Ïèîíåðû

 ENCOUNTER WITH A PANTHER.

                (FROM “THE PIONEERS.”)

BY this time they had gained the summit of the mountain, where they
left the highway, and pursued their course under the shade of the
stately trees that crowned the eminence. The day was becoming warm,
and the girls plunged more deeply into the forest, as they found
its invigorating coolness agreeably contrasted to the excessive heat
they had experienced in the ascent. The conversation, as if by mutual
consent, was entirely changed to the little incidents and scenes of
their walk, and every tall pine, and every shrub or flower called
forth some simple expression of admiration. In this manner they
proceeded along the margin of the precipice, catching occasional
glimpses of the placid Otsego, or pausing to listen to the rattling of
wheels and the sounds of hammers that rose from the valley, to mingle
the signs of men with the scenes of nature, when Elizabeth suddenly
started and exclaimed:

“Listen! There are the cries of a child on this mountain! Is there
a clearing near us, or can some little one have strayed from its
parents?”

“Such things frequently happen,” returned Louisa. “Let us follow the
sounds; it may be a wanderer starving on the hill.”

Urged by this consideration, the females pursued the low, mournful
sounds, that proceeded from the forest, with quick impatient steps.
More than once the ardent Elizabeth was on the point of announcing
that she saw the sufferer, when Louisa caught her by the arm, and
pointing behind them, cried, “Look at the dog!”

Brave had been their companion from the time the voice of his
young mistress lured him from his kennel, to the present moment.
His advanced age had long before deprived him of his activity; and
when his companions stopped to view the scenery, or to add to their
bouquets, the mastiff would lay his huge frame on the ground and await
their movements, with his eyes closed, and a listlessness in his air
that ill accorded with the character of a protector. But when, aroused
by this cry from Louisa, Miss Temple turned, she saw the dog with his
eyes keenly set on some distant object, his head bent near the ground,
and his hair actually rising on his body, through fright or anger. It
was most probably the latter, for he was growling in a low key, and
occasionally showing his teeth in a manner that would have terrified
his mistress, had she not so well known his good qualities.

“Brave!” she said, “be quiet, Brave! what do you see, fellow?”

At the sound of her voice, the rage of the mastiff, instead of being
at all diminished, was very sensibly increased. He stalked in front of
the ladies, and seated himself at the feet of his mistress, growling
louder than before, and occasionally giving vent to his ire by a short,
surly barking.

“What does he see?” said Elizabeth; “there must be some animal in
sight.”

Hearing no answer from her companion, Miss Temple turned her head, and
beheld Louisa, standing with her face whitened to the color of death,
and her finger pointing upward, with a sort of flickering, convulsed
motion. The quick eye of Elizabeth glanced in the direction indicated
by her friend, where she saw the fierce front and glaring eyes of a
female panther, fixed on them in horrid malignity, and threatening to
leap.

“Let us fly,” exclaimed Elizabeth, grasping the arm of Louisa, whose
form yielded like melting snow.

There was not a single feeling in the temperament of Elizabeth Temple
that could prompt her to desert a companion in such an extremity. She
fell on her knees, by the side of the inanimate Louisa, tearing from
the person of her friend, with instinctive readiness, such parts of
her dress as might obstruct her respiration, and encouraging their
only safeguard, the dog, at the same time, by the sounds of her voice.

“Courage, Brave!” she cried, her own tones beginning to tremble,
“courage, courage, good Brave!”

A quarter-grown cub, that had hitherto been unseen, now appeared,
dropping from the branches of a sapling that grew under the shade of
the beech which held its dam. This ignorant, but vicious creature,
approached the dog, imitating the actions and sounds of its parent,
but exhibiting a strange mixture of the playfulness of a kitten with
the ferocity of its race. Standing on its hind-legs, it would rend
the bark of a tree with its forepaws, and play the antics of a cat;
and then, by lashing itself with its tail, growling and scratching
the earth, it would attempt the manifestations of anger that rendered
its parent so terrific. All this time Brave stood firm and undaunted,
his short tail erect, his body drawn backward on its haunches, and
his eyes following the movements of both dam and cub. At every gambol
played by the latter, it approached nigher to the dog, the growling of
the three becoming more horrid at each moment, until the younger beast,
overleaping its intended bound, fell directly before the mastiff.
There was a moment of fearful cries and struggles, but they ended
almost as soon as commenced, by the cub appearing in the air, hurled
from the jaws of Brave, with a violence that sent it against a tree so
forcibly as to render it completely senseless.

Elizabeth witnessed the short struggle, and her blood was warming
with the triumph of the dog when she saw the form of the old panther
in the air, springing twenty feet from the branch of the beech to the
back of the mastiff. No words of ours can describe the fury of the
conflict that followed. It was a confused struggle on the dry leaves,
accompanied by loud and terrific cries. Miss Temple continued on her
knees, bending over the form of Louisa, her eyes fixed on the animals,
with an interest so horrid, and yet so intense, that she almost forgot
her own stake in the result. So rapid and vigorous were the bounds of
the inhabitant of the forest, that its active frame seemed constantly
in the air, while the dog nobly faced his foe at each successive leap.
When the panther lighted on the shoulders of the mastiff, which was
its constant aim, old Brave, though torn with her talons, and stained
with his own blood, that already flowed from a dozen wounds, would
shake off his furious foe like a feather, and rearing on his hind-legs,
rush to the fray again, with jaws distended and a dauntless eye. But
age, and his pampered life, greatly disqualified the noble mastiff
for such a struggle. In everything but courage he was only the vestige
of what he had once been. A higher bound than ever raised the wary
and furious beast far beyond the reach of the dog, who was making
a desperate but fruitless dash at her, from which she alighted in a
favorable position, on the back of her aged foe. For a single moment
only could the panther remain there, the great strength of the dog
returning with a convulsive effort. But Elizabeth saw, as Brave
fastened his teeth in the side of his enemy, that the collar of brass
around his neck, which had been glittering throughout the fray, was
of the color of blood, and directly, that his frame was sinking to
the earth, where it soon lay prostrate and helpless. Several mighty
efforts of the wild-cat to extricate herself from the jaws of the
dog followed, but they were fruitless, until the mastiff turned on
his back, his lips collapsed, and his teeth loosened, when the short
convulsions and stillness that succeeded announced the death of poor
Brave.

Elizabeth now lay wholly at the mercy of the beast. There is said to
be something in the front of the image of the Maker that daunts the
hearts of the inferior beings of his creation; and it would seem that
some such power in the present instance suspended the threatened blow.
The eyes of the monster and the kneeling maiden met for an instant,
when the former stooped to examine her fallen foe; next to scent her
luckless cub. From the latter examination it turned, however, with its
eyes apparently emitting flashes of fire, its tail lashing its sides
furiously, and its claws projecting inches from her broad feet.

Miss Temple did not or could not move. Her hands were clasped in the
attitude of prayer, but her eyes were still drawn to her terrible
enemy;;her cheeks were blanched to the whiteness of marble, and her
lips were slightly separated with horror. The moment seemed now to
have arrived for the fatal termination, and the beautiful figure of
Elizabeth was bowing meekly to the stroke, when a rustling of leaves
behind seemed rather to mock the organs than to meet her ears.

“Hist! hist!” said a low voice, “stoop lower, gal! your bonnet hides
the creature’s head.”

It was rather the yielding of nature than a compliance with this
unexpected order, that caused the head of our heroine to sink on her
bosom; when she heard the report of the rifle, the whiz of the bullet,
and the enraged cries of the beast, who was rolling over on the earth,
biting its own flesh, and tearing the twigs and branches within its
reach. At the next instant the form of Leather-Stocking rushed by her,
and he called aloud:

“Come in, Hector, come in old fool; ’tis a hard-lived animal, and may
jump agin.”

Natty fearlessly maintained his position in front of the females,
notwithstanding the violent bounds and threatening aspect of the
wounded panther, which gave several indications of returning strength
and ferocity until his rifle was again loaded, when he stepped up to
the enraged animal, and, placing the muzzle close to its head, every
spark of life was extinguished by the discharge.

                *       *       *       *       *


                THE CAPTURE OF A WHALE.

“TOM,” cried Barnstable, starting, “there is the blow of a whale.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” returned the cockswain, with undisturbed composure;
“here is his spout, not half a mile to seaward; the easterly gale
has driven the creater to leeward, and he begins to find himself in
shoal water. He’s been sleeping, while he should have been working to
windward!”

“The fellow takes it coolly, too! he’s in no hurry to get an offing.”

“I rather conclude, sir,” said the cockswain, rolling over his tobacco
in his mouth very composedly, while his little sunken eyes began
to twinkle with pleasure at the sight, “the gentleman has lost his
reckoning, and don’t know which way to head, to take himself back into
blue water.”

“’Tis a fin back!” exclaimed the lieutenant; “he will soon make
headway, and be off.”

“No, sir; ’tis a right whale,” answered Tom; “I saw his spout; he
threw up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to
look at. He’s a raal oil-butt, that fellow!”

Barnstable laughed, and exclaimed, in joyous tones;;

“Give strong way, my hearties! There seems nothing better to be done;
let us have a stroke of a harpoon at that impudent rascal.”

The men shouted spontaneously, and the old cockswain suffered his
solemn visage to relax into a small laugh, while the whaleboat sprang
forward like a courser for the goal. During the few minutes they were
pulling towards their game, long Tom arose from his crouching attitude
in the stern sheets, and transferred his huge frame to the bows of
the boat, where he made such preparation to strike the whale as the
occasion required.

The tub, containing about half of a whale line, was placed at the feet
of Barnstable, who had been preparing an oar to steer with, in place
of the rudder, which was unshipped in order that, if necessary, the
boat might be whirled around when not advancing.

Their approach was utterly unnoticed by the monster of the deep, who
continued to amuse himself with throwing the water in two circular
spouts high into the air, occasionally flourishing the broad flukes
of his tail with graceful but terrific force, until the hardy seamen
were within a few hundred feet of him, when he suddenly cast his head
downwards, and, without apparent effort, reared his immense body for
many feet above the water, waving his tail violently, and producing a
whizzing noise, that sounded like the rushing of winds. The cockswain
stood erect, poising his harpoon, ready for the blow; but, when he
beheld the creature assuming his formidable attitude, he waved his
hand to his commander, who instantly signed to his men to cease rowing.
In this situation the sportsmen rested a few moments, while the whale
struck several blows on the water in rapid succession, the noise of
which re-echoed along the cliffs like the hollow reports of so many
cannon. After the wanton exhibition of his terrible strength, the
monster sunk again into his native element, and slowly disappeared
from the eyes of his pursuers.

“Which way did he head, Tom?” cried Barnstable, the moment the whale
was out of sight.

“Pretty much up and down, sir,” returned the cockswain, whose eye was
gradually brightening with the excitement of the sport; “he’ll soon
run his nose against the bottom, if he stands long on that course, and
will be glad enough to get another snuff of pure air; send her a few
fathoms to starboard, sir, and I promise we shall not be out of his
track.”

