SEPTEMBER
SCRIBNER'S
MAGAZINE - ILLUSTRATED
Special Articles and Essays A Sculptor of the West ERNEST PEIXOTTO 266 Protective Thinking . EDGAR JAMES SWIFT 278 Some Dry-Points and an Etching. Drawn by WALTER TITTLE 297 Gabriele D'Annunzio . . JOSEPH COLLINS 304 Trailing Statistics on an American Frontier VIOLA I. PARADISE 322 The Paradox of Thoreau . . ODELL SHEPARD 335 The Cave Tiger of China. WILLIAM LORD SMITH 255 The Technique of Lying Awake MRS. WINFIELD SCOTT MOODY 364 Guide-Posts and Camp-Fires — Japonica The Ninth of Twelve Papers. HENRY VAN DYKE 368 Fiction and Poetry The Antidote . MRS. W K. CLIFFORD 259 The Argosies . . . . ALEXANDER HULL 285 The Puddle. Poem . EDEN PHILLPOTTS 296 Links LEONARD HATCH 312 Sea Ginger J. EDWARD MACY 343 Artists in This Number Gordon Stevenson, H. J. Mowat, A. Phimister Proctor, Leslie Crump, Walter Tittle, Florence Mtnard; also reproductions of paintings by Hob-bema, Cuyp, Antonis Mor, Ghirlandajo, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. Departments The Point of View. Then and Now—Changing Feminine Ideals—A Poor Man's Game 375 The Field of Art. The Art Collection of John G. Johnson . . . . HARRISON S. MORRIS 379 i The Financial Situation. "Deflation" ALEXANDER DANA NOYES 385 35 cents a number. $4.00 a year CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK fOWJieS SCBIBNER.-PRESIDENT I 597599 HFTH AVE.IrtWYORK-CONSTABLE COMPANY LIMITED LONDON. MURAD THE Turkish Cigarette Every day MURADS are held higher in the estimation of the men who smoke them. 'They are the standard of Taste. They never disappoint—never fail—never change— They are 100% pure Turkish tobacco—of the finest varieties grown. You are proud to smoke them in any company—on any occasion. They are the largest selling high-grade cigarette in the world. The cigarette smokers of America D O prefer Quality to Quantity. "Judge for Yourself—!" S AnagyrosMaker* of the Uighsi! Grade Turkish and Egyptian Ggarvttet in the W>r/d
Vol. LXVIII. No. 3 SEPTEMBER 1920 SCRIBNERS MAGAZINE
CONTENTS I ROSE, HOLDING THE TILLER ROPES IN MY
HANDS, AND FOLLOWED HIS POINTING . . . . . Frontispiece From a drawing by Gordon Stevenson to illustrate " Sea Ginger."
THE ANTIDOTE. A Story Mn. W. K. Clifford 259 Illustration by H. J. Mowat.
A SCULPTOR OF THE WEST Ernest Peixotto . 266 Illustrations from the works of A. Phimister Proctor. 278
PROTECTIVE THINKING . Edgar James Swift
TH E ARGOSIES. A Story Alexander Hull . 28s
Illustrations by Leslie Crump.
296
THE PUDDLE. Poem . . Eden Phillpotts .
297
SOME DRY-POINTS AND AN ETCHING. Drawn by . Walter Tittle
304 GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO Joseph Collins . 312 LINKS. A Story . Leonard Hatch .
Illustrations by Florence Minard. TRAILING STATISTICS ON AN AMERICAN 322 FRONTIER • . . Viola I. Paradise . Illustrations from photographs, by permission of the Children's Bureau.
THE PARADOX OF THOREAU Odell Shepard
335
SEA GINGER. A Story J. Edward Macy . 343 Illustrations (Frontispiece) by Gordon Stevenson.
THE CAVE TIGER OF CHINA William Lord Smith 3SS Illustrations from photographs by the Author.
THE TECHNIQUE OF LYING AWAKE Mrs. Winfield Scott Moody 364
GUIDE-POSTS AND CAMP-FIRES Henry van Dyke . 368 JAPONICA. THE NINTH OF TWELVE PAPERS.
TH E POINT OF VIEW—Then and Now—Changing Feminine Ideals—A Poor Man's Game -375
THE FIELD OF ART—The Art Collection of John G.
Johnson Harrison S. Morris
379
TH E FINANCIA L SITUATION—"Deflation" . Alexander Dana Noyes 38s (Unlisted Securities—Where Do They Go ? by William W. Craig, Adv. page 79.)
PUBLISHED MONTHLY. PRICE, 35 CENTS A NUMBER; $4.00 A YEAR Copyrighted in 1920 in United States, Canada, and Great Britain, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Printed in New York. All-rights reserved. Entered as Second-Class Matter December 2, i836, at the Post-Office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879. Entered as Second-Class Matter at the Post-Office Department, Ottawa, Canada.
Drawn by Gordon Stevenson. I ROSE, HOLDING THE TILLER ROPES IN MY HANDS, AND FOLLOWED- HIS POINTING. —"Sea Ginger," page 343. 258
SCRIBNERS MAGAZINE
VOL. LXVIII SEPTEMBER, 1920 NO. 3 TH E ANTIDOTE
By Mrs. W. K. Clifford
ILLUSTRATION BY H . J. MOWAT GUY HORBURY was thirty-three, big and clumsily made; but he moved easily and was light on his feet— like an elephant stuffed with feathers. A good face, keen blue eyes, a deferential, sympathetic manner and low, deep voice that suggested an ability, regretfully repressed, to make love: all this made him attractive to the other sex. In 1916 he returned from the Western front, knocked about but not disfigured. Ever since, he had been stuck in a byway of the War Office. He had a charming little house and garden on Campden Hill, a cook-housekeeper who was a genius, and a discharged soldier who was a treasure. Occasionally he thought of marriage; but, after all, there was a good deal to be said for a fireside, a lamp, and an evening paper to himself. Last winter, through the death of a distant cousin, he became Sir Guy Horbury: not much money, a thousand or two a year perhaps, but still, there it was. .. . So he went to see his Aunt Cecilia, an elderly spinster, living alone, in Hyde Park Place. She was presiding at a comfy-looking tea-table when he arrived. "M y dear Guy," she said, "I was just talking about you. I'm delighted to think you've got it." She meant the title and the rest, of course. "Poor dear Henry didn't enjoy life." Henry was the unlamented cousin. "It was so wise of him not to go on with it. . . . Do you know Mrs. Thornton?" He had seen her the moment he entered and said to himself, "Oh, I say," for the little black figure seated on the sofa was charming to look at—eyes as blue as his own, but with an appealing expression in them, or a bewildered one when it occurred to her to turn it on, and a delightful smile. She looked very young, and she was dressed in deepest mourning. "She's a little war widow," Aunt Cecilia said tenderly; "you'll feel for her, for you might have been one yourself a year or two ago. I mean you might have made one if you'd been married." Then tea amenities occupied her till she saw her visitors exchanging glances. "If he is very good you'll sing him a song before you go,won't you,Esme,dar]ing?" she asked. "Oh—shall I? " The voice was soft and caressing. He felt rather badly for a moment— pleasantly badly. "He was a hero in the war, just as your poor Leonard was," Aunt Cecilia went on. "But I told you all about him just now." It rather pleased him to find that he had been explained. She proceeded to explain Esme darling to him. "This poor child," she said, "worked at a hospital till her husband was killed; now her mother lives with her, but they are not well off—no one is with all the dreadful taxes—so she wants to give lessons in singing. She is going to see the Gordon-Days, who live three doors off, at five o'clock. They have two girls, dear, good, plain creatures, who think they have voices." Copyrighted in 1920 in United States, Canada, and Great Britain, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Printed in New York. All rights reserved. 259 The Antidote II " I ONLY sing foolish little English songs," Mrs. Thornton said, while her pretty fingers wandered about on the keys. " I love—them." She looked up at him in the middle of the sentence, which was why he hesitated. Her voice was sweet and true and her articulation perfect. She put pathetic meaning into every word of "When the thorn is white with blossom." . . . Then it was time to go. "One more; the Gordon-Days are only three doors off," he pleaded. "It won't take you a minute to get there." But Esme darling shook her head. "She and her mother live in a little flat in Hyde Park Mansions by the Edge-ware Road. I am afraid they are very poor," Aunt Cecilia told him when she had gone. "What was her husband like?" "Oh, a dear fellow; but I think he kept her in order." Aunt Cecilia smiled all over her face, and a dimple, that had come along the years from her youth, showed itself. "She's such a helpless little thing and so pretty—I hope she'll marry again, poor child." Then, hastily, "She wouldn't do for you, dear Guy, you would be much too easy. . . . Now tell me about yourself. I'm so glad you came to-day, for to-morrow I'm going to Droitwich for two months." Two months ! It instantly occurred to him that he wouldn't see Mrs. Thornton's blue eyes again. . . . He looked at the clock. Half past five. She had had time enough to discuss those lessons. . . . He saw her leave the Gordon-Day house just ahead of him, and went toward her. " Do let me tell you how awfully I enjoyed that song," he said in his most deferential tone. "Did you?" Her manner was dejected. "I hope it was a successful visit?" "I'm afraid not; they want someone from the College of Music. I'm only just, well—you know " "Oh, I say, how stupid of them." He hesitated. "There are some friends of mine who might be useful—and—may I walk on a little way with you?" She nodded. They went on together. He wished she were not quite so much like a little walking funeral. Her long veil waggled to and fro^he could see it out of the tail of his eye; people looked at them as they passed, as if they thought —but it didn't matter. "D o tell me about the friends," she said. He thought her voice adorable. "They have daughters and that sort of thing, you know." This was all pure lying. "They live in—Hampstead," he added desperately. "I'l l write to themto-night. .. . I say, if I might venture, it's frightfully rude of me, when we have only just met, but if I were you," he thought it kind to give her a hint, "I'd take off some of that mourning when you go to see about pupils—it puts people in low spirits at this time—such a lot of worry about, you know—I hope you don't mind?" "Of course I don't," she said gratefully. He thought it so nice of her. This was when they were on her door-step. "I'l l remember the address—and— write." With evident regret he was about to go. " Come in," she said with a smile that made his head whirl. "Mother would love to thank you. You are so kind." "Oh, but perhaps she wouldn't like to—be bothered with a caller?" "She would," in a low tone; "I know she would." The fiat was on the ground floor. He followed her into a pleasant sitting-room that showed some knowledge of the prevailing fashion in furniture—and suggested scanty expenditure. There was a fire, with a low fender stool before it. He felt that it was her favorite seat. "This is where we live," she said. "Awfully nice—just you and your mother, eh?" "Just us two," she gave a soft little laugh—her spirits were evidently going up. "We are very cosy—only"—as if she had suddenly remembered her role— "I am often dreadfully unhappy. You see it's all so difficult." She pulled in her underlip. He longed to kiss her, but, of course, he made no sign. "Is the mother out?" he asked. " I don't think so—I'll go and see." When she had gone he looked at the The Antidote songs on the piano and the books on the shelves. The books were all novels; some of them made him grunt a little. "She oughtn't to read this sort of stuff," he thought, "but probably they were Thornton's." "Mother is lying down," she said when she came back. "She had a headache." He turned as if to go. " Perhaps you'll let me in another day, or," as he saw a look of regret on her face, "mayn't I stay and talk to you now for a little while?" "Yes, do—this room is so untidy—and those poor flowers—we have had them a week." She tried to rearrange them. He knew, though her back was turned, that she stooped and kissed them. He almost loved her for it. "They are dying," she said with a sigh. She shook up the two rather meagre sofa cushions and collected the songs on the piano and smiled at him and sat down on the low fender seat. " I say." he asked gently in a low, sympathetic tone, "is it long since ?" "Nearly a year." "Poor little girl." He ventured to touch her hand: she didn't mind. Then the mother entered. She was a good deal like her daughter, with the same rather underbred manner and prettiness. In five minutes he was talking with them as if he had known them five months at least. This had been Leonard Thornton's flat, he learned. They would have to give it up shortly and go to an aunt in the Regent's Park Road. It was wonderful how aunts were sprinkled all over the country, he thought, and always used for emergencies. Before he went away he had suggested taking them to hear a well-known singer at the Albert Hall next Sunday afternoon. "I'm afraid I couldn't go," the mother said, "but Esme would like it," and he understood that he might take her alone. He felt that he was in luck. "Isn't he a darling!" Esme said when he had gone; "and Sir Guy Horbury— Sir Guy—" She stood on tiptoe on the fender stool and looked at herself in the glass over the mantelpiece. It was hung inconveniently high so that it might hide a dark patch on the wall. "Yo u ought to marry him." "Perhaps he doesn't want to marry any one." "Oh, nonsense. A man wants to do anything, if a woman knows how to make him. You didn't care much for Leonard." III THE Y went to the concert on Sunday. Esme wore a soft gray coat and skirt and a gray fur toque. She looked charming; he saw it, felt it. "I hardly knew you," he said in the taxi. He had seen her twice since the other day and taken her flowers and books; they were almost old friends. "I'm so glad you've left off those ghastly black things." "I liked them." "Liked them?" "I thought they were so becoming." He looked at her uneasily. "Oh, no," he said quickly. "Think what they meant." " I didn't think," she answered innocently. "I just wore them." "Oh, I see—" He was rather puzzled. "But I am so glad to have left them off." She turned her face toward him. He could have sworn there was tenderness in her blue eyes: so he took her hand. The music had its effect on them both, or, at any rate, on him. . . . They walked back across the park in the twilight. And then they had tea at the flat with her mother, and Esme sang to him— in a very low voice, because it was Sunday, she said—little old French songs and very old English ones. Her perfect articulation sent every sentimental word into his heart. He could hardly tear himself away. He rather hoped they would ask him to dinner, but they didn't . . . for, as a matter of fact, they didn't have any —only a little scrambly meal, quite unfit to set before a well-off young man. So he went back to Campden Hill and sat by the fireside and forgot to read The Observer and wondered. . . . She was a dear little thing. .. . It would be awful for her to live with her mother and aunt. It couldn't be done. . . . And as for teaching—he hadn't much confidence in her capacity. .. . He didn't feel that she had cared very much for her Leonard. The Antidote She was certain to marry again; but he didn't think there was any one in the way. He realized with a start that he couldn't bear the thought of any one else snapping her up. " Jolliest little girl in the world," he said to himself. "B y Jove, I could eat her." So things went on. He saw her nearly every day for a fortnight. He contrived to send the mother presents—game and fruit; flowers and chocolates to Esme. He developed a taste for the National Gallery and took her there, but it wasn't a success. She knew nothing about pictures. She liked matinees and tea shops . . . oh, yes, she liked cakes. Then matters were suddenly hurried up. Some one made an offer for the flat and Esme and her mother were to migrate to the aunt in the Regent's Park. She told him about it one afternoon while she sat at his feet on the fender stool—just as usual. Her mother had a headache—just as usual. "I can't bear it," she said. "It's a horrid little house. The black beetles come up-stairs in the night, and you can hear the animals in the Zoological Gardens—lions and tigers roaring and growling when it's dark." She shuddered and opened her eyes very wide and looked frightened. "And Aunt Lilian is deaf and so domineering. I can't bear to think of it." She ate a chocolate from a box on the floor beside her, turned to the fire, and considered for a minute. He couldn't talk sentiment, but he was very much in love. "Look here," he said, "don't bear it. Marry me instead. I have a jolly little house and we'd have no end of sport." He pulled her up from the stool. "Oh, I couldn't." But she let his arms go round her. " Yes, you could, you know, if you tried. Don't you think you could manage to— well, care for me a bit?" " I do," she said, "frightfully—dreadfully," and burst into tears. It fetched him more than anything else could have done. "Yo u little darling, you little angel— and everything else that is stunning. We'll be married right off." He had never felt so happy in his life. " I shouldn't have any clothes." " We'll go to Paris afterwards and you shall have a heap—I'll get passports, you bet." She laughed—she had a dear little chuckling laugh. "Last night I was making my veil— do you remember it? " "Rather." He remembered how it had waggled. " I was making it into a little dinner blouse and trimming it with gold, in case we dined at the Ritz again." Rather a rum thing to make a widow's veil for one man into something to go out larking with another, he thought. But, of course, she was such an innocent little thing—and—well, she just lived. By Jove, she should live, too, and be happy in the future. "I'l l go about a license to-morrow," he said when he was leaving her; "we'll be married at once. You shan't interview the black beetles or go within hail of the tigers." He put her pretty head on his shoulder and her arm round his neck. . . . The Regent's Park aunt was expected, so he hurried away, and he was the happiest man in the world that evening. He sat and thought how lovely it would be in Paris; it was very full, but they would get in somewhere. And now the war was over there would be heaps of things in the shops. It would be splendid fun to give her pretty frocks. He imagined her laughter and her eyes with the appealing look in them when she wanted something extra-expensive .. . he thought of her lips and her kisses. . . . IV IT was rather cruel—the very next morning soon after ten he had a telegram: "Come immediately, something dreadful. Esme." "Good Lord !" Heboltedout, looking for a taxi. He was nearly distracted before he found one, but he did at last, and, forgetting even to pay the man, he rushed into the flat and into that blessed little room in which he had spent such happy hours while she sat on the fender stool and looked up at him. She was waiting for him—watching. She flung herself into his arms.
Drawn by H. J. Mowat. "What is the meaning of this?" he asked sternly.—Page 264.
The Antidote "Oh, darling, darling Guy," she said, "what are we to do? He has come back!" "Come back?" "He isn't dead," she moaned. He pushed her a little way off and looked at her. "What do you mean?" Of course he knew, but he wanted it put into words. "He is alive—alive— The telegram saying he was dead was all a mistake; he has been in prison." Her face was flushed and her eyes shining; there were tears on her cheeks. He felt paralyzed. " Why didn't he telegraph ? When did he come?" "Last night, just about half past nine. He didn't know we thought he was dead, he meant it to be a happy surprise." She wrung her hands. "He came about half past nine, and mother went away with aunt." "Di d he stay here all night?" She covered her face with her hands. "Yes, he stayed here all night—I cried my life out—I thought I should die." "Where is he now?" "He went by the ten o'clock train to see his mother. He wanted me to go but I wouldn't. I telegraphed to you the minute he had gone. Oh, Guy, Guy, what shall I do?" "It's too awful—for me." "An d for me, too." "But, my dear child, you loved him?" He felt sorry for the poor beggar. "Oh, yes, I did once, but not now. I love you—you." A sense of justice laid hold of him though he was miserable. "Yo u must think of him." He stood a little way off. She was another man's wife. " I shall never be able to bear it," she said recklessly, "and we shall live in this horrid little flat again and I shall be a nobody to the end of my days." His heart went cold. "You'll get used to it. It's no good. We must say good-by, my dear." "Oh, I can't—I can't " "Poor chap, probably he had a bad time. You must make him as happy as you can—I'd better go." "Oh, but you mustn't—mustn't go," she said, and clung to him. "An d I've thought of a way out. Take me away. Take me away at once " He was touched, of course—after all, he was only a man. " I can't do that," he said, but he brushed back her rumpled hair and his arms went around her. "You can," she said. "Take me at once, this very minute. There's your taxi at the door. Let us go now—I'll leave a note " " M y dear child, you don't know what you're asking." "Yes, I do, I've thought it out. I lay awake all night planning it." "Good God! All night!" "Take me away this minute," she entreated. "I can't," he said—slowly. "But you can. He'd get a divorce directly. He's that sort of man. And then we could be married. It is so easy to get a divorce now. Take me, Guy, darling." " I'm not going to do it," he said firmly, and pushed her gently from him. "It's an awful business. But I'm sorry for this chap and I'm not going to behave like a— like a skunk." "Oh, but I love you so—I love you so." He took her in his arms again at that. "M y little girl, my little girl," he said, "one must do the right thing " Then the door opened and a man entered. They started apart and stood like two scared hares. He was a thin man, tall, lantern-jawed, with stern blue eyes and very fair hair. His coat-sleeves were too short; and he closed his large hands as if he were doubling his fists. "Oh, Leonard! Leonard!" she gasped. "What is the meaning of this?" he asked sternly. " I thought you had gone to Reading. I didn't dream you would come back." She trembled with fright. "I lost my train." He turned to Guy then. "Perhaps you will be good enough to explain, sir?" She went to the sofa and hid her face in a cushion. "M y wife always had her flirtations." He looked unforgivingly at the little figure on the sofa. "N o doubt she has had them even in the past months; but I didn't expect to find her in another man's arms this morning, after the efThe Antidote fusive welcome she gave me last night. I * can believe anything after this. You had better take her away at once. I presume that is your taxi at the door. 1 She can go." She raised her head at that and showed a tear-stained face. Her lips were trembling; she held out her hands. "Oh, yes, take me away, Guy, take me away." A sound broke from her husband's hps. Then Guy spoke, and there was something that carried conviction in every word he spoke. "Look here," he said, "I'm going to tell you the literal facts and she knows the truth of them. You and I have both been out in this war and within easy reach of death and I should deserve to be shot if I lied to you. Your wife is very young and pretty, and she loved you right enough at one time—I know that. She thought you were dead— thought it for a year. You couldn't expect her to spend the rest of her days alone, struggling and giving singing lessons, living with a delicate mother and a deaf aunt in the Regent's Park. She's four and twenty. I came along and fell in love with her—you did; so you can find an excuse for me. I offered to marry her, only yesterday, though I have been in love with her much longer. I was awfully sorry for her, that's how it began. I felt that she wanted a proper home of her own again, and comfort and luxury, that's why she took me. I think it was natural enough—and that you ought to forgive her. It wouldn't be fair to any woman, at her age, to expect her to spend a life of grieving and struggling if she could help it. I shouldn't expect a woman to do it for me." "She was in your arms when I came in." "I know she was—my fault. I was awfully fond of her. I couldn't let her go without just—well—just a minute. It was my fault—not hers. She had waited a year—lots of women haven't done that—she only left off her mourning the other day. She looked like a little funeral six weeks ago. It was awful. Now I've told you the truth. You can believe it or not, just as you choose." "I do," the other man answered doggedly. "An d I think she would have made a better thing of it if I had not turned up and you had married her." He looked at her. She was sitting up on the sofa. His expression softened. "If I could believe she loved me." "But I do, Leonard, of course I do," she said in the pathetic tone Guy knew so well. "Only—only he has been so kind—and so kind to mother, too." It was very adroit of her to put that in, Guy thought afterward. "But of course I love you,.Leonard— And, oh, do forgive me." She looked at Guy, tearful and imploring. "Of course I forgive you," Guy answered; "so will he. I am going." He turned to Thornton. " I would have done my best to take care of her and you will have her—a ripping little woman—all your life—but if I'd dreamt " Thornton hesitated a moment, then gripped the extended hand. " I think you are a good fellow," he said. " I don't know who you are or what your name is, on the whole I'd rather not, for we had better keep out of each other's way in the future. This is a painful business for us both." Guy nodded and turned to Esme. "Good-by, my dear," he said; " I shan't forget you and it will all turn out much better for you than if you had gone on with a duffer like myself. I can feel that he's a cleverer fellow than I am and a better one." She held out her hand shyly. He kissed it and went to the door. Leonard saw him out and waited till the taxi had disappeared. Then he went back to Esme. "Oh, Lennie, darling," she said, "you do forgive me, don't you, darling? I thought you had gone forever and I couldn't bear being poor. And he was so rich and kind and mother wanted it and it seemed the only thing to do." "Yes, my dear, I understand, of course you had to think of her—and he was such a good fellow that I'm rather ashamed of myself for turning up." Guy sat by his fire again that night and thought it over. "Poor little girl," he said to himself. "But she was a cute little beggar--and on the whole I think I'm well out of it."
Couchant Tiger.
On the estate of Mr. Herbert Pratt, Glen Cove, L. I.
A SCULPTOR OF THE WEST
By Ernest Peixotto
ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE WORKS OF A . PHIMISTER PROCTOR tHE leader of modern research in the domain of animal sculpture was, without a doubt, the great Frenchman, Barye. The first of the modern animaliers to replace mere convention by truth and reality, to observe animals closely and record in bronze a profound knowledge of their forms, he succeeded also in imparting to his groups, both large and small, an incomparable dignity of line and mass. In this respect, indeed, he has remained without a peer, still standing pre-eminent in this purely sculptural quality. His successor, Cain, inclined to the melodramatic and Fremiet, too, superb workman that he was, was guilty more than once of sensationalism. With our closeness to nature in its untrammelled forms, here in America, it is no wonder that the art of animal sculpture has received serious attention. Since Remington's day (and he was the first who really knew and depicted the fauna of the West) we have had at least three American sculptors who have modelled animals with a fine sense of form and 266 a highly competent technic: Arthur Putnam, Solon Borglum, and A. Phimister Proctor. Putnam's animals, instinct with life and fashioned with a very high order of artistry, are known only to a limited number of cognoscenti in California. Solon Borglum possesses a profound knowledge of animal form, and joins to this a fine feeling for sentiment— but not sentimentality—suggesting almost always the part his beasts play in their relationship to man, and the results that he obtains from this combination of realism and sentiment are, at times, singularly striking. Phimister Proctor looks at his animals with wide-open eyes, with the eyes of a closely observant student, attracted above all by the facts of things. Whether he models the lumbering gait of an elephant or the fragile structure of a young fawn, you are convinced that he knows a fond the flesh and bone of his model; that he has seen and drawn animals in the open (not caged in the zoo); that he has lived in habitual contact with them: that he has hunted them and cut them up and anatomized them. And all this is true. The Buckaroo, or Bronco-Buster.
To be erected in the Civic Centre of Denver, Colorado.
Born in Canada, he came as a small boy School that he attended still stands but a to this country and was brought up in few steps away near the imposing State Colorado. Forty years ago he played Capitol. But in the little frontier city of baseball on the land that is now the handhis boyhood he remembers seeing ansome Civic Centre of Denver, where his telope scurrying across the corner of this two latest works, "On the War-Trail" same plaza, where the Greek Theatre now and "The Bronco-Buster," are soon to be stands silhouetted against the majestic unveiled. The old Broadway Grammar background of Pike's Peak and the 267 A Sculptor of the West Rockies. He recalls, too, seeing Utes ride into town with fresh scalps hanging at their saddle-bows. At sixteen young Proctor killed his first grizzly. Armed only with an old rifle that he had traded for a seventy-fivewounded bull with them. At last he succeeded in forcing the shell out of his old rifle and followed the trail of the bull's blood for some time, until, in a clump of jack-pines, he saw the big beast not twenty feet from him. The animal made a dive On the War-Trail.
To be erected in the Civic Centre of Denver, Colorado.
cent jack-knife—a rifle that had been discarded as worthless and thrown into a lake—he had started from camp at Grand Lake in the Rockies quite alone, for his brother had refused to take him with him. He wandered about for a while and was standing looking at a hollow log from which the Indians had chopped a squirrel, when, looking up, he saw nine elk coming toward him, among them a big bull. He waited, shot at the bull and wounded him. But the ejector of his rifle wouldn't work, and the elk turned and trotted off, the at him and, as he shot, had come so near that the powder burned his neck. Proctor cut off the elk's head, and, proud of his first big trophy, started to lug it back to camp four miles away, when, in crossing an arroyo on a dead log, he fell into a ditch and hurt his back quite badly. But gamely, with the big head still upon his shoulders, he struggled on again and had gone but a hundred yards or so when he perceived, as he expresses it, "a grizzly bear mozying about in a swampy place. The Charging Panther. Presented to Theodore Roosevelt by the Tennis Cabinet. " I hesitated whether to shoot. Of course I wanted to get a bear, but I couldn't take much stock in my old rifle. 'But,' says I, 'heregoes.' I hit him too far back. He let out a bawl and rolled over. I threw in another shell and thought of what an old bear-hunter, Len Pollard, used to say: 'Never shoot at a grizzly when he's looking at you.' So I sat there with the sight of my gun wabbling back and forth across the bear, for I confess that I was scared with an old rifle that was anything but dependable. Finally I fired again, but missed him, and this time he started for me, grinning and growling. Fortunately my ejector worked all right and I hit him with the third shot right in the sticking-place. He gave a couple of jumps and rolled over, dead. And I tell you that was quite an experience for a lad of sixteen—an elk and a grizzly both in one day." Was it any wonder, then, with this background of his youth, with his love of the hunt, with a life spent at times for weeks alone in the woods, that Phimister Proctor's first attempts at art were concentrated upon the delineation of animals ? He sketched in pencil and in color, and he modelled a bit; even then, from'the very first, he was fully determined to be an artist, a sculptor. But the only good piece of sculpture that he had yet seen, as he expresses it, was a cigar-store Indian. About this time he met Frederick Dellenbaugh, one Bas-relief for overmantel in the home of Mr . W . B . Ayer, Portland, Oregon. 269 A Sculptor of the West of the few artists worthy of the name, who had, at that early date, penetrated the West. Dellenbaugh, recognizing his natural talent, advised him to go to New York or Europe to study, but how to get the necessary funds was the problem. He tried mining, but failed to make a stake. Then he sold a little ranch and, with his small capital, went to New York, where he studied at the schools of the man monument in New York. For these he made the four-foot models quite complete. In 1895 he won the Rinehart Prize and went to Paris again, remaining this time for three years, perfecting his technic at Julian's and Colarossi's, still centring his thoughts, however, on his own Far West, so that the works that he produced even in Paris were drawn from his early recolBas-relief of one of Mr . Proctor's children. National Academy and the Art Students League. In 1892, like many of the younger artists of his day, he found his first real opportunity at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. For this great World's Fair he modelled a number of animals—polar bears, elk, moose—as well as an Indian scout and a cow-puncher for the Transportation Building and the lions in front of the Fine Arts Building. These various groups brought him recognition and success, and he was able to go to Paris to study under Injalbert and Puech. But a year later he was recalled to America by Augustus St. Gaudens to model the horses for the Logan statue in Chicago, and the Sherlections of our Western plains and forests. When he returned to America he spent all his summers in the Northwest: in Alberta, British Columbia, and Montana. His great studio in New York is filled with trophies of his hunts there, with superb heads of mountain-sheep, with antlers and bearskins, and with a multitude of graphic water-color sketches that he painted there: sun-baked plains, tawny in color as lionskins; pellucid lakes that mirror purple mountains; stern and snow-clad peaks, home of the mountain-sheep, whose rugged structures are expressed with a sincerity and a conviction that only a sculptor can put into his work. During the next few years he modelled A Sculptor of the West the gigantic lions at the base of the McKinley monument in Buffalo, the pumas at the entrance to Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and the two superb tigers that stand at the entrance to Nassau Hall in Princeton, guardians of its historic portals, heroic bronzes that fit harsincere, so competent, so faithful, and so intensely alive. During Theodore Roosevelt's last year of office in the White House, the President decided that the lion heads that ornamented each side of the great mantelpiece in the State Dining-Room were out of Charging Elephant. moniously with their architectural surroundings. These animals of his have monumental dignity. They, as well as the couchant tiger that he modelled a little later for Mr . Herbert Pratt's beautiful home at Glen Cove, evince his deep knowledge of the feline nature, show the closeness of his observation. Their modelling, while full of suggestion, renders structure and action with convincing fidelity. They have a fundamental feeling of vivid actuality without a trace of transcendentalism. One detects in them at times, perhaps, an element of realism untempered by the beauty of creative art, yet one is always satisfied with work so place in the Executive Mansion, saying, with his customary energy: "What place have British lions in the American White House ? They ought to be bison heads." So Proctor was called in to model a pair of buffalo heads to take their places. When these were finished, the sculptor was passing through the White House on his way to the dining-room, with the heads in his hands, when the President, as he sat dictating to his stenographer, caught sight of him through an open doorway and called out vociferously, "Bully for you, Proctor; bully for you!" leaving his official business at the earliest possible moment to come in and see the bison heads and put A Sculptor of the West his emphatic stamp of approval upon them. Not long after this the President's "Tennis Cabinet," as it was called—a group of his friends who loved sport and the out-of-doors—gave him a farewell dinner. Seth Bullock, former sheriff in Sketch for A Bear Hunter the Black Hills, and marshal for South Dakota, sat on Roosevelt's right, and in front of the President was placed a pile of American Beauty roses. "Toward the end of dinner, Seth got up and began pawin' among the roses," as Roosevelt told the story, "and I put out my hand to restrain him, when I remembered that Seth was a two-gun man, so I let him alone. And when he opened up the roses there was Proctor's ' Charging Panther,' which they gave me as a souvenir." Roosevelt evidently liked his gift, for he used a reproduction of it as the frontispiece of his "Strenuous Life," saying that it expressed the feeling of the book better than anything else he could think of. And, indeed, its strained muscles, its stealthy, supple movement with its belly pressed close to the ground, its general tenseness that precedes the spring, do express the very essence of action, the maximum of concentrated effort. By this time Phimister Proctor had received his medals and his honors: gold medals at the Paris Exposition of 1900, at the St. Louis World's Fair, and at the Pan-Pacific Exposition at San Francisco, besides the great gold medal of the Architectural League of New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Gallery at Ottawa, and the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh had acquired his works for their permanent collections. He had been elected a National Academician and a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He had built himself a big studio in New York City. But the West still lured him, and he could not resist its appeal. He felt heartsick for the old free life. In 1914 he went to the Northwest again and became so enamored with what he saw there that he sent forthwith for his wife and seven children to come out and join him. "Talk about women," he said, "by George, she had nerve! We were all fixed up in New Rochelle; but, two weeks after I sent word to her, all was arranged and packed up, the house was rented, and she and the children were on the road." He settled this time at Pendleton, in eastern Oregon, a place whose round-ups are famous, and at whose fair-grounds they hold Wild-West shows that are Mr. Proctor working on the clay model of "The Indian Fountain."
