of Meurice—Lanternier joins us—Four new
prisoners—Their adventures—Our way of passing our time—Conversation
of the Prisoners—Fourteen heads—The Italians 158
CHAPTER XI.
Departure from Mascara—Striking scene—Milianah—Moussa the
renegade—His letter—The Rhamadan—Delays—The Bey of Milianah—Setting
out for Algiers—The Bey’s daughters—First sight of Algiers—Fresh
delays and disappointments—The Hakem’s hospitality—Arrival at
Algiers—Benedicto—The Arab prisoners at Marseilles 165
THE FRENCH IN ALGIERS.
================
CHAPTER I.
Coleah—Arab Coffee-houses—The Hakim’s—Court of Justice—Arab Women and
Domestic Life—Marriages—False Alarm—Sofi the Modern Hâfiz—Grief for
the Departed Glory of the Moors—Abubekr’s Piety rewarded.
Coleah, September, 1841.
At last, my dear friend, after so many hardships and such various
wanderings, I have leisure to write to you; and I have much, very
much, to tell. The events of my life have lately followed each other
in such rapid succession, that the dangers and sorrows of the noble,
much-enduring Odysseus, nay, even the immortal adventures of the
valiant Knight of La Mancha, are mere child’s play in comparison with
my own.
Since the month of April we have scarce had time to take breath; so
rapidly did expedition follow expedition, and _razzia razzia_. The
new Governor, Bugeaud, naturally enough wishes to show that he is
equal to his post. His predecessor, Vallée, drew upon himself the
imputation of indolence, but no one can deny to Bugeaud the possession
of great energy and untiring activity. He encounters the Arabs with
their own weapons, harassing them with incessant attacks, and burning
and plundering the whole country. We have made two very important
expeditions; the first against Thaza, a strong fortress belonging to
Abd-el-Kader, situated on the borders of the desert. After destroying
this place, we returned through the iron gates (_portes de fer_) to
our own camp; this expedition occupied about four weeks. A few days
afterwards we started again to throw provisions into Milianah, and
to lay waste the plains of the Chellif with fire and sword. It was
exactly harvest time. In order to cut off from the Bedouins all means
of existence, it was of course necessary to drive away their cattle
and to burn their corn. Before long the whole plain looked like a sea
of fire.
These expeditions, sent out in the very hottest season of the year,
had such an effect upon the health of the soldiers, that the Governor
was compelled to allow them a short rest. The regiment to which
I belonged had scarcely a third part fit for service, the other
two-thirds were either dead or in the hospital. We were accordingly
sent to Coleah to recruit our strength.
You will have a tolerably correct idea of our recruiting quarters when
I tell you that one day is passed on guard, another in reconnoitring
the enemy for several hours, and the third in working at the dry ditch
(a sort of _pendant_ to the great wall of China) intended to defend
the plain of the Metidja against any sudden attacks of the Hadjutes.
I assure you, however, that we think this life vastly agreeable, and
consider ourselves as well off as if we were in Abraham’s bosom. There
was a time, indeed, when I should not have been quite so contented
with my lot, but every thing is relative in this best of all possible
worlds.
Coleah is a true Arab town, which stands on the south-eastern
declivity of the Sahel range of mountains, in a charming little nook,
and is well supplied with water.
We are only twelve leagues from Algiers and about three from the sea,
the proximity to which makes the place extremely healthy. The constant
sea breeze renders the heat even of this season quite tolerable.
At our feet is stretched the vast plain of the Metidja bounded by the
blue hills of the lesser Atlas range. We are quartered in a fortified
camp outside the town, on a small eminence which commands it. Of
course all the gates of the town and the market-place are guarded by
our troops. My leisure hours, which, indeed, are not too many, are
generally passed in sauntering about the streets.
The inhabitants of Coleah are pure descendants of the Moors, and still
retain some traces of their former refinement; you must not confound
them with the Bedouins and Kabyles, who always have been, and still
are the lowest in point of civilisation. I have nowhere found the Arab
so polished and so attractive as at Coleah, not even at Algiers and
Oran; in those towns, their intercourse with the French has called
forth all their rapacity, and spoiled the simplicity of their manners.
It is a remarkable fact that in all these towns near the sea the
Spanish language is still spoken, of course in a most corrupt dialect;
a proof that some connection with Spain has constantly existed—often,
no doubt, a very reluctant one on their parts: as in the reign of
Charles V., who conquered great part of this coast.
To me this is very welcome, as it enables me to talk with the Arabs;
it is not | 2,517.983631 |
2023-11-16 18:59:01.9704200 | 1,541 | 11 |
Produced by Ben Courtney and PG Distributed Proofreaders
SQUINTY
THE COMICAL PIG
HIS MANY ADVENTURES
BY
RICHARD BARNUM
Author of "Slicko, the Jumping Squirrel,"
"Mappo, the Merry Monkey,"
"Tum Tum, the Jolly Elephant,"
"Don, a Runaway Dog," etc.
ILLUSTRATED BY
HARRIET H. TOOKER
KNEETIME ANIMAL STORIES
By Richard Barnum
SQUINTY, THE COMICAL PIG
SLICKO, THE JUMPING SQUIRREL
MAPPO, THE MERRY MONKEY
TUM TUM, THE JOLLY ELEPHANT
DON, A RUNAWAY DOG
Large 12mo. Illustrated. Price per volume
40 cents, postpaid
1915
_Squinty, the Comical Pig_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I SQUINTY AND THE DOG
II SQUINTY RUNS AWAY
III SQUINTY IS LOST
IV SQUINTY GETS HOME
V SQUINTY AND THE BOY
VI SQUINTY ON A JOURNEY
VII SQUINTY LEARNS A TRICK
VIII SQUINTY IN THE WOODS
IX SQUINTY'S BALLOON RIDE
X SQUINTY AND THE SQUIRREL
XI SQUINTY AND THE MERRY MONKEY
XII SQUINTY GETS HOME AGAIN
ILLUSTRATIONS
Squinty looked at the beautiful wagons, and at the strange animals
Squinty saw rushing toward him, Don, the big black and white dog
"Hop on," he said to the toad. "I won't bother you."