The conjecture of the experienced old seaman proved true, for in a
few minutes the water broke near them, and another spout was cast into
the air, when the huge animal rushed for half his length in the same
direction, and fell on the sea with a turbulence and foam equal to
that which is produced by the launching of a vessel, for the first
time, into its proper element. After the evolution, the whale rolled
heavily, and seemed to rest from further efforts.

His slightest movements were closely watched by Barnstable and his
cockswain, and, when he was in a state of comparative rest, the former
gave a signal to his crew to ply their oars once more. A few long and
vigorous strokes sent the boat directly up to the broadside of the
whale, with its bows pointing toward one of the fins, which was, at
times, as the animal yielded sluggishly to the action of the waves,
exposed to view.

The cockswain poised his harpoon with much precision and then darted
it from him with a violence that buried the iron in the body of their
foe. The instant the blow was made, long Tom shouted, with singular
earnestness,;;

“Starn all!”

“Stern all!”, echoed Barnstable; when the obedient seamen, by united
efforts, forced the boat in a backward direction, beyond the reach of
any blow from their formidable antagonist. The alarmed animal, however,
meditated no such resistance; ignorant of his own power, and of the
insignificance of his enemies, he sought refuge in flight. One moment
of stupid surprise succeeded the entrance of the iron, when he cast
his huge tail into the air with a violence that threw the sea around
him into increased commotion, and then disappeared, with the quickness
of lightning, amid a cloud of foam.

“Snub him!” shouted Barnstable; “hold on, Tom; he rises already.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” replied the composed cockswain, seizing the line,
which was running out of the boat with a velocity that rendered such
a man;uvre rather hazardous.

The boat was dragged violently in his wake, and cut through the
billows with a terrific rapidity, that at moments appeared to bury the
slight fabric in the ocean. When long Tom beheld his victim throwing
his spouts on high again, he pointed with exultation to the jetting
fluid, which was streaked with the deep red of blood, and cried,;;

“Ay, I’ve touched the fellow’s life! It must be more than two foot of
blubber that stops my iron from reaching the life of any whale that
ever sculled the ocean.”

“I believe you have saved yourself the trouble of using the bayonet
you have rigged for a lance,” said his commander, who entered into the
sport with all the ardor of one whose youth had been chiefly passed in
such pursuits; “feel your line, Master Coffin; can we haul alongside
of our enemy? I like not the course he is steering, as he tows us from
the schooner.”

“’Tis the creater’s way, sir,” said the cockswain; “you know they need
the air in their nostrils when they run, the same as a man; but lay
hold, boys, and let us haul up to him.”

The seaman now seized their whale-line, and slowly drew their boat
to within a few feet of the tail of the fish, whose progress became
sensibly less rapid as he grew weak with the loss of blood. In a few
minutes he stopped running, and appeared to roll uneasily on the water,
as if suffering the agony of death.

“Shall we pull in and finish him, Tom?” cried Barnstable; “a few sets
from your bayonet would do it.”

The cockswain stood examining his game with cool discretion, and
replied to this interrogatory,;;

“No, sir, no; he’s going into his flurry; there’s no occasion for
disgracing ourselves by using a soldier’s weapon in taking a whale.
Starn off, sir, starn off! the creater’s in his flurry.”

The warning of the prudent cockswain was promptly obeyed, and the
boat cautiously drew off to a distance, leaving to the animal a clear
space while under its dying agonies. From a state of perfect rest,
the terrible monster threw its tail on high as when in sport, but
its blows were trebled in rapidity and violence, till all was hid
from view by a pyramid of foam, that was deeply dyed with blood. The
roarings of the fish were like the bellowings of a herd of bulls, and,
to one who was ignorant of the fact, it would have appeared as if a
thousand monsters were engaged in deadly combat behind the bloody mist
that obstructed the view. Gradually these efforts subsided, and, when
the discolored water again settled down to the long and regular swell
of the ocean, the fish was seen exhausted, and yielding passively to
its fate. As life departed, the enormous black mass rolled to one side;
and when the white and glistening skin of the belly became apparent,
the seamen well knew that their victory was achieved.




  Illustration: (‡ decoration)


                NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

                “THE GREATEST OF AMERICAN ROMANCERS.”


NO black knight in Sir Walter Scott’s novels, nor the red Indians of
Cooper, nor his famous pioneer, Leather Stocking of the forest, nor
his long Tom of the ocean, ever seemed more truly romantic than do
Hawthorne’s stern and gloomy Calvinists of “The Scarlet Letter,” and
“The House of Seven Gables,” or his Italian hero of “The Marble Faun.”

We have characterized Hawthorne as the greatest of American romancers.
We might have omitted the word _American_, for he has no equal in
romance perhaps in the world of letters. An eminent critic declares:
“His genius was greater than that of the idealist, Emerson. In all
his mysticism his style was always clear and exceedingly graceful,
while in those delicate, varied and permanent effects which are gained
by a happy arrangement of words in their sentences, together with
that unerring directness and unswerving force which characterize
his writings, no author in modern times has equalled him. To the
rhetorician, his style is a study; to the lay reader, a delight that
eludes analysis. He is the most eminent representative of the American
spirit in literature.”

It was in the old town of Salem, Massachusetts;;where his Puritan
ancestors had lived for nearly two hundred years;;with its haunted
memories of witches and strange sea tales; its stories of Endicott
and the Indians, and the sombre traditions of witchcraft and Puritan
persecution that Nathaniel Hawthorne was born July 4, 1804. And it was
in this grim, ancient city by the sea that the life of the renowned
romancer was greatly bound up. In his childhood the town was already
falling to decay, and his lonely surroundings filled his young
imagination with a ;weirdness that found expression in the books
of his later life, and impressed upon his character a seriousness
that clung to him ever after. His father was a sea-captain,;;but a
most melancholy and silent man,;;who died when Nathaniel was four
years old. His mother lived a sad and secluded life, and the boy
thus early learned to exist in a strange and imaginative world of his
own creation. So fond of seclusion did he become that even after his
graduation from college in 1825, he returned to his old haunt at Salem
and resumed his solitary, dreamy existence. For twelve years, from
1825 to 1837, he went nowhere, he saw no one; he worked in his room
by day, reading and writing; at twilight he wandered out along the
shore, or through the darkened streets of the town. Certainly this
was no attractive life to most young men; but for Hawthorne it had
its fascination and during this time he was storing his mind, forming
his style, training his imagination and preparing for the splendid
literary fame of his later years.

      ; ‘wierdness’ replaced with ‘weirdness’

  Illustration: “THE OLD MANSE,” CONCORD, MASS.

      Built for Emerson’s grandfather. In this house Ralph Waldo
    Emerson dwelt for ten years, and, here, in the same room
    where Emerson wrote “Nature” and other philosophic essays,
    Hawthorne prepared his “Twice Told Tales,” and “Mosses from
    an Old Manse.” He declares the four years (1842–1846) spent
    in this house were the happiest of his life.

Hawthorne received his early education in Salem, partly at the school
of Joseph E. Worcester, the author of “Worcester’s Dictionary.” He
entered Bowdoin College in 1821. The poet, Longfellow, and John S. C.
Abbott were his classmates; and Franklin Pierce;;one class in advance
of him;;was his close friend. He graduated in 1825 without any special
distinction. His first book, “Fanshawe,” a novel, was issued in 1826,
but so poor was its success that he suppressed its further publication.
Subsequently he placed the manuscript of a collection of stories in
the hands of his publisher, but timidly withdrew and destroyed them.
His first practical encouragement was received from Samuel G. Goodrich,
who published four stories in the “Token,” one of the annuals of
that time, in 1831. Mr. Goodrich also engaged Hawthorne as editor
of the “American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge,”
which position he occupied from 1836 to 1838. About this time he also
contributed some of his best stories to the “New England Magazine,”
“The Knickerbocker,” and the “Democratic Review.” It was a part of
these magazine stories which he collected and published in 1837 in
the volume entitled, “Twice Told Tales,” embodying the fruits of his
twelve years’ labor.

This book stamped the author as a man of stronger imagination and
deeper insight into human nature than Washington Irving evinced in
his famous sketches of the Hudson or Cooper in his frontier stories,
for delightful as was Irving’s writings and vivid as were Cooper’s
pictures, it was plain to be seen that Hawthorne had a richer
style and a firmer grasp of the art of fiction than either of them.
Longfellow, the poet, reviewed the book with hearty commendation, and
Poe predicted a brilliant future for the writer if he would abandon
allegory. Thus encouraged, Hawthorne came out from his seclusion into
the world again, and mixed once more with his fellow-men. His friend,
the historian, Bancroft, secured him a position in the Custom House
at Salem, in 1839, which he held for two years. This position he
lost through political jobbery on a trumped-up charge. For a few
months he then joined in the Brook Farm settlement, though he was
never in sympathy with the movement; nor was he a believer in the
transcendental notions of Emerson and his school. He remained a
staunch Democrat in the midst of the Abolitionists. His note-books
were full of his discontent with the life at the Brook Farm. His
observations of this enterprise took shape in the “Blythedale Romance”
which is the only literary memorial of the association. The heroine of
this novel was Margaret Fuller, under the name of “Zenobia,” and the
description of the drowning of Zenobia;;a fate which Margaret Fuller
had met;;is the most tragic passage in all the writings of the author.

In 1842 Hawthorne married Miss Sophia Peabody;;a most fortunate and
happy marriage;;and the young couple moved to Concord where they
lived in the house known as the “Old Manse,” which had been built for
Emerson’s grandfather, and in which Emerson himself dwelt ten years.
He chose for his study the same room in which the philosopher had
written his famous book “Nature.” Hawthorne declares that the happiest
period of his life were the four years spent in the “Old Manse.”
While living there he collected another lot of miscellaneous stories
and published them in 1845 as a second volume of “Twice-Told Tales,”
and the next year came his “Mosses from an Old Manse,” being also a
collection from his published writings. In 1846 a depleted income and
larger demands of a growing family made it necessary for him to seek
a business engagement. Through a friend he received an appointment as
Surveyor of Customs at Salem, and again removed to the old town where
he was born forty-two years before. It was during his engagement here,
from 1846 to 1849, that he planned and wrote his famous book “The
Scarlet Letter,” which was published in 1850.

A broader experience is needed to compose a full-grown novel than to
sketch a short tale. Scott was more than fifty when he published
“Waverly.” Cooper wrote the “Spy” when thirty-three. Thackeray, the
author of “Vanity Fair,” was almost forty when he finished that work.
“Adam Bede” appeared when George Elliot was in her fortieth year;
and the “Scarlet Letter,” greater than them all, did not appear until
1850, when its author was in his forty-seventh year. All critics
readily agree that this romance is the masterpiece in American fiction.
The only novel in the United States that can be compared with it
is Mrs. Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and, as a study of a type of
life;;Puritan life in New England;;“The Scarlet Letter” is superior to
Mrs. Stowe’s immortal work. One-half a century has passed since “The
Scarlet Letter” was written; but it stands to-day more popular than
ever before.