His model, Chief Beaver, appears at the right.
known throughout the Northwest. He was given permission to fit up a studio in a barn in the fair-grounds themselves, and he hired "Slim," a well-known buckaroo, as his model. " I got 'Slim' to buy me a couple of ornary ponies," he told me, "a couple of VOL. LXVIII.—18 bucking broncos that were full of ginger. These we brought into the studio andmodelled them. But we had our troubles. 'Old Wall Eye' got gay and cavorted around and things went flying. Every chair in the place flew out of the window. But 'Slim' held her head and kept away 273 A Sculptor of the West from her business end, and finally we quieted her down. Now ' Slim,' it seems, had a habit of picking up ropes, and he didn't mind if there was sometimes a horse at the other end. So that, just as soon as I was finished with him, the sheriff took him in,. He'd been needing him in his business for three months, but he didn't want to spoil my work by taking away gifts of public-spirited citizens. It has already been cast and is ready to be placed. The other statue is still in his studio. It is called "On the War-Trail" and depicts an Indian of the olden time, nude except for a breech-clout, his long spear in his hand, mounted upon his shaggy cayuse that he is pulling up with a sharp gesture as if he seems to see something Indian Pursuing Bison. my model. Pretty nice of him, I call it, don't you?" The result of this combination was his "Buckaroo," or "Bronco-Buster," a heroic-size figure mounted on a bucking cayuse. The hoofs of the horse's fore legs are dug deep into the ground. His hind legs are flung into the air, and his whole body is quivering with the effort to rid himself of his rider, who sits erect, clad in his "woolly chaps" and his shirt, open at the neck, around which is knotted a handkerchief. His riata hangs at his saddle-bow, and in his upraised hand he grasps his quirt, with which he is whacking the pony's straining flanks. This is one of the two statues that are to be erected in the Civic Centre of Denver, suspicious approaching. He controls his pony with a rope, made of buffalo hide, that is tied securely in the horse's jaw, and with which the rider can either bind himself to his steed or hobble him, as occasion may require. Over his shoulder hangs a case for his bow and a quiver for his arrows, both made of panther skin, while at his left side (the squaws carry theirs at the right) he carries his hunting-knife. The pose is alert and spirited without being melodramatic or overdrawn, and the shaggy Western pony is modelled with that thorough knowledge of anatomy, that fine feeling for form, that remarkably convincing air of reality that characterizes all of Mr. Proctor's work. During the two years that he spent in Mr . Proctor's studio.
Showing the figure for "On the War-Trail" being hoisted on its horse.
Pendleton he made a number of figures Remington or Solon Borglum. Yet he and animals: Indians with broncos and lived in constant touch with the cow-buffaloes, decorative bas-reliefs of lions puncher's life. and elk. But to the cowboy he has deHe went to all the round-ups, and on voted much less attention than either more than one occasion was made a judge 275 276 A Sculptor of the West of the contests in steer-tying, bronco-liberate step. The targets that he hides busting, rope-tying, pony-races, and the in a drawer in his studio show an accuracy like. He can narrate stories of thrilling of marksmanship with a revolver that experiences with bulls in the arena, and might well make even a "bad man" hesiThe Pioneer. In the grounds of the University of Oregon, Eugene, Ore. of shooting-scrapes growing out of these tate to pick a quarrel with him: ten concontests. In spite of his metropolitan secutive bull's-eyes at 30 feet; ten conlife he has remained, too, a typical Westsecutive hits with a .44 at 50 yards. His erner in appearance, with his strongly wife, indeed, accuses him of valuing his marked features, his powerful figure, and medals for marksmanship more highly his rolling gait that shifts his weight from than those he has received for his sculpone foot to the other with a sure but deture. A Sculptor of the West One day he saw an old wolf-trapper come into Pendleton, with his whiskers and long hair untouched by any barber, dressed in his buckskin shirt and leading his cayuses and his bear-dogs. He got the old fellow to pose for him, showed his sketch to Mr. Joseph M . Teal, of Portland, and by him was commissioned to model a heroic figure, "The Pioneer," that was unveiled last year on the campus of the University of Oregon, a gift of Mr. Teal to that institution. It fitly commemorates those hardy and courageous old pioneers who tempted fate and risked their lives and those of their families in the forties, driving their wagons through the mountain fastBas-relief of one of Mr . Proctor's children. the street came nesses and forests of the unexplored Northwest, surmounting every obstacle, blazing the trail until they came to the Dalles on the Columbia River, and thence descended to the beautiful Willamette Valley, where they settled. Recently Mr . Proctor has been modelling another figure, an "Indian" for the Geyser Basin, Saratoga State Park, at Saratoga, New York, a gift of Mr. George D. Pratt, State conservation commissioner. It is to be placed on a sidehill among the trees, in quite naturalistic surroundings. A little stream runs by with pools near the figure, from which the Indian is dipping up a handful of water. He was modelled from Chief Beaver, a Blackfoot that Proctor brought to New York with him, he who appears with the sculptor in the photograph reproduced herewith. I happened to go to see Mr . Proctor one morning not so very long ago, and, on nearing the studio, saw an express-wagon standing at the curb before it, with some men in it busily spreading a bed of excelsior. The studio was in a turmoil. The big Indian Fountain had been cast in plaster, and was ready to go to the foundry. Men were unscrewing the arms and taking off the weapons. Finally the great figure was lifted bodily from the revolving modelling-stand and placed upon a low truck and carefully trundled through the doors and out upon the sidewalk. Here its appearance created quite a sensation. Th e firemen from the station across running over to see the statue, and the postman stopped and exclaimed: "Huh, Chief Beaver!" To all of them this Indian was a well-known figure, an appealing reality, and I realized the direct appeal, even to the uninitiated, of Mr . Proctor's work; the big audience that he commands among red-blooded men, hunters, sportsmen, lovers of the out-of-doors, who understand nothing of the superlative technical qualities of his art but are carried away by its reality. To our public parks and highways, to our zoological gardens, to our natural-history museums, as well as to our art museums, he has contributed living, vital things, noble presentments of our fast-disappearing American fauna, of our vanishing Western types, thereby vastly enriching our artistic patrimony and our American inheritance.
PROTECTIVE THINKING
By Edgar James Swift
Author of " Psychology and the Day's Work " mAN has inherited a brain of vox populi is a part of their natural relisuperior value, but he has not learned to use it advantageously. He does not select his beliefs thoughtfully. He grows into them unconsciously, and the opinions thus accepted produce a mental attitude which blinds him to the facts that refute them. The great majority of people have good intentions, but certain actions, they feel, are necessary. These actions are good business, or good politics, or they promote social dignity. But they are always the offspring of our wishes. Our behavior, however, must satisfy social requirements; it must fit into the prevailing ethical standards. What we want to do must, therefore, be made to appear reasonable—at least to ourselves. Consequently, more or less trimming and remodelling are sometimes needed, but the alterations are made with due regard to mental economy. The wish may be altered in form but not in substance. Yet, in some way, consistency between ideals and conduct must be preserved. Here, language, which is very accommodating, lends generous assistance, and words that justify the desire are readily found. So easy is it for men to deceive themselves. They forget the human truth expressed in the French proverb: Qui s'excuse s'accuse. Adjustment to the environment is a requirement of survival, but man's social needs have greatly strengthened the adaptive impulse. Man is, above all of his more humble and less endowed relations, adaptive, and "Providence," Walter Bagehot once observed, "generally bestows on the working adaptive man a quiet adoptive nature. He receives insensibly the suggestions of others; he hears them with willing ears; he accepts them with placid belief. A n acquiescent credulity is a quality of such men's nature. They cannot help being sure that what every one says must be true; the 278 gion." This is not complimentary to human intelligence but, unfortunately, it is justified by a survey of history. The path of progress is strewn with tragic human documents—documents that show the pains and penalties of thinking, and, incidentally, reveal a serious defect of the human mind—the difficulty of recognizing problems even when others show them to us. Thinking, at best, is not easy. It is much simpler to accept the conventional view and adapt oneself to the prevailing opinion. Agreement is evidence of sanity. Marked divergence, obviously, indicates "queer," "eccentric," "erratic" thoughts. Besides, to be sane is to be respectable, and desire to be respectable prevents men from becoming intelligent. The norm by which eccentricity is judged is, of course, the generally accepted view. Those who live in insane asylums and those on the outside agree in this. The measure of intelligence thus varies with one's surroundings and one's neighbors. There are two kinds of mental disorder —those that exist and those that do not. To the latter class of mental derelicts belonged Daguerre, the inventor of photography, and Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, and Langley, who believed in flying-machines, and a whole galaxy of men who investigated and adopted the germ theory of disease. And, in every case, the proof of mental derangement was that the man made a discovery. Evidently, discovery is a dangerous pastime. To be sure, the treatment of these disorders varies with the period and with the degree of civilization. Daguerre was confined in an insane asylum because he said that he could print the picture of a man on a sheet of tin. Later, the treatment became more humane. Harvey, and the discoverers of disease germs and antiseptics, only lost their medical practice. They were allowed to starve outside of insane asylums. Protective Thinking And Langley, being a harmless lunatic, since belief in flying-machines injured no one except himself, was killed by the torture of ridicule. The list of men who paid the supreme penalty for intellectual curiosity and originality could be extended almost indefinitely. Benjamin Franklin was laughed at for his paper on "The Sameness of Lightning with Electricity," Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes was called a sophomoric writer because he advocated antiseptics, Galvani was named the "frogs' dancing-master" on account of his belief in galvanic electricity. Lebon, the discoverer of illuminating gas, was killed by ridicule because he believed in "a lamp without a wick," Jouffroy, the inventor of the steamboat, was permitted to die in peace—and poverty, and Young, a celebrated physician, published his theory of light, color, and luminiferous ether anonymously, to escape the loss of his practice for departing from accepted views. Original theories make trouble. Obviously it is a mistake to be wise too soon. Dead radicals are eulogized because the issues for which they fought are as dead as the men who advocated them. Dead issues can do no harm. Belief in them has become traditional, and therefore eminently respectable. The market value of ideas increases with their antiquity. They must be well seasoned. Then monuments are built commemorating them, and people assemble to venerate the wisdom of their discoverers—men whom an earlier age condemned. It is fortunate, however, for the reputation of thinkers that they finally pass away, because there is something in discoverers of ideas which rebels against the authority of tradition. These men are not content with interpretations that rest only upon convention. They cross-examine belief in their hunt for hidden evidence. They do not fear the consequences of thought. They use their reason reasonably. One would think that the relics of opinions preserved in museums of antiquated beliefs, as exhibitions of the unreasonableness of human reason—opinions whose overthrow believers thought would destroy society—would make men hesitate to hold so tenaciously to what they are least able to demonstrate. But belief graciously conforms to our wishes, and reason supplies the arguments. Benjamin Franklin once illustrated this in his quaint way: " I have omitted mentioning," he says, "that, in my first voyage from Boston, being becalmed off Block Island, our people set about catching cod, and hauled up a great many. Hitherto I had stuck to my resolution of not eating animal food, and, on this occasion I considered . . . the taking of every fish as a kind of unprovoked murder, since none of them had done or even could do us any injury that might justify the slaughter. All this seemed very reasonable. But I had formerly been a great lover of fish, and when these came hot out of the frying-pan they smelt admirably well. I balanced some time between principle and inclination, till I recollected that, when the fish were opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs. Then thought I, ' if you eat one another, I don't see why we may not eat you!' So I dined upon cod very heartily. .. . So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do." The recent war has also furnished examples of the accommodation of human reason to man's desires. A striking illustration is given by Kellogg in his " Conscientious Objectors": "The unwillingness of these devout Christians to undertake works of mercy," he says, "was frequently appalling. Several testified that they could work in a civilian hospital, but could do nothing in a military hospital. In one of the Southern camps, I was told, during the epidemic of influenza, that practically every one had been called upon to help in the hospitals. Nearly fifty men were dying each day.' The objectors were asked to carry stretchers and otherwise to aid in saving, if possible, the lives of the stricken men. Many of the objectors refused—they could do nothing. It was against their conscience." Some people indulge in an emotional spree whenever excited by an important question. And the debauch not only unsettles their reason, but, what is even more serious, destroys their moral perspective. One rarely finds a more charmProtective Thinking ing exhibition of the moral obliquity produced by a lost argument than was displayed in an issue of Four Lights received from the People's Council of America during the war. "Accustom your children gradually to the sight of blood," this councillor of right thinking says, presumably giving the view of those who believe that war is ever justifiable. "An d for yourself learn to kill a little every day. One sweet woman is accustomed to ask herself searchingly each night, 'Whom have I killed to-day?' and to fall asleep resolving to kill more on the morrow." It may be said that these are exceptional cases—that the strain of war searched out the mentally ill-poised and tensed their reason to the snapping-point. To be sure, crises do test the quality of minds. They force men to orient themselves, because supreme problems that demand solution must be faced without evasion. Crises, therefore, reveal the content, or lack of content, of human minds. And they also expose mental frailties— inability to distinguish the essential from the accidental. But this only means that emergencies are keener scouts for weak points than are peaceful, uneventful periods when habits of thought, with their fixed classification, meet all needs of life. But crises do not produce insanity. They only find it. Unfortunately, however, deception of oneself and others by soporific phrases is not limited to periods of crisis. A pamphlet against animal experimentation, for example, issued by some well-intentioned gentlefolk of limited mental outlook, bears the psychologically convincing title, "Is Christian Mercy, a Cruel Mocking Delusion?" The suggested "delusion" is explained in the further question, "Can the church allow this deadly moral venom, distilled by vivisectors in their laboratories of scientific research, to poison the spiritual atmosphere of the souls Christ died to save ? " Obviously, any one who will distil "this deadly moral venom" in the "laboratories of scientific research to poison the spiritual atmosphere of the souls Christ died to save," should arouse intense abhorrence in all who have no respect for truth, or for the English language. And the success of such phrases indicates that there are many compliant minds luxuriating in verbal vacuity, and never experiencing the pleasurable pains of mental inquisitiveness. Phrases assist in classifying ideas and principles of action without mental effort. And, since no one wishes to take unnecessary trouble, this painless thinking is popular. Ideas are tied up in bundles, like old clothes, and laid away for future use. This is a great convenience because, when an opinion is needed, one can go to* the moth-proof mental closet and get it. Unhappily, however, when these bundles are opened for use the contents, cut from earlier patterns, are old-fashioned, but antiquity is not so obvious in ideas as in clothes and, consequently, the owner does not know that they are out of date. The illusion that one's old-style opinions are still in fashion is strengthened by the intellectual blinders known as social classes. Those in "our set" agree with us, wherein, of course, they show good judgment, and they use the same labels as we do for the ideas they lay away for use when an opinion is needed. Most people earn their living by having the reputation of being "safe." To be sure, the time seems to have passed when physical inventions arouse serious emotional antagonism. And yet, as late as 1902, Simon Newcomb "proved beyond question" that it was "impossible" for a heavier-than-air machine to fly. Was his mistake caused by mathematical inability? One hesitates at this conclusion in a mathematician of such renown. The explanation seems to be mental and emotional resistance to a view so inconsistent with "established" scientific principles. Professor Newcomb could not see and understand mathematical relations that conflicted with "known facts." Again, at a somewhat earlier date, von Liebig, notwithstanding his scientific attainments which had justly won worldwide fame, refused to consider seriously the growing belief that vegetable cells cause fermentation. With the microscope, he saw the "globules," as they were called, which appeared in the deposit of saccharine fermentation and, consequently, to a free mind they were worth examination and investigation. But for Liebig they had no special significance. ProtectiveTo the end of his life he explained fermentation and putrefaction by the same process. Both were a kind of slow combustion, he said. And it is the dead portion of yeast, rather than the living, which, "by the rupture of its own elements, sets in motion the molecules of the fermentative matter." Once more, accepted, and consequently "safe," scientific opinions blocked the flow of thought. Authority again won in the contest with investigation and experimentation. The "elder statesmen" continued to rule because of respect and reverence for the antique. Fortunately, man is endowed with the ability to forget, and he remembers great men only by their achievements. But if Newcomb and von Liebig were alive today they would, perhaps, feel impelled to follow the notable example of Jerome Cardan, one of the celebrated astrologers of earlier days. Having been called to England to calculate the nativity of Ed ward VI, he predicted a long life with illnesses at twenty-three, thirty-four, and fifty-five years of age. Almost immediately after Cardan left England King Edward died. Cardan then wrote a pamphlet entitled, "What I Thought Afterward Upon the Subject." I have referred at some length to the inability of Newcomb and von Liebig to accept new discoveries because of the rather wide-spread conviction that in scientific matters, at least, a change of opinion and acceptance of new views is easy. When the question is suffused with feeling, and emotions ramp unchecked, the progress of innovations is admittedly difficult. But the evidence does not support the opinion that even scientific discoveries are free from the personal bias that clouds the vision. Scientific views are vested intellectual interests which must be preserved intact. The motive is not consciously selfish, but the reputation of science must be jealously protected from the attacks of innovators. Established principles, which are often only the opinions of "authorities," are to be esteemed and not doubted. And yet, later, as in history, these established principles are, not infrequently, found to be fiction agreed upon by those who have controlled opinion through the weight of Thinking 281 their reputation. "B y the time a man of science attains eminence in any subject," some one has said, "he becomes a nuisance, because he is sure to retain errors which were in vogue when he was young but which have since been refuted." This emotional influence in scientific thought is especially mischievous because it works so subtly. After a man has once taken a decisive position his conviction is strengthened by the knowledge that admission of error would be evidence of hasty and unreflective judgment. And proof that one has taken a stand without weighing the evidence is fatal to self-respect. The admission must, under no circumstances, be made. This may best be illustrated, perhaps, from long ago. One likes to think that human nature has changed and that such things could not happen to-day, at least not in the case of oneself. So we will go back to the time of Darwin. Thomas Huxley, while still a young man, had attacked and disproved a statement of Owen, "the autocrat of science in Great Britain," regarding the differences, or perhaps I should say similarities, between the brain of man and that of the orang-outang. Later, when Darwin's "Origin of Species" appeared, Owen saw the danger to his own scientific reputation. It was not now a question of fact and truth but of self-defense. He had already made statements that conflicted with the principle of evolution and Huxley had shown them to be wrong. The last trench must, at all hazards, be held. Consequently, Owen began a bitter attack on Darwin and his theory of natural selection. No quarter was asked or given. It was war to the knife. Owen's reputation must be saved. So everything must be denied. " So long as an element of doubt is admissible in the view that conflicts with our position," says Gotch in his review of the scientific method, "an opponent will suffer the inference to be drawn without a violent outburst; but when the inference is logically certain and the opponent is forced to admit his error or stultify himself, he may, it is true, maintain a magnanimous silence, but generally he fails to do so; he becomes greatly perturbed, Protective Thinking and denies everything, even the most demonstrable facts." "There is a special hell for books in perfect taste," observed Zorn in "The Great Desire," and, in similar vein, it may be said, in this day of broken precedents, that thoughts which fit too nicely lead to unventilated conclusions. A little confusion, when it is recognized, breeds life. Unfortunately, however, to be sure is to be happy. Finality gives upholstered and cushioned ease. But it acts as a narcotic rather than as a stimulant. Discoveries in science do not become epidemic. They are not a social menace. Yet we have found that they begin as heresies and end in conventional knowledge. When, however, new ideas are offered outside the physical sciences they indicate an organic disease, and, consequently, the treatment of the malady must be vigorous. They are symptoms of a contagious mental disorder which requires the isolation of the infected lest others get the disease. The average man fears exposure to new ideas as he dreads catching cold. Public opinion plagues the intellectually keen until it reduces first-rate ability to second-rate mediocrity. The average man is a person with his own business to attend to. He does not want to be disturbed by theories. He may even have a few figures in his head to refute equally well any theory. He always has phrases which he applies indiscriminately. " Eccentric " is a word that he likes to use. "Singular young man," he says; "a strange combination "; " most unfortunate ideas"; "well-intentioned, no doubt, but unsafe, quite unsafe." The average man can't endure novelty. " I never heard of such a thing," he exclaims, and this, in his opinion, is a complete refutation of any new idea. He continues to distil opinions by boiling his old ideas without realizing how thin the stock has become. He prides himself on doing his own thinking, and thereby relieves others of the charge of being accomplices. Ideas do not illuminate his mind, because he cultivates a convenient mental blindness. The substitution of phrases for thinking is a common means of human deception. It is popular because it is so satisfying. Well-chosen, striking words are convincing—if one does not inquire too closely into their meaning. To accom-, plish their purpose phrases must be sufficiently vague to suit the needs of many people. Each one should be able to say: "That's just my opinion." To-day we are having an excellent illustration of the carrying power of verbal formulas in the explanation of "spirit communication." "Currents of magnetism from the etheric plane," "odic effluvia," and "radiant aura" are obscure enough to be believed by any one. The fact that the "odic effluvia" "emanating" from different spirits "radiates" various kinds of "aura" is a matter of indifference. Perhaps it is only our inability to read the spiritualistic code of the "effluvia" that causes us to find contradictions in the communications of different spirits regarding what is happening on the other side. Besides, contradictions are trifling matters for those who want to believe. The reply "Yo u must be sympathetic to understand" is always ready for unbelievers. And this argument is unanswerable, since a trusting, believing attitude will cause non-sense to overflow with meaning. But phrases not only soothe the mind with the unruffled flow of inconsequential ideas, they also, at other times, frighten those who may be assumed to accept them. Arnold Bennett in "Clayhanger" gives a good illustration of this effect. " It was not easy—at any rate it was not easy in The Five Towns—" he says, "for a timid man in reply to the question,' Are you in favor of a professed Free Thinker sitting in the House of Commons ?' to reply, 'Yes, I am.' There was something shameless in that word 'professed.' If the Free Thinker had been ashamed of his free thinking, if he had sought to conceal his meaning in phrases—the implication was that the case might not have been so bad." " I suppose that is what made the word the weapon," says Alexander Black in "The Great Desire," "why we look out upon life through bars of words, why we trim and shuffle to escape skulking words, words lying in wait to devour our peace. Men are thrown into frightful convulsions by a hurled syllable." Basking in problems is pleasanter than Protective Thinking solving them. Vague phrases make a noise that sounds like wisdom. Familiar words have the warmth of old friends. We doubt the one as little as the other because of intimacy. We know both from long association. But new problems in their altered conditions demand new settings for old words. Thinking requires forgetting old formulas. "Personal liberty" and "free speech" would not present so many difficulties were it not for the accretions which they have gathered from the past. And the fact that men speak English does not mean that they speak the same language. They quite certainly do not if they belong to different social or industrial classes. Their varying views of life, with the different meanings for the same words into which they have unconsciously grown, prevent them from understanding one another. This is what Gilbert Chesterton means when he says, speaking of the Irish question: "It is not so much that Englishmen cannot rule Irishmen, as that merchants cannot rule peasants." If we seek the cause of fixed opinions we find a most interesting human characteristic. Experiences organize themselves into systems of ideas. We do not get these opinions. They get us. We grow into them through the influence of the newspapers that we read and the views that we hear from people in "our class." And, unfortunately for progress, the so-called classes are about as isolated as animals on an oceanic island are separated from those on the mainland. These systems of thought become organized as fixed mental complexes. Enthusiasts display them in their hobbies. Some men, for example, bore us with golf, or photography, or with their particular brand of reform. Such mental complexes are usually harmless to society and diverting to their possessor. But where important matters are at stake, these fixed systems of thought blind us to the essential factors of the problem. We cannot understand opposing arguments. We are biassed toward all questions to which our systems of thought apply. And, under these circumstances, thinking is a rearrangement of our prejudices. New ideas may be inserted into these mental complexes provided the operation does not disturb the old thoughts. Doctor James Simpson, a Scotch physician, has shown how the mental surgeon should proceed, to graft new ideas onto the old. Anaesthetics had just been discovered and the good doctor was one of the eccentric physicians who believed in their use. But the opposition was bitter. No physician could use them and keep his social standing or his practice. Pain was God-given, it was said, and any attempt to alleviate it was an effort to thwart his will. The situation was critical. A major operation was clearly needed. So the doctor wrote a pamphlet in which he said: "M y opponents forget the twenty-first verse of the second chapter of Genesis. It is the record of the first surgical operation ever performed, and that text proves that the Maker of the Universe, before he took the rib from Adam's side for the creation of Eve, caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam." Doctor Simpson's operation was successful. The patients suffered no mental shock, and thinking proceeded as before. Is thinking then a hopeless matter? Must our thoughts continue to be manufactured for us like ready-made clothing, and shall our individuality consist only in selecting what fits our organized systems of thoughts, until an intellectual upheaval throws our opinions into such confusion that we cannot piece them together? The situation is hopeless unless we are convinced of the truth of the saying of that grouchy old thinker, Samuel Butler, that "Cultivation will breed in any man a certainty of the uncertainty of his most assured convictions." This is an excellent antidote for old-fogyism in others, but Mr. Butler did not think that he himself needed it. Perhaps this was one of his most assured convictions the uncertainty of which cultivation had bred a certainty. In any case, his method was to get his theory first and then to find reasons to support it. Consequently, he attacked Darwin and his theory of natural selection, and maintained that the "Odyssey" was written by a woman whom he knew well enough to call by name. Contentment with one's own beliefs is a human defect. Those who see the truth intuitively, as Butler did, do not 284 Protectiveneed a mental antitoxin. For them facts are only an obstruction to thought. Opinions come by special insight, and the reason reveals its subtlety by proving the wisdom of these views. Butler's confidence in the product of his own mental factory shows the difficulty of escaping from ourselves—of viewing and judging our opinions objectively. We readily see the defects of thinking in others. Who could not, since they are so obvious? But our beliefs possess a certain sanctity and charm because we made them. That is, we think we did, but, as a matter of fact, they made us. They are the offspring of desires that had their origin in business, or political, or social pressure. Opinions we feel we must have to maintain our position. It is like keeping up an establishment on a fictitious income. To admit insufficient knowledge upon which to base belief is humiliating, at least to those who think that opinions indicate mental wealth. We decorate rather than enrich ourselves with opinions. And only such knowledge is desired as will support these decorations. Effort to justify a view rather than to examine and test it obscures the issue with shuffling language. If a man is clearly and honestly in error he may some time discover his mistake, but if he is unclearly and evasively wrong he only hides the issue with a screen of mental smoke. In this way he masks the facts which might reveal the truth. Men do not consciously strive to find their way from the darkness of error into light. On the contrary, they become so accustomed to the twilight that it looks quite bright to them. Beliefs are occasionally changed by colliding with facts, but never by collision with opposing be Thinking liefs. Facts may produce a shock that jars one from one's comfortable intellectual perch, but conflicting beliefs give a pleasurable feeling of superiority. This shows the disastrous effect of politeness, which consists in remaining silent about the beliefs which our companion passionately holds. If we would throw facts at him until his complacency is sorely wounded he might do a little thinking. Impoliteness is bad social policy but it is very diverting and, sometimes, educative. The problem of efficient thinking, however, is, first of all, a personal one. Some people spend so much time reforming others that they overlook themselves. It is pleasanter because it gives us the feeling of unusual ability and clarity of vision. We like to think ourselves different from others, just as we believe our country and period free from the weaknesses of other peoples and past ages. And the cure is to apply the same relentless cross-examination to our own opinions as we use toward others. If we were to ask ourselves the ground of opinions that we cherish, we would often be amazed at the weakness of the foundation. Those who do not clearly know that these failures in reasoning are as true of themselves as of others are hopeless. For them meaningless words and phrases take the place of thinking. "Reason!" exclaimed Derek, in Galsworthy's "The Freelands," "Reason! It's the coward's excuse, and the rich man's excuse, for doing nothing. It's the excuse of the man who takes jolly good care not to see for fear that he may come to feel! Reason never does anything, it's too reasonable. The thing is to act; then perhaps reason will be jolted into doing something."