"Oh, Father!" exclaimed the boy, "do let me have just one little pig"
Squinty gave a little spring, and over the rope he went
The next moment Squinty felt himself lifted off the ground
"Why, I am Mappo, the merry monkey," was the answer
SQUINTY, THE COMICAL PIG
CHAPTER I
SQUINTY AND THE DOG
Squinty was a little pig. You could tell he was a pig just as soon as
you looked at him, because he had the cutest little curly tail, as
though it wanted to tie itself into a bow, but was not quite sure
whether that was the right thing to do. And Squinty had a skin that was
as pink, under his white, hairy bristles, as a baby's toes.
Also Squinty had the oddest nose! It was just like a rubber ball,
flattened out, and when Squinty moved his nose up and down, or sideways,
as he did when he smelled the nice sour milk the farmer was bringing for
the pigs' dinner, why, when Squinty did that with his nose, it just made
you want to laugh right out loud.
But the funniest part of Squinty was his eyes, or, rather, one eye. And
that eye squinted just as well as any eye ever squinted. Somehow or
other, I don't just know why exactly, or I would tell you, the lid of
one of Squinty's eyes was heavier than the other. That eye opened only
half way, and when Squinty looked up at you from the pen, where he lived
with his mother and father and little brothers and sisters, why there
was such a comical look on Squinty's face that you wanted to laugh right
out loud again.
In fact, lots of boys and girls, when they came to look at Squinty in
his pen, could not help laughing when he peered up at them, with one eye
widely open, and the other half shut.
"Oh, what a comical pig!" the boys and girls would cry. "What is his
name?"
"Oh, I guess we'll call him Squinty," the farmer said; and so Squinty
was named.
Perhaps if his mother had had her way about it she would have given
Squinty another name, as she did his brothers and sisters. In fact she
did name all of them except Squinty.
One of the little pigs was named Wuff-Wuff, another Curly Tail, another
Squealer, another Wee-Wee, and another Puff-Ball. There were seven pigs
in all, and Squinty was the last one, so you see he came from quite a
large family. When his mother had named six of her little pigs she came
to Squinty.
"Let me see," grunted Mrs. Pig in her own way, for you know animals have
a language of their own which no one else can understand. "Let me see,"
said Mrs. Pig, "what shall I call you?"
She was thinking of naming him Floppy, because the lid of one of his
eyes sort of flopped down. But just then a lot of boys and girls came
running out to the pig pen.
The boys and girls had come on a visit to the farmer who owned the pigs,
and when they looked in, and saw big Mr. and Mrs. Pig, and the little
ones, one boy called out:
"Oh, what a queer little pig, with one eye partly open! And how funny he
looks at you! What is his name?"
"Well, I guess we'll call him Squinty," the farmer had said. And so,
just as I have told you, Squinty got his name.
"Humph! Squinty!" exclaimed Mrs. Pig, as she heard what the farmer said.
"I don't know as I like that."
"Oh, it will do very well," answered Mr. Pig. "It will save you thinking
up a name for him. And, after all, you know, he _does_ squint. Not that
it amounts to anything, in fact it is rather stylish, I think. Let him
be called Squinty."
"All right," answered Mrs. Pig. So Squinty it was.
"Hello, Squinty!" called the boys and girls, giving the little pig his
new name. "Hello, Squinty!"
"Wuff! Wuff!" grunted Squinty.
That meant, in his language, "Hello!" you see. For though Squinty, and
his mother and father, and brothers and sisters, could understand man
talk, and boy and girl talk, they could not speak that language
themselves, but had to talk in their own way.
Nearly all animals understand our talk, even though they can not speak
to us. Just look at a dog, for instance. When you call to him: "Come
here!" doesn't he come? Of course he does. And when you say: "Lie down,
sir!" doesn't he lie down? that is if he is a good dog, and minds? He
understands | 2,517.99046 |
2023-11-16 18:59:02.0595750 | 1,376 | 6 |
Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger
PASSAGES FROM THE AMERICAN NOTE-BOOKS, VOLUME II
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
[EXTRACTS FROM HIS PRIVATE LETTERS.]
Brook Farm, Oak Hill, April 13th, 1841.--.... Here I am in a polar
Paradise! I know not how to interpret this aspect of nature,--whether it
be of good or evil omen to our enterprise. But I reflect that the
Plymouth pilgrims arrived in the midst of storm, and stepped ashore upon
mountain snowdrifts; and, nevertheless, they prospered, and became a
great people,--and doubtless it will be the same with us. I laud my
stars, however, that you will not have your first impressions of
(perhaps) our future home from such a day as this.... Through faith,
I persist in believing that Spring and Summer will come in their due
season; but the unregenerated man shivers within me, and suggests a doubt
whether I may not have wandered within the precincts of the Arctic
Circle, and chosen my heritage among everlasting snows.... Provide
yourself with a good stock of furs, and, if you can obtain the skin of a
polar bear, you will find it a very suitable summer dress for this
region....
I have not yet taken my first lesson in agriculture, except that I went
to see our cows foddered, yesterday afternoon. We have eight of our own;
and the number is now increased by a transcendental heifer belonging to
Miss Margaret Fuller. She is very fractious, I believe, and apt to kick
over the milk-pail.... I intend to convert myself into a milkmaid
this evening, but I pray Heaven that Mr. Ripley may be moved to assign me
the kindliest cow in the herd, otherwise I shall perform my duty with
fear and trembling....
I like my brethren in affliction very well; and, could you see us sitting
round our table at meal-times, before the great kitchen fire, you would
call it a cheerful sight. Mrs. B------ is a most comfortable woman to
behold. She looks as if her ample person were stuffed full of
tenderness,--indeed, as if she were all one great, kind heart.