Enumerated briefly, the books written by Hawthorne in the order
of their publication are as follows: “Fanshawe,” a novel (1826),
suppressed by the author; “Twice-Told Tales” (1837), a collection of
magazine stories; “Twice-Told Tales” (second volume, 1845) “Mosses
from an Old Manse” (1846), written while he lived at the “Old Manse”;
“The Scarlet Letter” (1850), his greatest book; “The House of Seven
Gables” (1851), written while he lived at Lenox, Massachusetts; “The
Wonder Book” (1851), a volume of classic stories for children; “The
Blythedale Romance” (1852); “Life of Franklin Pierce” (1852), which
was written to assist his friend Pierce, who was running for President
of the United States; “Tanglewood Tales” (1853), another work for
children, continuing the classic legends of his “Wonder Book,”
reciting the adventures of those who went forth to seek the “Golden
Fleece,” to explore the labyrinth of the “Minotaur” and sow the
“Dragon’s Teeth.” Pierce was elected President in 1853 and rewarded
Hawthorne by appointing him Consul to Liverpool. This position he
filled for four years and afterwards spent three years in traveling on
the Continent, during which time he gathered material for the greatest
of his books;;next to “The Scarlet Letter”;;entitled “The Marble
Faun,” which was brought out in England in 1860, and the same year
Mr. Hawthorne returned to America and spent the remainder of his life
at “The Wayside” in Concord. During his residence here he wrote for
the “Atlantic Monthly” the papers which were collected and published
in 1863 under the title of “Our Old Home.” After Mr. Hawthorne’s
death, his unpublished manuscripts, “The Dolliver Romance,” “Septimius
Felton” and “Dr. Grimshawe’s Secret,” were published. Mrs. Hawthorne,
also, edited and published her husband’s “American and English
Note-Books” and his “French and Italian Note-Books” in 1869. The
best life of the author is perhaps that written by his son, Julian
Hawthorne, which appeared in 1885, entitled “Nathaniel Hawthorne and
His Wife; a Biography.”

A new and complete edition of Hawthorne’s works has been lately issued
in twenty volumes; also a compact and illustrated library edition in
seven volumes.

Nathaniel Hawthorne died May 18, 1864, while traveling with his friend
and college-mate, Ex-President Pierce, in the White Mountains, and was
buried near where Emerson and Thoreau were later placed in Concord
Cemetery. Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell and Whittier were at the funeral.
His publisher, Mr. Field, was also there and wrote: “We carried him
through the blossoming orchards of Concord and laid him down in a
group of pines on the hillside, the unfinished romance which had
cost him such anxiety laid upon his coffin.” Mr. Longfellow, in an
exquisite poem describes the scene, and referring to the uncompleted
romance in the closing lines says:

    “Ah, who shall lift that wand of magic power,
      And the lost clue regain?
    The unfinished window in Alladin’s tower
      Unfinished must remain.”

The noble wife, who had been the inspiration and practical stimulus
of the great romancer, survived her distinguished husband nearly
seven years. She died in London, aged sixty, February 26, 1871, and
was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, near the grave of Leigh Hunt.

                *       *       *       *       *


                EMERSON AND THE EMERSONITES.

                (FROM “MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE.”)

THERE were circumstances around me which made it difficult to view
the world precisely as it exists; for severe and sober as was the Old
Manse, it was necessary to go but a little way beyond its threshold
before meeting with stranger moral shapes of men than might have
been encountered elsewhere in a circuit of a thousand miles. These
hobgoblins of flesh and blood were attracted thither by the wide
spreading influence of a great original thinker who had his earthly
abode at the opposite extremity of our village. His mind acted upon
other minds of a certain constitution with wonderful magnetism, and
drew many men upon long pilgrimages to speak with him face to face.

Young visionaries, to whom just so much of insight had been imparted
as to make life all a labyrinth around them, came to seek the clew
which should guide them out of their self-involved bewilderment.
Gray-headed theorists, whose systems;;at first air;;had finally
imprisoned them in a fiery framework, traveled painfully to his door,
not to ask deliverance, but to invite the free spirit into their own
thralldom. People that had lighted upon a new thought;;or thought
they had fancied new;;came to Emerson as a finder of a glittering gem
hastens to a lapidary to ascertain its quality and value. Uncertain,
troubled, earnest wanderers through the midnight of the moral world
beheld his intellectual fire as a beacon burning upon a hill-top,
and climbing the difficult ascent, looked forth into the surrounding
obscurity more hopefully than hitherto. The light revealed objects
unseen before:;;mountains, gleaming lakes, glimpses of creation
among the chaos: but also, as was unavoidable, it attracted bats and
owls and the whole host of night-birds, which flapped their dusty
wings against the gazer’s eyes, and sometimes were mistaken for
fowls of angelic feather. Such delusions always hover nigh whenever
a beacon-fire of truth is kindled.

For myself there had been epochs of my life when I too might have
asked of this prophet the master-word that should solve me the riddle
of the universe; but now, being happy, I felt as if there were no
question to be put; and therefore admired Emerson as a poet of deep
beauty and austere tenderness, but sought nothing from him as a
philosopher. It was good, nevertheless, to meet him in the wood-paths,
or sometimes in our avenue, with that pure intellectual gleam diffused
about his presence, like the garment of a shining one; and he so quiet,
so simple, so without pretension, encountering each man alive as if
expecting to receive more than he could impart. And in truth, the
heart of many a man had, perchance, inscriptions which he could not
read. But it was impossible to dwell in his vicinity without inhaling
more or less the mountain atmosphere of his lofty thought, which in
the brains of some people wrought a singular giddiness;;new truth
being as heady as new wine.

Never was a poor country village infected with such a variety of queer,
strangely-dressed, oddly-behaved mortals, most of whom took upon
themselves to be important agents of this world’s destiny, yet were
simply bores of the first water. Such, I imagine, is the invariable
character of persons who crowd so closely about an original thinker as
to draw in his unuttered breath, and thus become imbued with a false
originality. This triteness of noveltry is enough to make any man of
common sense blaspheme at all ideas of less than a century’s standing,
and pray that the world may be petrified and rendered immovable in
precisely the worst moral and physical state that it ever yet arrived
at, rather than be benefitted by such schemes of such philosophers.

                *       *       *       *       *


                PEARL.

                (THE SCARLET LETTER. A ROMANCE. 1850.)

WE have as yet hardly spoken of the infant; that little creature,
whose innocent life had sprung, by the inscrutable decree of
Providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance
of a guilty passion. How strange it seemed to the sad woman, as
she watched the growth, and the beauty that became every day more
brilliant, and the intelligence that threw its quivering sunshine over
the tiny features of this child! Her Pearl!;;For so had Hester called
her; not as a name expressive of her aspect, which had nothing of
the calm, white, unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated by
the comparison. But she named the infant “Pearl,” as being of great
price,;;purchased with all she had,;;her mother’s only treasure! How
strange, indeed! Men had marked this woman’s sin by a scarlet letter,
which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy
could reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as a direct
consequence of the sin which was thus punished, had given her a lovely
child, whose place was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her
parent forever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally
a blessed soul in heaven! Yet these thoughts affected Hester Prynne
less with hope than apprehension. She knew that her deed had been evil;
she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be good.
Day after day, she looked fearfully into the child’s expanding nature,
ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity, that should
correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being.

Certainly, there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape, its
vigor, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried limbs,
the infant was worthy to have been brought forth in Eden; worthy to
have been left there, to be the plaything of the angels, after the
world’s first parents were driven out. The child had a native grace
which does not invariably coexist with faultless beauty; its attire,
however simple, always impressed the beholder as if it were the very
garb that precisely became it best. But little Pearl was not clad in
rustic weeds. Her mother, with a morbid purpose that may be better
understood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be
procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the
arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child wore before
the public eye. So magnificent was the small figure, when thus arrayed,
and such was the splendor of Pearl’s own proper beauty, shining
through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a paler
loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance around her,
on the darksome cottage floor. And yet a russet gown, torn and soiled
with the child’s rude play, made a picture of her just as perfect.
Pearl’s aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety; in this
one child there were many children, comprehending the full scope
between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the pomp,
in little, of an infant princess. Throughout all, however, there was
a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she never lost; and
if, in any of her changes she had grown fainter or paler, she would
have ceased to be herself,;;it would have been no longer Pearl!

One peculiarity of the child’s deportment remains yet to be told. The
very first thing which she had noticed, in her life, was;;what?;;not
the mother’s smile, responding to it, as other babies do, by that
faint embryo smile of the little mouth, remembered so doubtfully
afterwards, and with such fond discussion whether it were indeed a
smile. By no means! But that first object of which Pearl seemed to
become aware was;;shall we say it?;;the scarlet letter on Hester’s
bosom! One day, as the mother stooped over the cradle, the infant’s
eyes had been caught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery about
the letter; and, putting up her little hand, she grasped at it,
smiling, not doubtfully, but with a decided gleam, that gave her face
the look of a much older child. Then, gasping for breath, did Hester
Prynne clutch the fatal token, instinctively endeavoring to tear it
away; so infinite was the torture inflicted by the intelligent touch
of Pearl’s baby-hand. Again, as if her mother’s agonized gesture were
meant only to make sport of her, did little Pearl look into her eyes,
and smile! From that epoch, except when the child was asleep, Hester
had never felt a moment’s safety; not a moment’s calm enjoyment of her.
Weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during which Pearl’s gaze
might never once be fixed upon the scarlet letter; but then, again, it
would come at unawares, like the stroke of sudden death, and always
with that peculiar smile and odd expression of the eyes.

                *       *       *       *       *


                SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE.

HOW various are the situations of the people covered by the roofs
beneath me, and how diversified are the events at this moment
befalling them! The new-born, the aged, the dying, the strong in
life, and the recent dead, are in the chambers of these many mansions.
The full of hope, the happy, the miserable, and the desperate, dwell
together within the circle of my glance. In some of the houses over
which my eyes roam so coldly, guilt is entering into hearts that
are still tenanted by a debased and trodden virtue;;guilt is on the
very edge of commission, and the impending deed might be averted;
guilt is done, and the criminal wonders if it be irrevocable. There
are broad thoughts struggling in my mind, and, were I able to give
them distinctness, they would make their way in eloquence. Lo! the
rain-drops are descending.

The clouds, within a little time, have gathered over all the sky,
hanging heavily, as if about to drop in one unbroken mass upon
the earth. At intervals the lightning flashes from their brooding
hearts, quivers, disappears, and then comes the thunder, traveling
slowly after its twin-born flame. A strong wind has sprung up, howls
through the darkened streets, and raises the dust in dense bodies, to
rebel against the approaching storm. All people hurry homeward;;all
that have a home; while a few lounge by the corners, or trudge on
desperately, at their leisure.