TH E ARGOSIES
By Alexander Hull
ILLUSTRATIONS BY LESLIE CRUMP tHERE may have been some benevolent force watching over Harber. In any case, that would be a comforting belief. Certainly Harber himself so believed, and I know he had no trouble at all convincing his wife. Yes, the Harbers believed. But credulity, you may say, was ever the surest part in love's young golden dream: and you, perhaps, not having your eyes befuddled with the rose-fog of romance, will see too clearly to believe. What can I adduce for your conviction? The facts only. After all, that is the single strength of my position. There was, of course, the strange forehanded, subtle planning of the other girl, of Janet Spencer. Why did she do it? Was it that, feeling her chances in Tawnleytown so few, counting the soil there so barren, driven by an ambition beyond the imagination of staid, stodgy, normal Tawnleytown girls, she felt she must create opportunities where none were? She was very lovely, Harber tells me, in a fiery rose-red of the fairy-tale way; though even without beauty it needn't have been hard for her. Young blood is prone enough to adventure; the merest spark will set it akindle. I should like to have known that girl. She must have been very clever. Because, of course, she couldn't have foreseen, even by the surest instinct, the coincidence that brought Harber and Barton together. Yes, there is a coincidence in it. It's precisely upon that, you see, that Harber hangs his belief. I wonder, too, how many of those argosies she sent out seeking the golden fleece returned to her? It's a fine point for speculation. If one only knew . . . ah, but it's pitiful how much one doesn't, and can't, know in this hard and complex world! Or was it merely that she tired of them and wanted to be rid of them ? Or again, do I wrong her there, and were there no more than the two of them, and did she simply suffer a solitary revulsion of feeling, as Harber did? But no, I'm sure I'm right in supposing Barton and Harber to have been but two ventures out of many, two arrows out of a full quiver shot in the dark at the bull's-eye of fortune. And, by heaven, it was splendid shooting . . . even if none of the other arrows scored! Harber tells me he was ripe for the thing without any encouragement to speak of. Tawnleytown was dull plodding for hot youth. Half hidden in the green of fir and oak and maple, slumberous with midsummer heat, it lay when he left it. Thickly powdered with the fine white dust of its own unpaven streets, dust that sent the inhabitants chronically sneezing and weeping and red-eyed about town, or sent them north to the lakes for exemption, dust that hung impalpably suspended in the still air and turned the sunsets to things of glorious rose and red and gold though there wasn't a single cloud or streamer in the sky to catch the light, dust that lay upon lawns and walks and houses in deep gray accumulation . . . precisely as if these were objects put away and never used and not disturbed until they were white with the inevitable powdery accretion that accompanies disuse. Indeed, he felt that way about Tawnleytown, as if it were a closed room of the world, a room of long ago, unused now, unimportant, forgotten. So unquestionably he was ready enough to go. He had all the fine and far-flung dreams of surging youth. He peopled the world with his fancies, built castles on every high hill. He felt the urge of ambition fiercely stirring within him, latent power pulsing through him. What would you? Wasn't he young and in love? For there had been, you must know, a good deal between them. What does one 28s The Argosies do in these deadly dull little towns for amusement, when one is young and fain and restless? Harber tells me they walked the streets and shaded lanes in the dim green coolness of evening, lounged in the orchard hammock, drifted down the little river, past still pools, reed-bordered, under vaulting sycamores, over hurrying reaches fretted with pebbles, forgot everything except one another and their fancies, and made, as youth must, love. That was the programme complete, except for the talk, the fascinating, never-ending talk. Volumes on volumes of it —whole libraries of it. So, under her veiled fostering, the feeling that he must leave Tawnleytown kept growing upon Harber until one evening it crystallized in decision. It was on a Sunday. They had taken a lunch and climbed Bald Knob, a thousand feet above the town, late in the afternoon. The dying sun and the trees had given them a splendid symphony in black and gold, and had silenced them for a little. They sat looking down over the valley in which the well-known landmarks slowly grew dark and indistinguishable, and dim lights blossomed one after another. The sound of church bells rose faintly through the still air. The last pale light faded in the sky. Harber and Janet sat in the long grass, their hearts stirring with the same urgent, inarticulate thoughts, their hands clasped together. "Let's wait for Eighty-seven," she said. Harber pressed her hand for reply. In the mind of each of them Eighty-seven was the symbol of release from Tawnleytown, of freedom, of romance. Presently a shifting light appeared in the east, a faint rumble became perceptible and increased. The swaying shaft of light intensified and a moment later the long-drawn poignancy of a chime-whistle blowing for the river-road crossing, exquisitely softened by distance, echoingly penetrated the still valley. A streak of thunderous light swam into view and passed them, plunging into a gap in the west. The fire-box in the locomotive opened and flung a flood of light upon a swirling cloud of smoke. A sharp turn in the track, a weak blast of the whistle at the bridge-head, and the "Lim ited," disdaining contemptible Tawnleytown, had swept out of sight—into the world—at a mile to the minute. "If I were on it," said Harber slowly. Janet caught her breath sharply. " You're a man !" she said fiercely. " You could be—so easily!" Harber was startled for a moment. Her kindling of his flame of adventure had been very subtle until now. Perhaps she hadn't been sure before to-day of her standing. But this afternoon, upon the still isolation of Bald Knob, there had been many kisses exchanged, and brave vows of undying love. And no doubt she felt certain of him now. With Harber, however, the pathway had seemed leading otherwhere. He wasn't the sort of youth to kiss and ride away. And, discounting their adventurous talk, he had tacitly supposed that his course the last few weeks spelled the confinement of the four waUs of a Tawnleytown cottage, the fetters of an early marriage. He had been fighting his mounting fever for the great world, and thinking, as the train sped by, that after all "home was best." It would be. It must be. So, if his fine dreams were the price he must pay for Janet, still he would pay them! And he was startled by her tone. Her slim fingers tightened upon his. "Why do you stay?" she cried passionately. "Why don't you go?" "There's you," he began. "Yes!" she exclaimed. "Oh, I'm selfish, maybe ! I don't know! But it's as much for me as for you that I say it! " Her words poured out tumultuously. "Where are all our wonderful dreams— if you stay here ? Gone aglimmering! Gone ! I can't see them all go—I can't! Can you?" Was he to have, then, both Janet and his dreams? His heart quickened. He leaned impulsively toward her. She pushed his face away with her free hand. "No—no! Wait till I'm through! We've always known we weren't like other Tawnleytown folk, haven't we, dear ? We've always said that we wanted more out of life than they—that we wouldn't be content with half a loaf—
Drawn by Leslie Crump. "Where are all our wonderful dreams—if you stay here? "—Page 286.
The Argosies that we wanted the bravest adventures, the yellowest gold, the finest emotions, the greatest power! And if now . . . " See those lights down there—so few— and so faint. We can't live out our lives there. Seventy-five dollars a month in the bank for you—and dull, deadly monotony for both of us—no dreams—no adventures—nothing big and fine! We can't be content with that! Why don't you go, John? "Don't mind me—don't let me keep you—for as soon as you've won, you can come back to me—and then—we'll see the world together!" "Janet—Janet!" said Harber, with pounding heart. "How do you know— that I'll win?:' "Ah," she said strangely, "I know! You can't fail—7 won't let you fail!" Harber caught her suddenly in his arms and kissed her as if it were to be his last token of her. "I'm going then!" he whispered. "I'm going!" "When?" "There's no time to be lost!" he said, thinking fast. " If I had known that you were willing, that you would wait—if .. . Janet, I'm going to-morrow!" Her arms tightened about him convulsively. " Promise me—promise me !" she demanded tensely, "that you'll never, never forget me—that you'll come back to me!" Harber laughed in her face. '-'Janet," he said solemnly, "I'l l never forget you. I'll come back to you. I'll come back— 'though 'twere ten thousand mile !' " And they walked home slowly, wrapt once more in their fascinating talk, fanning the flames of one another's desires, painting for their future the rich landscapes of paradise. Youth! Brave, hot youth! The next day Harber contemptuously threw over his job in the bank and fared forth into the wide world that was calling. Well, he went south, then east, then west, and west, and farther west. So far that presently, after three years, he found himself not west at all, but east— far east. There were between him and Janet Spencer now thousands on thousands of miles of vast heaving seas, and snow-capped mountain ranges, and limitless grassy plains. Three years of drifting! You'd say, perhaps, knowing the frailty of vows, that the connection might have been lost. But it hadn't. Harber was but twenty-three. Faithfulness, too, comes easier then than later in life, when one has seen more of the world, when the fine patina of illusion has worn off. Besides, there was, I'm sure, a touch of genius about that girl, so that one wouldn't forget her easily, certainly not in three years. And then, you know, Harber had had her letters. Not many of them. Perhaps a dozen to the year. Pitifully few, but they were filled with a wonderful fascination against which the realities of his wandering life had been powerless to contend. Like a slender cable they bound him—they held him! Well, he was in Sydney now, standing on the water-front, beneath a bright-blue Australian sky, watching the crinkling water in the Circular Quay as it lifted and fell mightily but easily, and seeing the black ships . . . ah, the ships! Those masterful, much more than human, entities that slipped about the great world nosing out, up dark-green tropical rivers, in black, fir-bound fjords, through the white ice-flows of the Arctics, all its romance, all its gold! Three years hadn't dulled the keen edge of his appetite for all that; rather had whetted it. Nevertheless, as he stood there, he was thinking to himself that he must have done with wandering; the old saw that a rolling stone gathered no moss was cropping up sharply, warningly, in his mind. He had in the three years, however—and this is rather remarkable—accumulated about three thousand dollars. Three thousand dollars! Why, in this quarter of the world, three thousand dollars should be like three thousand of the scriptural mustard-seed—they should grow a veritable forest! What was puzzling him, however, was where to plant the seed. He was to meet here a man who had a plan for planting in the islands. There were wild rumors afloat of the fortunes that could be made in rubber and vanilla out in the Papuan "Back Beyond." Harber was only half The Argosies inclined to believe them, perhaps; but half persuaded is well along the way. He heard his name called, and, turning, he saw a man coming toward him with the rolling gait of the seaman. As he came closer, Harber observed the tawny beard, the sea-blue eyes surrounded by the fine wrinkles of humor, the neat black clothing, the polished boots, and, above all, the gold earrings that marked the man in his mind as Farringdon, the sea-captain who had been anxious to meet him. Harber answered the captain's gleam of teeth with one of his own, and they turned their backs upon the water and went to Harber's room, where they could have their fill of talk undisturbed. Harber says they talked all that afternoon and evening, and well into the next morning, enthusiastically finding one another the veritable salt of the earth, honorable, level-headed, congenial, temperamentally fitted for exactly what they had in mind—partnership. "How much can you put in?" asked Harber finally. "Five hundred pounds," said the captain. "I can match you," said Harber. "Man, but that's fine !" cried the captain. "I've been looking for you—you, you know—-just you—for the last two years ! And when Pierson told me about you . . . why, it's luck, I say!" It was luck for Harber, too. Farringdon, you see, knew precisely where he wanted to go, and he had his schooner, and he knew that part of the world, as we say, like a man knows his own buttons. Harber, then, was to manage the plantation; they were going to set out rubber, both Para and native, and try hemp and maybe coffee while they waited for the Haevia and the Ficus to yield. And Farringdon was ready to put the earnings from his schooner against Harber's wage as manager. The arrangement, you see, was ideal. Skip seven years with me, please. Consider the plantation affair launched, carried on, and consummated. Farringdon and Harber have sold the rubber-trees as they neared bearing, and have sold them well. They're out of that now. In all likelihood, Harber thinks, permanently. For that seven years has seen other proj-VOL. LXVIII.—19 ects blossom. Harber, says Farringdon, has "the golden touch." There has been trading in the islands, and a short and fortunate little campaign on the stockmarket through Sydney brokers, and there has been, more profitable than anything else, the salvaging of the Brent Interisland Company's steamer Pailula by Farringdon's schooner, in which Harber had purchased a half-interest; so the partners are, on the whole, rather well fixed. Harber might be rated at, perhaps, some forty thousand pounds, not counting his interest in the schooner. One of Janet Spencer's argosies, then, its cargo laden, is ready to set sail for the hills of home. In short, Harber is now in one of the island ports of call, waiting for the steamer from Fiji. In six weeks he will be in Tawnleytown if all goes well. It isn't, and yet it is, the same Harber. He's thirty now, lean and bronzed and very fit. He can turn a hundred tricks now where then he could turn one. The tropics have agreed with him. There seems to have been some subtle affinity between them, and he almost wishes that he weren't leaving them. He certainly wouldn't be, if it were not for Janet. Yes, that slender thread has held him. Through ten years it has kept him faithful. He has eyed askance, ignored, even rebuffed, women. The letters, that still come, have turned the trick, perhaps, or some clinging to a faith that is inherent in him. Or sheer obstinacy ? Forgive the cynicism. A little of each, no doubt. And then he hadn't often seen the right sort of women. I say that deliberately, because: The night before the steamer was due there was a ball—yes, poor island exiles, they called it that!—and Harber, one of some thirty "Europeans" there, went to it, and on the very eve of safety . . . The glare and the oily smell of the lanterns, the odor of jasmine, frangipanni, vanilla, and human beings sickeningly mingled in the heat, the jangling, out-oftune music, the wearisome island gossip and chatter, drove him at length out into the night, down a black-shadowed pathway to the sea. The beach lay before him presently, gleaming like silver in the soft blue radiance of the jewelled night. As he stood there, lost in far memories, the melThe Argosies low, lemon-colored lights from the commissioner's residence shone beautifully from the fronded palms and the faint wave of the waltzes of yesteryear became poignant and lovely, and the light trade-wind, clean here from the reek of lamps and clothing and human beings, vaguely tanged with the sea, blew upon him with a light, insistent pressure. Half dreaming, he heard the sharp sputter of a launch— bearing belated comers to the ball, no doubt—but he paid no attention to it. He may have been on the beach an hour before he turned to ascend to the town. And just at the top of the slope he came upon a girl. She hadn't perceived him, and she stood there, slim and graceful, the moonlight bright upon her rapt face, with her arms outstretched and her head flung back, in an attitude of utter abandonment. Harber felt his heart stir swiftly. He knew what she was feeling, as she looked out over the shimmering half-moon of harbor, across the moaning white feather of reef, out to the illimitable sea, and drank in the essence of the beauty of the night. Just so, at first, had it clutched him with the pain of ecstasy, and he had never forgotten it. There would be no voicing that feeling; it must ever remain inarticulate. Nor was the girl trying to voice it. Her exquisite pantomime alone spelled her delight in it and her surrender to it. He saw at a glance that he didn't know her. She was "new" to the islands. Her clothes were evidence enough for that. There was a certain verve to them that spoke of a more sophisticated land. She might have been twenty-five, though she seemed younger. She was in filmy white from slipper to throat, and over her slender shoulders there drifted a gossamer banner of scarf, fluttering in the soft trade-wind. Harber was very close to see this, and still she hadn't observed him. "Don't let me startle you, please !" he said, as he stepped from the shadow of the trumpet-flower bush that had hitherto concealed him. Her arms came down slowly, her chin lowered; her pose, if you will, melted away. Her voice when she spoke was low and round and thrilled, and it sent an answering thrill through Harber. " I'm mad !" she said. "Moon-mad— or tropic-mad. I didn't hear you. I was worshipping the night!" "As I have been," said Harber, feeling a sudden pagan kinship with her mood. She smiled, and her smile seemed the most precious thing in the world. "You, too? But it isn't new to you . . . and when the newness is gone every one— here at least—seems dead to it! " "Sometimes I think it's always new," replied Harber. "An d yet I've had years of it . . . but how did you know?" "You're Mr. Harber, aren't you?" "Yes. But—" "Only that I knew you were here, having heard of you from the Tretheways, and I'd accounted for every one else. I couldn't stay inside because it seemed to me that it was wicked, when I had come so far for just this, to be inside stuffily dancing. One can dance all the rest of one's life in Michigan, you know! So "It's the better place to be—out here," said Harber abruptly. "Need we go in?'-' " I don't know," she said doubtfully. "Maybe you can tell me. You see, I've promised some dances. What's the usage here? Dare I run away from them?" " Oh, it might prove a three-day scandal if you did," said Harber. "But I know a bench off to the right, where it isn't likely you'll be found by any questing partner, and you needn't confess to having had a companion. Will you come and talk to me?" "I'm a bird of passage," she answered, smiling, "and I've only to unfold my wings and fly away from the smoke of scandal. Yes, I'll come—if you won't talk—too much. You see, after all, I won't flatter you. It's the night I want, not talk . . . the wonderful night!" But, of course, they did talk. She was an American girl, she told him, and had studied art a little, but would never be much of a painter. She had been teaching classes in a city high school in the Middle West, when suddenly life there seemed to have gone humdrum and stale. She had a little money saved, not much, but enough if she managed well, and she'd boldly resigned and determined, once at least before she was too old, to follow The Argosies spring around the world. She had almost given up the idea of painting now, but thought presently she might go in for writing, where, after all, perhaps, her real talent lay. She had gotten a letter of introduction in Suva to the Tretheways and she would be here until the next steamer after the morrow's. These were the bare facts. Harber gave a good many more than he got, he told me, upon the theory that nothing so provoked confidence as giving it. He was a little mad himself that night, he admits, or else very, very sane. As you will about that. But, from the moment she began to talk, the thought started running through his head that there was fate in this meeting. There was a sort of passionate fineness about her that caught and answered some instinct in Harber . . . and I'm afraid they talked more warmly than the length of their acquaintance justified, that they made one another half-promises, not definite, perhaps, but implied; promises that . . . "I must go in," she said at last, reluctantly. He knew that she must, and he made no attempt to gainsay her. "Yo u are going to America," she went on. "If you should " And just at that moment, Harber says, anything seemed possible to him, and he said eagerly: "Yes—if you will—I should like " How well they understood one another is evident from that. Neither had said it definitely, but each knew. "Have you a piece of paper?" she asked. Harber produced a pencil, and groped for something to write upon. All that his pockets yielded was a sealed envelope. He gave it to her. She looked at it closely, and saw in the brilliant moonshine that it was sealed and stamped and addressed. "I'l l spoil it for mailing," she said. "It doesn't matter," Harber told her ineptly. "Or you can write it lightly, and I'll erase it later." There was a little silence. Then suddenly she laughed softly, and there was a tiny catch in her voice. "So that you can forget?" she said bravely. "No ! I'll write it fast and hard .. . so that you can . . . never . . . forget!" And she gave him first his pencil and envelope, and afterward her hand, which Harber held for a moment that seemed like an eternity and then let go. She went into the house, but Harber didn't follow her. He went off to his so-called hotel. In his room, by the light of the kerosene-lamp, he took out the envelope and read what she had written. It was: Vanessa Simola, Claridon, Michigan. He turned over the envelope and looked at the address on the other side, in his own handwriting: Miss Janet Spencer, Tawnleytown. And the envelope dropped from his nerveless fingers to the table. Who shall say how love goes or comes ? Its ways are a sacred, insoluble mystery, no less. But it had gone for Harber: and just as surely, though so suddenly, had it come! Yes, life had bitterly tricked him at last. She had sent him this girl . . . too late ! The letter in the envelope was written to tell Janet Spencer that within six weeks he would be in Tawnleytown to claim her in marriage. One must be single-minded like Harber to appreciate his terrible distress of mind. The facile infidelity of your ordinary mortal wasn't for Harber. No, he had sterner stuff in him. Vanessa! The name seemed so beautiful . . . like the girl herself, like the things she had said. It was an Italian name. She had told him her people had come from Venice, though she was herself thoroughly a product of America. "So that you can never forget," she had said. Ah, it was the warm blood of Italy in her veins that had prompted that! A n American girl wouldn't have said that! He slit the envelope, letting the letter fall to the table, and put it in his pocket. Yet why should he save it? He could never see her again, he knew. Vain had been those half-promises, those wholly lies, that his eyes and lips had given her. For there was Janet, with her prior promises. Ten years Janet had waited for him . . . ten years . . . and suddenly, aghast, he realized how long and how terrible the years are, how they can efface The Argosies memories and hopes and desires, and how cruelly they had dealt with him, though he had not realized it until this moment. Janet . . . why, actually, Janet was a stranger, he didn't know Janet any more ! She was nothing but a frail phantom of recollection: the years had erased her! But this girl—warm, alluring, immediate .. . No—no ! It couldn't be. So much will the force of an idea do for a man, you see. Because, of course, it could have been. He had only to destroy the letter that lay there before him, to wait on until the next sailing, to make continued love to Vanessa, and never to go to Tawnleytown again. There was little probability that Janet would come here for him. Ten years and ten thousand miles . . . despite all that he had vowed on Bald Knob that Sunday so long ago, wouldn't you have said that was barrier enough? Why, so should I! But it wasn't. For Harber took the letter and put it in a fresh envelope, and in the morning he went aboard the steamer without seeing the girl again . . . unless that bit of white standing near the top of the slope, as the ship churned the green harbor water heading out to sea, were she, waving. But he kept the address she had written. Why? He never could use it. Well, perhaps he didn't want to forget too soon, though it hurt him to remember. How many of us, after all, have some little memory like that, some intimate communion with romance, which we don't tell, but cling to? And perhaps the memory is better than the reality would have been. We imagine . . . but that again is cynical. Harber will never be that now. Let me tell you why. It's because he hadn't been aboard ship on his crossing to Victoria twenty-four hours before he met Clay Barton. Barton was rolled up in rugs, lying in a deck-chair, biting his teeth hard together to keep them from chattering, though the temperature was in the eighties, and most of the passengers in white. Barton appeared to be a man of forty, whereas he turned out to be in his early twenties. He was emaciated to an alarming degree and his complexion was of the pale, yellow-green that spoke of many recurrences of malaria. The signs were familiar to Harber. He sat down beside Barton, and, as the other looked at him half a dozen times tentatively, he presently spoke to him. "You've had a bad time of it, haven't you?" "Terrible," said Barton frankly. "They say I'm convalescent now. I don't know. Look at me. What would you say?" Harber shook his head. Barton laughed bitterly. "Yes, I'm pretty bad," he agreed readily. And then, as he talked that day and the two following, he told Harber a good many things. "I tell you, Harber," he said, "we'll do anything for money. Here I am—and I knew damned well it was killing me, too. And yet I stuck it out six months after I'd any earthly business to—just for a few extra hundreds." "Where were you? What were you doing?" asked Harber. "Trading-post up a river in the Straits Settlements," said Barton. " A crazy business from the beginning—and yet I made money. Made it lots faster than I could have back home. Back there you're hedged about with too many rules. And competition's too keen. You go into some big corporation office at seventy-five a month, maybe, and unless you have luck you're years getting near anything worth having. And you've got to play politics, bootlick your boss—all that. So I got out. "Went to California first, and got a place in an exporting firm in San Francisco. They sent me to Sydney and then to Fiji. After I'd been out for a while and got the hang of things, I cut loose from them. "Then I got this last chance, and it looked mighty good—and I expect I've done for myself by it. Five years or a little better. That's how long I've lasted. Back home I'd have been good for thirty-five. A short life and a merry one, they say. Merry. Good God !" He shook his head ironically. "The root of all evil," he resumed after a little. "Well, but you've got to have
The Argosies it—can't get along without it in this world. You've done well, you say?" Harber nodded. "Well, so should I have, if the cursed fever had let me alone. In another year or so I'd have been raking in the coin. And now here I am—busted—done— fini, as the French say. I burned the candle at both ends—and got just what was coming to me, I suppose. But how could I let go, just when everything was coming my way?" "I know," said Harber. "But unless you can use it " "You're right there. Not much in it for me now. Still, the medicos say a cold winter back home will . . . I don't know. Sometimes I don't think I'll last to . . . "Where's the use, you ask, Harber? You ask me right now, and I can't tell you. But if you'd asked me before I got like this, I could have told you quick enough. With some men, I suppose, it's just an acquisitive nature. With me, that didn't cut any figure. With me, it was a girl. I wanted to make the most I could for her in the shortest time. A girl . . . well . . ." Harber nodded. " I understand. I came out for precisely the same reason myself," he remarked. "You did?" said Barton, looking at him sadly. "Well, luck was with you, then. You look so—so damned fit! You can go back to her . . . while I . . . ain't it hell? Ain't it?" he demanded fiercely. "Yes," admitted Harber, "it is. But at the same time, I'm not sure that anything's ever really lost. If she's worth while " Barton made a vehement sign of affirmation. "Why, she'll be terribly sorry for you, but she won't care," concluded Harber. " I mean, she'll be waiting for you, and glad to have you coming home, so glad that . . ." "Ah . . . yes. That's what ... I haven't mentioned the fever in writing to her, you see. It will be a shock." Harber, looking at him, thought that it would, indeed. " I had a letter from her just before we sailed," went on the other, more cheerfully. "I'd like awfully, some time, to have you meet her. She's a wonderful girl—wonderful. She's clever. She's much cleverer than I am, really . . . about most things. When we get to Victoria, you must let me give you my address." "Thanks," said Harber. "I'l l be glad to have it." That was the last Harber saw of him for five days. The weather had turned rough, and he supposed the poor fellow was seasick, and thought of him sympathetically, but let it rest there. Then, one evening after dinner, the steward came for him and said that Mr . Clay Barton wanted to see him. Harber followed to Barton's stateroom, which the sick man was occupying alone. In the passageway near the door, he met the ship's doctor. "Mr. Harber?" said the doctor. "Your friend in there—I'm sorry to say "I suspected as much," said Harber. "He knows it himself, I think." "Does he?" said the doctor, obviously relieved. "Well, I hope that he'll live till we get him ashore. There's just a chance, of course, though his fever is very high now. He's quite lucid just now, and has been insisting upon seeing you. Later he mayn't be conscious. So " Harber nodded. "I'll go in." Barton lay in his berth, still, terribly thin, and there were two pink patches of fever burning upon his cheek-bones. He opened his eyes with an infinite weariness as Harber entered the room, and achieved a smile. "Hard luck, old fellow," said Harber, crossing to him. "'S all up!" said Barton, grinning gamely. "I'm through. Asked 'em to send you in. Do something for me, Harber—tha's right, ain't it—Harber's your name ? " "Yes. What is it, Barton?" Barton closed his eyes, then opened them again. "Doggone memory—playin' tricks," he apologized faintly. "This, Harber. Black-leather case inside leather grip there—by the wall. Money in it—and letters. Everything goes—to the girl. Nobody else. I know you're straight. Take 'em to her?" The Argosies "Yes," said Harber. "Good," said Barton. "Al l right, then ! Been expecting this. All ready for it. Name—address—papers—all there. She'll have no trouble—getting money. Thanks, Harber." And after a pause, he added: "Better take it now—save trouble, you know." Harber got the leather case from the grip and took it at once to his own stateroom. When he returned, Barton seemed for the moment, with the commission off his mind, a little brighter. "No end obliged, Harber," he murmured. "Al l right," said Harber, "but ought you to talk?" "Won't matter now," said Barton grimly. "Feel like talking now. Tomorrow may be—too late." And after another pause, he went on: "The fine dreams of youth—odd where they end, isn't it? "This—and me—so different. So different ! Failure. She was wise—but she didn't know everything. The world was too big—too hard for me. 'You can't fail,' she said,'/ won't let you fail!' But you see " Harber's mind, slipping back down the years, with Barton, to his own parting, stopped with a jerk. "What!" he exclaimed. Barton seemed drifting, half conscious, half unconscious of what he was saying. He did not appear to have heard Harber's exclamation over the phrase so like that Janet had given him. "We weren't like the rest," droned Barton. "No—we wanted more out of life than they did. We couldn't be content—with half a loaf. We wanted—the bravest adventures—the yellowest gold— the ..." Picture that scene, if you will. What would you have said? Harber saw leaping up before him, with terrible clarity, as if it were etched upon his mind, that night in Tawnleytown ten years before. It was as if Barton, in his semidelirium, were reading the words from his past! " I won't let you fail! . . . half a loaf . . . the bravest adventures . . . the yellowest gold." Incredible thing! That Barton and his girl should have stumbled upon so many of the phrases, the exact phrases! And suddenly full knowledge blinded Harber. . . . No! No! He spurned it. It couldn't be. And yet, he felt that if Barton were to utter one more phrase of those that Janet had said and, many, many times since, written to him, the impossible, the unbelievable, would be stark, unassailable fact. He put his hand upon Barton's arm and gently pressed it. "Barton," he said, "tell me—Janet— Tawnleytown?" Barton stared with glassy, unseeing eyes for a moment; then his eyelids fell. "The bravest adventures—the yellowest gold," he murmured. Then, so faintly as almost to baffle hearing: "Where—all — our — dreams ? Gone — aglimmering. Gone." That was all. Impossible? No, just very, very improbable. But how, by its very improbability, it does take on the semblance of design! See by how slender a thread the thing hung, how every corner of the plan fitted. Just one slip Janet Spencer made; she let her thoughts and her words slip into a groove; she repeated herself. And how unerringly life had put her finger upon that clew ! So reasoned Harber. Well, if the indictment were true, there was proof to be had in Barton's leather case! Harber, having called the doctor, went to his stateroom. He opened the leather case. Inside a cover of yellow oiled silk he found first a certificate of deposit for three thousand pounds, and beneath it a packet of letters. He unwrapped them. And, though somehow he had known it without the proof, at the sight of them something caught at his heart with a clutch that made it seem to have stopped beating for a long time. For the sprawling script upon the letters was almost as familiar to him as his own. Slowly he reached down and took up the topmost letter, drew the thin shiny sheets from the envelope, fluttered them, dazed, and stared at the signature: "Yours, my dearest lover, JANET." The Puddle Just so had she signed his letters. It gan, to learn of her people when Vanessa was Janet Spencer. Two of her argosies, might be expected home. They told him each one laden with gold for her, had met she was on her way. So, fearing to miss in their courses, had sailed for a little toher if he went seeking, he settled down gether. there and stayed until she came. It was The first reasonable thought that came seven months of waiting he had . . . but to Harber, when he was convinced of the it was worth it in the end. authenticity of the miracle, was that he was free—free to go after the girl he And that was Harber's romance. Just loved, after Vanessa Simola. I think that an incredible coincidence, you say. I if he could have done it, he'd have turned know it. I told Harber that. And Mrs. the steamer back to the Orient in that Harber. moment. The thought that the ship was And she said nothing at all, but looked plunging eastward through a waste of at me inscrutably, with a flicker of scorn smashing heavy seas was maddening, no iii her sea-gray eyes. less! Harber smiled lazily and serenely, and He didn't want to see Janet or Tawnleaned back in his chair, and replied in a leytown, again. He did have, he told me, superior tone: "M y dear Sterne, things a fleeting desire to know just how many that are made in heaven—like my marother ships Janet might have launched, riage—don't just happen. Can't you see but it wasn't strong enough to take him that your stand simply brands you an unto see her. He sent her the papers and believer?" letters by registered mail under an asAnd, of course, I can see it. And Harsumed name. ber may be right. I don't know. Does And then he went to Claridon, Michiany one, I wonder?
THE PUDDLE By Eden Phillpotts I CURSED the puddle when I found Unseeing I had walked therein, Forgetting the uneven ground, Because my eyes Were on the skies, To glean their glory and to win The sunset's trembling ecstasies. And then I marked the puddle's face, When still and quiet grown again, Was but concerned, as I, to trace The wonder spread Above its head, And mark and mirror and contain The gold and purple, rose and red. We seek our goals; we climb our ways With hearts inspired by radiant thought, And hate the luckless wight who stays The upward stream Of vision's beam; Nor guess that we have roughly wrought A like hiatus in his dream.
Portrait Miss L. SOME DRY-POINTS AND
AN ETCHING BY WALTER TITTLE
tHER E are few of the arts that have a greater popular appeal than etching. It is, first of all, an art of direct personal expression, and many famous painters and workers in other fields of artistic endeavor have turned aside to find in the etching-needle and the shining copper-plate an opportunity for the expression of either individual creations or transcripts from nature seen through the eye of the imagination. Etching has the delightful charm to the artist of many accidental effects. These are especially characteristic of the bitten line where the drawing of the artist is scratched in the surface through an etching ground that protects the copper everywhere from the acid except where these 297 Robertscratches have been made. There are many unexpected things that may happen in a bitten plate, and every one at all interested or familiar with prints knows the significance of the word "states" as applied to many famous examples. A less common use of the etching-needle and the copper-plate is in the process known as dry-point. Here there is no 298 Henri. covering of the plate with a ground, or any use of acid—the picture is scratched directly into the copper. With this process, as will be readily understood, on each side of the line is thrown up a little ridge known to etchers as the "burr," and it is to this burr that the dry-point owes its special charm. There is a notable richness in the darks that reminds one of the Henry Caro-Delvaille. velvety black tones that are so characteristic of mezzotints. Many workers in dry-point first make a sketch and then transfer this to copper by means of stencilling. In the series of portraits by Mr. Tittle, all dry-points but one, he has made his sketches directly on the copper from life. He says that the artist gains greatly by this directness in both spontaneity of expression and in truth to character. His portrait sketches are the result of two or three sittings of approximately two hours each. To use the needle in this way calls for a thorough understanding of its possibilities as well as its limitations, a sureness of drawing, and a knowledge of the effect of every line. There is little of the 29 Meredithfreedom of pen-and-ink drawing, and none of the flowing quality of the brush. As a matter of fact it is free-hand engraving on copper without the minuteness, precision, and insistence on the character of the line for its own sake that belong to line-engraving done with the burin. It is necessarily slow as compared with pencil, crayon, or pen, and 300 Nicholson. greater care is required in choosing just the right line, for it is a somewhat laborious and tedious process to make corrections after the line is cut. There are ways, however, of modifying and altering the first impressions. Where the lines seem too heavily accented the burr may be reduced by burnishing, and an unnecessary line that destroys something Nina. of the delicacy of modelling can be entirely removed by rubbing the copper down with an ordinary honing-stone, then burnishing the surface. Trial proofs are made from the plate in its first state, and corrections made with them as guide. A great deal of the charm of either a bitten plate or a dry-point is due to skilful printing—a thorough understanding of just the effects desired. Mr. Tittle does his own printing. He laid the foundation for his adventure into the etching field, as well as for the admirable work he has done as an illustrator and in painting, in the old Chase School of Art, under the teaching of Chase and Robert Henri. His pen-and-ink drawings and drawings in wash are known to readers of 3°i Charles Dana Gibson. this and other magazines, and some may remember that several of the illustrations that accompanied Mr. Meredith Nicholson's "The Valley of Democracy," were etchings. There is a suggested similarity between the work of the pen-and-ink draftsman and the etcher, and yet the student will see a marked difference in technic. Mr . Tittle has made some seventy plates in all since he began etching several years ago, and they include landscapes as well as many portraits. He is now at work on a new series of portraits of well-known people of the stage. His paintings in oil have been exhibited in the National Academy, and his etchings were among others admitted for the first time to the 302 The Sun Hat.