* * * * * *
April 14th, 10 A. M.--.... I did not milk the cows last night, because
Mr. Ripley was afraid to trust them to my hands, or me to their horns, I
know not which. But this morning I have done wonders. Before breakfast,
I went out to the barn and began to chop hay for the cattle, and with
such "righteous vehemence," as Mr. Ripley says, did I labor, that in the
space of ten minutes I broke the machine. Then I brought wood and
replenished the fires; and finally went down to breakfast, and ate up a
huge mound of buckwheat cakes. After breakfast, Mr. Ripley put a
four-pronged instrument into my hands, which he gave me to understand was
called a pitchfork; and he and Mr. Farley being armed with similar
weapons, we all three commenced a gallant attack upon a heap of manure.
This office being concluded, and I having purified myself, I sit down to
finish this letter....
Miss Fuller's cow hooks the other cows, and has made herself ruler of the
herd, and behaves in a very tyrannical manner.... I shall make an
excellent husbandman,--I feel the original Adam reviving within me.
April 16th.--.... Since I last wrote, there has been an addition to
our community of four gentlemen in sables, who promise to be among our
most useful and respectable members. They arrived yesterday about noon.
Mr. Ripley had proposed to them to join us, no longer ago than that very
morning. I had some conversation with them in the afternoon, and was
glad to hear them express much satisfaction with their new abode and all
the arrangements. They do not appear to be very communicative, however,
--or perhaps it may be merely an external reserve, like my own, to shield
their delicacy. Several of their prominent characteristics, as well as
their black attire, lead me to believe that they are members of the
clerical profession; but I have not yet ascertained from their own lips
what has been the nature of their past lives. I trust to have much
pleasure in their society, and, sooner or later, that we shall all of us
derive great strength from our intercourse with them. I cannot too
highly applaud the readiness with which these four gentlemen in black
have thrown aside all the fopperies and flummeries which have their
origin in a false state of society. When I last saw them, they looked as
heroically regardless of the stains and soils incident to our profession
as I did when I emerged from the gold-mine....
I have milked a cow!!!.... The herd has rebelled against the
usurpation of Miss Fuller's heifer; and, whenever they are turned out of
the barn, she is compelled to take refuge under our protection. So much
did she impede my labors by keeping close to me, that I found it
necessary to give her two or three gentle pats with a shovel; but still
she preferred to trust herself to my tender mercies, rather than venture
among the horns of the herd. She is not an amiable cow; but she has a
very intelligent face, and seems to be of a reflective cast of character.
I doubt not that she will soon perceive the expediency of being on good
terms with the rest of the sisterhood.
I have not yet been twenty yards from our house and barn; but I begin to
perceive that this is a beautiful place. The scenery is of a mild and
placid character, with nothing bold in its aspect; but I think its
beauties will grow upon us, and make us love it the more, the longer we
live here. | 2,518.079615 |
2023-11-16 18:59:02.1632020 | 1,960 | 13 |
E-text prepared by Ruth Hart
Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustrations.
See 26633-h.htm or 26633-h.zip:
(http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/6/6/3/26633/26633-h/26633-h.htm)
or
(http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/6/6/3/26633/26633-h.zip)
SECOND SIGHT
A Study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance
by
SEPHARIAL
Author of "A Manual of Astrology," "Prognostic Astronomy," "A Manual
of Occultism," "Kabalistic Astrology," "The Kabala of Numbers,"
Etc., Etc.
London
William Rider & Son, Limited
1912
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
Brunswick Street, Stamford Street, S.E.,
and Bungay, Suffolk.
CONTENTS
Introduction 7
Chapter I. The Scientific Position 10
Chapter II. Materials and Conditions 21
Chapter III. The Faculty of Seership 29
Chapter IV. Preliminaries and Practice 39
Chapter V. Kinds of Vision 51
Chapter VI. Obstacles to Clairvoyance 59
Chapter VII. Symbolism 67
Chapter VIII. Allied Psychic Phases 76
Chapter IX. Experience and Use 84
Conclusion 93
INTRODUCTION
Few words will be necessary by way of preface to this book,
which is designed as an introduction to a little understood and
much misrepresented subject.
I have not here written anything which is intended to displace
the observations of other authors on this subject, nor will it be
found that anything has been said subversive of the conclusions
arrived at by experimentalists who have essayed the study
of clairvoyant phenomena in a manner that is altogether
commendable, and who have sought to place the subject on a
demonstrable and scientific basis. I refer to the proceedings of
the Society for Psychical Research.
In the following pages I have endeavoured to indicate the nature
of the faculty of Second Sight or Clairvoyance, the means of its
development, the use of suitable media or agents for this
purpose, and the kind of results that may be expected to follow
a regulated effort in this direction. I have also sought to show
that the development of the psychic faculties may form an
orderly step in the process of human unfoldment and perfectibility.
As far as the nature and scope of this little work will allow, I
have sought to treat the subject on a broad and general basis
rather than pursue more particular and possibly more attractive
scientific lines. What I have here said is the result of a personal
experience of some years in this and other forms of psychic
development and experimentation. My conclusions are given
for what they are worth, and I have no wish to persuade my
readers to my view of the nature and source of these abnormal
phenomena. The reader is at liberty to form his own theory in
regard to them, but such theory should be inclusive of all the
known facts. The theories depending on hypnotic suggestion
may be dismissed as inadequate. There appear to remain only
the inspirational theory of direct revelation and the theory of the
world-soul enunciated by the Occultists. I have elected in
favour of the latter for reasons which, I think, will be
conspicuous to those who read these pages.
I should be the last to allow the study of psychism to usurp the
legitimate place in life of intellectual and spiritual pursuits, and
I look with abhorrence upon the flippant use made of the
psychic faculties by a certain class of pseudo-occultists who
serve up this kind of thing with their five o'clock tea. But I
regard an ordered psychism as a most valuable accessory to
intellectual and spiritual development and as filling a natural
place in the process of unfoldment between that intellectualism
that is grounded in the senses and that higher intelligence which
receives its light from within. From this view-point the
following pages are written, and will, I trust, prove helpful.