And now the storm lets loose its fury. In every dwelling I perceive
the faces of the chambermaids as they shut down the windows, excluding
the impetuous shower, and shrinking away from the quick, fiery glare.
The large drops descend with force upon the slated roofs, and rise
again in smoke. There is a rush and roar, as of a river through the
air, and muddy streams bubble majestically along the pavement, whirl
their dusky foam into the kennel, and disappear beneath iron grates.
Thus did Arethusa sink. I love not my station here aloft, in the midst
of the tumult which I am powerless to direct or quell, with the blue
lightning wrinkling on my brow, and the thunder muttering its first
awful syllables in my ear. I will descend. Yet let me give another
glance to the sea, where the foam breaks in long white lines upon a
broad expanse of blackness, or boils up in far-distant points, like
snowy mountain-tops in the eddies of a flood; and let me look once
more at the green plain, and little hills of the country, over which
the giant of the storm is riding in robes of mist, and at the town,
whose obscured and desolate streets might beseem a city of the dead;
and turning a single moment to the sky, now gloomy as an author’s
prospects, I prepare to resume my station on lower earth. But stay! A
little speck of azure has widened in the western heavens; the sunbeams
find a passage, and go rejoicing through the tempest; and on yonder
darkest cloud, born, like hallowed hopes, of the glory of another
world, and the trouble and tears of this, brightens forth the Rainbow!

                *       *       *       *       *


                A REMINISCENCE OF EARLY LIFE.

                (FROM AMERICAN NOTE BOOKS.)

                SALEM, Oct. 4th.

                _Union Street, [Family Mansion.]_

... Here I sit in my old accustomed chamber, where I used to sit in
days gone by.... Here I have written many tales,;;many that have been
burned to ashes, many that doubtless deserved the same fate. This
claims to be called a haunted chamber, for thousands upon thousands
of visions have appeared to me in it; and some few of them have become
visible to the world. If ever I should have a biographer, he ought to
make great mention of this chamber in my memoirs, because so much of
my lonely youth was wasted here, and here my mind and character were
formed; and here I have been glad and hopeful, and here I have been
despondent. And here I sat a long, long time, waiting patiently for
the world to know me, and sometimes wondering why it did not know me
sooner, or whether it would ever know me at all,;;at least, till I
were in my grave. And sometimes it seemed as if I were already in the
grave, with only life enough to be chilled and benumbed. But oftener
I was happy,;;at least, as happy as I then knew how to be, or was
aware of the possibility of being. By and by, the world found me out
in my lonely chamber, and called me forth,;;not, indeed, with a loud
roar of acclamation, but rather with a still, small voice,;;and forth
I went, but found nothing in the world that I thought preferable to
my old solitude till now.... And now I begin to understand why I was
imprisoned so many years in this lonely chamber, and why I could never
break through the viewless bolts and bars; for if I had sooner made
my escape into the world, I should have grown hard and rough, and been
covered with earthly dust, and my heart might have become callous by
rude encounters with the multitude.... But living in solitude till
the fulness of time was come, I still kept the dew of my youth, and
the freshness of my heart.... I used to think that I could imagine
all passions, all feelings, and states of the heart and mind; but how
little did I know!... Indeed, we are but shadows; we are not endowed
with real life, and all that seems most real about us is but the
thinnest substance of a dream,;;till the heart be touched. That touch
creates us,;;then we begin to be,;;thereby we are beings of reality
and inheritors of eternity....

When we shall be endowed with our spiritual bodies, I think that they
will be so constituted that we may send thoughts and feelings any
distance in no time at all, and transfuse them, warm and fresh, into
the consciousness of those whom we love.... But, after all, perhaps it
is not wise to intermix fantastic ideas with the reality of affection.
Let us content ourselves to be earthly creatures, and hold communion
of spirit in such modes as are ordained to us.

  Illustration: SOUVENIR OF HAWTHORNE




  Illustration: (‡ decoration)


                EDWARD EVERETT HALE.

                “THE ROBINSON CRUSOE OF AMERICA.”


EDWARD EVERETT HALE is to-day one of the best known and most beloved
of American authors. He is also a lecturer of note. He has probably
addressed as many audiences as any man in America. His work as a
preacher, as a historian and as a story-teller, entitles him to
fame; but his life has also been largely devoted to the formation of
organizations to better the moral, social and educational conditions
of the young people of his own and other lands. Recently he has been
deeply interested in the great Chatauqua movement, which he has done
much to develop.

His name is a household word in American homes, and the keynote of his
useful life may be expressed by the motto of one of his most popular
books, “Ten Times One is Ten:”;;“Look up and not down! Look forward
and not backward! Look out and not in! Lend a hand!”

Edward Everett Hale was born in Boston, Massachusetts, April 3, 1822.
He graduated at Harvard University in 1839, at the age of seventeen
years. He took a post graduate course for two years in a Latin school
and read theology and church history. It was in 1842 that he was
licensed to preach by the Boston Association of Congregational
Ministers. During the winter of 1844–45 he served a church in
Washington, but removed the next year to Worcester, Massachusetts,
where he remained for ten years. In 1856 he was called to the South
Congregational (Unitarian) Church in Boston, which he has served for
more than three decades.

When a boy young Hale learned to set type in his father’s printing
office, and afterwards served on the “Daily Advertiser,” it is said,
in every capacity from reporter up to editor-in-chief. Before he was
twenty-one years old he wrote a large part of the “Monthly Chronicle”
and “Boston Miscellany,” and from that time to the present has done an
immense amount of newspaper and magazine work. He at one time edited
the “Christian Examiner” and also the “Sunday School Gazette.” He
founded a magazine entitled “The Old and the New” in 1869, which was
afterwards merged into “Scribner’s Monthly.” In 1866 he began the
publication of “Lend a Hand, a Record of Progress and Journal of
Organized Charity.”

As a writer of short stories, no man of modern times, perhaps, is his
superior, if indeed he has any equals. “My Double and How He Undid
Me,” published in 1859, was the first of his works to strike strongly
the popular fancy; but it was “The Man Without a Country,” issued in
1863, which entitled its author to a prominent place among the classic
short story-tellers of America, and produced a deep impression on
the public mind. His “Skeleton in a Closet” followed in 1866; and,
since that time his prolific pen has sent forth in the form of books
and magazine articles, a continuous stream of the most entertaining
literature in our language. He has the faculty of De Foe in giving to
his stories the appearance of reality, and thus has gained for himself
the title of “The Robinson Crusoe of America.”

Mr. Hale is also an historical writer and a student of great
attainment, and has contributed many papers of rare value to the
historical and antiquarian societies of both Europe and America. He is,
perhaps, the greatest of all living authorities on Spanish-American
affairs. He is the editor of “Original Documents from the State Paper
Office, London, and the British Museum; illustrating the History of
Sir Walter Raleigh’s First American Colony at Jamestown,” and other
historical works.

Throughout his life, Mr. Hale has always taken a patriotic interest
in public affairs for the general good of the nation. While he dearly
loves his native New England hills, his patriotism is bounded by no
narrow limits; it is as wide as his country. His voice is always the
foremost among those raised in praise or in defence of our national
institutions and our liberties. His influence has always been exerted
to make men and women better citizens and better Americans.

                *       *       *       *       *


                LOST.;

                (FROM “PHILIP NOLAN’S FRIENDS.”)

      ; Copyright, Roberts Bros.

BUT as she ran, the path confused her. Could she have passed that
flaming sassafras without so much as noticing it? Any way she should
recognize the great mass of bays where she had last noticed the
panther’s tracks. She had seen them as she ran on, and as she came up.
She hurried on; but she certainly had returned much farther than she
went, when she came out on a strange log flung up in some freshet,
which she knew she had not seen before. And there was no clump of bays.
Was this being lost? Was she lost? Why, Inez had to confess to herself
that she was lost just a little bit, but nothing to be afraid of; but
still lost enough to talk about afterwards she certainly was.

Yet, as she said to herself again and again, she could not be a
quarter of a mile, nor half a quarter of a mile from camp. As soon as
they missed her;;and by this time they had missed her;;they would be
out to look for her. How provoking that she, of all the party, should
make so much bother to the rest! They would watch her now like so many
cats all the rest of the way. What a fool she was ever to leave the
knoll! So Inez stopped again, shouted again, and listened and listened,
to hear nothing but a swamp-owl.

If the sky had been clear, she would have had no cause for anxiety. In
that case they would have light enough to find her in. She would have
had the sunset glow to steer by; and she would have had no difficulty
in finding them. But with this horrid gray over everything she dared
not turn round, without fearing that she might lose the direction
in which the theory of the moment told her she ought to be faring.
And these openings which she had called trails;;which were probably
broken by wild horses and wild oxen as they came down to the bayou to
drink;;would not go in one direction for ten paces. They bent right
and left, this way and that; so that without some sure token of sun
or star, it was impossible, as Inez felt, to know which way she was
walking.

And at last this perplexity increased. She was conscious that the
sun must have set, and that the twilight, never long, was now fairly
upon her. All the time there was this fearful silence, only broken
by her own voice and that hateful owl. Was she wise to keep on in her
theories of this way or that way? She had never yet come back, either
upon the fallen cottonwood tree, or upon the bunch of bays which was
her landmark; and it was doubtless her wisest determination to stay
where she was. The chances that the larger party would find her were
much greater than that she alone would find them; but by this time
she was sure that, if she kept on in any direction, there was an even
chance that she was going farther and farther wrong.

But it was too cold for her to sit down, wrap herself never so closely
in her shawl. The poor girl tried this. She must keep in motion.
Back and forth she walked, fixing her march by signs which she could
not mistake even in the gathering darkness. How fast that darkness
gathered! The wind seemed to rise, too, as the night came on, and a
fine rain, that seemed as cold as snow to her, came to give the last
drop to her wretchedness. If she were tempted for a moment to abandon
her sentry-beat, and try this wild experiment or that, to the right
or left, some odious fallen trunk, wet with moss and decay, lay just
where she pressed into the shrubbery, as if placed there to reveal to
her her absolute powerlessness. She was dead with cold, and even in
all her wretchedness knew that she was hungry. How stupid to be hungry
when she had so much else to trouble her! But at least she would make
a system of her march. She would walk fifty times this way, to the
stump, and fifty times that way; then she would stop and cry out and
sound her war-whoop; then she would take up her sentry-march again.
And so she did. This way, at least, time would not pass without her
knowing whether it was midnight or no.

“Hark! God be praised, there is a gun! and there is another! and there
is another! They have come on the right track, and I am safe!” So she
shouted again, and sounded her war-whoop again, and listened,;;and
then again, and listened again. One more gun! but then no more! Poor
Inez! Certainly they were all on one side of her. If only it was not
so piteously dark! If she could only walk half the distance in that
direction which her fifty sentry-beats made put together! But when
she struggled that way through the tangle, and over one wet log and
another, it was only to find her poor wet feet sinking down into mud
and water! She did not dare keep on. All that was left for her was to
find her tramping-ground again, and this she did.