An etching.
recent Academy Exhibit in the Brooklyn Institute. The charm and vitality of the etching lies in suggestion; it is an art of leaving out non-essentials, and in using the line that expresses the feeling, temperament, and individuality of the artist. The dry-point, with its opportunities for both boldness and delicacy of handling, is particularly well adapted for portraits, and the contrast between a vigorous masculine line and one of greater delicacy is well shown in these portraits by Mr . Tittle. 3°3
GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO
By Joseph Collins
Author of " M y Italian Year," " Idling in Italy," etc. tHE most conspicuous name in the annals of Italian literature of the generation now passing is that assumed by a child or a youth when the Voice first whispered to him that he had been chosen to announce the coming of a new era, to blaze the way for a new social and national life: Gabriele D'Annunzio. He is said to have been born "somewhere in Italy," near Chieti in the Abruzzi or at Pescara in the Regno, the old kingdom of Naples, or on board ship in the Adriatic in 1863, or, as one cautious biographer puts it, "toward that date." One day of his infancy in Ferravilla-on-the-Sea suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind. From that moment the little Annunciator was filled with the gift of verbal expression. He enhanced the endowment by diligent study in the high school at Prato in Tuscany where he spent his boyhood. Thus did he acquire an unparalleled mastery of the Italian language. The gods of mythology, the Hellenic heroes and philosophers, the emperors and courtesans of Pagan Rome, were the loves of his infancy. Alter Carducci's "Odi Barbari" exploded his poetic magazine, he looked about to find a god and a Greek upon which to mould his conduct. The career of Dionysius offered a model ready-made and alluring, and the die was cast. But he must have a philosophy as well. Heraclitus, whose name signifies "he who rails at the people," had formulated one that appealed to him. He taught that eternal flux and change is the only actuality; that all phenomena are in a state of continuous transition from non-existence to existence, and vice versa; that everything is and is not; that all things are and nothing remains; that all things must be reduced by way of quasi-condensation to the primary matter from which they originated. The process of quasi-reduction was to be preceded by purification 3°4 through pleasure, and pleasure was to be obtained by stimulation of the senses. The more they were stimulated the greater became their potency for purification. When he looked about the world he found others had been seduced by Heraclitus. Nietzsche, whose activity preceded D'Annunzio's for a few years, was the most conspicuous exponent of the Eternal Recurrence. He too taught a master morality, a morality which says yea to life and nay to morals, rules, and conventions. Christianity is the moral code of slaves. Instinct is the true wisdom. The genesis instinct is the basis of all other instincts. Therefore cultivate it, for thus one becomes superman and begets a race of supermen. No attempt will be made here to put an estimate upon D'Annunzio's conduct or his accomplishments of the past five years, save to say that they have been in keeping with his previous life. Literary criticism is concerned with the genius of the writer and the way in which he makes that genius manifest. It is not concerned with the morals or immorality of his writing, and yet it has to take some cognizance of them, especially if they are at variance with that which is considered moral or approximately moral. No one who is a public figure or whose activities are concerned with the welfare of the public, whether it be their diversion, instruction, or protection, can comport himself in a way that is flagrantly offensive to the public without showing the effect of it in his writings. For instance, a writer produces a masterpiece of literature, one that has qualities of conception and construction that excite universal admiration. It has been written for one of three reasons or all of them. First, because the artist has it in him and he must externalize it, a creative craving that must be satisfied; second, he has a purpose in doing it, he wants to amuse,amaze, or instruct people; third, he wants to gain fame or money. If he is utterly oblivious to the latter two, Gabriele D'Annunzio his writings may be as immoral or unrighteous as he wishes to make them. If the public does not wish to read them, they need not; and if they consider them injurious to others whose mental capacity does not enable them to judge whether they are proper or injurious, they may be suppressed. If, however, the writer is animated to production by either of the last two motives he must be reconciled to having an estimate made of his work not only from the point of view of literary criticism but from the point of view of the fitness of his works for literary consumption. That is, he must be reconciled with attempts to estimate whether or not the world would not have been better off without his works. Gabriele D'Annunzio, it is generally admitted, is the most consummate master of Italian verse now living. His prose writings show that he is not a literary craftsman of the first order, but he has understood that art rises out of our primal nature and that art is instinctive. He has sung the praises of sensualism as they never have been sung in modern times, and he has panoplied the preliminaries to love's embrace with garlands made of flowers of forced blooming, artificially perfumed and colored so that the average human being does not recognize them as products of nature. He has preached and practised a moral code the antithesis of Christianity, and yet no one has sought seriously to save his soul. In truth, D'Annunzio had tired the world of him. When he went to Paris it seemed to be content that he should disappear in that maelstrom as it had been that a contemporary, sensuous ego-centrist should disappear when he left Reading Gaol; but D'Annunzio must enter upon the final stage of his mission from the gods, and the Great War gave him the opportunity. Although so long a conspicuous figure in the public eye, he has managed to keep certain layers of the mantle of mystery about him so closely that little is known of his origin or of the forces that contributed to the making and development of his extraordinary career. It is confidently stated by those who claim to know him that he is a Jew, but he is not claimed by Hebrew writers who are proud VOL. LXVIII—20 of enrolling Bergson and Brandes, Spinoza and Strauss, in their list. Vainly offering his life for Italy, he is not somatically, mentally, or emotionally an Italian. Knowing her history, her traditions, and her reactions as few of her sons have known them, until the war he had not sung her virtues or mirrored her wondrous accomplishments of nation-building. His face has steadily been turned, not toward the east, where the sun of her glory is arising, but toward the west, where he has revelled in the resurrected glows of sunsets of Pagan and Renaissance days. He has treated his friends disdainfully when it suited his whim; he has meted out contumely to his adulators when it pleased his fancy; he has disdained those who have accused him; he has passed unnoticed those who have sought to belittle him, and he has gone among his superiors as if he were their king. He has been called everything save Philistine and fool. He has been called the greatest literary figure of modern Italy, and it is likely that he merits it. He is a poet, novelist, dramatist, journalist, politician, critic, propagandist, prophet, aviator, hero, dictator, and self-constituted arbiter of Italy's destinies. Neither his peer nor his superior has ever denied him a rare imagination, an artistic intelligence of extraordinary range, depth, and exquisiteness, a stupendous versatility and productiveness, a tireless energy, a fearless daring, and a supreme contempt for the feelings, beliefs, and accomplishments of others. There is no dearth of evidence to show that he was a precocious child and a youth of prodigious intellectual acumen and prehensileness, of boundless self-confidence, and fathomless ego-centrism. His first collection of verse, "Primo Vere" (First Truths), was published when he was fifteen years old, and two years later he published a second edition "corrected with pen and fire and augmented.'' From the beginning it was pointed out by critic and commentator that he plagiarized line and verse from poets of Italy—Niccolo Tommaseo, Giosue Carducci—and of other countries, but if the accusations made any impression upon him it was not evidenced in his future conduct, for later he took from Verga and Capuana, from ' Gabriele D'Annunzio Nietzsche and Tolstoy, from Maeterlinck and Flaubert, from Ibsen and Dostoievsky, and from countless others that which it pleased him to take. His fame in Italy as a poet was heralded by the poet Giuseppi Chiarini, who published an article which did for him what Octave Mirabeau's article in the Figaro of August 24, 1890, did for Maeterlinck. Before he had reached his maturity he was hailed as the coming poet whose originality was admirable, whose sensuality was shocking but acceptable, whose versatility was marvellous. There is nothing morbid, decadent, or blatant in his early poems. In the "Canto Novo" published in 1882 he displayed the torridity of his temperament, the splendor of his imagination, the ardency of his loves, and the implacability of his hatreds. It swept like a fire over Italy. It was a lyric of the joy of life, "the immense joy of living, of being strong, of being young, of biting with eager teeth the fruits of the earth, of looking with flaming eyes upon the divine face of the world as a lover looks upon his mistress." It was followed in quick succession by "Terra Vergine," "The Intermezzo di Rime," and "II libro delle Vergini," which enhanced his reputation and caused the Italians to hail him intemperately. He then went to Rome and began work as a journalist, but this did not interfere with his output of poetry, and by 1892, when he began publishing romances, he had established by the publication of "Isaotta Guttadauro," the "Elegie ro' mane," and the "Odi navali" a reputation with the people of being the most appealing, most satisfying, poet in Italy, and the critics were not at all sure he would not surpass Carducci, who was then considered Italy's greatest poet, and whose fame has steadily increased. His fame as a poet being established to his own satisfaction, he turned to the field of romance, and in the next five years (1893-1898) there flowed from the printing-presses a series of romances that veritably flooded literary Italy: "II Piacere," "LTnnocente," "Giovanni Episcopo," "II Trionfo della Morte," "Le Vergini delle Rocce," "Forse che si forse che no," and the "Novelle della Pescara." They had a quality that is not easily characterized by word or brief description. They were "sensuous," "decadent," "daring," "shocking," "brilliant." They were modelled on Flaubert, Prevost, Huysmans; they were saturated with the philosophy of Nietzsche, the psychology of Ibsen, the mysticism of Maeterlinck, the morality of Petronius; they reek of Wilde and Verlaine; they are the glorification of pagan ethics; they are apotheosis of lust. But they were read, discussed, admired, praised, not only in Italy but the world over. I doubt that praise was ever given so lavishly, so widely, and so unjustifiably as was given to this series of romances which to-day, a generation after their publication, are a constant reminder of the wayward step which Italian literature took at the end of the nineteenth century. In these volumes the author showed that he had a marvellous capacity to depict states of exalted sensibility; that he had an extraordinary, almost superhuman sensitiveness to beauty as it is revealed in nature and in art; that he had a clairvoyant knowledge of the activity of the unconscious mind of human beings, and how it conditions their behavior under circumstances and environments fortuitous or chosen; in other words until it is revealed to them behavioristically; that he had a comprehensive familiarity with plastic and pictorial art; an intimacy with ancient history and modern literature that was stupendous and withal a capacity to externalize his visions, his emotional elaboration, and his mental content in words so linked together that the very juxtaposition of them is a pleasure to the eye and a satisfaction to the mind. But that which he knew best of all was the history of eroticism. Not only was he familiar with its ancestry to the remotest time, but he had guarded its infant days with such solicitude that he knew every impression that worldly contact made upon its plastic consciousness, and when it got its growth he set to work to ornament it so that contact with it would be the apogee of all beauty, intimacy with it the purpose of all ambition, the object of all strife. There are features of his romances that cannot be adequately praised; there are Gabriele D'Annunzio features that cannot be sufficiently condemned. A poem that contains no particular thought may excite our profoundest admiration just as does a papiermache triumphal arch or monument, but a romance or novel depicts some phase or aspect of life, reveals man's aspirations or accomplishments, his behaviors and reactions under certain conditions, reflects his nobilities, depicts his frailties, and extols his ambitions, and what he would like to do, experience, and accomplish. In a general way it is expected that it shall be tuned to an ethical pitch that will not give offense to the man of average morality or outrage universally accepted and acceptable convention. The most successful horticulturist in the world would find no market for his roses even though they were more exquisite than those of all other florists should he impregnate them with a scent obtained from the Mustelidae. But D'Annunzio was conscious of no such law. He revels in all kinds of perverted emotions. Unspeakable relationships which the clean-thinking northern mind refuses even to contemplate form the theme of many of his books. In the English translations of his romances these things have been largely expurgated, but in some of them, as in "LTnnocente," for example, they cannot be expurgated, for they do not occur as instances, they are the atmosphere, the essence, of the book. It narrates the conduct of a man who having wedded a superior woman of great intellectual charm and bodily attractions yields to the temptations of the life of dissipation in which he had distinguished himself previous to an ideal matrimony and a contented paternity. He realizes that his digressions are scandalous and that their frequent deliberate repetitions justify his wife in living apart from him, though her love, being beyond contrbl, still continues. They agree to live with each other as brother and sister. The moment he succeeds in placing her in his soul as his sister an irresistible impulse seizes him to have possession of her, and the burden of the book is a description of the seduction of his own wife, who in the new covenant is his sister. He meanwhile, with consummate art, has described in the first chapter as the only true love the love that exists between brother and sister, his apostrophe of it having been called forth by recalling the sister whom death had fortunately removed. Before he has accomplished her seduction he has precipitated her in a vulgar adventure with his own brother, a pattern of all the virtues. It is a part of his consummate art to create circumstantial evidence that will tend to put the paternity of her child upon a fellow author who in other days had been civil and courteous to his wife, and had sent a copy of his latest book with an enigmatical inscription on the fly-leaf, but in reality he succeeds in creating an atmosphere from which one senses with readiness that the real father is his brother. The book in so far as it is concerned with the nobility of Giuliana, the sweetness of life in the country, the lovability of her mother and her children, the way in which her emotions and thought after the advent of the child are shaped that she may grow to hate it as he hates it, as well as the mental elaborations that justify him in seeking to destroy it and the accomplishment of it, are done in a way that shows the author to be not only intimately familiar with the workings of the normal human mind but with the depraved human mind. Fiom the beginning of his literary career D'Annunzio was at no pains to conceal that he was the model from which he painted his heroes. He conceived himself a superman long before he began to write romances, and I am not one of those who believe that he got his conception from Nietzsche. He got it from the same indescribable source that that unbalanced monster of materialism got his. Its roots, if they could be traced back to the days of the Hebrew prophets, would be found to have their germinal sprouts in some descendant of Samuel or David. D'Annunzio's romances are a mixture of materialism, sensualism, and pessimism reduced in a pagan mortar to a homogeneous consistency and then skilfully admixed with honey so that it is acceptable to the Christian palate, but once it has got beyond the taste-buds of the tongue, once it is taken into the system, its poisonous, corroding, and destructive qualities become operative. I doubt if D'Annunzio ever wrote a word or line in Gabriele D'Annunzio his plays or romances that any one was the better for having read or heard, and by better I mean that he added to his spiritual possessions, to his inherent nobility, or to his aspirations for a moral perfection, one iota. I doubt if any normal human being, normal physically, mentally, and spiritually, can read "II Piacere" without feeling ill and humiliated, not because of the picture that the author draws of himself in the guise of Andrea Sperelli, this finished expert in the employments of love, nor of Donna Maria, nor of the woman more infernally expert in those matters, nor the score of other characters which he paints with a master-hand, but because of the way in which he draws his bow across the over-taut strings of sensuousness until they scream and wail in frenzied fashion and then finally burst asunder. The way in which he makes an appeal to his perverted sensuality through vicarious and over stimulation of the senses with which he was endowed for self-conservation and self-preservation, the senses of smell and sight and touch and hearing, is in itself a perversion. He stimulates them until they shriek for mercy or for immersion in some benumbing balm. The true pervert is he who puts out of proportion and out of perspective the sources of aesthetic emanation and who concentrates them upon the percipient apparatus of one or other of the senses so that it may be excited to a frenzied activity. Like Nietzsche, D'Annunzio looks upon women as creatures of an inferior race, instruments of pleasure and procreation who were created to serve. When they no longer are amusing, useful, or serviceable, they are to be brushed aside and with the same sang-froid as one would put aside an automobile that had broken down, worn out, or become its "corpo non e piu giovane," as he kept saying of Foscarina in "II Fuoco," who belonged to him "like the thing one holds in his fist, like the ring on one's finger, like a glove, like a garment, like a word that may be spoken or not, like a draft that may be drunk or poured on the ground." In "Vergina della Rocce" he expounds the theory that inequality is the essence of the state, and in this book as well as in "II Trionfo della Morte" we find all the passion of language and of sentiment that one finds in Nietzsche. In his "Life of Cola di Rienzo," D'Annunzio again took occasion to lampoon and traduce the common people, describing them as the great beast which must be crushed and annihilated. "11 Trionfo della Morte" is the very essence of Heraclitan philosophy and Dionysian ethics. The hero, who is a paragon of knowledge, which he displays for the reader's edification, meets the young and pretty wife of a business man who bores her. He is successful finally in persuading her to pass a few weeks with him in his villa by the sea. Then the reader gets a description of the gradual hatred that develops in him the outgrowth of his subjection of her. "Every human soul carries in it for love a definite quality of sensitive force. This quality is used up with time, and when it is used up no effort can prevent love from ceasing." But, unlike the animal when he is satiated, he is not content with driving her from him, he must needs mete out the same fate to her that he did to the infant in "II Piacere," so he lures her to the edge of a sea-cliff and hurls her into space. " She would in death become for me matter of thought, pure ideality; from a precarious and imperfect existence she would enter into an existence complete and definite, forsaking forever the infirmities of her weak, luxurious flesh. Destroy to possess. There is no other way for him who seeks the absolute in love." The reader yields to the enchantment of his style, to the seductiveness of his lyrism, to the intoxications of his descriptions of beauty; and the critic and fellow writer to his mastery of technic and consummate mastery of behavioristic psychology. From the critics' point of view "The Triumph of Death" and "The Fire" are the high-water marks of D'Annunzio as a stylist, and they mark his completest moral dissolution. In "II Fuoco" we get the same ethics, philosophy, aesthetics, and glorification of sensuousness that we get in all his other books. Here the two leading characters are exact replicas of himself and of the world's greatest actress of her day portrayed in an environment, Venice, that is Gabriele D'Annunzio redolent of beauty in decay like a crushed Grecian vase overfilled with withered rose-leaves which fall from it at every puff of wind. This environment makes an ideal palette upon which he blends the colors whose pigments he has been selecting and experimenting with for a quarter of a century. The publication of it promoted his voluntary exile from Italy. His fellow countrymen could not condone the monstrous offense of depicting therein their beloved actress. And they have not yet forgiven him, nor are they likely to do so. After D'Annunzio had established a reputation as a neoromanticist with a classical tendency he turned to drama, and the year 1897 marks his advent into that field. His first efforts, three one-act parables, "The Foolish Virgins and the Wise Virgins," "The Rich Man and Poor Lazarus," and "The Prodigal Son," were published in the Mattino of Naples, a newspaper controlled by the husband of his friend and fellow writer, Matilda Serao. They are noteworthy merely to show the way in which a sensuous pagan can transform simple characters into decadent, perverted proselyters of pleasure. It was not until he wrote "The Dream of a Spring Morning" and "The Dream of an Autumn Sunset" that he displayed the same measure of lascivious imagery and capacity for description of the perverse manifestations of eroticism that he revealed in his romances. In "La Citta Morta," his most successful drama, his purpose was to revive in form, structure, and unity the Greek drama, and he took occasion also to display his knowledge of the classics and archaeology. The philosophy and mysticism of the play he got from Maeterlinck. The thought is poetic, the diction graceful, but the theme is of the sort abhorrent to the Anglo-Saxon mind. His next play, "L a Gioconda," is an exposition of the exemption which D'Annunzio thinks the artist of his own superman caliber should have from conforming to the laws of state or custom. The contention is a simple one. He should do anything that he pleases, which means give himself over to the pleasure of the senses and the appetites until the indulgence is followed by satiety, and thus his progress toward perfection through gratification of desires will be accomplished. The two dramas of D'Annunzio which are best known to the English-speaking public are "L a Figlia d'Jorio " and " Francesca da Rimini." "The Daughter of Jorio" is a tragedy laid in the mountains of Abruzzi. D'Annunzio knows the customs, habits, and traditions of the shepherds and mountaineers, their superstitions and emotions, as he knows art, archaeology, and eroticism. In "Francesca da Rimini," an historical play filled with erudite archaeological details, he displays a knowledge of the thirteenth century and of the customs of the time which has never been excelled save by historical writers. It is a picture of war and bloodshed, of treachery and accusation. The central theme is the love of Francesca and Paolo. They may be taken as the typical human beings of the thirteenth-century Italy, fond of luxury and beautiful things, but savage in their reactions. Perhaps Francesca is one of the best feminine figures that D'Annunzio has ever drawn. In 1904 there appeared two volumes entitled "Praises of the Sky, the Sea, the Earth, and of Heroes." After that period his tragedies, "The Light Under the Bushel," "The Ship," "Fedra," and "The Mystery of San Sebastian," appeared in French, and soon he adopted France as his home, having previously published a spiritual autobiography of 8,400 lines entitled "Laus Vitae," in which he summarizes the motives of his past and lays the basis of his new inspiration. D'Annunzio's war poems have all been inspired with the belief that Italy's future lies on the sea. It is much to be regretted that they have not yet been collected into a single volume. When it is done he will not unlikely be recognized as the most meritorious of Pindar's descendants. Undoubtedly he will want them to be the conspicuous, permanent wreath on his tomb. The Libyan war inspired him to the production of his noblest war poetry: "Canzoni della Gesta d'Oltremare" (Songs of Achievements across the Sea). In the "Canzoni di Mario Bianco" he foresaw the beginning of a new era for Italy, and he forecast the aspirations and 310 Gabriele D'Annunzio promises of the third Italy. His "Canzone del quarnaro" describes the raid of the three Italian torpedo-boats on the Buccari, a few miles to the southeast of Fiume. It is short and forceful. The introductory "beffa" describes the raid in detail. D'Annunzio is inordinately fond of using Christian imagery and he reverts to it here in the distribution of his little tricolor flags, which has a mystic import. "It is a true eucharistic sacrament, the closest and most complete communion of the spirit with beautiful Italy. There is no need of consecrating words; the tricolor wafer was converted through our faith into the living beauty of our country. We are purified, we are sundered from the shore and from our daily habits, separated from the land and all vulgar cares, from our homes and from all useless idleness, from profane love and all base desires, we are immune from the thought of return." The "Cantico per l'ottava della Vitoria" is a wish fulfilment for him. As the boat enters the quarnaro and runs up the coast of Istria it is for D'Annunzio the guarantor of the Treaty of London, and he sees all the cities and islands of this coast restored to Italy, and these cities and all the places hallowed by the war join in the paean of triumph. In "Songs of Achievements Across the Sea," D'Annunzio established an incontestable claim to be the great inspiring poet, even the prophet of his generation in Italy, and he produced work which has not been surpassed, but he was still the poet only, singer of the deeds of others, in which he had no share himself. The contrast between his pretensions and his achievements made the affectations of his early years appear ridiculous to many people and tended to obscure the true value of his work. He was still seeking, and the years that followed in Paris showed that he had discovered no new world to explore, but when Italy joined the Allies he suddenly found himself. Al l the brooding sense of incomplete achievement of other days vanished in a moment. The speeches and addresses that he delivered between May 4 and 25,1915, showed that he had been preparing for what he knew would be "The Day" for him. D'Annunzio is a poet who abounds in lyrical ecstasies. His style is the most remarkable thing about him. He describes armor, architecture, archaeology, like an expert. He knows the dramatic point of view. He knows how to depict dramatic situations. His personages are all living personages. He is concerned with the neurotic, decadent, hectic, temperamental type of human beings. All his characters have a love of beauty. He is the true decadent of the nineteenth-century literature, to which the decadent French symbolists cannot hold a candle. The last books of D'Annunzio illustrating his new attitude toward life are "L a Leda senza-cigno" (Leda Without the Swan), "Per la piu grande Italia" (For Greater Italy), "L a beffa di Buccari" (Buccari's Joke), "L a riscossa" (The Rescue), "Bestetti e Tuminelli" (Italy and Death), "Contro uno e Contro Tutti" (Against One and Against All), and a series of volumes under the title of "The Archives of Icarus" which are all concerned with incidents in the Great War. It is too soon to attempt to guess the pedestal that posterity will allot Gabriele D'Annunzio in the Gallery of Fame. The committee that will do it will estimate his qualifications of lyric poet and Hellenic dramatist—perhaps as warrior. It was widely believed in Italy in 1917 and 1918 that from the evening of May 4, 1915, when D'Annunzio addressed a meeting at Quadro to commemorate Garibaldi's departure with his faithful thousand to deliver Sicily and Naples from the Bourbon yoke, and from the day when he addressed an admiring, enthusiastic audience in the Costanza Theatre in Rome, and later went with the enormous crowd to ring the bell of the Campodoglio,, the signal was given for the declaration of war against Austria and Germany. After he had sucked the luscious orange of Italy dry and eaten of its pomegranates to satiety; after he had exhausted sensation in the search for sensation and he could no longer hope for stimulation from vision, from image, from sound, from color; when the nets of Eros were so lacerated and worn from having been dragged upon the rocks and crags of life; when Italian food, though appetizingly spiced and washed down Gabriele D'Annunzio with rare vintage of the Castelli Romani, would no longer nourish him, he abandoned his native land and went to France. His writings there were like those of a man who is dominated by a dementia following protracted delirium, and as he emerged from this dementia he published a pietistic piece called "Contemplation of Death." It seems to have been suggested to him by the death of the poet Pascoli, for whom he professed admiration, but more particularly by Adolfo Bermond, whom he had met after he went to France, and who apparently had been able to depict the beauties of humility so that they were recognizable to D'Annunzio. In his fatigued, emotional, and enfeebled mental state he asked himself whether humility was not more desirable than pride, love not stronger than hate, spiritual aristocracy more ennobling than aristocracy of blood, of money, of brain, of privilege. In this state of mock humility he wrote: "I always feel above me the presence of the sacrifice of Christ. I see now that the glory of my life is not in the beauty of my possessions. I have never felt so miserable and at the same time so powerful. Never since I lived have I had within me an instinct, a need, so deep and so storming. I am aware that a part of my being, maybe the best part, is deeply asleep within me." But soon this spiritual awakening was throttled by the influence of Nietzsche. "What will become of me if I surrender wholly to the Saviour? Surely I want the world to know if in my life, filled with base instincts, there comes the moment of changing. Even if my glory be destroyed, I will not be a prisoner to the worse that speaks within me." It was from that hour that he decided to be the Garibaldi of the third Italy. He would then be another Gabriel standing in the presence of God and sent to speak to them and show them glad tidings. It was a similar awakement that D 'Annunzio had when he went to Rome in the early '90's. Perhaps it was before that time that he encountered "L'Ornement Des Noces Spirituelles de Ruysbroeck 1'Admirable" and later "L a Sagesse et la Destinee," and he absorbed some of its aesthetic mysticism. He realized that it was another variety of search for wisdom because it is happiness, and he began to portray it in his poetry and tragedies. The day came when the conduct of a corrupt people in a decadent fictitious world no longer sufficed to divert him; having drunk from the poisoned springs of lust not only to satiety but to disgust, he, like his prototype of Huysmans's creation, "des Esseintes," must hide himself away far from the world, in some retreat where he might deaden the sound of the loud rumblings of inflexible life, as one covers the street with straw for sick people. This retreat was Paris, and there we must leave him making scenic plays and erudite verse for a Russian ballerina, and working out his destiny in contemplation of death, and in planning the selection of warriors for Valhalla. We are not concerned with his conduct or with his morals. We are concerned with his activities to divert and instruct us, and the influence that his efforts had upon the people of his time. He wrote artistically perfect novels. His poetry is the highest form of lyric expression. He made his dramas the revivification of the elements of Greek tragedy. He strove to prove that Eros was unconquerable by priest, sage, or warrior. Now, with the world in ferment, they are his only earnest for our acceptation of his assurance that he can shape the fate of Italy more acceptably than its statesmen.
LINKS
By Leonard Hatch
ILLUSTRATIONS BY FLORENCE MINARD wE meet to-night as usual, Comrade Levin!" Hardly more than a whisper, the remark percolated through the tangled thicket of beard covering the lower face of a gigantic Slav who was wheeling a truck full of zinc disks past Levin Livotski. . Levin Livotski merely nodded, without looking up. Indeed, the huge Magaroff's customary, almost stereotyped air of mystery always bored Levin a little. He knew that the usual meeting was to take place that night. He knew also that Magaroff was perfectly well aware that he knew. Therefore the conspirator's air of the big bearded man struck him somehow as a little over-melodramatic, though Levin had never heard that word and wouldn't have known what it meant anyhow. If Levin had been able to put into words the feeling he had in his starved and groping brain, he would have told you that getting together with his fellow-workers to discuss their mutual problems and the vital things of life was too sacred to be referred to with that sort of sibilant aside, like one con man tipping off his pal. So Levin merely grunted sourly and went on with his work like an automaton. All about him the myriad machines, manned by myriad workers like himself, shrilled and clattered and clanged and snarled in a deep bass diapason shot through with a million metallic falsettos. The Hector Truck Company did things on a big scale. They counted their output, not by dozens and scores, but by hundreds and thousands. And in all these hundreds and thousands Levin had a share. It consisted in the welding of one steel link which gave just so many fractions of an inch play where demanded and then held firm. That link was a vital part in every Hector truck which had gone out from the 312 plant. Levin had been welding their unconquerable stanchness into each ever since the earliest models had been perfected. Yet to him they signified nothing but the endless routine of Monday to Saturday. And not merely endless, but meaningless routine. Routine that, as the months had rolled their courses into years, had brewed a bitterness in the soul of Levin Livotski. It had been six years ago that he had come from Russia. He had learned English. But he had never been naturalized. Nor had he married and raised a family. He had few friends, few ties of any sort save the ties of toil. And as he worked year after year, he had done a deal of thinking. In spite of being an elementary and primitive animal organism, Levin had in him a generous dash of the cloister philosopher. He had grown into the way of pondering over what he considered the utter meaninglessness to himself of his work. What significance did he have in America? How did he count in the social fabric of this adopted land of his? How—in short— did he count at all? Such was the bitter cud of his ruminations, both in the thunder of the factory and during long summer evenings when he hung about down-town pool-rooms or on the steps of his boarding-house. And far from reaching solutions of any sort, his thoughts had led him into warped and maze-like channels. Small wonder he was easy meat for the octopus of false radicalism. It had been at the suggestion of a fellow-worker that he had gone one evening to a meeting where poison was ladled out as Truth. That evening was stamped ineffaceably on Levin's mind. The chief speaker had a curiously impotent and flaccid mouth, but an eye which smouldered and roved. Roved, yet bored whenever it settled. And it happened to settle on Levin as the eager, innocent, receptive son of the Slavs
Drawn by Florence Minard. Meaningless routine had brewed a bitterness in the soul of Levin Livotski.—Page 312.