CHAPTER I.
THE SCIENTIFIC POSITION
It would perhaps be premature to make any definite pronouncement
as to the scientific position in regard to the psychic phenomenon
known as "scrying," and certainly presumptuous on my part
to cite an authority from among the many who have examined
this subject, since all are not agreed upon the nature and
source of the observed phenomena. Their names are, moreover,
already identified with modern scientific research and theory,
so that to associate them with experimental psychology would
be to lend colour to the idea that modern science has recognized
this branch of knowledge. Nothing, perhaps, is further from
the fact, and while it cannot in any way be regarded as derogatory
to the highest scientist to be associated with others, of less
scientific attainment but of equal integrity, in this comparatively new
field of enquiry, it may lead to popular error to institute a connection.
It is still fresh in the mind how the Darwinian hypothesis was utterly
misconceived by the popular mind, the suggestion that man was descended
from the apes being generally quoted as a correct expression of
Darwin's theory, whereas he never suggested any such thing,
but that man and the apes had a common ancestor, which makes
of the ape rather a degenerate lemur than a human ancestor.
Other and more prevalent errors will occur to the reader, these
being due to the use of what is called "the evidence of the
senses"; and of all criteria the evidence of sensation is perhaps
the most faulty. Logical inference from deductive or inductive
reasoning has often enough been a good monitor to sense-perception,
and has, moreover, pioneered the man of science to correct
knowledge on more than one occasion. But as far as we know
or can learn from the history of human knowledge, our senses
have been the chiefest source of error. It is with considerable
caution that the scientist employs the evidence from sense
alone, and in the study of experimental psychology it is the sense
which has first to be corrected, and which, in fact, forms the great
factor in the equation. A person informs me that he can see a vision in
the crystal ball before him, and although I am in the same relation
with the "field" as he, I cannot see anything except accountable
reflections. This fact does not give any room for contradicting him or
any right to infer that it is all imagination. It is futile to say the
vision does not exist. If he sees it, it does exist so far as he is
concerned. There is no more a universal community of sensation than of
thought. When I am at work my own thought is more real than any
impression received through the sense organs. It is louder than the
babel of voices or the strains of instrumental music, and more
conspicuous than any object upon which the eye may fall. These external
impressions are admitted or shut out at will. I then know that
my thought is as real as my senses, that the images of thought
are as perceptible as those exterior to it and in every way as
objective and real. The thought-form has this advantage,
however, that it can be given a durable or a temporary existence,
and can be taken about with me without being liable to impost
as "excess luggage." In the matter of evidence in psychological
questions, therefore, sense perceptions are only second-rate
criteria and ought to be received with caution.
Almost all persons dream, and while dreaming they see and
hear, touch and taste, without questioning for a moment the
reality of these experiences. The dreaming person loses sight of
the fact that he is in a bedroom of a particular house, that he has
certain relations with others sleeping in the same house. He
loses sight of the fact that his name is, let us say, Henry, and
that he is famous for the manufacture of a particular brand of
soap or cheese. For him, and as long as it lasts, the dream is the
one reality. Now the question of the philosopher has always
been: which is the true dream, the sleeping dream or the waking
dream? The fact that the one is continuous of itself while the
other is not, and that we always fall into a new dream but
always wake to the same reality, has given a permanent value to
the waking or external life, and an equally fictitious one to the
interior or dreaming life. But what if the dream life became
more or less permanent to the exclusion of all other memories
and sensations? We should then get a case of insanity in which
hallucination would be symptomic. (The dream state is more or
less permanent with certain poetical temperaments, and if there
is any insanity attaching to it at all, it consists in the inability
to react.) Imagination, deep thought and grief are as much
anaesthetic as chloroform. But | 2,518.183242 |
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Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
THE STEPHENS FAMILY
A Genealogy of the Descendants of Joshua Stevens
Written by Bascom Asbury Cecil Stephens, Los Angeles,
California, A. D. 1892
Printed, with a few additions, by Alonzo Smith Bower, Lima,
Ohio, A. D. 1910
JOSHUA STEPHENS, (6), the ancestor of this STEPHENS Family, was born,
according to the family tradition, in what is now the County of Berkes,
in the State of Pennsylvania, of Welsh parents, A. D. 1733. According to
the recollection of C. C. Stephens, (176) his grandfather, E. D.
Stephens, (16), son of this Joshua Stephens, (6), stated to him in an
interview at Hardin, Ohio, about 1860, that Joshua Stephens's father's
name was also Joshua Stephens, (3), which would make him the senior;
that Joshua Stephens, Senior, with two brothers, David, (5), and
Ebenezer, (4), came over from Wales. Of these three last named persons
nothing further is known at the present writing, than the foregoing
statement.
That there was a large Welsh immigration into the present territory of
Berkes County prior to 1733, the birth year of Joshua Stephens, Jr.,
(6), is a fact well corroborated by the (Stot.) history of Pennsylvania.
EXPLANATION
The principal abbreviations used in these pages are:
b. standing for born.
m. standing for married.
d. standing for died.
y. standing for young.