“Good God, take care of me! My poor dear father;;what would he say
if he knew his child was dying close to her friends? Dear mamma, keep
watch over your little girl!”;;

  Illustration: (‡ decoration)




  Illustration: (‡ decoration)


                WM. DEAN HOWELLS.

                (THE REALISTIC NOVELIST OF AMERICA.)


THE West has contributed many notable men to our nation within the
last half of the present century. There seems to be something in the
spirit of that developing section to stimulate the aspirations and
ambitions of those who grow up in its atmosphere. Progress, Enterprise,
“Excelsior” are the three words written upon its banner as the motto
for the sons of the middle West. It is there we go for many of our
leading statesmen. Thence we draw our presidents more largely than
from any other section, and the world of modern literature is also
seeking and finding its chiefest leaders among the sons and daughters
of that region. True they are generally transplanted to the Eastern
centres of publication and commercial life, but they were born and
grew up in the West.

Notably among the examples which might be cited, we mention William
Dean Howells, one of the greatest of modern American novelists, who
was born at Martin’s Ferry, Ohio, March 1st, 1837. Mr. Howells did
not enjoy the advantage of a collegiate education. At twelve years
of age he began to set type in his father’s printing office, which he
followed until he reached manhood, employing his odd time in writing
articles and verses for the newspapers, and while quite young did
editorial work for a leading daily in Cincinnati. At the age of
twenty-one, in 1858, he became the editor of the “Ohio State Journal”
at Columbus. Two years later he published in connection with John
James Piatt a small volume of verse entitled “Poems of two Friends.”
These youthful effusions were marked by that crystal like clearness of
thought, grace and artistic elegance of expression which characterize
his later writings. Mr. Howells came prominently before the public
in 1860 by publishing a carefully written and most excellent “Life of
Abraham Lincoln” which was extensively sold and read during that most
exciting presidential campaign, and no doubt contributed much to the
success of the candidate. Mr. Lincoln, in furnishing data for this
work, became well acquainted with the young author of twenty-three
and was so impressed with his ability in grasping and discussing state
affairs, and good sense generally, that he appointed him as ;consul
to Venice.

      ; ‘cousul’ replaced with ‘consul’

During four years’ residence in that city Mr. Howells, in addition
to his official duties, learned the Italian language and studied
its literature. He also here gathered, the material for two
books, “Venitian Life” and “Italian Journeys.” He arranged for the
publication of the former in London as he passed through that city
in 1865 on his way home. The latter was brought out in America on
his return, appearing in 1867. Neither of these works are novels.
“Venetian Life” is a delightful description of the manners and
customs of real life in Venice. “Italian Journeys” is a charming
portrayal;;almost a kinetoscopic view;;of his journey from Venice
to Rome by the roundabout way of Genoa and Naples, with a visit to
Pompeii and Herculaneum, including artistic etchings of notable scenes.

The first attempt of Mr. Howells at story-telling, “Their Wedding
Journey,” appeared in 1871. This, while ranking as a novel, was really
a description of an actual bridal tour across New York. “A Chance
Acquaintance” (1873) was a more complete novel, but evidently it was
a venture of the imagination upon ground that had proven fruitful in
real life. It was modeled after “The Wedding Journey,” but described a
holiday season spent in journeying up the St. Lawrence River, stopping
at Quebec and Saguenay.

Since 1874 Mr. Howells has published one or more novels annually,
among which are the following: “A Foregone Conclusion” (1874), “A
Counterfeit Presentment” (1877), “The Lady of the Aroostook” (1878),
“The Undiscovered Country” (1880), “A Fearful Responsibility” (1882),
“A Modern Instance” and “Dr. Breen’s Practice” (1883), “A Woman’s
Reason” (1884), “Tuscan Cities” and “The Rise of Silas Lapham” (1885),
“The Minister’s Charge” and “Indian Summer” (1886), “April Hopes”
(1887), “Annie Kilburn” (1888), “Hazard of New Fortune” (1889). Since
1890 Mr. Howells has continued his literary activity with increased,
rather than abating, energy. Among his noted later novels are “A
Traveler from Altruria” and “The Landlord at Lion’s Head” (the latter
issued in 1897). Other notable books of his are “Stops at Various
Quills,” “My Literary Passion,” “Library of Universal Adventure,”
“Modern Italian Poets,” “Christmas Every Day” and “A Boy’s Town,” the
two last mentioned being for juvenile readers, with illustrations.

Mr. Howells’ accurate attention to details gives to his stories a
most realistic flavor, making his books seem rather photographic than
artistic. He shuns imposing characters and thrilling incidents, and
makes much of interesting people and ordinary events in our social
life. A broad grasp of our national characteristics and an intimate
acquaintance with our institutions gives him a facility in producing
minute studies of certain aspects of society and types of character,
which no other writer in America has approached. For instance, his
“Undiscovered Country” was an exhaustive study and presentation of
spiritualism, as it is witnessed and taught in New England. And those
who admire Mr. Howells’ writings will find in “The Landlord at Lion’s
Head” a clear-cut statement of the important sociological problem yet
to be solved, upon the other; which problem is also characteristic of
other of his books. Thoughtful readers of Mr. Howells’ novels gain
much information on vital questions of society and government, which
broaden the mind and cannot fail to be of permanent benefit.

From 1872 to 1881 Mr. Howells was editor of the “Atlantic Monthly,”
and since 1886 he has conducted the department known as the “Editor’s
Study” in “Harper’s Magazine,” contributing much to other periodicals
at the same time. He is also well known as a poet, but has so
overshadowed this side of himself by his greater power as a novelist,
that he is placed with that class of writers. In 1873 a collection
of his poems was published. While in Venice he wrote “No Love Lost;
a Romance of Travel,” which was published in 1869, and stamped him as
a poet of ability.

                *       *       *       *       *


                THE FIRST BOARDER.

             (FROM “THE LANDLORD AT LION’S HEAD.” 1897.)

      _By Permission of Messrs. Harper & Brothers, Publishers._

THE table was set for him alone, and it affected him as if the
family had been hurried away from it that he might have it to himself.
Everything was very simple; the iron forks had two prongs; the knives
bone handles; the dull glass was pressed; the heavy plates and cups
were white, but so was the cloth, and all were clean. The woman
brought in a good boiled dinner of corned beef, potatoes, turnips
and carrots, from the kitchen, and a teapot, and said something about
having kept them hot on the stove for him; she brought him a plate of
biscuit fresh from the oven; then she said to the boy, “You come out
and have your dinner with me, Jeff,” and left the guest to make his
meal unmolested.

The room was square, with two north windows that looked down the lane
he had climbed to the house. An open door led into the kitchen in
an ell, and a closed door opposite probably gave access to a parlor
or a ground-floor chamber. The windows were darkened down to the
lower sash by green paper shades; the walls were papered in a pattern
of brown roses; over the chimney hung a large picture, a life-size
pencil-drawing of two little girls, one slightly older and slightly
larger than the other, each with round eyes and precise ringlets, and
with her hand clasped in the other’s hand.

The guest seemed helpless to take his gaze from it, and he sat fallen
back in his chair gazing at it, when the woman came in with a pie.

“Thank you, I believe I don’t want any dessert,” he said. “The fact is,
the dinner was so good that I haven’t left any room for pie. Are those
your children?”

“Yes,” said the woman, looking up at the picture with the pie in her
hand. “They’re the last two I lost.”

“Oh, excuse me!” the guest began.

“It’s the way they appear in the spirit life. It’s a spirit picture.”

“Oh! I thought there was something strange about it.”

“Well, it’s a good deal like the photographs we had taken about a year
before they died. It’s a good likeness. They say they don’t change a
great deal, at first.”

She seemed to refer the point to him for his judgment; but he answered
wide of it:

“I came up here to paint your mountain, if you don’t mind, Mrs.
Durgin;;Lion’s Head, I mean.”

“Oh, yes. Well I don’t know as we could stop you, if you wanted to
take it away.” A spare glimmer lighted up her face.

The painter rejoined in kind. “The town might have something to say,
I suppose.”

“Not if you was to leave a good piece of intervale in place of it.
We’ve got mountains to spare.”

“Well, then, that’s arranged. What about a week’s board?”

“I guess you can stay, if you’re satisfied.”

“I’ll be satisfied if I can stay. How much do you want?”

The woman looked down, probably with an inward anxiety between the
fear of asking too much and the folly of asking too little. She said,
tentatively, “Some of the folks that come over from the hotels say
they pay as much as twenty dollars a week.”

“But you don’t expect hotel prices?”

“I don’t know as I do. We’ve never had any body before.”

The stranger relaxed the frown he had put on at the greed of her
suggestion; it might have come from ignorance or mere innocence, “I’m
in the habit of paying five dollars for farm board, where I stayed
several weeks. What do you say to seven for a single week?”

“I guess that’ll do,” said the woman, and she went out with the pie,
which she had kept in her hand.

                *       *       *       *       *


                IMPRESSIONS ON VISITING POMPEII.;

                FROM “ITALIAN JOURNEYS.” 1867.

      ; Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

THE cotton whitens over two-thirds of Pompeii yet interred: happy the
generation that lives to learn the wondrous secrets of that sepulchre!
For, when you have once been at Pompeii, this phantasm of the past
takes deeper hold on your imagination than any living city, and
becomes and is the metropolis of your dream-land forever. O marvellous
city! who shall reveal the cunning of your spell? Something not
death, something not life,;;something that is the one when you turn
to determine its essence as the other! What is it comes to me at
this distance of that which I saw in Pompeii? The narrow and curving,
but not crooked streets, with the blazing sun of that Neapolitan
November falling into them, or clouding their wheel-worn lava with
the black, black shadows of the many-tinted walls; the houses, and
the gay columns of white, yellow, and red; the delicate pavements of
mosaic; the skeletons of dusty cisterns and dead fountains; inanimate
garden-spaces with pygmy statues suited to their littleness; suites of
fairy bed-chambers, painted with exquisite frescos; dining-halls with
joyous scenes of hunt and banquet on their walls; the ruinous sites
of temples; the melancholy emptiness of booths and shops and jolly
drinking-houses; the lonesome tragic theatre, with a modern Pompeian
drawing water from a well there; the baths with their roofs perfect
yet, and the stucco bass-reliefs all but unharmed; around the whole,
the city wall crowned with slender poplars; outside the gates, the
long avenue of tombs, and the Appian Way stretching on to Stabi;;
and, in the distance, Vesuvius, brown and bare, with his fiery breath
scarce visible against the cloudless heaven; these are the things that
float before my fancy as I turn back to look at myself walking those
enchanted streets, and to wonder if I could ever have been so blest.
For there is nothing on the earth, or under it, like Pompeii....