314 Links sat there leaning forward and gaping up at the professional malcontent as he mouthed and snarled his rubber-stamp phrases against all employers and theirs in particular. " While we grind away the best part of our lives, sweating drops of blood," he rasped, "what are they doing? They're marketing the things we make. They're selling them for bags of gold. They're buying jewels and riding round in cars with silver and gold trimmings. And they're laughing at us, at us slaves, behind our backs, laughing because we're such fools. Fools because we give—give —eternally give, and never get anything back in return but a paltry wage. "They crack the whip while we make all the luxuries of life for them. Did you —a single one of you—ever profit in any way by the things you turn out? No. Do these things you manufacture ever do you the slightest good? No. " He paused rhetorically. To Levin that seemed the vital point, the very pith of the whole situation. The fact that no one answered swung the scales for him. That gleaming eye and the orotund falsities masked as truths galvanized Levin from a listener to a convert. The speaker's words were as flashes of lightning to one, who gropes. Thereafter Levin missed no meeting. And his problems were transformed little by little to bitterness and animosity— especially toward that very company which gave him his pay envelope every week for his part in making the Hector truck. After the third meeting Levin carried away in an inside pocket a blood-red card which stated that Levin Livotski belonged to the comradeship of Communal Workers. The meetings became a fixture in Levin's life. Gradually he grew more and more the enthusiast, finally the fanatic whose eyes are fixed upon the fair vision of a roseate new era. From the evening when he was first called a slave, he came to believe that he was one. He made new acquaintances, new friends. And almost every evening found him listening to fluent lies. Meanwhile, over and over in his brain, there surged, like an inescapable refrain, the words: "Do the things you manufacture ever do you the slightest good?" And over and over the same answer assailed him: that those links he welded for the Hector truck meant nothing in his life. So the winter passed. And the meetings became more outspoken, the imported speakers more venomous, as tfme went on. But their bitterness was no greater than that in Levin's heart. It was because he was going anyhow, not because the thick-bearded Magaroff had advised it, that Levin Livotski shuffled along through the clear, star-garnished night toward the hall where their meetings were held. As he passed the freight-yards near his destination a stocky man in a stiff hat eyed him fixedly. But at the time that meant nothing to Levin. In fact, he had forgotten all about it by the time he was seated in the ill-ventilated, second-story room where the meeting was held. The room was jammed from platform to rear wall with the flotsam and jetsam of a score of countries. There were big bearded men like Magaroff, with lowering brows and hands which seemed all knuckles. There were men who merely needed a leader to conduct them from one chronic grudge to another. There were phlegmatic men. And, not least numerous, there were high-strung men like Levin, wistful men, men with stifled souls which would have expanded had they but known how. All these were packed in together there, arguing, commenting, snarling, cursing, or silent—in the reeking haze of threescore cigars and pipes. The room was so stuffy from the tobacco and oil lamps that Levin had seated himself at the side of the room beside a window which was a few inches open. There was a new speaker to-night, and he began tearing up by the roots the nation with all its government, its social organization and its legal checks and balances. National habits, creeds, aspirations—all were lashed with hifalutin oratory and made to walk the plank. Levin Livotski sat enraptured as the speaker thrummed acrid variations on his theme. Levin was informed over and over that he was not being given a fair Links 315 chance to work with and for all his fellow countrymen. Surely, thought Levin, that was the truth, if ever there was such a thing. And then, just as the speaker took one final fling at the impotence of the government, the government itself entered. It entered silently and swiftly, led by the man with the derby whom Levin had vaguely noticed on the street. It entered a dozen strong. It entered behind the barrels of drawn revolvers. It entered not to rebut or palaver, but to act. The speaker slunk from the rostrum. The crowd leaped up, many of them on their chairs. All but Levin. As the audience came to its feet, he dropped to his hands and knees, so as to be effectually concealed from the officers at the door. Then, in the instant at his disposal, he slid his body through the window behind him. It was swiftly and nimbly done, and unobserved by the officers. Outside the window, and just beside it, Levin discovered a water-spout leading from roof to ground. Clutching this, he tried to clamber down its eighteen feet. And he might have made it, too, for his fingers were like steel. But as he was half-way down, the spout became unjointed and shot, him down to the earth with a crash. On the instant an officer, who was stationed outside for just such attempted getaways, came running up. But Levin gave the official such a nicely timed and sturdy shove that in stepping back he tripped and fell. Before he could recover Levin had leaped away into the darkness. He ran silently and swiftly, at first unnerved and without purpose, then instinctively turning his footsteps toward the railroad yards. Once there, he stopped and listened. Al l was quiet behind him. But he knew that the officers were picking up his comrades. And he had the fear that when the whistle of the Hector truck works blew in the morning, officers would be waiting at the gate to take him as he entered. That decided him. Stealthily he crept along into the jungle, of freight-cars. Once he caught his toe in a switch-bar and fell heavily, wrenching his leg so that he walked with a limp. But he edged his way deeper and deeper into the maze of cars, around them, alongside them, crawling under them. And finally he reached a train that was just being made up and ready to pull out. Never pausing to consider the wherefore or whither, he climbed up and perched between two of the cars, clinging to the brake-rod. And hardly was he there before the train began to move, winding its way slowly out of the labyrinth, and faster and faster on into the night. It was an unusually warm night for winter time, else Levin must surely have frozen. But as it was, he clung there like a leaf in the crotch of a tree. And as he clung, he hummed under his breath the words and music of the song of discontent which he had chanted among his comrades earlier that evening. It would have been better for him to have kept his mouth shut, for a brakeman passing along on top of the train heard above the roar of the wheels the wavering notes of the song rising from one of the dark canyons between cars. That brakeman noted the location of those cars in the train. And when daylight came and the engine stopped for water at a tank out in the country, the brakeman went forward and proceeded to kick Levin off the train, quite unemotionally and deftly. And when the train trundled away, it left Levin Livotski all alone there at the edge of the track. In the dim light of morning he could see neither house nor village in his vicinity. But off toward the north he detected a persistent sibilant murmur. It appeared to belong to the animal kingdom somehow or other. So Levin turned his footsteps in that direction. The sound grew clearer and clearer as he approached it, limping his way along. And by the time it was fully light he came up with the noise. It rose from a hundred small shacks and wire enclosures. Mysterious as it had been from afar, it was no longer perplexing to Levin when he came out upon a knoll overlooking this poultry farm at just the identical moment that the golden sun made the morning glorious. Acres of wire enclosures behind which pullet and bantam, Plymouth Rock and Rhode 316 Links Island Red, scurry voraciously about, have never been accounted either an inspiring or a poetic spectacle. Yet so different was it from the murky smoke and vapor and turmoil of his usual morning environment, that it sent a curious thrill through the heart of Levin Livotski. Of course, he had known that there were such places, just as he had known that there were places where the wheat grew which went into bread, and other places where beeves were raised. But that he—Levin Livotski—whose sphere in life was to weld one sort of link time after time, and to carry in his pocket a card of the Communal Workers—that he should be limping along through that sunlit morning, past these acres of feathered creatures-—well, it was like a scene in the movies. Yet he was happy, despite his wrenched leg, as he plodded toward the great farmhouse he could see a quarter of a mile away. A half-hour later he was telling his story to Homer B. Trask, the man who owned all that farm. Trask was a big, upstanding man with a clear and kindly eye and a booming voice. He was successful in producing eggs and broilers for precisely the same reasons that he would have been successful in producing mushrooms, overalls, or telescope lenses if he had switched his activities into those channels. As it was, he knew his farm as an invalid knows the pattern on his wall-paper. There was hardly a square yard of it that he did not traverse every day. In fact, he was once heard to remark that he gauged the success of any year by the number of shoes he could wear out in that year. You can readily see why Levin had no difficulty in getting an audience—and a job. But Levin was not communicative on the way he got his limp, or, indeed, on what he had been doing. He merely said he had come from the city and knew machinery a little. Whereupon Trask had looked him over shrewdly and set him to work in helping stretch new wire for new enclosures. At which he made good from the start. And if Levin marvelled at his employer at the outset, he marvelled still more as the days went on. For Trask, as he happened by, would stop and talk to him, which was quite foreign to all Levin's experience or understanding. Indeed, it was on the second day he was there that Levin got a brand-new thriU, but not from his boss. To be sure, Trask happened to be standing beside him when it occurred, but the sudden quickening of Levin's pulse was due to the fact that some reels of new wire were deposited beside them by a big Hector truck. The Slav gaped. He knew that carloads of trucks left the factory for all over the world, but his imagination went no further. He had never visualized one of these trucks outside the environment of the city where they were made. "Yours?" he asked Trask. "Sure," the farmer made answer. "Wouldn't think of using any other truck but the Hector." Levin fairly beamed. The light of proprietary interest leaped Into his eyes. "I made him," said he, as one would say, " I made the sun, moon, and stars." It was Trask's turn to stare. "You made it? " he repeated in bewilderment. Levin nodded and went over to the truck. "Sure," he continued, "not all of it, but most important part," he remarked, more naively than with braggadocio. Down onto his knees he flopped in the road and peered up under to where his link should be—his link. Yes, it was there, no longer glistening as when it left his hands, but still very much on the job. He beamed again. It was literally the first time he had ever looked at his handiwork outside the factory. Homer Trask saw the lay of the land, and—half in curiosity, half in amusement —led him on. Levin, nothing loath, went into a long monologue about the link, how it was made, its specific purpose, and how well it served that purpose. Before he knew it, Levin was the artist, boldly proclaiming the merit of his art. Had he been in the Sales Department of the Hector Truck instead of a mere factory hand, he could not have sung the praises of the truck more eloquently or with more personal enthusiasm. Trask could not help wondering how an artisan with so much pride in his handicraft should leave it to stretch chicken Links 317 netting. But he asked nothing. He knew a good worker when he saw one, and thanked his luck. Meanwhile the days passed on out of February, the bottle-neck of the winter, and occasionally a mild, sunshiny day would hint of the coming spring. Such days made Levin restless. He thought at first that it was because he missed the radical powwows at night. And it occurred to him to try to make converts out of his "fellow-workers" on the farm. The old rubber-stamp phrases still ran glibly off his tongue. But when he tried out young Dick Sprague with some remarks about bondage, Dick thought Levin was trying to sell him one of his old Liberty Bonds. "Nothin' doin'," said he. "I've got three of my own, and I've a mind to sell them and get a motor-cycle." Levin gave him up as an ignoramus. But he had little better luck with George West, a grizzled old countryman who had spent almost his entire life inside a fifty-mile circumference. " Don't you realize you're a slave ? " began Levin one day. "Sure I am," said old George. "Al ways have been. But say—ain't oP man Trask a damn fine feller to work for?" Upon which Levin decided that this was stony soil for proselyting. He dropped it. Yet he was not without a haunting suspicion that his failure to impress Dick Sprague and old George was perhaps not altogether due to their lack of receptivity. Somehow the old feverish discontent within him had cooled, though he tried to fan it to its former flame. But the serenity of the country was stealing surreptitiously into his soul, seeping through and through him. The breath of April, the calm sunrise and sunset, the incredible silence of the nights, all these had a reassuring and sedative effect on him. His work was altogether outdoors, with the single exception of one occasion when Trask had to set him to helping mark eggs. For many years it had been a whim of Trask's to mark his name in indelible purple ink upon each egg in a number of choice crates which he shipped every day. His business had passed the stage where it needed the stimulus of this publicity, but he kept up the old practice for sentiment's sake. But Levin, naturally enough, had no pleasure in that kind of dainty-fingered work. He was glad to get back to his fence-posts and meshed wire. The country had endowed him with such restless vigor that only labor which gave him that comfortable slackness of muscle when nightfall came, could appease him. That thrill when he saw the Hector truck—his truck—for the first time, was not repeated. Nevertheless, every time he caught sight of the truck on its round of daily routine tasks—chiefly that of carrying egg-crates to the Junction—he got the most curious sensation of somehow being responsible for its sturdy service. As it wound its way off with a load of crates for shipment, or came careening homeward ready for a new cargo, he felt an impression akin to paternal pride. It worried him a little to feel that way. Here was a Hector, a truck which he had assisted in building, obviously helping in Trask's business. In that sense his handiwork was serving Trask, the "damn fine feller." Yet only a few weeks ago it had been laid down to Levin by those strident, gesticulating speakers as an absolute law that to work in the Hector plant was to be a useless slave, serving only to swell the already swollen bank-accounts of the company's officials. And here was a seeming contradiction of this, demonstrated afresh before his eyes every day. The work he had done beside the roaring forges was now aiding Trask to carry on a successful business. There was something queer about this, something that failed to dovetail with the speeches he had thought so convincing. He mulled and mulled over it with his childlike brain. The only decision he could arrive at was that those radical orators hadn't understood very well that these trucks were a good many of them bought by men like Trask—good fellows, not a bit tyrannical, deserving of the kind of first-rate service which a truck like the Hector could give them. He decided that some time in the future, when he heard one of his favorite speakers, he would buttonhole him after the meeting and explain to him about Trask and what a fine fellow he was. He would 318 Links tell the orator that at least the " tyrants " should be given credit when they did anything so praiseworthy as to provide trucks for men like that. But he had not forgotten that stinging question which had first converted him: "D o the things you manufacture ever do you the slightest good?" And he had to admit to himself that the answer was still "No." Nevertheless, he became obsessed with a desire to discuss the matter with Trask. And one day, when the opportunity came, he poured out the whole story: how he worked on Hector trucks for a lot of tyrants, how he did the work while they got the big money, how the radicals had shown him the light and given him a ticket admitting him to the Communal Workers, how he had slipped through the coils of a government raid, and, finally, how he had come to Trask's farm. Trask took it all in in silence, with no signs of interest or emotion except an occasional grunt or the relighting of his pipe. And he did not speak for some time after Levin was through. Then he pointed to the nearest group of fowls and boomed: "See those chickens!" "Yes." "I'm a tyrant over 'em, eh? They're slaves to me, aren't they?" "Yes," faltered the Russian. "No , they're not—anything of the sort," roared Trask, louder than before. "They've got a certain gift—accomplishment—call it anything you like. It's layin' eggs. They do that job—do it well. And all I do is to see that those eggs move along to where they're wanted. If I make some money out of 'em, it's a fifty-fifty proposition, for they make their board an' lodging out o' me. And we're both of us working for others and for ourselves at the same time. "That's the way you were working before you went and got yourself pie-eyed on a lot of hot air from a bunch who don't know a mo tor-truck from a bowl of spinach. Why, you poor fried carrot, as a worker nowadays my chickens can give you big and little casino and five aces, and then lick you." Levin defended himself. "Until a month ago I had made that big link on every truck." "Sure you had. You were the real succotash then. You were as big as any man in the company. The trucks you helped make carried clothes and food to your fellow citizens. Those trucks brought food and clothes to you." Levin interrupted vehemently. '' Never. I always carried my own clothes back from the store. And no food ever came to me on a truck. I eat at Felsener's boarding-house." Trask gave it up. There's nothing else to do when arguing with a literalist. But he shot a final round: " Go back. Do your job. You're fired from here, anyhow. And remember this: We're all in the game together, here in America. When you do your job, and do it right, and stop worrying for fear somebody else is a tyrant, you help the men below you, and the men with you, and the men above you. And they help you. And you help yourself. " 'S I've said, I'm firin' you, because you're not doing your real job here with me. But, just the same, if you go back to work you an' me are partners. Try it on, son; do your job, keep things moving, and you'll find you're an active partner with every man in this whole country. As long as we all pull together, we'll make the grade. An', by Jasper, when we all pull together in this country, there ain't any grade we can't make." So Levin Livotski went back, somewhat awed by the thunderbolts of Trask, a little chastened in spirit, but stiU rebellious at heart. No Vice-Presidents met him at the factory gate with outstretched hands and a beaming welcome to tell him that in reality he was their partner. No Sales Manager greeted him with the tidings that their dealers across the country had been clamoring for his return. No Factory Manager fell on his neck and told him that his pay was to be doubled. The world doesn't wag that way. Instead, the foreman of his shop department objurgated him roundly and told him that he was being taken back on his old job only because the new man on it was no good. In short, his welcome was no welcome at all, merely a new clock number. The only special cordiality he met was Nora would tell him that " he had a face as long as Shamus Patch the day they told him he was to be hanged."—Page 320. from the remnants of the shattered group of Communal Workers. They hailed him as One more member of their depleted band. They still held meetings, but nowadays Magaroff's secrecy was warranted. In spite of Trask's fulminations and his own doubts, Levin attended these meetings. But something was wrong. The old-time invective and venom were there, but they left him cold. He was in the meetings, but not of them. Nevertheless, he was no backslider. He believed in the doctrines propounded and the dynamic projects for a new era. And he should continue so to believe as long as no proof ever seemed to reach him that the work he did day by day played any direct part in his life. Even Trask became but a hazy memory. Indeed, from his former fanaticism he now drifted into an almost worse cold inertia and state of indifference to everything. Until—the third Saturday in May. On that day Levin Livotski was walking alone and glum through a public park on the outskirts of the city. The pathway on which he walked was sunk about eight feet below the boulevard which ran parallel to it. It was a busy road, filled with the unceasing onrush of passenger-cars, motor-cycles, and trucks. Ahead of Levin was walking a young woman. She was quietly dressed and he could not see her face, but something about the steady swing of her stride made him look with admiration. And then, in a flash, came a shout from the roadway above and the thunder of wheels and machinery. A huge Hector truck, loaded with massive packing-cases, was rushing down the roadway beyond all 319 320 Links control. (It later turned out that the man who was driving it had stopped to sample a friend's home-made brew, and that had totally incapacitated him for driving purposes.) The runaway truck rushed down a grade in the road. The road curved just at the point above where the girl with the swinging stride was walking. The vast machine could not make the turn, kept straight ahead, and crashed into a stout tree just above where the girl walked. Levin stared with horror, though it was not till later in the day that he realized just what happened and what missed happening. At the moment all he thought of was the fear that the body of the truck would be torn from the chassis by the impact. In which case the crates and boxes must inevitably have been hurled down upon the girl. But—though he did not realize at that time that the truck was a Hector—all the strain of that impact failed to snap the steel link which he had fastened into place months before. It had held, and that fact had prevented the fatal tilting of the truck floor which would have precipitated the boxes down upon the girl. It had held, and a life had been saved. Levin sprang to the girl expecting to have her collapse. It is true that she was quivering, but instead of some stereotyped expression of terror wrung from her lips, he heard a rippling Galway brogue say, "Shurely, 'tis wan sad thing that the lapin' baste should so set upon a young gurl what has done it no manner of harrm." He led her to the nearest bench. After she was seated and he was about to pass on, came the soft purling flow of speech again: " You must be an American, to be so in a hurry." Whereupon he had paused and lingered. And before he knew it he was sitting beside her. And also before he knew it he was explaining to her his part in making the truck that had threatened her, intimating with not too great subtlety, that had he done his work less well the collapse of the truck might inevitably have meant her death. And it was within a fortnight, and on that very bench, that he realized what the incident had brought into his life. Nora, it turned out, was as alone in this country as he. She was the presiding culinary genius of a boarding-house where many workmen lived because of its reputation for serving good food. And it was not long before Levin had pulled up stakes from his old abode and moved to live in her domain. And that doubly clinched the matter. It was no mere lover's blindness that made him think her biscuit featherweight and her pie-crust the most toothsome in the world. She had cooked from the cradle up. Every warm evening found them together on the bench where they had first met, making love as openly as the glaring arc-lights permitted. And so used had Levin grown to indulging in self-pity that he even talked to her about his " slavery " and the " tyrants." Whereat Nora would laugh and tell him that "he had a face as long as Shamus Patch the day they told him he was to be hanged." And she had not the slightest compunctions in making sport of his meetings and the Communal Workers. (She called them the Comical Workers.) But even love cannot break down the stubbornness of a Levin Livotski. And he still clung doggedly to that notion that he worked solely for others, and that his daily task never played the slightest part in his own life and welfare. Even the fact that his rigid craftsmanship had saved the life of Nora for him did not reach his inner consciousness. It would be very beautiful and romantic to be able to record that the way Nora came into his life worked his regeneration. Such an eventuation would have been both highly dramatic and moving. But nothing of the sort happened to Levin Livotski. The strident-voiced trouble-makers had sowed their nettles too deep. One morning late in June, after Levin had breakfasted on ham and eggs which Nora had fried to a marvellous shade of golden brown, he went off to work past the back of the house, where he could fling Nora a farewell message. Nothing direct, for he was afraid of being laughed at. This morning it was a message about the supreme excellence of her fried eggs. And Nora had made answer: " 'Tis not' the cook, but the eggs thimselves Links 321 that are good. Here are the shells. You kin ate thim too." And she had flung out of the window at Levin an eggshell which he had caught deftly as he passed on. He happened to glance at it before throwing it away, and there stared up at him from the shell the indelible purple inscription: "Homer B. Trask." Psychologists tell us that it is not the big things of life that most irresistibly impel us, but the unexpected impingement of trifles. And in this case one eggshell did for Levin Livotski what the propaganda of employers, the thundered truths of Trask, and the ridicule of a sweetheart had never done. The cure was both instantaneous and complete. He knew that his breakfast had seemed to him surpassingly good; he now knew by what vehicle of transportation an essential part of that breakfast had left the farm of Trask. Finally, he knew that he had constructed a vital portion of that vehicle. The circle was complete. He had helped provide his own breakfast. He had profited by the thing he made. To him the whole network of problems was settled for all time by one fragile eggshell. All of which seems to justify the erudite psychologists in their theories about the importance of little things as links to eternal verities. While Levin was crossing the canal on the way to the factory he was overtaken by Magaroff. As on a previous occasion, the giant Slav whispered through his beard: "We meet to-night, Comrade Livotski." Livotski answered but one word: "Wait!" He drew from his pocket the blood-red card certifying his membership among the Communal Workers. He tore it across— once—twice—three times. He dropped its fragments into the sluggish yellow water beneath. Astonished and sullen, Magaroff passed along. As Levin Livotski squared his shoulders and strode onward to the day's task of making his unending links, he began to hum a little folk-song which his mother used to sing to him when he was a boy. But the words which he improvised to it were American. VOL. LXVIII.—2i
TRAILING STATISTICS ON AN AMERICAN
FRONTiER
By Viola I. Paradise Recently of the Children's Bureau, Department of Labor ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS, BY PERMISSION OF THE CHILDREN'S BUREAU tHE "special agents" were importunate: "Aren't you going to put Hell-Buster in the report? "Or Geraldine and Jiminy? Or the bachelors? "Or us? You can't leave us out!" "Well," I parried, "you know the government. There are things no government report would publish. Of course Hell-Buster on infant mortality is illuminating— Perhaps a magazine " The government had sent five of us out into the plains and bad lands of eastern Montana for statistics and other information about children in new homesteading country. The warning in Washington of probable hardships presaged adventure. When we left the train in the Western railroad town and found, not an old-fashioned covered wagon to take us to our headquarters, but instead an automobile stage, our first feeling was disappointment. Our second glance at the "outfit" reassured us. Battered, gray with alkali dust, the wind-shield opaque except for a small patch in front of the driver, it had an encouraging air of rakish late middle age. Anything might happen in such a car. It carried an equally reckless trailer for baggage, furniture, foodstuffs, lumber, and other things. We set out on the ninety-mile trip to our headquarters, leaving behind us railroads, telephones, electricity, bathtubs, and other stigmata of what is sometimes called civilization, and we were soon plunging along a rough twisting trail, across the hot, sear, rolling, treeless plains, in and out among fantastic buttes, past grotesque wind-sculptured rocks, through coulees and dry creek beds. I sat next to the driver, a weathered young giant, whose casual manner of driving 322 grew out of intimacy with every rut in the road. Without slacking his speed, he would, every now and then, take out a cigarette, strike a match on the wheel, and get a light, the rushing air to the contrary notwithstanding. "Why are the roads ploughed and not the fields?" I asked him after a while, puzzled at the deep furrows through which we were twisting. "Not ploughed at all," he laughed. "It's like this. The cars and the freighting outfits gouge 'em out. When the ruts get so deep that we stick on high centres, we move over a little, and start some new ones." It was clear that we were new to the country, but he seemed quite without scorn for our ignorance and other characteristics as tenderfeet. When one of us exclaimed after a harder bump than usual, he "guessed the tall dark lady didn't like the roads." He commented that "the lady who burns was getting a good one this time." This gave the lady who burned courage to plaster her vivid suffering countenance with cold-cream. "If you're a sight you might as well be a comfortable sight," was her philosophy. By this time we were all so covered with alkali dust that after her applications she looked only a little whiter than the rest of us. We went on and on, past small herds of cattle and horses, and now and then great flocks of sheep, grazing on the wild sparse buffalo-grass that grew on the sage-brush mottled prairies. The smell of sage-brush took something of the curse off the dusty air. Now and then we would see a bleached-white buffalo skull, reminder of days not so long ago, when bison and Indians ranged undisputed on these plains. From time to time our driver would Trailing Statistics on an American Frontier point out a sheep-herder's monument—a pile of narrow flat stones, topping a butte like a chimney, built to while away the tedious hours of sheep-herding. We passed no villages on our way; only now and then a lonely dwelling—a sod ing moods of weather—to the dramatic sunsets and sunrises with their cumulus clouds, to the incredibly white moonlight, to the dazzling snow, to an eerie dust-storm, we were to learn in the next three months. A typical tar-paper shack house, or a clay-gumbo house, or a dugout in the side of a hill; or more often a small tar-paper shack. The chimneys stuck out of the curving roofs at unintended angles. The tar-paper shacks wore theirs at an especially jaunty slant. Frequently a buffalo skull adorned the roof, above the door. How generously this rugged country lends itself to varying lights and chang-Shortly before dark we reached Alibi, a little town with a main street and a cross street, and a number of small white painted stores and houses. The stores presented to the world square false fronts, built up above their gable, to simulate second stories. A school, a butcher-shop, three drug stores—one of which contained the post-office—two or three general stores, a hotel, a restaurant, two boardingTrailing Statistics on an American Frontier houses—one of which advertised "tableboard and livery," and was kept by a man named Hash—a saloon, a barber-shop kept by an ex-sheep-shearer, the newspaper office, and the town pump were the leading features of Main Street. The side street boasted a garage, a small page of each issue, "-Alibi is the Metropolis of Western Blank County." "What is the population?" we asked a local official. "Well, let's see. At the hotel there's Mr. and Mrs. Coburn—that's two; and next door at the Brants' there's four— Our headquarters in Alibi. bright-blue jail, a blacksmith-shop, and the Grand Hotel. Back a short distance on the prairie stood Alibi's amusement hall. A few houses were scattered about. It was a dry, dusty-looking town, with its unpaved roads. Sometimes a bit of wooden sidewalk, now and then a plank or two, interrupted the paths in front of the buildings. After our long ride, however, this little village, set down haphazard on the plains, had for us a metropolitan aspect. Indeed the weekly newspaper boasted in large letters across the front that makes six—" He continued a verbal census of the town, and concluded that in summer there were about fifty, and in winter, when some people came in from their homesteads, about two hundred and fifty. We "located" at the Grand Hotel, a small clean new building, with no modern conveniences except a pump in the "lobby," which was attached to a sink, which drained into a pail beneath. The five of us almost but not quite filled the hotel. Geraldine reluctant. Having plumbed the depths of the little white-painted tin basins and pitchers in room, and having achieved a simulation of cleanliness, we went down to the dining-room, to hear that the hotel did not serve meals, but that a restaurant on Main Street served "short orders." The short orders we quickly learned by heart, and by another organ more immediately concerned. Then we went to the garage, in search of two autos with which we planned to cover such parts of the county as were accessible by car. A dark-haired, blue-eyed man named Steve informed us that the garage had only one car at the time, but that he might be able to get another for us "as an accommodation." His partner, an even younger man called Jack, thought that Wallace's car might be used. The rates were twenty-five dollars a day for each car. We gasped a bit at the price, thinking that their extreme youth might be responsible for exaggeration, but we were told that gasolene cost fifty-five cents a gallon and had to be hauled ninety miles by stage; but since the cars were wanted by the government, a special price might be made. "How 'bout that, Jack?" "Just as you say, Steve." "Well, what do you think, Jack?" "Well, anything you say will be all right with me, Steve." After more preliminary hesitations they decided that "fifteen 325 326 Trailing Statistics ondollars a day, and you to feed the drivers " would be a fair price. "Yo u see," continued Jack, "the drivers' food won't cost you anything. Anybody'11 give you a meal in this country, unless it's an Easterner. And there ain't many of those that won't. Why, if a driver's food ever cost you as much as a dollar a day, I'd give it back to you!" We compromised on sixteen dollars a day for each car, and the drivers to feed themselves. The next morning the sky was black with clouds, and I hastened to the garage to say that if it was going to rain, we'd postpone our first trip until the next day. Came the astonishing reply: "Oh, quit your kiddin'!" "Beg pardon?" I was puzzled. "Don't kid us about rain," he went on laughing. And then seeing that I had not stopped in for a little chat, but really meant what I said, he explained: '' When any one talks about rain out here, we think they're kiddin' us. Why, it hasn't rained since it snowed, and that was Decoration Day. And to-day's the 15th of August. Clouds don't mean nothing out here." Which we found true. Indeed it was not until late in September that we had any rain. We had planned our course on an impressive if somewhat inaccurate map, and at eight o'clock the two cars were at our door. The tall dark lady, remembering the roads, braved our scorn and brought a pillow. We explained the purpose of our work to the drivers, and told them we wished to make a homestead-tohomestead canvass, in order to find every home in which a baby had been born in the last five years. It soon became clear that Wallace, the driver of our car, had got the point. We had been driving for about fifteen minutes, when one of us spied a house off the road some little distance. We exclaimed. "Guess only a bachelor lives there," responded Wallace, driving on. But he was very good-natured when we insisted on making sure. We turned off the road, and churned through a rough field toward the house. A man came out with a gaze of frank curiosity. "Mornin'," spoke up Wallace, before we could say anything. "These-ladies an American Frontier are doin' a round-up on babies. Got any here?" After roars of laughter, the bachelor wanted to know just what we were doing and why we were doing it, and what good would come of it, and whether we liked the job, and what we thought of the roads. We answered to his satisfaction. He concluded that it was "about time that the government was doing something for kids. Back in Iowa wherecome from they were gettin' busy about pigs. But this kid idea is all right, too. Now there was a baby over at Stubbins's died about six months ago. Suppose you want to know about the dead ones as well as the live ones?" As we were leaving, he called after us: "Say, go to Mart's place, and ask him about babies. I'll give you anything you like if—" Laughter got the better of him. Our driver stopped the car to have his laugh out, and then called back: " Guess we've wasted enough government time on bachelors to-day." Then he turned to us: "I thought he was the man that lived there. Of course, you could tell by the look of the shack that it was a bachelor's outfit." (Everything was called an outfit out here.) We asked the identifying marks, but Wallace could not say. "Just the look of the place." We soon learned to recognize bachelors' outfits. " No clothes-line and no chickens is the sign," said Hungry (who had earned the nickname). '' That ough t to be pu t on file somewhere, because some day some one might come to these parts hunting not babies but bachelors !" B y this time, for some unknown reason, our car had got the name of Geraldine. That night when we returned to Alibi we learned that the other car had been christened Jimmy early in the day, but had soon been renamed Jiminy, for cause. Soon we began arguing about the top of the car. The lady who burns had just persuaded the tall dark lady that the top served to keep one from bouncing out. The t. d. 1. had replied that though the top might keep one in, and probably would save a delicate skin from burning, it was unfortunately so near the rest of the car, that it was likely to knock one into a state of coma. Hungry, who didn't mind the jolts, advised the t. d. 1. to bind Trailing Statistics on an American Frontier her cushion to the top of her head, to break the impact, instead of using it in the status quo, where there was just as much chance of missing as of hitting it, as she came down. Even this much conversation did not run along smoothly. There were illustrative bumps and jars to point the re-have the hind sight to steer herself down the curved cut bank, or— We shuddered at the alternative. Some one, trying to lighten the strain, remarked: "Yo u can't make these snaking turns on high, even in a Ford, can you ? " Hungry, whose swiftly developed faith in Geraldine regarded as a personal affront any Sod house. Note water-barrels on wagon. Three agents slept on the floor here one night, as the haystack was occupied. marks—a sudden swerve out of the road to avoid contact with a cogitating cow. Then, suddenly, every one saw the critical moment coming along. We tried to look calm, and to conceal our perturbation from the tranquil driver, Geraldine sniffed and snorted, and dug her front teeth into the cut bank up which we were climbing. With short grinding bites she slowly and convulsively ate her way up the twisting climb. We dared not look back, and thought hopefully of the brake, which, considering Geraldine's temperament, was not always to be relied upon. In case it failed us now, would Geraldine insinuation of limitations, commented with dignity that Geraldine was equal to any emergency. The lady who burns said indiscreetly: "If she sneezes, we are lost!" At that moment we were approaching the top of the cut bank. Could she do it ? With a final sprint, her little heart chugging fast, she leaped to the top, getting all four feet on the ground at once. We were safe at last, and could breathe freely— for a while. This experience was repeated every fifteen minutes. A t the next stop we found a baby, and Interior of log schoolhouse. Note the meagre equipment. The piano, however, makes this school available for dances and other community affairs. the driver dropped one of us to interview the mother, and took the other two on to the next places. When he had deposited us, he went back for the first. Relaying in this way saved time. It was noon when we had each finished a "schedule." The driver, calling for me, said that the neighboring family was getting dinner for all of us. When we arrived the mother was taking the dinner off the stove. A five-year-old youngster was amusing himself on the floor cutting out fashion-plates from the pages of a mail-order catalogue. We were cordially welcomed. The mother said that dinner was ready. The father took the catalogue from the little boy and put it on a chair to elevate the youngest child, aged three, to eating height. There were not enough chairs, but we sat cheerfully on boxes. There were no napkins. "Ma's ashamed to give you the kind we use," said the father, "but I'm not." He lifted the 328 baby from the catalogue and tore out enough pages to go around. "Water's so scarce that we left our napkins packed away/ But I don't know what we'd do without our homesteader's bible. A man who couldn't run a homestead with a mailorder catalogue, some gunny-sacking, and some baling wire ain't much account out in this country." "No more account than a woman who can't keep house and raise a family and chickens on a hairpin!" laughed the mother. We ate ravenously of the salt pork, potatoes, hot biscuits, and pie; and talked of the children, the weather, the crops, and the war. "I hated to see my oldest enlist," said the mother, "but we can't have the Dutch romping all over us." This family had come to homestead six years previous, and had been the first family to settle in its neighborhood. The ( Trailing Statistics on an American Frontier 329 young soldier, then a boy of fifteen, had been sent on ahead to pick out the homestead. He had done a good job, too, said the father, for there was water on the place and all the land was tillable, except one corner. The rest of the family came on, their household goods piled high on a wagon, which they drove eighty miles from the railroad. The mother walked, pushing the baby-carriage, or carrying the baby in her arms the whole distance, except the last two miles. When they arrived they lived in a tent until their one-room sod house was built. "And it rained every day of that time. Queer," said the father; " I suppose there's enough rain in the world, only it ain't well distributed. Here we are, our crops dying of thirst, our cattle getting poor, and sure to die on us, if we have another winter like the last. Now if there was some way of ordering the weather by mail—but even so, I suppose we'd be complaining of the mail service. 