For convenience and distinction, as in all genealogical works, each name
is given a number separately. Without this it would be difficult to tell
which Joshua Stephens is meant, for there are many of that name, as also
others. The numbers are also valuable for tracing out any particular
pedigree; for instance, suppose that William Stephens, of Camp Verde,
should desire to know the full line of his paternal ancestry, he would
find his name on page (41) 56, where his number is | 2,518.183523 |
2023-11-16 18:59:02.2634880 | 6,816 | 43 |
*The Riverside Biographical Series*
NUMBER 5
THOMAS JEFFERSON
BY
HENRY CHILDS MERWIN
[Illustration: Th. Jefferson]
THOMAS JEFFERSON
BY
HENRY CHILDS MERWIN
[Publisher's emblem]
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
Boston: 4 Park Street; New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street
Chicago: 378-388 Wabash Avenue
*The Riverside Press, Cambridge*
COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY HENRY C. MERWIN
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. YOUTH AND TRAINING 1
II. VIRGINIA IN JEFFERSON'S DAY 16
III. MONTICELLO AND ITS HOUSEHOLD 28
IV. JEFFERSON IN THE REVOLUTION 36
V. REFORM WORK IN VIRGINIA 45
VI. GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA 59
VII. ENVOY AT PARIS 71
VIII. SECRETARY OF STATE 82
IX. THE TWO PARTIES 98
X. PRESIDENT JEFFERSON 114
XI. SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM 130
XII. A PUBLIC MAN IN PRIVATE LIFE 149
THOMAS JEFFERSON
I
YOUTH AND TRAINING
Thomas Jefferson was born upon a frontier estate in Albemarle County,
Virginia, April 13, 1743. His father, Peter Jefferson, was of Welsh
descent, not of aristocratic birth, but of that yeoman class which
constitutes the backbone of all societies. The elder Jefferson had
uncommon powers both of mind and body. His strength was such that he could
simultaneously "head up"--that is, raise from their sides to an upright
position--two hogsheads of tobacco, weighing nearly one thousand pounds
apiece. Like Washington, he was a surveyor; and there is a tradition that
once, while running his lines through a vast wilderness, his assistants
gave out from famine and fatigue, and Peter Jefferson pushed on alone,
sleeping at night in hollow trees, amidst howling beasts of prey, and
subsisting on the flesh of a pack mule which he had been obliged to kill.
Thomas Jefferson inherited from his father a love of mathematics and of
literature. Peter Jefferson had not received a classical education, but he
was a diligent reader of a few good books, chiefly Shakespeare, The
Spectator, Pope, and Swift; and in mastering these he was forming his mind
on great literature after the manner of many another Virginian,--for the
houses of that colony held English books as they held English furniture.
The edition of Shakespeare (and it is a handsome one) which Peter
Jefferson used is still preserved among the heirlooms of his descendants.
It was probably in his capacity of surveyor that Mr. Jefferson made the
acquaintance of the Randolph family, and he soon became the bosom friend
of William Randolph, the young proprietor of Tuckahoe. The Randolphs had
been for ages a family of consideration in the midland counties of
England, claiming descent from the Scotch Earls of Murray, and connected
by blood or marriage with many of the English nobility. In 1735 Peter
Jefferson established himself as a planter by patenting a thousand acres
of land in Goochland County, his estate lying near and partly including
the outlying hills, which form a sort of picket line for the Blue Mountain
range. At the same time his friend William Randolph patented an adjoining
estate of twenty-four hundred acres; and inasmuch as there was no good
site for a house on Jefferson's estate, Mr. Randolph conveyed to him four
hundred acres for that purpose, the consideration expressed in the deed,
which is still extant, being "Henry Weatherbourne's biggest bowl of Arrack
punch."
Here Peter Jefferson built his house, and here, three years later, he
brought his bride,--a handsome girl of nineteen, and a kinswoman of William
Randolph, being Jane, oldest child of Isham Randolph, then
Adjutant-General of Virginia. She was born in London, in the parish of
Shadwell, and Shadwell was the name given by Peter Jefferson to his
estate. This marriage was a fortunate union of the best aristocratic and
yeoman strains in Virginia.
In the year 1744 the new County of Albemarle was carved out of Goochland
County, and Peter Jefferson was appointed one of the three justices who
constituted the county court and were the real rulers of the shire. He was
made also Surveyor, and later Colonel of the county. This last office was
regarded as the chief provincial honor in Virginia, and it was especially
important when he held it, for it was the time of the French war, and
Albemarle was in the debatable land.
In the midst of that war, in August, 1757, Peter Jefferson died suddenly,
of a disease which is not recorded, but which was probably produced by
fatigue and exposure. He was a strong, just, kindly man, sought for as a
protector of the widow and the orphan, and respected and loved by Indians
as well as white men. Upon his deathbed he left two injunctions regarding
his son Thomas: one, that he should receive a classical education; the
other, that he should never be permitted to neglect the physical exercises
necessary for health and strength. Of these dying commands his son often
spoke with gratitude; and he used to say that if he were obliged to choose
between the education and the estate which his father gave him, he would
choose the education. Peter Jefferson left eight children, but only one
son besides Thomas, and that one died in infancy. Less is known of
Jefferson's mother; but he derived from her a love of music, an
extraordinary keenness of susceptibility, and a corresponding refinement
of taste.
His father's death left Jefferson his own master. In one of his later
letters he says: "At fourteen years of age the whole care and direction of
myself were thrown on myself entirely, without a relative or a friend
qualified to advise or guide me."
The first use that he made of his liberty was to change his school, and to
become a pupil of the Rev. James Maury,--an excellent clergyman and
scholar, of Huguenot descent, who had recently settled in Albemarle
County. With him young Jefferson continued for two years, studying Greek
and Latin, and becoming noted, as a schoolmate afterward reported, for
scholarship, industry, and shyness. He was a good runner, a keen
fox-hunter, and a bold and graceful rider.
At the age of sixteen, in the spring of 1760, he set out on horseback for
Williamsburg, the capital of Virginia, where he proposed to enter the
college of William and Mary. Up to this time he had never seen a town, or
even a village, except the hamlet of Charlottesville, which is about four
miles from Shadwell. Williamsburg--described in contemporary language as
"the centre of taste, fashion, and refinement"--was an unpaved village, of
about one thousand inhabitants, surrounded by an expanse of dark green
tobacco fields as far as the eye could reach. It was, however, well
situated upon a plateau midway between the York and James rivers, and was
swept by breezes which tempered the heat of the summer sun and kept the
town free from mosquitoes.
Williamsburg was also well laid out, and it has the honor of having served
as a model for the city of Washington. It consisted chiefly of a single
street, one hundred feet broad and three quarters of a mile long, with the
capitol at one end, the college at the other, and a ten-acre square with
public buildings in the middle. Here in his palace lived the colonial
governor. The town also contained "ten or twelve gentlemen's families,
besides merchants and tradesmen." These were the permanent inhabitants;
and during the "season"--the midwinter months--the planters' families came
to town in their coaches, the gentlemen on horseback, and the little
capital was then a scene of gayety and dissipation.