            THE HOUSES OF POMPEII AND THEIR PAINTED WALLS.
                _From “Italian Journeys.”_

The plans of nearly all the houses in the city are alike: the
entrance-room next the door; the parlor or drawing-room next that;
then the _impluvium_, or unroofed space in the middle of the house,
where the rains were caught and drained into the cistern, and where
the household used to come to wash itself, primitively, as at a pump;
the little garden, with its painted columns, behind the _impluvium_,
and, at last, the dining-room.

                *       *       *       *       *

After referring to the frescos on the walls that have remained for
nearly two thousand years and the wonder of the art by which they were
produced, Mr. Howells thus continues:

Of course the houses of the rich were adorned by men of talent; but it
is surprising to see the community of thought and feeling in all this
work, whether it be from cunninger or clumsier hands. The subjects
are nearly always chosen from the fables of the gods, and they are
in illustration of the poets, Homer and the rest. To suit that soft,
luxurious life which people led in Pompeii, the themes are commonly
amorous, and sometimes not too chaste: there is much of Bacchus and
Ariadne, much of Venus and Adonis, and Diana bathes a good deal with
her nymphs,;;not to mention frequent representations of the toilet of
that beautiful monster which the lascivious art of the time loved to
depict. One of the most pleasing of all the scenes is that in one of
the houses, of the Judgment of Paris, in which the shepherd sits upon
a bank in an attitude of ineffable and flattered importance, with
one leg carelessly crossing the other, and both hands resting lightly
on his shepherd’s crook, while the goddesses before him await his
sentence. Naturally, the painter has done his best for the victress
in this rivalry, and you see

    “Idalian Aphrodite beautiful,”

as she should be, but with a warm and piquant spice of girlish
resentment in her attitude, that Paris should pause for an instant,
which is altogether delicious.

    “And I beheld great Here’s angry eyes.”

Awful eyes! How did the painter make them? The wonder of all these
pagan frescos is the mystery of the eyes,;;still, beautiful, unhuman.
You cannot believe that it is wrong for those tranquil-eyed men and
women to do evil, they look so calm and so unconscious in it all; and
in the presence of the celestials, as they bend upon you those eternal
orbs, in whose regard you are but a part of space, you feel that here
art has achieved the unearthly. I know of no words in literature which
give a _sense_ (nothing gives the idea) of the _stare_ of these gods,
except that magnificent line of Kingsley’s, describing the advance
over the sea toward Andromeda of the oblivious and unsympathizing
Nereids. They floated slowly up and their eyes

    “Stared on her, silent and still, like the eyes in the house
        of the idols.”

                *       *       *       *       *


                VENETIAN VAGABONDS.;

                (FROM “VENETIAN LIFE.” 1867.)

      ; By special permission of the author and of Houghton,
        Mifflin & Co.

THE lasagnone is a loafer, as an Italian can be a loafer, without
the admixture of ruffianism, which blemishes lost loafers of northern
race. He may be quite worthless, and even impertinent, but he cannot
be a rowdy;;that pleasing blossom on the nose of our fast, high-fed,
thick-blooded civilization. In Venice he must not be confounded
with other loiterers at the caf;; not with the natty people who talk
politics interminably over little cups of black coffee; not with those
old habitu;s, who sit forever under the Procuratie, their hands folded
upon the top of their sticks, and stare at the ladies who pass with a
curious steadfastness and knowing skepticism of gaze, not pleasing in
the dim eyes of age; certainly, the last persons who bear any likeness
to the lasagnone are the Germans, with their honest, heavy faces
comically anglicized by leg-of-mutton whiskers. The truth is, the
lasagnone does not flourish in the best caf;; he comes to perfection
in cheaper resorts, for he is commonly not rich.

It often happens that a glass of water, flavored with a little
anisette, is the order over which he sits a whole evening. He knows
the waiter intimately, and does not call him “Shop!” (Bott;ga) as
less familiar people do, but Gigi, or Beppi, as the waiter is pretty
sure to be named. “Behold!” he says, when the servant places his
modest drink before him, “who is that loveliest blonde there?” Or
to his fellow-lasagnone: “She regards me! I have broken her heart!”
This is his sole business and mission, the cruel lasagnone;;to break
the ladies’ hearts. He spares no condition;;neither rank nor wealth
is any defence against him. I often wonder what is in that note he
continually shows to his friend. The confession of some broken heart,
I think. When he has folded it and put it away, he chuckles, “Ah,
cara!” and sucks at his long, slender Virginia cigar. It is unlighted,
for fire consumes cigars. I never see him read the papers;;neither
the Italian papers nor the Parisian journals, though if he can
get “Galignani” he is glad, and he likes to pretend to a knowledge
of English, uttering upon the occasion, with great relish, such
distinctively English words as “Yes” and “Not,” and to the waiter,
“A-little-fire-if-you-please.” He sits very late in the caf;, he
touches his hat;;his curly French hat;;to the company as he goes out
with a mild swagger, his cane held lightly in his left hand, his coat
cut snugly to show his hips, and genteely swaying with the motion
of his body. He is a dandy, of course;;all Italians are dandies;;but
his vanity is perfectly harmless, and his heart is not bad. He would
go half an hour to put you in the direction of the Piazza. A little
thing can make him happy;;to stand in the pit at the opera, and gaze
at the ladies in the lower boxes;;to attend the Marionette or the
Malibran Theatre, and imperil the peace of pretty seamstresses and
contadinas;;to stand at the church doors and ogle the fair saints
as they pass out. Go, harmless lasagnone, to thy lodging in some
mysterious height, and break hearts if thou wilt. They are quickly
mended.




  Illustration: (‡ decoration)


                GENERAL LEWIS WALLACE.

                AUTHOR OF “BEN HUR.”


THERE is an old adage which declares “without fame or fortune at forty,
without fame or fortune always.” This, however is not invariably true.
Hawthorne became famous when he wrote “Scarlet Letter” at forty-six,
Sir Walter Scott produced the first Waverly Novel after he was forty;
and we find another exception in the case of the soldier author who
is made the subject of this sketch. Perhaps no writer of modern times
has gained so wide a reputation on so few books or began his literary
career so late in life as the author of “The Fair God;” “Ben Hur” and
“The Prince of India.” It was not until the year 1873 that General
Lewis Wallace at the age of forty-six became known to literature.
Prior to this he had filled the double position of lawyer and soldier,
and it was his observations and experiences in the Mexican War, no
doubt, which inspired him to write “The Fair God,” his first book,
which was a story of the conquest of that country.

Lew. Wallace was horn at Brookville, Indiana, in 1827. After receiving
a common school education, he began the study of law; but on the
breaking out of the Mexican War, he volunteered in the army as a
lieutenant in an Indiana company. On his return from the war, in 1848,
he took up the practice of his profession in his native state and
also served in the legislature. Near the beginning of the Civil War
he became colonel of a volunteer regiment. His military service was of
such a character that he received special mention from General Grant
for meritorious conduct and was made major-general in March, 1862. He
was mustered out of service when the war closed in 1865 and resumed
his practice of law at his old home in Crawfordsville. In 1873, as
stated above, his first book, “The Fair God,” was published; but it
met with only moderate success. In 1878, General Wallace was made
Territorial Governor of Utah and in 1880, “Ben Hur; a Tale of The
Christ” appeared. The scene was laid in the East and displayed such a
knowledge of the manners and customs of that country and people that
General Garfield;;that year elected President;;considered its author
a fitting person for the Turkish Ministry, and accordingly, in 1881,
he was appointed to that position. It is said that when President
Garfield gave General Wallace his appointment, he wrote the words
“Ben Hur” across the corner of the document, and, as Wallace was
coming away from his visit of acknowledgement at the White House, the
President put his arm over his friend’s shoulder and said, “I expect
another book out of you. Your duties will not be too onerous to allow
you to write it. Locate the scene in Constantinople.” This suggestion
was, no doubt, General Wallace’s reason for writing “The Prince of
India,” which was published in 1890 and is the last book issued by its
author. He had in the mean time, however, published “The Boyhood of
Christ” (1888).

None of the other books of the author have been so popular or
reached the great success attained by “Ben Hur,” which has had the
enormous sale of nearly one-half million copies without at any time
being forced upon the market in the form of a cheap edition. It is
remarkable also to state that the early circulation of “Ben Hur,”
while it was appreciated by a certain class, was too small to warrant
the author in anticipating the fortune which he afterwards harvested
from this book. Before General Wallace was made Minister to Turkey,
the book-sellers bought it in quantities of two, three or a dozen at
a time, and it was not until President Garfield had honored the author
with this ;significant portfolio that the trade commenced to call for
it in thousand lots.

      ; ‘significent’ replaced with ‘significant’

                *       *       *       *       *


                DESCRIPTION OF CHRIST.;

                (FROM “BEN HUR.” 1880.)

      ; Selections printed here are by special permission of the
        author. Harper Brothers, Publishers.

THE head was open to the cloudless light, except as it was draped with
long hair and slightly waved, and parted in the middle, and auburn in
tint, with a tendency to reddish golden where most strongly touched by
the sun. Under a broad, low forehead, under black well-arched brows,
beamed eyes dark blue and large, and softened to exceeding tenderness
by lashes of great length sometimes seen on children, but seldom, if
ever, on men. As to the other features, it would have been difficult
to decide whether they were Greek or Jewish. The delicacy of the
nostrils and mouth was unusually to the latter type, and when it was
taken into account with the gentleness of the eyes, the pallor of the
complexion, the fine texture of the hair and the softness of the beard,
which fell in waves over His throat to His breast, never a soldier
but would have laughed at Him in encounter, never a woman who would
not have confided in Him at sight, never a child that would not, with
quick instinct, have given Him its hand and whole artless trust, nor
might any one have said He was not beautiful.

The features, it should be further said, were ruled by a certain
expression which, as the viewer chose, might with equal correctness
have been called the effect of intelligence, love, pity or sorrow,
though, in better speech, it was a blending of them all;;a look
easy to fancy as a mark of a sinless soul doomed to the sight and
understanding of the utter sinfulness of those among whom it was
passing; yet withal no one could have observed the face with a thought
of weakness in the man; so, at least, would not they who know that
the qualities mentioned;;love, sorrow, pity;;are the results of a
consciousness of strength to bear suffering oftener than strength to
do; such has been the might of martyrs and devotees and the myriads
written down in saintly calendars; and such, indeed, was the air of
this one.

                *       *       *       *       *


             THE PRINCE OF INDIA TEACHES REINCARNATION.;

                (FROM THE “PRINCE OF INDIA.” 1890.)

      ; Selections printed here are by special permission of the
        author. Harper Brothers, Publishers.

“THE Holy Father of Light and Life,” the speaker went on, after a
pause referable to his consummate knowledge of men, “has sent His
Spirit down to the world, not once, merely, or unto one people, but
repeatedly, in ages sometimes near together, sometimes wide apart, and
to races diverse, yet in every instance remarkable for genius.”