'Bout the only thing we can't get out of the homesteaders bible is weather." He then returned to his story. "When the house was finished, we had three sheep, five dollars in cash, and provisions for one month. We managed somehow, but it was a long pull. There were times when we thought we'd have to relinquish, but we had some luck, and by and by added two rooms to our house. We got most of our winter clothes, from stockings to a suit of clothes, by sending the wool from our sheep to a mail-order house that takes your own wool and makes your clothes from it, taking a part of the wool in payment. Well, now we're proved up, and getting on our feet. And along comes this drought!" When we reached Alibi at eight o'clock that evening we decided to modify our method of work. Distances were too great for single-day trips. So we provided ourselves with tarpaulin and blankets, prepared to sleep wherever night found us, and to return to the "metropolis" only for the week-ends. During the summer we made it a point to select our camp before dark, to avoid An attractive group of homesteaders. 330 Trailing Statistics on an American Frontier snakes, cactus, and other untoward features. But as autumn progressed, dark came before supper-time, and we had to take our chances. Nothing more serious ever happened than an occasional scare from a more or less domestic animal, when we made the mistake of stopping too near a house. The first night we slept out we had some difficulty selecting a place, but finally came upon a comfortable-looking coulee. "This will be bully!" exclaimed Hungry" I hope not too bully," some one replied, with a gesture toward a not-fardistant herd of cattle. The lady who burns insisted on stopping up twenty possible snake holes. This rite performed, we went back to the car for bedding. Wallace, hearing of the treatment of the snake holes, drawled reassuringly: "Al l I can say is there'll be twenty pretty mad snakes coming home late to-night, and not able to get into their houses." He preferred his own way of sleeping—on auto-cushions spread in the shelter of Geraldine. It seemed extravagant to waste the stars and the sweet-scented night air, but sleepiness was stronger upon us than a sense of beauty. From time to time, in the night, when we did wake up, it was not to commune with stars, but to comment on the inelasticity of the human frame, with special reference to the protuberance known as the hip; or to struggle with the bedclothes. It takes a night or two to learn how to sleep on the ground. But for all that we slept well, and daylight came upon us suddenly. We awoke to see the cattle, formed in a semicircle at a not-quite-respectful distance, staring curiously at us. But no snakes had intruded on our privacy. Dressing in the chilly morning consisted of combing our hair, taking off the extra clothes we had added for the night—for even in August and September the nights are cold, though the days may scorch— and washing our hands and faces in a few drops of water poured grudgingly from the water-bag, drop by drop, into our greedy hands. Water was hard to carry, and scarce, and our bag had to last for coffee, and until we found another well. A clean handkerchief completed our toilet, and we were ready for breakfast. We usually took enough coffee, bread, bacon, canned milk, and other canned food to last us for our trip. For fruit we munched raw prunes and raisins. When we were invited to meals the food was usually salt pork, potatoes, and canned food like our own. Sometimes we had eggs, and rarely the luxury of a fresh vegetable. The scarcity of water and rain made gardens practically impossible. Many families had to haul water over half a mile, having none on their homesteads. And there was no milk but canned milk, for the cattle were raised for beef, not for dairy products. Al though we seemed to gain flesh on the limited diet of our "tin-can trail," we were always hungry, and food was always prominent in our conversation. Sometimes at night we would lie awake and discourse at length on what we would order if ever we reached a real hotel. The thought of food: pursued us. Physical hardships were almost the only ones we had to contend with. The quick comprehension and easy humor of the homesteaders made the work itself fairly easy. They grasped very quickly the purpose and importance of our investigation, and gave a genuine co-operation. They understood, too, something of the fun and romance which we, as investigators, were enjoying in collecting our data. It had happened to most of us, in city studies, to be pitied by a work-worn, weary woman because we had to go about asking people questions. Not so in Montana. One man exclaimed: "And they pay you for this yet!" It should not, however, be supposed that we met everywhere a happy and cheerful situation. Indeed there were many homes where we heard tales of distress and disaster and struggle. The lot of these new pioneers is no less hard than that of America's early Western frontiersmen—barring the struggle with Indians. It is only a few years since the prairies which now pasture "bronco" and cattle were the stamping-ground of buffaloes. Three or four families, it is true, came out fifteen or twenty years ago; but the great majority have come West within the last Trailing Statistics on an American Frontier five years. The isolation, the lack of physicians, of schools, and other phases of community life, are often terrible factors in the lives of the homesteaders. Often we heard of women and children who died because a physician could not be secured in time, and there were other after the baby, or to help her in any way, she went through the ordeal of childbirth alone. She dragged herself out of bed to get what little food she ate for two days. At the end of this time her husband returned, chagrined to find what his wife had endured. Fortunately this mother A homestead near nowhere: the whole outfit—sod house, outbuildings, and sage-brush. cases of miraculous escapes from death. At the time of our study there were only three registered physicians in an area of 5,500 square miles, and not a single hospital. Most of the women had to depend on the unskilled aid of their husbands or neighbors in childbirth. In some instances we learned that women had been entirely alone in childbirth. A young woman of nineteen, for instance, was alone when her first baby was born. Her confinement came before she expected it, during her husband's absence. She had no one to send for a doctor or a neighbor. Frightened, without any one to nurse her, or prepare food for her, or to look recovered, although the experience left her in a weakened condition for many months. Perhaps as urgent as the need for physicians and hospitals and public health nurses was the need for schools. The homesteaders again and again bewailed the fact that schools were so few and far between, and so inaccessible, that the school terms were so short, that many children were being compelled to grow up in ignorance. Often the people in a neighborhood would get together and erect a school-building out of private funds, looking to the school district to supply a teacher, and desks and benches. 332 Trailing Statistics onIn one instance a group of neighbors built a school, but the district supplied only four benches and desks for the nineteen children. "After much complaint," said one woman, "we succeeded in getting a few more benches, but some of the children still have to sit on boxes or logs. For a while there was no blackboard, but the school supervisor finally took one from the school six miles south of here, that had two blackboards." Families often made great sacrifices to get schools, and often were unsuccessful. A homesteader commented: "Funny how the government spends time and money keeping illiterate foreigners out of the country, and all the while manufactures illiterates from our own native stock." In one neighborhood grouped about a school-building were several empty shacks and dugouts, and a white-covered sheep-herder's wagon. Families had camped in these during the school term, so that their children could go to school. We were told that five or six children had lived in the sheep-wagon during the previous winter, the older children caring for the younger, with no adult supervision. The chief reason for the lack of schools, and for other wants of this Western area, was the newness and the poverty of the country. Most of the families were homesteading, and therefore paying no land taxes. But despite the struggle which most of the homesteaders were having against poverty and other unyielding factors of frontier life, we met everywhere with warm hospitality. The custom of the country seems to be to take in the stranger and share roof and meal with him. We often had difficulty inducing families to take payment from us—even those families who were in the hardest straits. Sometimes the mention of pay was an insult. Again and again we were invited to "spend the night," and though we were usually quite comfortable sleeping out of doors on the ground, we often accepted invitations to sleep in. There were times when a bed could hardly be resisted, and when the chance to get a good wash was tempting beyond refusal. And frequently invitations were so proffered as to be hard to refuse. "What an American Frontier are you afraid of?" asked the father of a family of five persons who lived in one room, partitioned by a scant curtain. (Few houses have more than three rooms, and most of them consist of only one or two rooms. And the size of the family is usually in inverse ratio to the size of the dwelling.) "Nothing here'll hurt you, unless it might be a bedbug, and they don't bite hard this time of the year. And you aren't afraid of a little bedbug, are you?" The agent who had protested that she could be quite comfortable in the haystack felt challenged to show her lack of fear, and slept comfortably with the mother and baby, while the father and the boys occupied the floor on the other side of the curtain. Another night three of us stayed at "Hell-Buster's" ranch. His real name we never could learn. The nickname he had earned at bronco-busting on an occasion when a wild "bronc" had thrown him, and stepped on his face. He had "been given up for gone," when he surprised the onlookers by regaining consciousness suddenly, making at once for the "bronc," and succeeding in subduing the animal. Hell-Buster's ranch was unusually prosperous for that country, owning a victrola and some excellent records. After playing a Tetrazzini, he turned to us with the comment: "There ain't no coyote got nothin' on that gal!" Hell-Buster had interesting views on infant mortality. " I know why babies die. Ain't handled horses and cattle all my life for nothin'. It's because their mothers go to the movies so much !" We could not quite follow his reasoning, but I suppose he may have argued that the infant-mortality rate among colts and calves was much lower than among children, and that it was an incontrovertible fact that cows and mares did not go to movies. But, for that matter, neither did the mothers out in this homesteading country, for there was no movie to go to. However, even though we could not always keep up with Hell-Buster's logic we enjoyed and appreciated his hospitality. Sometimes even at houses where there were no children we were urged to stay. " I haven't seen a woman-for a month," said one homesteader's wife; "can't you Trailing Statistics on an American Frontier stay a few days and just talk?" The country is so sparsely settled and the homesteaders are so long at grips with loneliness and isolation, that human relations take on a peculiar value. One old man who had known the country in the days of Indians and buffaloes, said: "Every human contact,is precious to her intention of writing a poem with the refrain, " The patter of the'rain-drops on the tarp, tarp, tarp, The patter of the rain-drops on the tarp!" but the masterpiece grew no longer. When the thermometer performed such A n agent leans up against the roof to write down the directions to the next homestead. us on these plains." We were much tempted to stay and hear him tell "of sights around Smoky Butte that would curdle your blood, and sights that would thrill a wooden man," but we were on the trail of statistics, and could not tarry. In October and November, as the winter drew on, the joys of sleeping out began to dwindle. True, one night as we pulled the tarp up over our heads to keep out the chilly rain, Hungry announced a drop that our water-bag froze solid, we began to accept all invitations to spend the night; and one cold night, when darkness found us far from any place, we found a deserted shack, and crept in through the window; and learned that wooden floors are harder than frozen ground, and almost as cold. Frequently we were lost. Except for the main-travelled trails, the roads were highly impressionistic, and locating homesteads required a real technic. Many 334 Trailing Statistics onhomes were off the trails, and directions were hard to follow, especially in neighborhoods with which our drivers were unfamiliar. There were few landmarks. "This is the country where you can look the farthest and see the least," ran a local proverb. Once we were lost between Hell Creek and Crooked Creek, and we had experiences on Sage Hen Creek, on Calf Creek, on the Lodgepole, and others with equally engaging names. Once after pursuing a trail for three hours along Hungry Creek without seeing a single dwelling, we finally spied a crooked stovepipe, which guided us to a family living in a tar-paper shack, where we received the following directions: "Yo u follow the trail till you pass a big butte; not the biggest, but one of the big ones. You'll know it when you come to it. Then you leave the trail and go through a coulee where there's a dead horse—ain't been dead so very long: skin's still on. After a ways you turn to the right, and you'll see a log house. That's it. You can't miss it." The fact that there were many buttes to be passed, and that a coulee in September is a mere depression in the ground, not always recognizable to the naked eye, left the direction quite incomprehensible to me. But to the driver, whom we sometimes suspected of second sight in these matters, it seemed to convey a distinct idea. Such a direction as "keep going due west. You'll lose the trail, and find yourself in some pretty rough sage-brush, but if you keep due west you'll find it again," had no horror for Wallace. Al l directions ended with "You can't miss it." But sometimes we could. Especially in the "breaks," along the Missouri and Musselshell Rivers. Here the bad lands were rougher, with their an American Frontier steep rocky hills, sparsely dotted with cedar and juniper, and cut by myriad streams and creeks. In these neighborhoods we deserted our faithful Geraldine, and sometimes on borrowed horses, sometimes on foot, we climbed and slid down the steep, narrow, twisting trails. Al though we had a few frights, we always managed to find ourselves. The horses, when they got tired of grazing, could sometimes be depended upon to make for home. About Thursday of each week, a passion for civilization would seize us. We would begin to long for Saturday, when we should get back to Alibi, to the tin pitcher and basin at the Grand Hotel, and to our mail. Mail came twice a week, weather permitting, and Saturday was one of the mail days. Each time we returned, Alibi seemed larger and more imposing. Each time our "plunge," which was really no more than a bird bath, seemed more, refreshing. Each time we raised our voices in praise of the "real meal'\ which we consumed at the boarding-house (we had long since given up the "short order" restaurant) in company with the postmaster—who wore a silk thread around his neck to ward off throat trouble—and the "boys from the garage," who stopped to wash up at the kitchen-pump, and to make themselves further presentable before a mirror on the dining-room wall, to which hung a comb, securely chained. At that moment in the week, we should have voted unanimously that food was the second best thing in life, the first being mail. Watching the cowboys, riding in on "broncs" for their mail, inspired "Hungry" to comment: "Travel is so broadening: it makes the movies seem so lifelike!" THE PARADOX OF THOREAU
By Odell Shepard
AMON G the belongings of Henry David Thoreau which are shown to the visitor in Concord—his bed, his chair and writing-desk, his quill, and the buckskin suit given him by an Indian friend—is a curious walking-stick which was cut from a cherry-tree seventy years ago by a man who knew how to use a jack-knife. There are few pieces of dead wood that one would give more to possess. It has gone walking with Emerson and Hawthorne; it has "travelled much in Concord," as also in Sudbury, Lincoln, Acton, and Billerica; it may have climbed Monadnock or tapped its way through the Tuckerman Ravine; it has been intimate with a man who allowed few intimacies, and that in his best moments, when he was alone in swamp or forest or out with the moon at midnight listening to the baying of dogs in distant farmsteads. Despite these noble memories, however, it is a very ordinary walking-stick except in the particular that it has been whittled flat along one side and notched to the length of twenty-four inches. Here, indeed, is a peculiarity. Usually, when one takes his walking-stick from the corner, he slams the door on mathematics and cuts across lots, content to measure distances by simple fatigue and hunger and thirst. But here is a stick which combines rambling with routine. It can measure a mountain or a field-mouse. It can either ignore boundaries or make them. In short, it is a most self-contradictory, paradoxical stick, and a perfect representative, therefore, of the vagabond-surveyor who cut and carried it. What were the gods about when they condemned this dreamer, this leaper of fences, this scorner of property, to earn his living by surveying other men's woodlots? Hear the man whose name is set down on one of the best maps of Concord as "H . D. Thoreau, Civ. Engr." sighing for "a people who would burn the fences and let the forest stand"! And yet, although the fact has not been recognized by those who can see in him only a misanthropic lover of the wild, Thoreau was quite as much interested in fences as in forests. It was no condemnation of the gods, but just the conflict of two deadly opposites deep-rooted in his mind, which drove him from forests to fences, from dreams to mathematics, from walking-sticks to measuring-rods, and back again. Finally he learned to combine the two. In that strange combination lies the secret of his genius. All that may be charged against the gods in the case of Thoreau is that they confined a Yogee and a Yankee, a mystic and a mathematician, a seer and a surveyor, in one human skin—and then prepared themselves for amusement. Undoubtedly there was something grandly humorous in the combination— " Yet half a beast is the great god Pan To laugh as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man " ! Up from the struggle thus foreordained in Thoreau rose the bubbles of his perennial paradox. Thence came his weathercock moods and fancies. All his life long the surveyor kept up with the seer in him an endless colloquy, of which the twenty volumes of his published works are a stenographic report. Thoreau the seer rambled about all his life long with a walking-stick, but Thoreau the surveyor used it as a measuring-rod. How much can be done with a measuring-rod two feet in length depends upon the man who carries it. Holding his at arm's length, Thoreau saw that it seemed taller than Monadnock and longer than the Milky Way. Thus he learned perspective. What was near at hand always bulked huge and momentous to him, but the distances dwindled swiftly to a point. He sedulously kept this naive 335 336 The Paradox of Thoreau innocence of the eye, allowing no intrusion of the abstract intelligence to correct its simple verdict. The central and most remarkable thing about him, indeed, was a sort of inspired frugality, an ability to make a very little go a very great way, to make what he had suffice. New England thrift found in this man whose "greatest wealth was to want but little" its most shining example. No man ever scanned his pennyworth more narrowly, no man ever drove a shrewder Yankee bargain with the world, no man was ever framed to get better service out of a two-foot measure than he. Concord itself was a two-foot measuring-rod, as Thoreau well enough knew, but he held it up against Babylon and Rome and dwarfed them to a speck. Thus he became the very apotheosis of the provincial. Al l his triangulations were calculated with the main street of his village as a base; the centre of all his circles was just the village spire. This meant, at the least, that in the midst of a nomadic and deracinated generation Thoreau had a centre, and that his triangles had one fixed and certain term. His provincialism was not without elements of humor and whim, but it had much of wisdom also. Concord was a small enough part of the world for one to learn something about it in a lifetime, but it was typical of all the rest. The man who had studied religion in its meeting-house, law in its town hall, commerce on the Musketaquid, trade on Main Street, and society in its parlors, had not much to learn from wider travels. He had seen the elements. The great world could offer him nothing but repetition. Thoreau made such use of his opportunities that nothing Concordian, at last, was alien to him. In order to become a true citizen of the world, then, he had only to learn that nothing was alien to Concord, whether it happened in Main Street or Texas, at Walden Pond or on the Congo. It may fairly be said that he did learn this. The John Brown episode and the ever-increasing pressure of the slave question taught him that even the tiny creek on which he lived must feel the tides of the sea. So long as the influence of slavery came no nearer than Boston he was not much concerned; for Boston, fifteen miles away, had always been a semi-foreign city to him, concerning which he was cheerfully prepared to believe the worst. But when he saw that his own town could not escape this evil thing, he was instantly on the alert. Despite his hatred of newspapers, he suddenly found that no man can afford to neglect The Times in favor of the Eternities, for the reason that there is no clear division between the two. Despite his hatred of politics, he astonished the townsfolk with two of the most passionate political speeches that came out of the war—•" Civil Disobedience " and " Slavery in Massachusetts." These speeches reveal a mind suddenly made aware that no little town liveth unto itself alone and show how expansile a true provincialism may be at need. Provincial they are, however, for all their wide purview, illustrating a phase of patriotic feeling in comparison with which our present federalism and our incipient internationalism are in their infancy. In the last analysis, they urge nothing less than the secession of Concord from the Union. But if Concord would not secede, Thoreau would—and did. It is worthy of note that when he went to jail rather than pay a small tax to the national government which he thought was supporting slavery, he cheerfully paid a larger one for the maintenance of town roads. Thoreau's boastful provincialism and professed contempt for travel may seem to some readers a mere crying of sour grapes. From Lowell's essay on Thoreau—which some one has called, a bit too harshly, " the work of an extraordinarily brilliant snob"—one gets the idea that the man's limitations were first imposed upon him and then glorified by his egotism. Lowell states the view, plausible enough in Boston, which assumes that all men really want the same things and that every man must be bitterly chagrined who does not get these things. But this has never been the Concord view, and it was not Thoreau's. What all men are supposed to want he was unusually well equipped to get, had he not thought the price too high. "It takes a man of genius," he says, "to travel in his own country, in his native village—to make progress between his door and his gate. The Paradox of Thoreau But such a traveller will make the distances which Hanno and Marco Polo and Cook and Ledyard went over seem ridiculous." Always thus, with a courageous and admiring eye upon his own limitations, he makes them shine with the lustre of special advantages. Nothing in Fate's quiver can harm such a man. Thoreau was armed in triple bronze by the stern delight he took in the very meagreness of his resources. In his lucid intervals, which were frequent enough, he must have seen that Concord was not in fact exceptionally favored by the gods. "But what a faculty must that be," he says, "which can paint the most barren landscape and humblest life in glorious colors! It is pure invigorated senses reacting upon a sound and strong imagination. Is not that the poet's case ? " Precisely. And was it not his own? The less there was of promise in his raw material, the greater was the challenge to the artist's passion in him—to that passion which always strives to achieve maximum results with the minimum of means. Thus he strove to find each day a new significance and beauty in that which he saw for the millionth time, setting himself to such severe ascetic training that he became, in the dew-clear delicacy of his five senses, a sort of Spartan Keats. No one need hope to understand Thoreau who does not see that his limitations were, for the most part, self-imposed. How cheerfully, at all events, he speaks of them! " The old coat that I wear is Concord," he writes to a friend. "It is my morning robe and study gown, my working dress and suit of ceremony. And it will be 'my nightgown after all." In the case of so complete a devotion it was natural that the environment should powerfully mould the man, and there is, in fact, scarcely any major quality of Thoreau's thought or style which is not referable, at least remotely, to the fact of his lifelong residence in a New England village. Of this man who might so easily have been a dull philosopher, Concord made almost a poet by teaching him the uses and beauty of the actual, by providing a firm soil of the concrete for the anchors of his transcendentalism to grapple in. His desire to make a complete inventory of the town's resources VOL. LXVIII.—22 may have been antecedent even to that passion for Nature for which he is chiefly known—and this may be the reason why he " spoke of Nature as though she had been born and brought up in Concord." Firm grip upon reality was what the transcendentalists most needed. The fact that Thoreau had it seems due in no small degree to the influence of his native town. He begs his friend Ricketson, who is writing a history of New Bedford, to "let it be a local and villageous book. That is the good old-fashioned way of writing, as if you actually lived where you wrote." Working on this sound theory, Thoreau himself often makes us hear almost the very throb of his pulse. He writes in his Journal: " I am living this 27th of June, 1847—a dull cloudy day and no sun shining. The clink of the smith's hammer sounds feebly over the roofs, and the wind is sighing gently. The farmer is ploughing in yonder fields, craftsmen are busy in the shops, the trader stands up in the counter, and all works go steadily forward." Is there not a startling actuality in these words, as though the dead man were whispering in one's ear ? Such sentences, like a few in Samuel Pepys, seem to crumple time and space. Concord did other important things for Thoreau. Consider, for example, his persistent trick, amounting almost to a vice, of likening small things to great and great to small. It is not fanciful to attribute even this, his habitual exaggeration, to the influence of his village life. If you live in a microcosm, you will have to exaggerate enormously to make others see what it means to you. If you survey the universe with a two-foot rod, you will have to use it as though it were a slide-rule. Thus every trifle became tremendous to Thoreau. For the almost pathetic poverty of his materials he made himself a rich amends in the gorgeous uses he put them to. Extraordinarily frugal in other matters, he was a spendthrift in his thought and style, reminding one of Carlyle's remark: "Sense can support herself handsomely for eighteen-pence a day; but for Fantasy planets and solar systems will not suffice." The minute changes of scene noticeable in dropping down the Musketaquid from 338 The ParadoxConcord to Lowell were to Thoreau's eyes like a panorama of foreign lands. He speaks of the men of Bedford and Billerica, two or three miles over the hills from where he sits writing, as of strange and unaccountable dwellers in Ultima Thule. Thus he gets his romantic distances, both of space and time, on remarkably cheap terms, making a little go a great way. The results of this magnifying habit of mind often border the grotesque, as where he speaks of the raindrop which struck the right slope of his nose and ran down the ravine there, remarking: "Such is the origin of rivers." But this is the source, too, of some of his best things: "Ever and anon the lightning filled the damp air with light, like some vast glow-worm in the fields of ether, opening its wings "—a simile which it would be hard to better, except for the negligible detail that the glow-worm has no wings. It is still the general impression that Thoreau made next to nothing of the fact that the little town in which he spent his life was inhabited by human beings. Mr. John Burroughs, in his essay on "Thoreau's Wildness," says that he appears to have been as stoical and indifferent and unsympathetic as a veritable Indian. This is the view which was given currency by Emerson's essay and which his selection of Thoreau's letters seemed to corroborate. It was unhesitatingly accepted by Robert Louis Stevenson and was spread broadcast by his paper on Thoreau. Nevertheless, this opinion will not stand against the almost universal testimony of those who knew the man best— and it is worthy of notice that he had throughout his life an unusual number of close friends. It is staggered by his essays on Friendship and on Love, in comparison with which those of Emerson seem cold and formal. It becomes grotesque in the light of certain letters—say those to Mrs. Lydian Emerson—which were published by Mr. Frank Sanborn. Undoubtedly there was too much ego in Thoreau's cosmos. He liked to think himself the sole spectator for whom Nature's pictures were painted, and he would have understood the sharp twinge of jealousy with which Wordsworth al of Thoreau ways heard any other person make mention of mountains. If his neighbors had obeyed his denunciatory exhortations and taken to living in the woods and fields, that, if anything, would have made him leave Concord. Yet he had by no means the qualities necessary to a successful hermit. The source of his chronic irritation at mankind was not misanthropy. It was, perhaps, even the reverse. He had hoped more from human nature than it could give, habitually forgetting our frame that we are dust. He was always on the lookout for better bread than is made of good wheat flour, having in his mind's eye some Platonic loaf which had soured, for him, all others. Ten miles down the river, he could think most lovingly of his fellows, but in the parlor at Emerson's house the demon of negation so ruled his members that even the master of that house once said, with well-nigh paternal forbearance: "Henry is with difficulty sweet." The perfect motto for Thoreau would have been Noli me tangere. Both for better and for worse, he never learned to say "Yes." Toward the world outside of Concord and the whole question of his social duty, also, Thoreau seemed indifferent, but was not. He had been in that breathless audience which heard Emerson's address on the "American Scholar" at Harvard in the year of Thoreau's graduation—one of those young men who listened "as if a prophet were proclaiming to them 'Thus saith the Lord,'" and who resolved that they too should be, in the noble phrase of the speaker, "delegated minds." No man went from that room, not even the speaker himself, who adhered more closely in later life to the spirit and letter of the address than did Thoreau. While the merchants of Concord bought and sold, while the farmers ploughed and reaped, he sat in the doorway of his cabin, thinking. Diogenes in his tub personified no more exasperating challenge and rebuke. In that very place where, as it is written, a prophet is without honor, there Thoreau deliberately sat down and stayed—"in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house." The moral courage, the hardening of purpose, the stiffening of character, which this involved must be The Paradoxevident enough. Not ten men in America could have fully understood what he was about, and not even many women. Margaret Fuller damned his manuscripts with faint praise, Elizabeth Hoar edged the scalpel of her wit upon him, the grocers of Concord sent him on errands. It was very hard to explain to a world which had not felt the need of such a thing that he was a "delegated mind." He made no explanations whatever, but went on thinking at the rate of a volume of Journal notes per year, keeping in the midst of the crowd, although not with perfect sweetness, the independence of solitude. What did it all come to in the end, this experiment of Thoreau's in vigorous independence and intensive self-culture, these forty-five years of devotion to lofty ideals, of high thinking, of living "as delicately as one plucks a flower"? He gave up in his pursuit of happiness nearly all that other men cared for— wealth, fame, ease, and pleasure. The crucial question is: Was he happy? Now, although he asserts that he was so with almost damnable iteration, one cannot finally stifle a doubt. One wishes that the high color which he always wears were more certainly the glow of health. He often felt the rare joy of mere passive being, he had his "ecstatic moments" and his hours of transfiguration, but one fears that he seldom knew the sober and durable pleasure