Such was Williamsburg in 1760 when Thomas Jefferson, the frontier
planter's son, rode slowly into town at the close of an early spring day,
surveying with the outward indifference, but keen inward curiosity of a
countryman, the place which was to be his residence for seven years,--in
one sense the most important, because the most formative, period of his
life. He was a tall stripling, rather slightly built,--after the model of
the Randolphs,--but extremely well-knit, muscular, and agile. His face was
freckled, and his features were somewhat pointed. His hair is variously
described as red, reddish, and sandy, and the color of his eyes as blue,
gray, and also hazel. The expression of his face was frank, cheerful, and
engaging. He was not handsome in youth, but "a very good-looking man in
middle age, and quite a handsome old man." At maturity he stood six feet
two and a half inches. "Mr. Jefferson," said Mr. Bacon, at one time the
superintendent of his estate, "was well proportioned and straight as a
gun-barrel. He was like a fine horse, he had no surplus flesh. He had an
iron constitution, and was very strong."
Jefferson was always the most cheerful and optimistic of men. He once
said, after remarking that something must depend "on the chapter of
events:" "I am in the habit of turning over the next leaf with hope, and,
though it often fails me, there is still another and another behind." No
doubt this sanguine trait was due in part at least to his almost perfect
health. He was, to use his own language, "blessed with organs of digestion
which accepted and concocted, without ever murmuring, whatever the palate
chose to consign to them." His habits through life were good. He never
smoked, he drank wine in moderation, he went to bed early, he was regular
in taking exercise, either by walking or, more commonly, by riding on
horseback.
The college of William and Mary in Jefferson's day is described by Mr.
Parton as "a medley of college, Indian mission, and grammar school,
ill-governed, and distracted by dissensions among its ruling powers." But
Jefferson had a thirst for knowledge and a capacity for acquiring it,
which made him almost independent of institutions of learning. Moreover,
there was one professor who had a large share in the formation of his
mind. "It was my great good fortune," he wrote in his brief autobiography,
"and what probably fixed the destinies of my life, that Dr. William Small,
of Scotland, was then professor of mathematics; a man profound in most of
the useful branches of science, with a happy talent of communication and
an enlarged liberal mind. He, most happily for me, soon became attached to
me, and made me his daily companion when not engaged in the school; and
from his conversation I got my first views of the expansion of science,
and of the system of things in which we are placed."
Jefferson, like all well-bred Virginians, was brought up as an
Episcopalian; but as a young man, perhaps owing in part to the influence
of Dr. Small, he ceased to believe in Christianity as a religion, though
he always at home attended the Episcopal church, and though his daughters
were brought up in that faith. If any theological term is to be applied to
him, he should be called a Deist. Upon the subject of his religious faith,
Jefferson was always extremely reticent. To one or two friends only did he
disclose his creed, and that was in letters which were published after his
death. When asked, even by one of his own family, for his opinion upon any
religious matter, he invariably refused to express it, saying that every
person was bound to look into the subject for himself, and to decide upon
it conscientiously, unbiased by the opinions of others.
Dr. Small introduced Jefferson to other valuable acquaintances; and, boy
though he was, he soon became the fourth in a group of friends which
embraced the three most notable men in the little metropolis. These were,
beside Dr. Small, Francis Fauquier, the acting governor of the province,
appointed by the crown, and George Wythe. Fauquier was a courtly,
honorable, highly cultivated man of the world, a disciple of Voltaire, and
a confirmed gambler, who had in this respect an unfortunate influence upon
the Virginia gentry,--not, however, upon Jefferson, who, though a lover of
horses, and a frequenter of races, never in his life gambled or even
played cards. Wythe was then just beginning a long and honorable career as
lawyer, statesman, professor, and judge. He remained always a firm and
intimate friend of Jefferson, who spoke of him, after his death, as "my
second father." It is an interesting fact that Thomas Jefferson, John
Marshall, and Henry Clay were all, in succession, law students in the
office of George Wythe.
Many of the government officials and planters who flocked to Williamsburg
in the winter were related to Jefferson on his mother's side, and they
opened their houses to him with Virginia hospitality. We read also of
dances in the "Apollo," the ball-room of the old Raleigh tavern, and of
musical parties at Gov. Fauquier's house, in which Jefferson, who was a
skillful and enthusiastic fiddler, always took part. "I suppose," he
remarked in his old age, "that during at least a dozen years of my life, I
played no less than three hours a day."
At this period he was somewhat of a dandy, very particular about his
clothes and equipage, and devoted, as indeed he remained through life, to
fine horses. Virginia imported more thoroughbred horses than any other
colony, and to this day there is probably a greater admixture of
thoroughbred blood there than in any other State. Diomed, winner of the
first English Derby, was brought over to Virginia in 1799, and founded a
family which, even now, is highly esteemed as a source of speed and
endurance. Jefferson had some of his colts; and both for the saddle and
for his carriage he always used high-bred horses.
Referring to the Williamsburg period of his life, he wrote once to a
grandson: "When I recollect the various sorts of bad company with which I
associated from time to time, I am astonished I did not turn off with some
of them, and become as worthless to society as they were.... But I had the
good fortune to become acquainted very early with some characters of very
high standing, and to feel the incessant wish that I could ever become
what they were. Under temptations and difficulties, I would ask myself
what would Dr. Small, Mr. Wythe, Peyton Randolph do in this situation?
What course in it will assure me their approbation? I am certain that this
mode of deciding on my conduct tended more to correctness than any
reasoning powers that I possesed."