There was a murmur at this, but he gave it no time.

“Ask you now how I could identify the ;Spirit so as to be able to
declare to you solemnly, as I do in fear of God, that in several
repeated appearances of which I speak it was the very same Spirit? How
do you know the man you met at set of sun yesterday was the man you
saluted and had salute from this morning? Well, I tell you the Father
has given the Spirit features by which it may be known;;features
distinct as those of the neighbors nearest you there at your right and
left hands. Wherever in my reading Holy Books, like these, I hear of
a man, himself a shining example of righteousness, teaching God and
the way to God; by those signs I say to my soul: ‘Oh, the Spirit, the
Spirit! Blessed ;is the man appointed to carry it about!’”

      ; ‘Spiritt’ replaced with ‘Spirit’

      ; ‘in’ replaced with ‘is’

Again the murmur, but again he passed on.

“The Spirit dwelt in the Holy of Holies set apart for it in the
Tabernacle; yet no man ever saw it here, a thing of sight. The soul is
not to be seen; still less is the Spirit of the Most High; or if one
did see it, its brightness would kill him. In great mercy, therefore,
it has come and done its good works in the world veiled; now in one
form, now in another; at one time, a voice in the air; at another, a
vision in sleep; at another, a burning bush; at another, an angel; at
another, a descending dove”;;

“Bethabara!” shouted a cowled brother, tossing both hands up.

“Be quiet!” the Patriarch ordered.

“Thus always when its errand was of quick despatch,” the Prince
continued. “But if its coming were for residence on earth, then its
habit has been to adopt a man for its outward form, and enter into
him, and speak by him; such was Moses, such Elijah, such were all
the Prophets, and such”;;he paused, then exclaimed shrilly;;“such was
Jesus Christ!”

                *       *       *       *       *


                THE PRAYER OF THE WANDERING JEW.;

                (FROM THE “PRINCE OF INDIA.”)

      ; Copyright, Harper & Bros.

“GOD of Israel;;my God!” he said, in a tone hardly more than speaking
to himself. “These about me, my fellow-creatures, pray thee in the
hope of life, I pray thee in the hope of death. I have come up from
the sea, and the end was not there; now I will go into the Desert in
search of it. Or if I must live, Lord, give me the happiness there is
in serving thee.

“Thou hast need of instruments of good: let me henceforth be one of
them, that by working for thy honor, I may at last enjoy the peace of
the blessed;;Amen.”

                *       *       *       *       *


                DEATH OF MONTEZUMA.;

                (FROM “THE FAIR GOD.”)

      ; Copyright, Harper & Bros.

THE king turned his pale face and fixed his gazing eyes upon the
conqueror; and such power was there in the look that the latter added,
with softening manner, “What I can do for thee I will do. I have
always been thy true friend.”

“O Malinche, I hear you, and your words make dying easy,” answered
Montezuma, smiling faintly.

With an effort he sought Cortes’ hand, and looking at Acatlan and
Tecalco, continued:

“Let me intrust these women and their children to you and your
lord. Of all that which was mine but now is yours;;lands, people,
empire,;;enough to save them from want and shame were small indeed.
Promise me; in the hearing of all these, promise, Malinche.”

Taint of anger was there no longer on the soul of the great Spaniard.

“Rest thee, good king!” he said, with feeling. “Thy queens and their
children shall be my wards. In the hearing of all these, I so swear.”

The listener smiled again; his eyes closed, his hand fell down; and so
still was he that they began to think him dead. Suddenly he stirred,
and said faintly, but distinctly,;;

“Nearer, uncles, nearer.” The old men bent over him, listening.

“A message to Guatamozin,;;to whom I give my last thought, as king.
Say to him, that this lingering in death is no fault of his; the aim
was true, but the arrow splintered upon leaving the bow. And lest the
world hold him to account for my blood, hear me say, all of you, that
I bade him do what he did.

“And in sign that I love him, take my sceptre, and give it to him;;”

His voice fell away, yet the lips moved; lower the accents stooped,;;

“Tula and the empire go with the sceptre,” he murmured, and they were
his last words,;;his will. A wail from the women pronounced him dead.

                *       *       *       *       *


                DESCRIPTION OF VIRGIN MARY.;

                (FROM “BEN HUR.”)

      ; Copyright, Harper & Bros.

SHE was not more than fifteen. Her form, voice and manner belonged to
the period of transition from girlhood. Her face was perfectly oval,
her complexion more pale than fair. The nose was faultless; the lips,
slightly parted, were full and ripe, giving to the lines of the mouth
warmth, tenderness and trust; the eyes were blue and large, and shaded
by drooping lids and long lashes, and, in harmony with all, a flood of
golden hair, in the style permitted to Jewish brides, fell unconfined
down her back to the pillion on which she sat. The throat and neck
had the downy softness sometimes seen which leaves the artist in
doubt whether it is an effect of contour or color. To these charms
of feature and person were added others more indefinable;;an air of
purity which only the soul can impart, and of abstraction natural to
such as think much of things impalpable. Often, with trembling lips,
she raised her eyes to heaven, itself not more deeply blue; often she
crossed her hands upon her breast, as in adoration and prayer; often
she raised her head like one listening eagerly for a calling voice.
Now and then, midst his slow utterances, Joseph turned to look at her,
and, catching the expression kindling her face as with light, forgot
his theme, and with bowed head, wondering, plodded on.

  Illustration: (‡ decoration)




  Illustration: (‡ decoration)


                EDWARD EGGLESTON.

                “THE HOOSIER SCHOOL-BOY.”


HERDER says with truth that “one’s whole life is but the
interpretation of the oracles of his childhood,” and those who are
familiar with the writings of Edward Eggleston see in his pictures of
country life in the Hoosier State the interpretation and illustration
of his own life with its peculiar environment in “the great interior
valley” nearly a half-century ago. The writers who have interpreted
for us and for future generations the life and the characteristic
manners which prevailed in the days when our country was new and the
forests were yielding to give place to growing cities and expanding
farms have done a rare and peculiar service, and those sections which
have found expression through the genius and gifts of novelist or poet
are highly favored above all others.

Edward Eggleston has always counted it a piece of good-fortune to
have been born in a small village of Southern Indiana, for he believes
that the formative influences of such an environment, the intimate
knowledge of simple human nature, the close acquaintance with nature
in woods and field and stream, and the sincere and earnest tone of
the religious atmosphere which he breathed all through his youth, are
better elements of culture than a city life could have furnished.

He was born in 1837 in Vevay, Indiana, and his early life was spent
amid the “noble scenery” on the banks of the Ohio River. His father
died while he was a young boy, and he himself was too delicate to
spend much time at school, so that he is a shining example of those
who move up the inclined plane of self-culture and self-improvement.

As he himself has forcefully said, through his whole life two men have
struggled within him for the ascendency, the religious devotee and
the literary man. His early training was “after the straitest sect
of his religion”;;the fervid Methodism of fifty years ago, and he was
almost morbidly scrupulous as a boy, not even allowing himself to read
a novel, though from this early period he always felt in himself a
future literary career, and the teacher who corrected his compositions
naively said to him: “I have marked your composition very severely
because you are destined to become an author.”

At first the religious element in his nature decidedly held sway
and he devoted himself to the ministry, mounting a horse and going
forth with his saddle-bags as a circuit preacher in a circuit of ten
preaching places. This was followed by a still harder experience in
the border country of Minnesota, where in moccasins he tramped from
town to town preaching to lumbermen and living on a meagre pittance,
eating crackers and cheese, often in broken health and expecting an
early death.

But even this earnest life of religious devotion and sacrifice was
interspersed with attempts at literary work and he wrote a critical
essay on “Beranger and his Songs” while he was trying to evangelize
the red-shirted lumbermen of St. Croix. It was in such life and amid
such experiences that Eggleston gained his keen knowledge of human
nature which has been the delight and charm of his books.

He began his literary career as associate editor of the “Little
Corporal” at Evanston, Illinois, in 1866, and in 1870 he rose to the
position of literary editor of the New York “Independent,” of which
he was for a time superintending editor. For five years, from 1874 to
1879, he was pastor of the Church of Christian Endeavor in Brooklyn,
but failing health compelled him to retire, and he made his home at
“Owl’s Nest,” on Lake George, where he has since devoted himself to
literary work.

His novels depict the rural life of Southern Indiana, and his
own judgment upon them is as follows: “I should say that what
distinguishes my novels from other works of fiction is the prominence
which they give to social conditions; that the individual characters
are here treated to a greater degree than elsewhere as parts of
a study of a society, as in some sense the logical result of the
environment. Whatever may be the rank assigned to these stories
as works of literary art, they will always have a certain value as
materials for the student of social history.”

His chief novels and stories are the following: “Mr. Blake’s Walking
Stick” (Chicago, 1869); “The Hoosier School-master” (New York, 1871);
“End of the World” (1872); “The Mystery of Metropolisville” (1873);
“The Circuit Rider” (1874); “School-master’s Stories for Boys and
Girls” (1874); and “The Hoosier School-boy” (1883). He has written
in connection with his daughter an interesting series of biographical
tales of famous American Indians, and during these later years of his
life he has largely devoted himself to historical work which has had
an attraction for him all his life.

In his historical work as in his novels he is especially occupied with
the evolution of society. His interest runs in the line of unfolding
the history of life and development rather than in giving mere facts
of political history.

His chief works in this department are: “Household History of the
United States and its People” (New York, 1893); and “The Beginners of
a Nation” (New York, 1897).

Though possessed of a weak and ailing body and always on the verge of
invalidism, he has done the work of a strong man. He has always
preserved his deep and earnest religious and moral tone, but he has
woven with it a joyous and genuine humor which has warmed the hearts
of his many readers.

                *       *       *       *       *


                SPELLING DOWN THE MASTER.;

                (FROM “THE HOOSIER SCHOOLMASTER.”)
                (ORANGE JUDD CO., PUBLISHERS.)

      ; Copyright, Orange Judd Co.

EVERY family furnished a candle. There were yellow dips and white
dips, burning, smoking, and flaring. There was laughing, and talking,
and giggling, and simpering, and ogling, and flirting, and courting.
What a dress party is to Fifth Avenue, a spelling-school is to
Hoophole County. It is an occasion which is metaphorically inscribed
with this legend, “Choose your partners.” Spelling is only a blind
in Hoophole County, as is dancing on Fifth Avenue. But as there are
some in society who love dancing for its own sake, so in Flat Creek
district there were those who loved spelling for its own sake, and
who, smelling the battle from afar, had come to try their skill in
this tournament, hoping to freshen the laurels they had won in their
school-days.

“I ’low,” said Mr. Means, speaking as the principal school trustee,
“I ’low our friend the Square is jest the man to boss this ere consarn
to-night. Ef nobody objects, I’ll appint him. Come, Square, don’t be
bashful. Walk up to the trough, fodder or no fodder, as the man said
to his donkey.”