that comes of pulling one's full weight in the world's united effort. Moreover, he was a reformer without a programme, a worshipper of the deed who never began to act. Here, one would say, is a formula for misery. But when we conclude that a given man cannot be anything but miserable, we are likely to overlook the prevalence of hope. As a matter of fact, Thoreau came near to a steady radiance of joy through his invincible expectation of better things. He always felt it possible that to-morrow's dawn might broaden over paradise, and all that he ever said of the actual grovelling of men is atoned for by his hopes of what men might become. He loved to think that the life in us, like the water in the river, might rise higher this year than ever before, and drown out all the muskrats. "Give me the old famil of Thoreau 339 iar walk," said he, "post-office and all— and this ever-new self, this infinite expectation and faith which does not know when it is beaten." With this one weapon of hope he fended off unweariedly " that defeat which the present always seems," and it was only this which made him able to say that he loved his fate to the very core and rind. Concerning his final success in life we have his own words, perhaps the most memorable that he ever penned: "If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance, like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal— that is your success." Two things must be done for Thoreau before he can take his due place as one of the three or four most original men of letters America has produced. The first of these is to get him out of the Emersonian shadow. Superficial readers, learning that both the Concord writers were. " transcendentalists," but that Emerson was in some vague way the American leader of the school, remembering that Thoreau was Emerson's junior by fourteen years, that he lived some time in Emerson's house, and built his Walden cabin on Emerson's land, that in his youth he resembled Emerson even in voice and manner, have drawn the natural conclusion that Thoreau shone with only a lunar light. It is as impossible to confute as it is to justify this specious conclusion on a priori grounds. The two men read the same books, walked the same streets, talked to the same persons, for many years—and that at a time when Concord practised a sort of communism in the realm of ideas. Moreover, the two men talked interminably with each other. Who can say that Emerson was less likely to appropriate a flashing thought or sentence from the younger man, whose agile and germinal intelligence he greatly admired, than Thoreau was to give the lie to all his proud boast of independence by servile imitation of the master ? The fact is, as Moncure Conway says in his absorbing "Autobiography," that "Thoreau was an imitator of no mortal." But the minds of critics and of the public are now so finally made up on this subject that 340 The Paradoxperhaps no mere statement of facts can change them. We have here simply another example of that injustice whereby the towering protagonist of epic or romance slowly gathers into his own cycle all the exploits of lesser heroes. "T o him that hath shall be given." Turning to the writings of the two men, one finds, amid much similarity of thought and expression which is easily explicable as the result of common influences playing upon them both, a difference in philosophy which is radical and wide-spreading. "Trust the instinct to the end," says Emerson, "though you can render no reason." This is strongly countered by Thoreau's sentence: "Man's life consists not in his obedience but in his opposition to his instincts." Says Emerson: "Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth and right, and to a perfect contentment." Thoreau's words on the same general topic have not the sound of a feeble echolalia: " I cannot afford to relax discipline because God is on my side, for He is on the side of discipline." Even in these contrasted quotations we catch a glimpse of one good reason for the fact that while Emerson has been widely popular for eighty years, Thoreau, in his deeper and more significant pages, has scarcely been read. Thoreau does not natter the sluggard in us. He could not float with any stream. Wherever he found a current, he began to swim against it. As Emerson wistfully pointed out, he had muscle—mental and moral muscle as well as physical. Emerson seems to have lived upon celestial capital stored for him by the supererogatory virtue of his ancestors. Thoreau earned his way. He laid an uncomfortable and unpopular emphasis upon practice, being chiefly remarkable among the Concord philosophers for the fact that he lived his philosophy. "To be a philosopher," he says, voicing a truth which has been largely forgotten since the time of Socrates, "is to solve some of the problems of life not only theoretically but practically." That was a significant scene which was enacted one morning at Concord jail, in which Thoreau had spent the of Thoreau night after refusing to pay his poll-tax. Deeply shocked and grieved, Emerson peered through the bars and said: "Henry, why are you here?" Instantly came back the Yankee reply: "Waldo, why are you not here?" ! It is hard to do full justice to Thoreau without some appearance of injustice to the man who was unquestionably, in almost all respects, his superior. If it seems that Thoreau was in sorne ways a better exponent of Emersonianism than Emerson was himself, that may be due to the fact that he travelled with lighter luggage. The simple fact is that Emerson rendered Thoreau the highest service any teacher can give by setting the young man free—to go his own way. For this, and for the lifelong stimulus of Emerson's presence, Thoreau gave his friend the loving reverence which all men gave, and which was inevitable. "One needs must love the highest when one sees it." The second thing to be done for Thoreau is to make it clear that he was not a naturalist, and did not even wish to be one. He was afraid that the scientist in him might starve out the poet, that the fences might overcome the forest. "I fear," he says, "that my knowledge is from year to year becoming more exact and scientific; that, in exchange for views as wide as heaven's cope, I am being narrowed down to the microscope." There is nothing here of that self-immolating devotion of the scientist which enabled Charles Darwin to sit quietly by and watch the slow atrophy of one whole side of his nature. Neither is there anything resembling the method of the modern scientist in Thoreau's choice of field. He seems to have been about equally interested in birds and fishes, turtles and lichens, flowers and rocks, weather and ants, mountains and woodchucks. The very range of his study, most of which was necessarily superficial, shows that his heart was not in that patient accumulation of fact by which science was in his time plodding toward its unknown goal. He would be more in sympathy with the biology of our own day, which more and more subordinates description and classification of species to the quest of ultimate laws and principles. When he was asked by a certain society what The Paradoxbranch of science he was especially interested in, he wrote in his Journal: " I felt that it would be to make myself a laughing-stock to describe to them that branch which especially interests me, inasmuch as they do not believe in a science which deals with the higher law. . . . How absurd that though I probably stand as near to Nature as any of them, and am by constitution as good an observer as most, yet a true account of my relation to Na ture should excite their ridicule only." What, then, was his real relation to Na ture ? Fundamentally, it was a religious one. He saw the material world more clearly than the mystics, but far more imaginatively, also, and under a holier light, than the ordinary scientist. Nature was to him chiefly "a means and a symbol." It was less a scientific than a religious impulse which kept him pressing on, chiefly by the way of intuition, toward the final Mystery of Things and the innermost Holy of Holies. He was always on the trail of his famous Horse and Hound. In roving tirelessly about the woods and fields on this high quest, he picked up large stores of information and misinformation concerning matters to which scarcely any one in America had paid any attention. It was natural that his woodcraft and powers of observation should be exaggerated by the bookish persons about him who had neither the one nor the other, and that a legend should grow about his name in this way which could not sustain the attacks even of those who have followed precisely the trails he blazed. His instruments were few and poor, he had no guides and few competitors, he had never known what we understand by scientific training. The result has been no little innocent amusement to professional and amateur scientists in correcting his many blunders and in wondering that he did not know this and that. But they attack a straw man. The real Thoreau wrote in his Journal: "Ma n cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye. He must look through and beyond her." Doubtless Thoreau would have been glad to solve the mystery of his "nightwarbler." Once he had done so, how of Thoreau ever, he would have moved on at once into some other parish of the Infinite. His ignorance was really more useful to him than his knowledge. One can imagine him smiling benignly at the ladies and gentlemen who scramble through thicket and swamp, opera-glass in hand, and complacently set down in their field-books at the end of a weary chase: "Siurus auricapillus, unknown to Thoreau." One can almost hear him murmur those helpful words of his friend's: "When me they fly, I am the wings." But if Thoreau was not a naturalist, then what was he ? He was a practical philosopher, constantly asking and trying to answer the most important question of all: how to live. This fact, patent enough to one who reads him without prepossession, has been neglected in our idle gossip about his knowledge or ignorance of Nature. It has been obscured by the malign sarcasms of Lowell's essay. Even in the brilliant biographical sketch which Emerson wrote shortly after Tho-reau's death we see the man already fading swiftly into myth. The result is that certain words of that sketch are as true to-day, and in a double sense, as they were when written: "The country knows not yet, or in the least part, how great a son it has lost." Thoreau is still lost to us. We have been bemused these sixty years by a mere legend about him. The country has yet to learn that it had in him not merely an amusing eccentric, not merely a shining target for the arrows of critical wit, but one of the few primary thinkers and teachers we have produced. For here was a man who stood with his head in the clouds, perhaps, but with his feet firmly planted on actual rubble and grit. He was "true to the kindred points of Heaven and Home." Here was a mind with a most unusual combination of accuracy with range, of audacious fancy with severe fidelity to fact—a mind that brought telescopic findings to bear upon the most microscopic field and took soundings of the Infinite from a cockboat. Here was a life in which the physical daring of our earlier frontiersmen turned inward and became a sort of spiritual pioneering. Of this man and mind and life we have made chiefly a spectacle and The Paradox of Thoreau a laughing-stock, ignoring the fact that Thoreau's eminently practical thought was really concerned, in the last analysis, solely with definite human problems. The major question, how to live, was at the end of all his vistas. He learned something about the woods and fields and something about books, becoming probably the best read man in Concord at a time when that was a distinction; but these studies were always ancillary to his study of man's life. And when he turns upon the human animal those eyes which have grown so keen in watching woodchucks, he can see mankind to the quick with his searching sidelong gaze. It is when he forgets the woodchuck, concerning which others now know more than he did, and begins to speak of men, that it behooves us to listen. We have talked and written more than enough about his misanthropy, his wildness, his solitude, his egoism. The real man, in whom these qualities were superficial and secondary, the man Thoreau whose main business was the application of shrewd common sense to the actual facts of life, has been very generally ignored. 1 For who does not prefer amusement to instruction and, still more, to admonition? Too clearly • for our comfort Thoreau saw what ails us, and he prescribed a cure which still seems worse than the disease. Accordingly, we have crunched the mere husk of him and thrown away the kernel. Much of the blame, however, for the fact that we still regard Thoreau as a mere transcendental wild man must be borne by the man himself. It cannot be denied that he was deliberately "queer," or that, in the midst of solitude, he adjusted his pose with a keen eye for the picturesque, thereby reminding even his admirers of what was said of Chateaubriand, that he "would have liked to live in a hermit's hut upon a public stage." Thoreau never learned, moreover, that self-expression is a social act. He wrote for an audience of one, taking little pains to be clear and still less to be ingratiating. The "celestial homespun " of his style, accordingly, shows many a woful patch and thrum. In a strict sense, he never learned to write, but only to exclaim—his genius, as Emerson said, being better than his talent. If he could always have chosen definite and manageable subjects, as he did in that crisp, compact, and witty paper on "The Landlord," of which Stevenson would have been proud; if he could have taken as models the great French masters of style instead of Hindu visionaries and Teutonizing Englishmen; if he could have made his sentences flow more like a river and less like a moraine of boulders—then he might have been not only a great writer but a good one as well. • Even such as he was, with all his faults and foibles upon him, this odd-choresman of Concord looms higher year by year on the horizon of our literature, and is "still loftier than the world suspects." We may yet learn that he was neither a naturalist nor an Emersonian echo; he may yet teach us something regarding the sources of a sound and enduring patriotism, something about economy, something of contentment; but even to-day, imperfectly understood as he still is, he must be considered as rather more than a picturesque figure. That ancient warfare of forests and fences, which is all the past of America, is brought to a vivid and powerful focus in him. He draws the mystery of the wilderness about our very doors. In the rude boat which he has made with his own hands he drops quietly down the River of Commonplace which flows through our own tame little town, he doubles strange cliffs which are after all only over the hill, and brings back shining wares from the next township as though from foreign and almost fabulous lands. He helps us to be content with what we have by making us see the glory of the near and familiar. He shows us what can be done with even a two-foot measuring-rod when it is carved on a walking-stick.
SEA GINGER
By J. Edward Macy
ILLUSTRATIONS (FRONTISPIECE) BY GORDON STEVENSON FOR five days the bark Rita had wallowed in an utter calm. This afternoon especially the air seemed as motionless as the blazing sunshine, as the blue zenith. The pitch was softening in the deck-seams, the sails flapped, the helmsman lolled over the wheel and dozed, the hands napped in the shadows. The only sound was the long, monotonous, alternating groans of the shrouds—first starboard, then port—as the vessel swayed in its tireless seesaw on the low ground swell. The only human activity was that of the captain's fourteen-year-old son, Ernie, fishing over the starboard rail. Occasionally the boy's line would jerk mightily and he would sing out in his high-keyed voice that he had had a bite; but the big fish was only the lad's father, lying in his bunk below, reaching out a hand through the porthole. Presently the practical joker himself rose out of the cabin companionway. Captain Dick Brand was lean, big-boned, bearded, with small eyes so pleasantly blue against the bronze of his face that they resembled twin turquoises set in leather. He yawned, looked across at his son, and winked at me; then he strolled over to the port rail to gaze at the one diverting object in that entire circle of glassy azure sea, a three-masted schooner, headed—so far as heading was possible—on the same course as the Rita. She was only an every-day, ordinary schooner. If Captain Brand had passed her somewhere up the coast he would scarcely have glanced at her. But in this desert of silent, tedious immobility, she was something curious, something alive though motionless, something fraught with life and purpose and destiny, like ourselves. And the familiarity of her distant presence as the days passed, had clothed her with the interest of a neighbor. We had talked her over fore and aft and 'thwartships; guessed at her tonnage, her length, her cargo; speculated whether she was homeward bound from Porto Rico or from farther south. For a whole half-hour we had argued from her cut where she was built; and Captain Brand had even conjectured how much she had cost; until I compared ourselves to two old women, busy with the affairs of a new family next door. I had sailed three trips with Brand as mate of the Rita, was better read than he, and felt on easy terms. And so now, while the lad at the starboard taffrail mourned over the loss of his gigantic nibbler, I sauntered over to the captain's side. "She bears a little farther aft," he observed, "though a man may wonder how two vessels can ever stay so still. It's as though they were both anchored. A picture, ain't she?" "But she looks nearer!" I exclaimed. He straightened and peered at her. "B y Jove, she does! She is nearer! We've drifted in quite a bit!" A leisurely descent to the cabin for his binoculars and the next minute he was eying the motionless craft through them, his great bare brown elbows resting on the rail. "Curious, ain't it?" he said, after a long silence. "N o motion ahead or astern, and yet we've floated in sidewise. Making leeway in a dead calm, so to speak. Yo u can see her real well now. That canvas hickey aft there is an old sail hung by ropes and shored up—by oars, I guess likely—for shade. They're stylish, with their awnings." He handed the glasses to me and I focussed them idly on the craft. Things on her deck could be made out clearly. A figure leaning against her taffrail caught my eye. "That explains their tony ideas," I said; " there's a woman aboard," and I returned the glasses. " I see her," said he. "Green waist. But why don't she stay under the awn343 Sea Ginger ing? What's she want to cruise round out thar by the poop rail for?" "She must have jumped like a flea, capt'n," I said. " She was aft against the taffrail when I sighted her." He focussed for another moment, then laughed. "Well, if thar ain't a couple of them 1 Two women aboard a longdistance, cargo-carryin' windjammer. Never heard tell before of ary woman aboard a ship but the skipper's wife. Two petticoats in the same cabin!" "Maybe the other's his daughter." "Mebbe; we'll say so anyhow"—and our old-wives' gossip was ended by his abruptly turning away and lounging round to the starboard quarter to poohoo at Ernie's wide-eyed description of those awful bites, which must have been a whale. That evening the sunset was like all the others. Void of clouds as had been the blue welkin throughout the day, white downy clumps now rose, piled by magic hands, to receive the sun. The magnificence that followed, the splendor of gold and pink and rose that veiled the sublime bed-going, is known only to those of nature's votaries who have sailed within the trades. Afterward the ocean lost its gleaming blue and became a darksome underworld, beneath fluid glass, peopled by ghosts of stars, with here and there a darting dragon of phosphorescent light. But the night brought little other change, only the cool melancholy of a shaded peace instead of the glaring laziness of a sunlit calm. Morning renewed the scene—the endless rocking of the ship, the alternate stretching of the shrouds and stays, the rattle of swaying sheet-blocks, the occasional whang of the spanker-gaff. During the day the schooner drifted a little forward of the beam. She looked even nearer than before. The fling of her booms against their sheets could be clearly heard. The two women, with sometimes the figure of captain or mate, could be plainly watched idling separately about the after-deck. Toward night she was farther forward but still nearer. Voices could be heard. Her name could be made out—Venus, New York. Again the night fell—softly, like the dimming of lights on a staged extravaganza. At midnight when I relieved Braley, the second mate, I found Captain Brand on deck, leaning back against the taffrail, smoking his pipe, gazing contemplatively off to port. Directly abreast of us, almost within talking distance, loomed the object of his interest, the dusky form of the Venus, silhouetted against the stars. "The whole tropic zone to drift in," he sputtered, after a few quick puffs, "and yet here be these two craft sidling up together like they callated to pick each other's pockets. You'll have to heave. over a drag if it keeps up much longer. Give me a call if things look too close." After he had gone below I fetched a stick of firewood from the galley and dropped it a few feet astern. For a half-hour I watched it rise and fall in the starlight. But not a foot—not a perceptible inch—did the Rita shift her position. Clearly it was our neighbor who was moving. A little later I hailed her. A voice answered, not from aft, as was to be expected, but from amidships, and indifferently: "Hello." "You're drifting down on us; lower a boat and tow her ahead." The reply was clear, though low and surly: "Lower a boat yourself." Now the Rita was much the heavier vessel. I had not imagined that as between the two, we should be the ones to tow. But I went forward, roused out the watch, and cleared away the starboard cutter for lowering. We then laid out the oars and a hawser. It was not the trick of a minute, and when I went back to look at the unmannerly stranger, she had become a swift and immediate menace. She was close aboard. There was no time to lower a boat and tow; I doubt if there would have been time before. After a roar at the watch to call all hands and to break out fenders, and another down the cabin companionway to turn out the skipper, I fell to bawling at the aggressor to lower quickly and tow. Captain Brand came to my side, and Braley ran aft buttoning his flannel shirt as he came. "These two vessels seem bound to scrape an acquaintance, don't they now? " said the captain, who was always most composed and whimsical in emergencies. "Scrape is right." Sea Ginger I described my efforts to get action, and told him how I had proven the schooner to be the sociable one. "Well now," he said, "if she's much like the Venus I read about once in a long piece o' poetry by that fellow Shakespeare, cuttin' up with a chap named Adonis, she ain't fit company for our modest Rita." But while he spoke his brain was working. "Yo u stay right here and bawl her out, look to the wheel, and stand by the fending," he ordered. "Braley, you man and lower the cutter. I'll clear away another boat." " Better get the yards braced round, sir, for fear she'll foul," I said. "Righto." And the next moment the hands were scampering about in the starlit dusk, blocks creaked, hawsers thumped. But the stranger was almost alongside. After another futile hail at her I scanned her shadowy deck. It was lower than ours, of course, and except when the low swell lifted or canted her, it was in clear view from the awning forward. On it not a human form was visible. The grating together of the two rising and falling hulls, with damage to stays, bulwarks, spars, and what-not, seemed imminent. Judging that Braley's boat would soon begin to tug a little at the Rita's bow, I ordered the helm astarboard and summoned several of the crew with fenders. Then my attention was caught by the fling of the schooner's long booms as she rocked. They were hauled out loosely on the port tack, and with every roll swung far over to starboard, bringing up against the tautened sheets with a whang. Our yards had been braced round in the nick of time. But the thought flashed on me that it was the continual jerk of those booms to starboard that caused the schooner's lateral drift. "Take in the slack of your sheets, you lubbers! Haul your booms amidships," I bellowed. From under the festooned edge of the improvised awning of sail appeared a pair of heads. They were within the length of an oar. I repeated my harangue; they vanished; in a moment several dark figures appeared oh deck and sped through the gloom to the main-sheets. Under the cover they had left, a lantern was burning. As the schooner swayed and the side heaved up, the light glowed on a circle of feet and legs; sounds came as of scuffling; there was a snarled "Sacre!" Then the view was lost.sprang over the rail and down into the mizzen-chains for a better look. Another lift of the sea brought the picture nearer. At last what had suspended all seamanship aboard that craft could be clearly made out. On the farther side, facing me, picturesque in the dim yellow light, was a black-mustached, leather-skinned, barefooted Spaniard, in trousers and undershirt, with a scarlet handkerchief round his neck; he was stooping and fiercely glaring. His teeth were bared in hate; his right hand clutched a knife; his knees were flexed in cat-like readiness. Opposing him, with back toward me, was a thick-shouldered, stolid, light-haired fellow, armed with an iron stanchion. It was the scuffling of his heavy shoes I had heard. No wonder the deck was abandoned, with the captain and the mate in mortal combat. As the dark one advanced with crouching, panther-like swiftness, and the blond one raised an impassable barrage of rapid sweeps with his murderous stanchion, the schooner sank back, and the scene was again cut off. Evidently just then some one tried to stop the fight, for the Spaniard's guttural tones smote the air: "Yo u keep away ! I keel da first man dat interfere!" Behind me a seaman spoke: "Look out for yourself, sir! You might get jammed!" The two sterns were swinging together. Braley's boat had begun to tow and the first motion of the bow was to starboard, swerving the stern to port. I sprang back into the shrouds as the hulls grazed and the fenders creaked. Then below me at the schooner's rail appeared a woman. " Queek, Eric ! Come queek !" she was calling back over her shoulder. The voice and accent were those of West India Spanish. She raised herself and stood on the rail. The feet and legs of Eric were now visible backing to the side, swinging his weapon. There he paused. If he turned to climb over he was lost; if he flung his Sea Ginger club at his foe a successful dodge would bring the knife to his vitals. "Ss!" hissed the woman. "Queek, Eric, queek!" Supporting herself by holding to a backstay, she turned and brushed aside a propping oar; then she stepped nimbly along the rail and pulled out the knot of a lashing on the shroud. This let'down the awning over the melee like a carpet over a fire—except that the Swede was free. Springing into the shrouds, Eric seized the woman's arm. "Yump! Yump!" he shouted, and into the Rita's mizzen-chains and scrambling up the ratlines they came. As the two vessels were now drawing apart, the leap was just in time to make the distance. But as the Spaniard appeared at the schooner's rail, Eric stopped, drew a sharp breath, and reached to his shoulder. The knife fell on our deck. It had been thrown with true Iberian dexterity, but without enough accuracy to do more than wound the fugitive. "Ya! " yelled back the Swede as he dropped to the deck with the woman and turned. "Ya, ya! You no goot anyvay! Good-by, captain, good-by!" waving his hand derisively. The bloodthirsty master of the Venus started into the rigging as though bent on pursuit, but thought better of it. Holding to the shrouds he stood shaking his fist and cursing venomously. " I keel you both when I ketch you—you see !" he vowed. Near him appeared the still form of the second woman; but the starlight was not bright enough to show her features. "Yo u stop your fighting and take better care of your vessel," Captain Brand called across to him. "Taka care my vessel, you say? Ha! You talk about vessel! How you tink you lika to have your mate taka your wife away? Leave his own wife, too. But I ketch 'em ! I keel her! Hi m too! By God, you see!" II TH E silver sparkle of sunrise found the two ships at a safe distance from each other, the Venus a mile off the Rita's quarter, and both embarking on another day of lazy seesawing. The midnight session had been ended by Captain Brand's realization that to send the senora back to her furious husband then and there would be to risk murder, and that to leave Eric's shoulder without attention would bring serious consequences. " Wall, I guess we'll adjourn till mawnin'," he had said; after which the senora had been stowed in the spare saloon stateroom. Eric's wound had been stitched and dressed in the saloon by the light of a sea lamp, Captain Brand bending his bushy eyebrows fiercely when Eric cringed under his needle; the boats had been hoisted in, the yards squared, the watch below consigned to the brief sleep which remained their due. And now, under the first polished darts of the new day, Captain Brand and I were pacing the deck together, with Ernie trying in vain to keep step beside his father. "Whar's the lady-killer now?" asked the captain, his eyes atwinkle. "Still slumbering serenely on the cushioned seat in the cabin," I told him. "The woman was up and dressed when I came on deck. I mentioned she'd ought to go back aboard her ship, but she began to carry on like a young typhoon. Did ye ever see such eyes before ? No wonder the big squarehead lost his helm." A little later a period of murmuring below in the cabin was ended by Eric's thumping up the companion ladder and out on deck. Moving stiffly in tribute to his wound, he sauntered round the cabin skylight and toward us. He was about twenty-five and a typical son of the northland; six feet in height, sturdy, slow-moving, with thick tow hair, plump, good-natured, boyish face, solid chest showing brown at the break of his blue cambric jumper, massive brown forearms bared below his rolled-up sleeves. As he approached, his mild eyes from under their flaxen lashes seemed to reflect the azure of the sea, his half-bashful smile to symbolize the simplicity of its life. "Good morning," said Captain Brand coldly, when he stopped before us. The smile broadened a little foolishly; then the blue eyes darkened with trouble like a tropic bay ruffled by a whiff of wind. "Captain, sir"—he hesitated. Sea Ginger "Well," said the skipper, still coldly. "Shall we lower away that boat?" " Captain, no! You vould not send Carlota back to be killed, sir. Yoost take us with you to Boston. Ve vill be no trouble. I vill turn to with the hands; she vill vork, help cook, anyting, sir. Und she does not like that oder man." The veteran mariner pulled his beard and gazed at the supplicant curiously. "And what about the nice little Swedish wife you've cast adrift over yonder?" he said at last. Eric's smile was somewhat sheepish. "She von't care at all. She'll forget. I'll give her money; she go back to Sveden." "But I guess the news ain't reached you yet that polygamy's been abolished." The other looked blank till the allusion was interpreted in simpler words; then the big body straightened and the blue eyes cleared. "That's all right, captain," he smiled. "Ve vill yoost do right; Captain Parrata he vill get divorce; und Hulda, she vants to go back to Sveden; she vill say yes und ve vill get a divorce. Yoost take us to Boston, sir. I'll be up for'ards in the crew und stay dere all da time." But the master was still fingering his beard debatively. As he told me afterward, the fellow was so whole-souled abOut it, so boyishly enthusiastic, so crystal-clear of guile, he was "kind o' taken flat aback." The fact was that Dick Brand was tender-hearted. " Waal, we don't want you stove in with a stiletto, anyway," he said presently. "An d I go by the rule, Judge not lest ye be judged; as the sculpin said to the polecat. Suppose we go below to Carlota and have a gam about it." While we followed the captain's long strides to the companionway I chanced to look astern at the distant Venus; on her forecastle-head the form of a woman could be made out gazing mutely toward us. A few minutes later, after sending the wide-eyed Ernie back on deck to fish, the Rita's master and mate were seated in the cabin before their uninvited passengers, like a pair of judges hearing a cause. It required but little divination to piece out the story. It was a tale of child-like naivete and simplicity. Captain Felipe Parrata, with capital furnished by his brother, a Porto Rican planter, went to New York and bought a schooner. The name "Venus," he kept because the letters were so tastily done on the stern. That was the only reason, safe to say, unless the cost of relettering entered in; assuredly there was no sentimental motive in him, although in fact he had been recently married. The dark-faced islander sailed his prize south. On the return trip northward, moved by pride in his command and in his sumptuous cabin, he took his pining young wife with him. In New York he was obliged to replace his mate. As mates were scarce he was delighted in securing a genuine Scandinavian seaman. But Eric was young. Not that this lessened in the least his prospective value as first officer; that was assured by his experience; but Parrata's wife was young also—much younger than himself; much livelier and more romantic. To make his jealous spirit easier on this score, he suggested that Eric take along his own young wife to keep the seflora company. Did not rich men take ladies in their yachts? Was not the Venus's cabin outfitted like a yacht's ? Why not all be merry together? The captain shrugged his Latin shrug and Eric beamed his broad norland smile, and the antipodal pair of optimists, unlearned in the idiosyncrasies of femininity, set sail for Porto Rico with their wives aboard. What contrasts were there: the smouldering fire of the Spaniard's soul, the deep cool well of the Swede's, the warm dazzling sparkle of Carlota's nature, the pale glow of Hulda's. No more remote was the light hay color of Eric's hair from the black of Parrata's than were the personalities of one pair from those of the other. Yet this very antithesis may have been what led to the trouble. It began with Carlota, no doubt—perhaps with the young girl's coveting of the rare and new in preference to the common and stale of her past; for Eric was a big, steady, masculine novelty. Or perhaps it followed a temptation to the beautiful and lively southern girl—having nothing else to occupy herself with—to match her attractions against her soberer sister's. Carlota coquetted with Eric behind Parrata's back. Eric was delighted with 348 Sea Ginger her. B y the time the Venus settled into this calm, on the homeward trip, they felt themselves so deeply in love that unless they could somehow get free from these others and marry each other, the bottom of the sea must receive them both. The waywardness had gone no farther; Eric was a good Lutheran and his thoughts were pure, if slightly intoxicated. On the second day of the calm, Parrata began to suspect; the Spaniard became darkly, gloomily watchful. Under the stars of this last night he had surprised them on deck, Eric with his broad arms about the young woman's shoulders, looking down into her eyes. Ensued the fight. And that fight was no child's play. Apparently it had lasted an hour and a quarter when we interrupted it. " I vould not kill him," said Eric. "I ban yoost keep him off. Him and his knife." "Ah, he mucha big! Mucha strong! He maka my Felipe dance laka da monkey," and Carlota, lounging negligently back on the cushioned stern seat, patted the bare arm beside her and laughed. Her dark eyes justified Brand's tribute. One moment they seemed to expand and glow intimately, the next to recede and sparkle; one moment they swelled with earnestness, the next relaxed into lazy voluptuousness, or crouched watchfully. Beside her Eric sagged a little, nursing his shoulder, which had begun to pain keenly with the intense soreness of first knitting. "But what about Hulda out yonder?" the captain said to him. " She don't care. She vants to go back to Sveden." " She never would have left you, though, to go back." Eric did not reply. " And don't you think a lot of Hulda ? " At this question Eric shook his bowed head and was for some time silent. Suddenly he looked up at us with a frank, boyish, fetching grin. "Hulda—she's too dead," he declared; then laying a hand on Carlota's—"I like more yinyer." "More ginger!" repeated the captain. He stared a moment, then burst into an immense roar of laughter, in which we all —even Eric himself—joined. "Well, we'll keep you aboard for the present," he concluded. " But, Eric, you needn't go for'ard. You're an officer; and besides, your shoulder wouldn't let you work for a time; then, too, we don't want Romeo and Juliet scenes goin' on over the poop rail. You stay aft and bunk with the steward." The captain and I returned to our walk on deck, which we pursued in silence until Ernie, coiling up his fish-line disconsolately, joined us. "An y more of those big bites?" asked his father. "Not a bite," said the boy. "What kind of fish do you think that was, papa, yesterday?" "That fish, sonny? Oh, that was a fish about six feet long with a kind o' beard-like on his chin; a stupid sort o' fish that flaps his tail and takes hold of a thing as though he meant businesSj then slacks off and stands by, puzzling what to do." The boy looked up at us doubtfully, but soon scampered away. An hour later as I wandered to the taffrail I again noticed in the bow of the Spaniard's schooner the still figure of Hulda, as she stood gazing spectrally, like the brooding spirit of reproach, after her departed lord. She was still there when Eric came on deck. He was drooping a little, dismally, with pain, aggravated by the heat below decks. As he looked off across the shining water toward the Venus the figure of the woman caught his eye. At that mutely appealing image he stood gazing soberly for a long time. Carlota came up the companionway and approached him. Seeing his absorption and the object of it, a gleam entered her eye and a curl touched her pretty lip. She turned, tossed her head, and walked away. A t four bells, ten o'clock, a sizable breeze came sweeping up from the starboard quarter. As though with the wave of a wand it awoke the sleepy realm to life. The ocean smiled, waves danced and sparkled, the Rita leaped forward like a steed. To leeward the schooner spread her wings and coursed ahead, passing us foot by foot as the hours glided on. By evening she lay well down on the horizon. III UNDE R another nocturne of stars the Rita swayed to the heave of the sea. The
From a drawing by Gordon Stevenson. She turned, tossed her head, and walked away.—Page 348.