This passage throws a light upon Jefferson's character. It does not seem
to occur to him that a young man might require some stronger motive to
keep his passions in check than could be furnished either by the wish to
imitate a good example or by his "reasoning powers." To Jefferson's
well-regulated mind the desire for approbation was a sufficient motive. He
was particularly sensitive, perhaps morbidly so, to disapprobation. The
respect, the good-will, the affection of his countrymen were so dear to
him that the desire to retain them exercised a great, it may be at times,
an undue influence upon him. "I find," he once said, "the pain of a little
censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of
much praise."
During his second year at college, Jefferson laid aside all frivolities.
He sent home his horses, contenting himself with a mile run out and back
at nightfall for exercise, and studying, if we may believe the biographer,
no less than fifteen hours a day. This intense application reduced the
time of his college course by one half; and after the second winter at
Williamsburg he went home with a degree in his pocket, and a volume of
Coke upon Lytleton in his trunk.
II
VIRGINIA IN JEFFERSON'S DAY
To a young Virginian of Jefferson's standing but two active careers were
open, law and politics, and in almost every case these two, sooner or
later, merged in one. The condition of Virginia was very different from
that of New England,--neither the clerical nor the medical profession was
held in esteem. There were no manufactures, and there was no general
commerce.
Nature has divided Virginia into two parts: the mountainous region to the
west and the broad level plain between the mountains and the sea,
intersected by numerous rivers, in which, far back from the ocean, the
tide ebbs and flows. In this tide-water region were situated the tobacco
plantations which constituted the wealth and were inhabited by the
aristocracy of the colony. Almost every planter lived near a river and had
his own wharf, whence a schooner carried his tobacco to London, and
brought back wines, silks, velvets, guns, saddles, and shoes.
The small proprietors of land were comparatively few in number, and the
whole constitution of the colony, political and social, was aristocratic.
Both real estate and slaves descended by force of law to the eldest son,
so that the great properties were kept intact. There were no townships and
no town meetings. The political unit was the parish; for the Episcopal
church was the established church,--a state institution; and the parishes
were of great extent, there being, as a rule, but one or two parishes in a
county.
The clergy, though belonging to an establishment, were poorly paid, and
not revered as a class. They held the same position of inferiority in
respect to the rich planters which the clergy of England held in respect
to the country gentry at the same period. Being appointed by the crown,
they were selected without much regard to fitness, and they were
demoralized by want of supervision, for there were no resident bishops,
and, further, by the uncertain character of their incomes, which, being
paid in tobacco, were subject to great fluctuations. A few were men of
learning and virtue who performed their duties faithfully, and eked out
their incomes by taking pupils. "It was these few," remarks Mr. Parton,
"who saved civilization in the colony." A few others became cultivators of
tobacco, and acquired wealth. But the greater part of the clergy were
companions and hangers-on of the rich planters,--examples of that type
which Thackeray so well describes in the character of Parson Sampson in
"The Virginians." Strange tales were told of these old Virginia parsons.
One is spoken of as pocketing annually a hundred dollars, the revenue of a
legacy for preaching four sermons a year against atheism, gambling,
racing, and swearing,--for all of which vices, except the first, he was
notorious.
This period, the middle half of the eighteenth century, was, as the reader
need not be reminded, that in which the English church sank to its lowest
point. It was the era when the typical country parson was a convivial
fox-hunter; when the Fellows of colleges sat over their wine from four
o'clock, their dinner hour, till midnight or after; when the highest type
of bishop was a learned man who spent more time in his private studies
than in the duties of his office; when the cathedrals were neglected and
dirty, and the parish churches were closed from Sunday to Sunday. In
England, the reaction produced Methodism, and, later, the Tractarian
movement; and we are told that even in Virginia, "swarms of Methodists,
Moravians, and New-Light Presbyterians came over the border from
Pennsylvania, and pervaded the colony."
Taxation pressed with very unequal force upon the poor, and the right of
voting was confined to freeholders. There was no system of public schools,
and the great mass of the people were ignorant and coarse, but morally and
physically sound,--a good substructure for an aristocratic society. Wealth
being concentrated mainly in the hands of a few, Virginia presented
striking contrasts of luxury and destitution, whereas in the neighboring
colony of Pennsylvania, where wealth was more distributed and society more
democratic, thrift and prosperity were far more common.
"In Pennsylvania," relates a foreign traveler, "one sees great numbers of
wagons drawn by four or more fine fat horses.... In the slave States we
sometimes meet a ragged black boy or girl driving a team consisting of a
lean cow and a mule; and I have seen a mule, a bull, and a cow, each
miserable in its appearance, composing one team, with a half-naked black
slave or two riding or driving as occasion suited." And yet between
Richmond and Fredericksburg, "in the afternoon, as our road lay through
the woods, I was surprised to meet a family party traveling along in as
elegant a coach as is usually met with in the neighborhood of London, and
attended by several gayly dressed footmen."
Virginia society just before the Revolution perfectly illustrated Buckle's
remark about leisure: "Without leisure, science is impossible; and when
leisure has been won, most of the class possessing it will waste it in the
pursuit of pleasure, and a _few_ will employ it in the pursuit of
knowledge." Men like Jefferson, George Wythe, and Madison used their
leisure for the good of their fellow-beings and for the cultivation of
their minds; whereas the greater part of the planters--and the poor whites
imitated them--spent their ample leisure in sports, in drinking, and in
absolute idleness. "In spite of the Virginians' love for dissipation,"
wrote a famous French traveler, "the taste for reading is commoner among
men of the first rank than in any other part of America; but the populace
is perhaps more ignorant there than elsewhere." "The Virginia virtues,"
says Mr. Henry Adams, "were those of the field and farm--the simple and
straightforward mind, the notions of courage and truth, the absence of
mercantile sharpness and quickness, the rusticity and open-handed
hospitality." Virginians of the upper class were remarkable for their
high-bred courtesy,--a trait so inherent that it rarely disappeared even in
the bitterness of political disputes and divisions. This, too, was the
natural product of a society based not on trade or commerce, but on land.