There was a general giggle at this, and many of the young swains took
occasion to nudge the girls alongside them, ostensibly for the purpose
of making them see the joke, but really for the pure pleasure of
nudging.

The squire came to the front.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, shoving up his spectacles, and
sucking his lips over his white teeth to keep them in place, “ladies
and gentlemen, young men and maidens, raley I’m obleeged to Mr. Means
fer this honor,” and the Squire took both hands and turned the top
of his head round several inches. Then he adjusted his spectacles.
Whether he was obliged to Mr. Means for the honor of being compared
to a donkey, was not clear. “I feel in the inmost compartments of my
animal spirits a most happyfying sense of the success and futility of
all my endeavors to sarve the people of Flat Creek deestrick, and the
people of Tomkins township, in my weak way and manner.” This burst of
eloquence was delivered with a constrained air and an apparent sense
of danger that he, Squire Hawkins, might fall to pieces in his weak
way and manner, and of the success and futility (especially the latter)
of all attempts at reconstruction. For by this time the ghastly pupil
of the left eye, which was black, was looking away round to the left
while the little blue one on the right twinkled cheerfully toward the
front. The front teeth would drop down so that the Squire’s mouth was
kept nearly closed, and his words whistled through.

“I feel as if I could be grandiloquent on this interesting occasion,”
twisting his scalp round, “but raley I must forego any such exertions.
It is spelling you want. Spelling is the corner-stone, the grand,
underlying subterfuge of a good eddication. I put the spellin’-book
prepared by the great Daniel Webster alongside the Bible. I do raley.
The man who got up, who compounded this little work of inextricable
valoo was a benufactor to the whole human race or any other.” Here
the spectacles fell off. The Squire replaced them in some confusion,
gave the top of his head another twist, and felt for his glass eye,
while poor Shocky stared in wonder, and Betsy Short rolled from side
to side at the point of death from the effort to suppress her giggle.
Mrs. Means and the other old ladies looked the applause they could not
speak.

“I appint Larkin Lanham and Jeems Buchanan fer captings,” said the
Squire. And the two young men thus named took a stick and tossed it
from hand to hand to decide who should have the “first chice.” One
tossed the stick to the other, who held it fast just where he happened
to catch it. Then the first placed his hand above the second, and so
the hands were alternately changed to the top. The one who held the
stick last without room for the other to take hold had gained the
lot. This was tried three times. As Larkin held the stick twice out
of three times, he had the choice. He hesitated a moment. Everybody
looked toward tall Jim Phillips. But Larkin was fond of a venture on
unknown seas, and so he said, “I take the master,” while a buzz of
surprise ran round the room, and the captain of the other side, as if
afraid his opponent would withdraw the choice, retorted quickly, and
with a little smack of exultation and defiance in his voice: “And _I_
take Jeems Phillips.”

And soon all present, except a few of the old folks, found themselves
ranged in opposing hosts, the poor spellers lagging in, with what
grace they could at the foot of the two divisions. The Squire opened
his spelling-book and began to give out the words to the two captains,
who stood up and spelled against each other. It was not long before
Larkin spelled “really” with one _l_, and had to sit down in confusion,
while a murmur of satisfaction ran through the ranks of the opposing
forces. His own side bit their lips. The slender figure of the young
teacher took the place of the fallen leader, and the excitement made
the house very quiet. Ralph dreaded the loss of influence he would
suffer if he should be easily spelled down. And at the moment of
rising he saw in the darkest corner the figure of a well-dressed
young man sitting in the shadow. It made him tremble. Why should his
evil genius haunt him? But by a strong effort he turned his attention
away from Dr. Small, and listened carefully to the words which the
Squire did not pronounce very distinctly, spelling them with extreme
deliberation. This gave him an air of hesitation which disappointed
those on his own side. They wanted him to spell with a dashing
assurance. But he did not begin a word until he had mentally felt
his way through it. After ten minutes of spelling hard words, Jeems
Buchanan, the captain of the other side, spelled “atrocious” with
an _s_ instead of a _c_, and subsided, his first choice, Jeems
Phillips, coming up against the teacher. This brought the excitement
to fever-heat. For though Ralph was chosen first, it was entirely on
trust, and most of the company were disappointed. The champion who now
stood up against the school-master was a famous speller.

Jim Phillips was a tall, lank, stoop-shouldered fellow, who had never
distinguished himself in any other pursuit than spelling. Except in
this one art of spelling he was of no account. He could neither catch
a ball well nor bat well. He could not throw well enough to make his
mark in that famous Western game of Bull-pen. He did not succeed well
in any study but that of Webster’s Elementary. But in that;;to use the
usual Flat Creek locution;;he was “a hoss.” The genius for spelling is
in some people a sixth sense, a matter of intuition. Some spellers are
born and not made, and their facility reminds one of the mathematical
prodigies that crop out every now and then to bewilder the world. Bud
Means, foreseeing that Ralph would be pitted against Jim Phillips, had
warned his friend that Jim could spell “like thunder and lightning,”
and that it “took a powerful smart speller” to beat him, for he knew
“a heap of spelling-book.” To have “spelled down the master” is next
thing to having whipped the biggest bully in Hoophole County, and Jim
had “spelled down” the last three masters. He divided the hero-worship
of the district with Bud Means.

For half an hour the Squire gave out hard words. What a blessed
thing our crooked orthography is. Without it there could be no
spelling-schools. As Ralph discovered his opponent’s mettle he became
more and more cautious. He was now satisfied that Jim would eventually
beat him. The fellow evidently knew more about the spelling-book than
old Noah Webster himself. As he stood there, with his dull face and
long sharp nose, his hands behind his back, and his voice spelling
infallibly, it seemed to Hartsook that his superiority must lie in his
nose. Ralph’s cautiousness answered a double purpose; it enabled him
to tread surely, and it was mistaken by Jim for weakness. Phillips
was now confident that he should carry off the scalp of the fourth
school-master before the evening was over. He spelled eagerly,
confidently, brilliantly. Stoop-shouldered as he was, he began to
straighten up. In the minds of all the company the odds were in his
favor. He saw this, and became ambitious to distinguish himself by
spelling without giving the matter any thought.

Ralph always believed that he would have been speedily defeated
by Phillips had it not been for two thoughts which braced him. The
sinister shadow of young Dr. Small sitting in the dark corner by the
water-bucket nerved him. A victory over Phillips was a defeat to one
who wished only ill to the young school-master. The other thought that
kept his pluck alive was the recollection of Bull. He approached a
word as Bull approached the raccoon. He did not take hold until he
was sure of his game. When he took hold, it was with a quiet assurance
of success. As Ralph spelled in this dogged way for half an hour the
hardest words the Squire could find, the excitement steadily rose in
all parts of the house, and Ralph’s friends even ventured to whisper
that “maybe Jim had cotched his match after all!”

But Phillips never doubted of his success.

“Theodolite,” said the Squire.

“T-h-e, the, o-d, od, theod, o, theodo, l-y-t-e, theodolite,” spelled
the champion.

“Next,” said the Squire, nearly losing his teeth in his excitement.

Ralph spelled the word slowly and correctly, and the conquered
champion sat down in confusion. The excitement was so great for some
minutes that the spelling was suspended. Everybody in the house had
shown sympathy with one or other of the combatants, except the silent
shadow in the corner. _It_ had not moved during the contest, and did
not show any interest now in the result.

“Gewhilliky crickets! Thunder and lightning! Licked him all to smash!”
said Bud, rubbing his hands on his knees. “That beats my time all
holler!”

And Betsy Short giggled until her tuck-comb fell out, though she was
on the defeated side.

Shocky got up and danced with pleasure.

But one suffocating look from the aqueous eyes of Mirandy destroyed
the last spark of Ralph’s pleasure in his triumph, and sent that awful
below-zero feeling all through him.

“He’s powerful smart is the master,” said old Jack to Mr. Pete Jones.
“He’ll beat the whole kit and tuck of ’em afore he’s through. I know’d
he was smart. That’s the reason I tuck him,” proceeded Mr. Means.

“Yaas, but he don’t lick enough. Not nigh,” answered Pete Jones. “No
lickin’, no larnin’, says I.”

It was now not so hard. The other spellers on the opposite side
went down quickly under the hard words which the Squire gave out.
The master had mowed down all but a few, his opponents had given
up the battle, and all had lost their keen interest in a contest
to which there could be but one conclusion, for there were only the
poor spellers left. But Ralph Hartsook ran against a stump where
he was least expecting it. It was the Squire’s custom, when one of
the smaller scholars or poorer spellers rose to spell against the
master, to give out eight or ten easy words that they might have some
breathing spell before being slaughtered, and then to give a poser or
two which soon settled them. He let them run a little, as a cat does a
doomed mouse. There was now but one person left on the opposite side,
and as she rose in her blue calico dress, Ralph recognized Hannah,
the bound girl at old Jack Means’s. She had not attended school in
the district, and had never spelled in spelling-school before, and was
chosen last as an uncertain quantity. The Squire began with easy words
of two syllables, from that page of Webster, so well-known to all
who ever thumbed it, as “Baker,” from the word that stands at the top
of the page. She spelled these words in an absent and uninterested
manner. As everybody knew that she would have to go down as soon as
this preliminary skirmishing was over, everybody began to get ready to
go home, and already there was a buzz of preparation. Young men were
timidly asking girls if they could “see them safe home,” which is the
approved formula, and were trembling in mortal fear of “the mitten.”
Presently the Squire, thinking it time to close the contest, pulled
his scalp forward, adjusted his glass eye, which had been examining
his nose long enough, and turned over the leaves of the book to the
great words at the place known to spellers as “Incomprehensibility,”
and began to give out those “words of eight syllables with the accent
on the sixth.” Listless scholars now turned round, and ceased to
whisper, in order to be in the master’s final triumph. But to their
surprise, “ole Miss Meanses’ white nigger,” as some of them called her,
in allusion to her slavish life, spelled these great words with as
perfect ease as the master. Still, not doubting the result, the Squire
turned from place to place and selected all the hard words he could
find. The school became utterly quiet, the excitement was too great
for the ordinary buzz. Would “Meanses’ Hanner” beat the master? Beat
the master that had laid out Jim Phillips? Everybody’s sympathy was
now turned to Hannah. Ralph noticed that even Shocky had deserted him,
and that his face grew brilliant every time Hannah spelled a word. In
fact, Ralph deserted himself. If he had not felt that a victory given
would insult her, he would have missed intentionally.

“Daguerreotype,” sniffled the Squire. It was Ralph’s turn.

“D-a-u, dau;;;;”

“Next.”

And Hannah spelled it right.




  Illustration: POPULAR AMERICAN NOVELISTS.

                _EDWD. BELLAMY._
       _F. MARION CRAWFORD._ • _GEO. W. CABLE._ • _E. P. ROE._
               _THOS. NELSON PAGE._ • _FRANK STOCKTON._