"I blush for my own people," wrote Dr. Channing, from Virginia, in 1791,
"when I compare the selfish prudence of a Yankee with the generous
confidence of a Virginian. Here I find great vices, but greater virtues
than I left behind me." There was a largeness of temper and of feeling in
the Virginia aristocracy, which seems to be inseparable from people living
in a new country, upon the outskirts of civilization. They had the pride
of birth, but they recognized other claims to consideration, and were as
far as possible from estimating a man according to the amount of his
wealth.
Slavery itself was probably a factor for good in the character of such a
man as Jefferson,--it afforded a daily exercise in the virtues of
benevolence and self-control. How he treated the blacks may be gathered
from a story, told by his superintendent, of a slave named Jim who had
been caught stealing nails from the nail-factory: "When Mr. Jefferson
came, I sent for Jim, and I never saw any person, white or black, feel as
badly as he did when he saw his master. The tears streamed down his face,
and he begged for pardon over and over again. I felt very badly myself.
Mr. Jefferson turned to me and said, 'Ah, sir, we can't punish him. He has
suffered enough already.' He then talked to him, gave him a heap of good
advice, and sent him to the shop.... Jim said: 'Well I'se been a-seeking
religion a long time, but I never heard anything before that sounded so,
or made me feel so, as I did when Master said, "Go, and don't do so any
more," and now I'se determined to seek religion till I find it;' and sure
enough he afterwards came to me for a permit to go and be baptized.... He
was always a good servant afterward."
Another element that contributed to the efficiency and the high standard
of the early Virginia statesman was a good, old-fashioned classical
education. They were familiar, to use Matthew Arnold's famous expression,
"with the best that has ever been said or done." This was no small
advantage to men who were called upon to act as founders of a republic
different indeed from the republics of Greece and Rome, but still based
upon the same principles, and demanding an exercise of the same heroic
virtues. The American Revolution would never have cut quite the figure in
the world which history assigns to it, had it not been conducted with a
kind of classic dignity and decency; and to this result nobody contributed
more than Jefferson.
Such was Virginia in the eighteenth century,--at the base of society, the
slaves; next, a lower class, rough, ignorant, and somewhat brutal, but
still wholesome, and possessing the primitive virtues of courage and
truth; and at the top, the landed gentry, luxurious, proud, idle and
dissipated for the most part, and yet blossoming into a few characters of
a type so high that the world has hardly seen a better. Had he been born
in Europe, Jefferson would doubtless have devoted himself to music, or to
architecture, or to literature, or to science,--for in all these directions
his taste was nearly equally strong; but these careers being closed to him
by the circumstances of the colony, he became a lawyer, and then, under
pressure of the Revolution, a politician and statesman.
During the four years following his graduation, Jefferson spent most of
the winter months at Williamsburg, pursuing his legal and other studies,
and the rest of the year upon the family plantation, the management of
which had devolved upon him. Now, as always, he was the most industrious
of men. He lived, as Mr. Parton remarks, "with a pen in his hand." He kept
a garden book, a farm book, a weather book, a receipt book, a cash book,
and, while he practiced law, a fee book. Many of these books are still
preserved, and the entries are as legible now as when they were first
written down in Jefferson's small but clear and graceful hand,--the hand of
an artist. Jefferson, as one of his old friends once remarked, _hated_
superficial knowledge; and he dug to the roots of the common law, reading
deeply in old reports written in law French and law Latin, and especially
studying Magna Charta and Bracton.
He found time also for riding, for music, and dancing; and in his
twentieth year he became enamored of Miss Rebecca Burwell, a Williamsburg
belle more distinguished, tradition reports, for beauty than for
cleverness. But Jefferson was not yet in a position to marry,--he even
contemplated a foreign tour; and the girl, somewhat abruptly, married
another lover. The wound seems not to have been a deep one. Jefferson, in
fact, though he found his chief happiness in family affection, and though
capable of strong and lasting attachments, was not the man for a romantic
passion. He was a philosopher of the reasonable, eighteenth-century type.
No one was more kind and just in the treatment of his slaves, but he did
not free them, as George Wythe, perhaps foolishly, did; and he was even
cautious about promulgating his views as to the folly and wickedness of
slavery, though he did his best to promote its abolition by legislative
measures. There was not in Jefferson the material for a martyr or a Don
Quixote; but that was Nature's fault, not his. It may be said of every
particular man that there is a certain depth to which he cannot sink, and
there is a certain height to which he cannot rise. Within the intermediate
zone there is ample exercise for free-will; and no man struggled harder
than Jefferson to fulfill all the obligations which, as he conceived, were
laid upon him.
III
MONTICELLO AND ITS HOUSEHOLD
In April, 1764, Jefferson came of age, and his first public act was a
characteristic one. For the benefit of the neighborhood, he procured the
passage of a statute to authorize the dredging of the Rivanna River upon
which his own estate bordered in part. He then by private subscriptions
raised a sum sufficient for carrying out this purpose; and in a short time
the stream, upon which before a bark canoe would hardly have floated, was
made available for the transportation of farm produce to the James River,
and thence to the sea.
In 1766, he made a journey to Philadelphia, in order to be inoculated for
smallpox, traveling in a light gig drawn by a high-spirited horse, and
narrowly escaping death by drowning in one of the numerous rivers which
had to be forded between Charlottesville and Philadelphia. In the
following year, about the time of his twenty-fourth birthday, he was
admitted to the bar, and entered almost immediately upon a large and
lucrative practice. He remained at the bar only seven years, but during
most of this time his professional income averaged more than L2500 a year;
and he increased his paternal estate from 1900 acres to 5000 acres. He
argued with force and fluency, but his voice was not suitable for public
speaking, and soon became husky. Moreover, Jefferson had an intense
repugnance to the arena. He shrank with a kind of nervous horror from a
personal contest, and hated to be drawn into a discussion. The turmoil and
confusion of a public body were hideous to him;--it was as a writer, not as
a speaker, that he won fame, first in the Virginia Assembly, and afterward
in the Continental Congress.
In October, 1768, Jefferson was chosen to represent Albemarle County in | 2,518.283528 |
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