Sea Ginger peace of the previous night was varied by the vast rustle of wavelets, the whirr of the wind in the rigging, the shadowy immobility of the sails, the realization of motion. The rough clang of the ship's bell making eleven o'clock rose faintly, dispelled by the wind. But the gloom of the deck, the sense of living in a dream, the appallingness of stygian solitude, were there—as in all night watches at sea. A cry sounded from the ship's bow: " Red light, two points off the port bow!" It seemed to come from nowhere, like a voice in the air. The sighting of the light was no novelty and required no attention; but anything is a diversion in these long hours, and I strolled forward through the shadows. " It looked like a port side-light when I sang out, sir," said the seaman on watch; "but it seems to change somehow-nuther. Can't quite make it out, sir." The tiny glow was farther away than I had expected, and unsteady—first bright then red; after disappearing for a time it suddenly flared; then it died uncertainly away. But at sea distances will play these tricks, and I went aft expecting that in due time the port light of a steamer would float distantly past us. Before long, however, while I drowsed on the after-deck with mind far away among the night memories that every mariner knows, I chanced to see the light again, rising and falling beneath the arc of the mainsail. It was much nearer. But it was no steamer's light. It wavered like the glare of a torch. I went down into the cabin to fetch the skipper's night-glasses. As I returned with the glasses to the foot of the companion-ladder, I saw by the glow of the low-burning sea-lamp, Eric sitting up on his cushion seat, fully dressed, his brow in his hand. "Does the wound keep you awake?" I asked him in the appropriate undertone. "Aye. But it vill be better to-morrow, I link." "Couldn't we put a salve on it, or something?" " I don't know." His voice grew a shade dismal. "I don't know. I vas yoost linking if Hulda was here she vould know what to do." The utter ingenuousness of it saved it from being actually grotesque. I left the big fellow leaning forward on his elbows, immersed in the broodiness that had been stealing over him throughout the day. On deck a seaman was waiting for me. "Rockets have gone up, sir, where that light is off the bow." " That settles it," I muttered, and made my way forward to the forecastle-head. What had appeared a wavering spark had now expanded into a definite gleam, which was broadened by the glasses into a persistent glow, now brilliantly lambent, now dully lurid. Another rocket went up. The sky became flushed with an ominous crimson stain. "It's a ship on fire," said Eric, who had followed me up from the cabin. The explanation was needless. "We raised it about where that thar dago schooner would 'a' been, sir," said a veteran voice from among the seamen now grouping round us. In a very few minutes Captain Brand had been turned out, the yards had been braced round, and the Rita was coursing swiftly toward the conflagration. Slowly it rose nearer. In an hour or so the heart of it had dissolved into leaping flames, and the red aurora seemed to overhang and engulf us. Then the call for all hands shattered the silence, and soon the deck was alive with the dark forms of seamen. " Better clear away the starboard boats, Mr . Sturgis," the captain called to me from the poop, "and make ready to lower if necessary. Swing out the port davits free, with the falls ready; we may have to hoist in their boats instead." After all had been made ready to give what aid was possible, master and mate and passengers collected on the after-deck, including Carlota, who had heard the captain called and sensed excitement, and Ernie whom his father had roused to see the spectacle. Eric had just come back from up forward. " I have made out the masts with the glasses," he announced soberly, "und once I saw the shape of the hull. It is the Venus." This was only what had been presumed, and so for a time we stood gazing forward silently, interrupted only by the captain's Sea Ginger occasional questions to Eric as to the cargo, the gasolene aboard, the number in the crew. The upper line of the schooner's hull grew distinct, black against the glow; over the whole length from stem to stern flames leaped and played, like demons dancing and flinging showers of sparks into the air in some whirling fandango. At last, within the red circle of this inferno, surrounded by a sea of liquid fire, the Rita swung into the wind, her mainsails aback, her fore-and-aft sails tugging and flapping petulantly as though in fear. Feet scampered to the clewlines and downhauls; the air filled with the cries of the mates and the whirr of descending staysails. As I returned to the after-deck for orders, the group of figures staring into the glare looked uncanny, like spectres transfigured with a hellish lustre. "Al l ready to lower away, sir," I said. "Small need," muttered the captain. "They'll have taken to their own boats by this." Eric spoke. He had forgotten his wound and was standing erect and attentive beside his inamorata: " I heard of a ship once where the fire it crept along under the deck then burst out all over her." "Aye, there have been some cases where they couldn't even reach the boats," said Captain Brand in a matter-of-fact tone. A long breath escaped Eric, as though his breathing had been delayed by mental tension. He took several steps toward the rail and stood scanning the water. The captain gazed at him. Carlota turned to me, her eyes agleam with the reflection. "Oh, but Felipe," she said with her Spanish shrug, "he is queek; he know what to do." But the situation required decision. "Even if they're not in the boats," I said, "there may be some one afloat." "Aye, lower away." The order was forestalled. Out of the lurid shadows a dark object was creeping in on the port side. A short distance behind was a second. Braley's voice bawled from 'midships: "Two boats abeam, sir." "Stand by to take them aboard; lower away the boat-falls; see they're well manned." I stationed Braley in charge at the forward davits; I took those amidships. The tackle-blocks were swung down just as the first boat hove alongside, almost in position, but manoeuvring against the wash of the heaving vessel. It was peopled with black figures, the two boats evidently containing the entire crew. Even in a quiet sea such as that, it is a sizable trick to get a boat-load aboard and a boat hooked to the falls and hoisted in. Upon its being accomplished eight grateful men, one of them the schooner's second mate, piled over the rail and grouped round me. They had been an hour lying on their oars, they said, after three hours of futile fire-fighting. I told their officer to muster them aft. Starting forward to meet the second boat-load, which Braley had by now taken safely aboard, I met the massive form of Eric. "She is not in that boat, either," he said in a high, strained voice. "Who?" I asked thoughtlessly, having forgotten for a time the pathetic watcher on the schooner's forecastle. "Hulda! She is not here! All da hands are here but she is not! She is left behind!" In the van of the second batch of refugees, now flocking aft, came Captain Parrata, one side of his figure ruddy in the flame-light, the other invisible in the shadow. For an instant I feared a collision, but he hurried past silently without more than a glance at the invader of his felicity. Of the others as they came along I inquired: "Where is the Swedish woman?" In a few graphic sentences they explained. Fearful of Parrata's wrathful mood, Hulda had fled to the very bow of the ship and clung to the remoteness of the forecastle-head from hour to hour, grieving in silence, eating nothing. The fire had risen suddenly from the region of the forecastle hatch; almost before they could begin their frantic fight with the pumps the forecastle-deck had burst into flames, and the smoulder was working aft under the planks so rapidly as to grill their feet and put all hands in peril of some sudden upburst of flame. Hulda, in the bow, had been cut off. One of the crew was sure he had seen her trying to Sea Ginger rush through to them when it was too late. Upon taking to the boats the captain had circled the blazing ship twice, no human life was visible, none seemed possible, on the forward deck. "The woman might have jumped overboard," I conjectured. "She couldn't svim," said Eric in his strained voice. A big mulatto, speaking in the light, slurring modulations of the Antilles, spoke up: " I don't reckon she had much chance to try, suh. She was caught in the fiah, I reckon. You ain't my mate no mo'"— turning to Eric—"I can say right what I tink to you now; and if ma wife 'a' been burned up in them flames ovah theah"—pointing dramatically into the glare—"an' I was to blame fo' it, I would drop right down on ma knees, suh, an' pray to God he fo'give me." Others murmured assent. They passed on to muster and I turned to the big Swede. His face was ghastly, staring, his stony cheeks tinted by the light into a marble rosiness. Again his long exhalation confessed the tension. I left him there and hurried-aft to Captain Brand. "Aye," answered the latter, "you'd better take one of the boats and cruise about. The woman may have gone overboard with something to buoy her up. Still, their boats covered the ground. Oh, well, I callate we wouldn't feel just right to set sail without a look." A careful lowering, a swish of the boat as she met the quick heave at the oars to clear the vessel, and we were under way—six rowers on the thwarts and the big Swede beside me in the stern sheets. We neared the long black hull, now resembling a gigantic dish of flame, the waters round us shining like a lake of seething blood, the heat growing with every stroke of the oars. The prospect seemed utterly void. On circling the stern the first whiff of wind brought us a scorching that made the oarsmen cry out sharply, and back water without orders. We ran out to a greater distance to leeward, and circled toward her bow. There the flames, having devoured the head-sails, were licking along the boom. To imagine a mortal still living there was to revive the miracle of the fiery furnace. Again and again, as we floated slowly on, Eric peered at the impossible and groaned. Then the big fellow stood up in the lurching boat and shouted through his cupped hands at the top of his voice: "Hulda! Hulda!" I pulled him down. It was useless. "There's only one chance," I told him, " that Hulda went overboard and is afloat on something." Up and down in the hellish light we rowed, scanning the colored billows. Again Eric stood up. His wound had opened; a dark stain was forming on his back. Again his cry rose above the swish of foam and the whirr of flame. " Hulda ! Hulda!" The call rose above the roar of the fire and the wash of the brilliant waters like that of a lost seraph on the burning lake. Far and wide we carried it through the night. It became plaintive, like the cry of a strong man anguished. A t last he sat down, and I headed for the Rita. "Once more, please, sir—only once more," he begged; and to humor him I wore around. We were far from the Venus now. "Yoost run in close again, please," he said. It was but the protest of a sore heart against leaving the spot of its lost hope. Somewhere there—perhaps now a mere scintillation—was the stanch girl from the old country, the sweetheart of his boyhood, the simple peasant lass who had left home and people and crossed the ocean in silent joy to become his wife; only to be ruthlessly, mortifyingly betrayed and abandoned. Straight into the heat I drove as far as we could go, then round the bow. Eric stood up, peering at the black heaving hull and into the adjacent dark margin of shaded water. • Suddenly he started. " Nearer ! nearer ! Oh, yoost a little nearer. Dere is something white. Ya ! Look! Look!" I rose, holding the tiller ropes in my hands, and followed his pointing. On the surface of the water, deep under the blur of the bow and against the very cutwater of the hulk, was a gleam of white, resembling a deathly human face. "Nearer—ve moost row nearer." Sea Ginger But the heat was stinging us already. "Are you good for it, lads?" I asked the men. "We'll go as far as you will, sir,answered a squat oarsman rowing stroke-oar. "Aye aye, sir, all o' that," came from the others. "Give way slowly, then," I ordered, steering straight for the hull. At a hundred feet the bow oarsman squirmed and groaned. "Hold water," I ordered. The heat was blistering; a sudden veer of the wind would be calamitous. Then Eric cried out with a great shout of joy: " Ya! Ya! Dere is a rope "—and with a great splash went overboard. "Throw water on each other; we'll follow him in as far as we can," I directed. Gently we floated in, dashing ourselves with the brine. We could see Eric threshing along with powerful strokes, unmindful of the salt in his wound, ducking his head to avoid the heat. Above us the fire roared like a forge; the foremast, a mere column of incandescence, toppled and collapsed, the sparks spouting upward like a display of fireworks and coming down about us in a rain of tiny hisses. Eric had reached the spot of white, and was working with the rope. Luckily there was less heat under that shelter. A moment more and he was struggling back with a burden. It did not seem that we drew the woman into the boat, so much as that the powerful swing of Eric's shoulders, the sheer impetus of his eagerness, forced her over the gunwale. Shifting to the stern, he heaved himself in with a single effort. Silently he lifted her from the bottom where we had laid her and, sitting in the stern beside me, drew her into his dripping arms, her wet ivory-white face upturned and rigid. So he sat until we were out of the intense heat and headed for the Rita, when, at my urging, but moving as though hypnotized or in a dream, he lowered Hulda's lifeless head and shoulders and tried to clear her lungs of water. "It may have been the exposure, though," I felt forced to say, after a time. With a speed born of the goodness of seamen's hearts, we approached the bark VOL. LXVIII.—23 where she floated, a colossal phoenix, in the flare. The falls were successfully hooked on, and the boat hoisted. With a sigh of attainment we found ourselves again on board. Eric carried Hulda aft, with the blood staining his wet shirt from a wound that must have opened painfully under the strain of her weight, and laid her on the cabin skylight. The scene of the next twenty minutes was memorable. At full length on the level window lay the plump-faced buxom Swedish girl, corpsy still and pale. Over her bent the bearded skipper, his sleeves rolled up, working as energetically as any surgeon. Beside him, crowding him, stooped the tow-headed viking husband, rubbing her hands and feet, fussing frantically, now and then emitting a faint moaning sound like the whine of an eager animal. About them crowded the group of watchers, and over the whole tableau played the baleful light of the gigantic fire. At last Eric's voice broke the silence in a yelp of joy. " Ya ! Ya! Dere she comes! More brandy, yoost a little! Ya! Ya!" '.v.Hulda's blue lips quivered, her white eyelids fluttered. She opened her eyes, closed them, opened them again on Eric's face. A faint smile touched her lips; she lifted a weak arm and placed it half round his neck, then sighed and closed her eyes. "There! Now take her below and put her to bed," smiled Captain Brand, rubbing his hands together. Carlota was not there during this. Chancing to go forward on the starboard side to oversee the setting of the clewed-up topgallants—for we were rapidly getting under way—I came on her walking stiffly up and down alone. She curled her lip. "He no good; he big baby," she sneered. " A steamer is bearing down off the starboard bow," Braley reported, meeting me at the break of the poop. "She has seen the fire, probably, and come up. If she should be a West India liner now— perhaps Captain Parrata and his men would rather go south " This proposal Captain Parrata and his men met with glee. We hove to again and signalled. The new arrival proved to be a fruiter bound for Haiti and JaSea Ginger maica, and her captain promptly consented to take the southerners south; so, while the vast illumination was waning on the port side and dawn was kindling on the starboard, the dusky master and crew clambered back into their boats. "You'd better get.in, too," I mumbled to Carlota as the boat was about to be lowered. Without a word, but as though suddenly deciding on her course, she climbed into the after boat and sat down resolutely, beside her Spanish husband. Amid jests and cheers the two boats took the water. Soon they were but a shadow of jet fading toward the long ebony bulk of the steamer, symbolical of the shadow that was vanishing from the two simple hearts in the cabin. IV O N the afternoon of the next day the breeze had reached its height. The hour was one of bulging sails, sparkling whitecaps, slanting decks. The ship seemed a live thing, fleeing relievedly from the horror of the night. "It's a great day for that young couple yonder," said Captain Brand, as we walked the after-deck together. At the port taffrail Eric was helping Ernie fish. The big Swede was pale from loss of blood, but looked happy as never before. Beside them in the sunshine Hulda was leaning convalescently back in a steamer-chair, brought from the cabin. " She told me the story this noon," he went on between puffs at his pipe. "After she tried to beat through the smoke and fire, and gave it up, she ran back to the fo'c'stle all choked and blinded, likely all panicky too. There she fell over the jib-sheet and struck her head on the bitts; doesn't know how long she lay stunned, but when she came to, the flames were almost on her. She unrove a rope—one of the head-sheets, likely— tied the end of it round under her arms, and let herself down onto the bobstays. There she recollected that the fire would soon cast off her line from above, so she stopped, gathered in the bight of the rope, and looped it over the bobstays. Then she dropped into the water and hauled the rope taut. Self-reliant as a man, these country-bred Scandinavian women. She thinks she must have fainted several times afterward, though, for whenever it was that Parrata's boat went round the bow looking for her, she didn't know it. When Eric reached her she was unconscious from the exhaustion pf trying to keep her head above the wash, and from exposure." "But why did she wait so long before trying to get aft?" He was silent for a long time. Eventually, " I might 'a' figured you'd ask that question," he mused, "and by Jove I'll answer it for you. Fact is—she set the fire. She fired the for'ard.cargo through the fo'c'stle hatch, which had been opened to air it out."_ At my astonishment he smiled gravely. "Made up her mind to bring us back to them," he explained. "Then she was afraid they'd suspect her of setting it, and waited too long; whole fo'c'stle-deck suddenly exploded in flame from the pressure of the fire below." For a time we continued our alternating walk in the same reflective silence as before. It was interrupted by a glad hullabaloo from Ernie. They had caught a fish. "Ya, pull it in," grinned Eric. We attained the rail in time to see a fine bonito—caught by trailing the hook on the surface, baited with a scrap of white canvas—come wriggling upward. But just as the boy was about to swing it gleefully in, it dropped off and splashed away. A scene of disappointment followed. "Waal, my lad," drawled the father, quizzically, " a bonito is one o' them pretty, lively, Spanish fishes that grabs and tussles, but don't hold on." "Too much ginger," I suggested. "Aye, that's it," he chuckled. "I prefer a good sober codfish, myself." We left them and strolled back to the weather side. Captain Brand was still smiling at his own wit. "Thar's yinyer and then again thar's yinyer," he finally muttered. "As the sculpin said to the polecat," I suggested, adopting his pet allegory. "As the sculpin said to the polecat," he agreed, and fell again to musing as he smoked.
Skin of the Chinese tiger. THE CAVE TIGER OF CHINA
By William Lord Smith
ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR wHE N I first learned the truth about the Chinese tigers, that they were all man-eaters and lived in caves, nothing could hold me at home. There was a picturesqueness in following a tiger into his den far below ground and meeting him face to face, which no other sport in the world offered. It was an opportunity for adventure not to be denied, and the desire to become acquainted with these cave-dwellers finally drove me to Amoy, in southern China, as the best port for entering the tiger country. A few days in Kulangzu—the small island near Amoy given over to white residents—put me on a good footing with the hospitable Europeans living there, and assisted by them I soon made all necessary arrangements. I engaged a remarkable Chinese hunter named Taikoff, who proved to be the key to the situation. Taikoff was brave, resourceful, patient. By an intimate knowledge of his countrymen and a fund of good humor he kept the hunters and coolies well in hand and roused their enthusiasm again and again when they began to tire of our continued hard luck and wished, to return home. By rare tact he soon won the favor of the headmen of the villages and chief priests in the monasteries, and with their aid smoothed my pathway through the country. Taikoff was "boy" (he was really fifty years old, but a boy in the East may be any age) and cook in the home of a resident Englishman and was loaned me for a month's trip —an example of the kindliness one finds throughout the East. There were tigers enough in the immediate neighborhood of Amoy. I was told that the townspeople frequently saw the smoke of fires built by the Chinese up-country to drive these animals from their villages and in a day's journey one might come across fresh tiger tracks. Our provisions were packed up at the hotel, somebody lent me a cot-bed, and with Taikoff and five coolies I sailed, one afternoon, across the narrow straits which separate Kulangzu from the mainland and 355 356 The Cave Tiger of China started briskly for the hunting-ground. The coolies, with their loads hung from the ends of pliant rods nicely balanced on one shoulder, stepped along at a swinging trot. The loads swung up and down in exact time with the gait and the perfect rhythm made work a pleasure. Everything was carried in this way from the heaviest packages to my fragile cameras, and if the weights did not balance, a stone or two in the right place squared the account. In two hours' walk we came to the small village of Ken-ai, where some famous Chinese hunters lived and a good base for exploring the coast country. The village, a collection of some twenty houses, was placed under a hill and typical of this part of China. The houses were well built of hewn stone, the only material available since the forests were cut down years ago, and were serviceable enough, but they were badly lighted and squalid with dirt and searching odors. As I passed along the filthy cobbled alleys, the drowsy smell of opium steamed out of many doorways. It saturated everything and told a sad story of Chinese dissipation. M y way was disputed by hens, ducks, pigs, and goats. Unwashed people watched me with idle curiosity, their clothes hanging in rags and their faces pinched and yellow from fever. The wretched conditions in the village were sharply contrasted by the view which greeted me at the end of the main street. Here in the foreground my eyes swept fields of beautiful white poppies in full blossom and waving rice-fields swimming in the spring floods behind their dams. An occasional. cherry-tree bursting into bloom colored the air with a generous pink. The fertile lowlands smiled back at me in peaceful plenty. But at the edge of the valleys, where the hills rose from the level, peace gave up its rule and confusion reigned. Along the slopes and ridges huge masses of rough granite were scattered about, sometimes gathered together in great mounds, sometimes standing alone as solitary sentinels. They were little changed since the ice age, when the glaciers, driven back by the heat, had been forced to open their cold grasp and drop these possessions in their northern retreat. These masses of gigantic rocks roofed in empty spaces, large and small, beneath their crushing weight, and it is in these deeply lying caverns that the cave tiger lives. The best caves for hunting and the only ones the men like to explore have but one opening, the same for entrance and exit. These openings lead through bottle-necked burrows to the caves below. To hunt the cave tiger you must crawl in on all fours through these winding tunnels, with rifle in hand and guided by the flash of torches carried by the hunters, one of whom goes ahead. You may worm yourself along through the tunnel in this manner ten, twenty, even fifty yards, into the hillside, your path so narrow at times that you are compelled to squeeze yourself between the rocks. At length you see a black space ahead. When this is lit up by the torches a cave opens into view, and then if lucky you will see a tiger crouched against the opposite rock wall within ten or fifteen feet, his white whiskers bristling in a snarl of rage as he blinks at the bright torches through narrowed eyes. If the tiger is at home your work is simple and you are not bothered by choice of action. Retreat is impossible and you have but one thing on hand: to kill the tiger. A religious festival was absorbing all the interests of Ken-ai on my arrival and the little temple of the village where guests usually put up was being used for joss pidgin, so I was quartered in an ordinary house. Taikoff promptly engaged seven hunters and, though at first sight they appeared to be only good-natured and unenthusiastic, they were better conditioned than their comrades and the older ones bore a reputation for skill and bravery. Each man was equipped with a spear and torch. The spear is armed with three strong iron prongs, the outer points being sixteen inches apart. This trident is fitted firmly on the end of a stout pole three feet long. The torch, which is even a greater protection than the spear, is made from a slender piece of bamboo longer than the spear, so that the lighted end projects well beyond the trident when the torch and spear are held together in the hands of a hunter. The smaller end of the bamboo shoot is gashed with a knife and old rags woven in and out among the splinters. When this wad is soaked with linseed-oil it is ready for the match. Five of these torches light up a cave sufficiently well for shooting, and with spears make a The Cave Tiger of China formidable barrier, in the hands of determined men, which the tiger will seldom charge unless wounded. Even so, you must always reckon with one danger. When you shoot, the concussion often snuffs out the torches, and if your tiger is still alive, or his mate happens to be in the thing to me. The idea that I was unlucky so filled their minds that it required the full swing of Taikoff's persuasive tongue to hold our party together. We tried country still farther from the coast and were again unsuccessful, but our blood was up by this time and each The coolies, with their loads hung from the ends of pliant rods nicely balanced on one shoulder, stepped along at a swinging trot.—Page 356. cave with him, the situation may become serious. Fighting by feel alone in a con• fined space is not good hunting. Ken-ai was suffering from a tiger famine at the time of our visit, and after a few uneventful days there we tried fresh fields. News was brought to us from time to time and we constantly changed our base, chasing rumors about the country. The information was often proved true by fresh footprints near well-known caves, but our goats were never killed and the tigers always decamped the very night we came to a village in the neighborhood of a cave they frequented. This happened so often that the hunters became discouraged. They said it was fate—the tigers avoided me—"Mas-kee." What great matter whether I killed a tiger or not? Why did I not go home? They could not realize that just then a tiger meant every-fresh disappointment drove us on the harder. Already we were beyond the region known to Taikoff and the hunters. The country was wilder, the people less friendly. Warfare was in progress between two small villages, and we could hear the guns and we saw some of the skirmishers. Tigers were plentiful if one could believe half we heard. "Twenty pieces man have been killed here in three years." One word came up repeatedly in answer to our questions—Pu-lau-kuo: monastery—that was the place we ought to try. According to the talk, it was the breeding-place of all these pests. As we came nearer Pu-lau-kuo we found the village streets deserted after dark, a sure sign of tigers, and were still further encouraged when we were shown a field where a man stealing sweet potatoes after dark a few days before had been killed by The Cave Tiger of China a tiger. We pushed on and after a tiring, hot day learned we were within a few hours of our goal. We fell in with the headman of the country, who was friendly, and followed him into a land determined by nature for the home of tigers. Rock ridges cropped out of the ground on every throats with the satisfying juice, we asked the people of the monastery about the tiger situation. For answer they pointed to a hill of towering rocks a quarter of a mile to the west and said that underneath this mass was a famous cave much frequented by tigers. M y men immediately The houses were well built of hewn stone.—Page 356. hand, terminating often in stone shafts which leaned over as if listening to our approach. It was little wonder the cave-dwellers felt secure in these fastnesses. Our path wound always upward toward the sunset, and in a long line we silently followed our guide into the very heart of the tiger land. The brown sides and stained tiled roof of the monastery so painted it into the natural surroundings that we were within stone's throw when it came into view, and though it was a wretched hovel we were glad to get to any resting-place. Hot, tired, and thirsty, we sat about on the ground and sucked delicious stalks of sugar-cane grown on the flats far below. While we rested and cooled our parched picketed two goats near the cave and returned to the monastery, where we all sat down together, every eye fastened on the hill. If a tiger were living there, the bleating of the goats might draw him out before dark. Half an hour passed and the hill was beginning to fade into an overcast sky, when the hunters sprang excitedly to their feet, exclaiming that they saw a tiger lying on a rock above one of the goats. I could not make the animal out and while I was stalking his position he disappeared. It was now past the time for accurate shooting and, not wishing to spoil our chances for the next day, we beat a retreat and packed ourselves away in the small building for the night. The Cave Tiger of China In the morning we found the two goats lying dead near the crest of the hill. It was clear they had been killed the previous evening, but finding them did not help us in the least, for a heavy rain which came on after midnight had washed away all tracks. The hunters believed the tiger long bounds; forty feet nearer and there would have been a fight, with heavy odds on the tiger. Among the big boulders I would have had barely time for one snap shot at the infuriated beast flying at me. We took up the trail which led us down the slope, but there was little earth to hold These masses of gigantic rocks roofed in empty spaces, large and small . . . and it is in these deeply lying caverns that the cave tiger lives.—Page 356. was in the main cave, but they first looked into all the likely hiding-places among the outlying rocks to eliminate every other possibility. With spear and lighted torch they stole in crouching line through the broken labyrinths, while Taikoff and I, perched on the top of a boulder, covered a good portion of the scene with our rifles. While waiting with little expectation I was startled by the shout of "Tiger!" from the slope above, and hunters' arms appeared waving me to the right. The tiger was escaping. I ran through passages and over boulders to cut him off. He easily distanced me, however, and though he dashed by within forty feet, the intervening boulders hid him completely from my view. I was serious for a moment as I looked at the widely spread claw marks where he had gripped the earth in his tne tracks and very soon all traces of these ceased. Our tiger was evidently at large and the hunters worked persistently to find him, until a heavy shower came on, which stopped the hunt. The following night another tiger came to our hill. He killed a goat we had tied out, and no doubt would have settled down for some time, had we not thoroughly torched the likely caves and tunnels on the previous day. The suspicious smell of burnt oil and rags drove him away. The deeply printed pugs led toward our temple, passed close by it, and entirely disappeared on a rocky hill beyond. This brought us to a halt. The hunters scattered right and left, searching in vain for the slightest trail. We moved slowly forward and inside of half a mile came to the abrupt edge of a The Chinese from a near-by village had heard of our hunt and had flocked out to enjoy themselves.—Page 362. ravine which cut through the rolling country at right angles to our line of march. The ravine was twenty-five feet deep; its floor was covered with big boulders and the sides wrenched apart into cracks and caves. It was lonely and desolate enough to suit the most particular tiger. The hunters explored the ravine while I paced the edge above, and it could not have been more than ten minutes when a voice suddenly shot up at me, "Bi g tiger have got! Come!" I climbed quickly down and joined Taikoff and the hunters by a large-mouthed tunnel which made back into the rock wall. A ragged overhanging shelf closed us in above and huge fragments of rock and dirt which had split away from the main mass and fallen a few feet back from'the base of the cliff hemmed us in on the back and sides. The daylight filtered in doubtfully through chinks in the debris, and the light of the torches travelled up the tunnel, flaring back from its rough sides and striking forward until lost in the solid darkness. The place was damp, evil-looking, and gloomy as a tomb. One smelt danger in the air coming from the cave's mouth. But the hunters were 360 used to such places and were not outwardly affected. On the contrary, they were transformed into new people and were all eagerness for the attack. Taikoff stood coolly by and explained. On discovering the tunnel the men had made their way far inside to a cave and there their torches lit up an inspiring sight:. a big tiger was crouched down at the end of the cave and scattered about in front of him were three human skulls and a pile of bones. The cave seemed absolutely tight except the tunnel entrance and Taikoff said to me: "The tiger have very fear; he savvee he allee samee dead." I hoped he was right, but was not so positive. Taikoff continued: "Must be make secure—hunters get bushes—make line of fire inside." The men left me and their soft footfalls quickly died away in the ravine. I retreated a little from the opening to gain freer play with my rifle. I confess I did not like the position of sentinel, with my back against a wall of fallen debris, and the mouth of the tunnel staring me in the face; but I thought I could probably count on one thing in my favor. Should The Cave Tiger of China the tiger dash out of the tunnel, his feline caution might hold him still for one second on seeing me, and that second was mine. The silence and gloom made the danger oppressive. Time seemed held in between the rock walls, so slowly did it pass through the solitude. From the continued silence, however, I soon felt that anticipation was likely to be my only reward. The hunters returned and I followed them into the tunnel. I was ten feet inside when a hunter (Mantella) came running out toward me shouting, "Tiger gone!" We had lost our tiger; I could not imagine how. The hunters said he had escaped through an impossibly narrow crack in the rocks and was somewhere in the open country outside. Rifle in hand, I climbed out of the ravine and ran along the tiger's line back toward the monastery. In a few minutes I reached the top of a ridge and there in front of me, seventy-five yards away, stood the tiger! For a second he held me fascinated. He was splendid—his big bulk tense in anger; his deep flanks scarcely moving under their black stripes; his long tail switching with indecision. With snarling mouth he challenged me and measured his chances. The little rifle slipped firmly against my shoulder and I pulled the trigger. No explosion followed. A t that instant the tiger felt the odds too great and made away to my left. Again and again I pulled the trigger with no result. A glance at the breech showed the safety bolt was locked! I pushed back the bolt and caught the tiger with the sights again as he galloped along a rocky ridge one hundred and fifty yards away. Two shots spat sharply on the rocks close to him; the third chipped the skin of a hind leg and brought out a sharp roar; but he continued bounding along out of sight in a hesitating way as if half a mind to turn back and fight. Mantella and I followed at full speed, making straight for the hill where the tiger had killed the goat. Running on past the monastery, we came to a cupped-out piece of very wet ground covered with sod and picked up the tracks bedded deep in the soft earth, the claw-marks showing distinctly where the tiger had bounded The result of the shot was instantaneous. . . . Wit h one convulsive shudder he lay still.—Page 363. 362 The Cave Tiger of China with tremendous strides up an incline to reach his shelter of the night before. We approached the stronghold with great care, for here, below the level of the ground, the rocks made a gigantic honeycomb in which our tiger lay in wait. Our party had now reassembled, but all the ingenuity and craft of the hunters were useless. There was but one thing to do: to wait quietly and keep the tiger guessing until he should make a move and put us in touch. At this moment all our plans were upset by an unforeseen invasion. The Chinese from a near-by village had heard of our hunt and had nocked out to enjoy themselves. Their enjoyment consisted chiefly in interfering with the hunt and in bothering me. In both they succeeded to exasperation. They perched themselves in squads on the top of the highest boulders and began talking together and calling to their friends at a distance. I do not know whether they saw the tiger or not, but they shouted constantly in howling chorus: "Hor li! Hor li! The tiger is here! The tiger is coming!'' Others, hearing the cry, ran to their lucky comrades, leaping from rock to rock. The whole place was in movement and uproar. I sat down powerless, discouraged. It was almost humorous, but I could not see it then. While the upper air was full of discordant cries, the hunters apathetic, Taikoff wrapt in calm, I mad to desperation— the situation changed in a second. One of my hunters cried " Tiger," and through a horizontal cleft of rock in front I caught sight of a flat head, with bristling whiskers, deep down below the surface debris, within twenty feet. It vanished instantly. The little band remained rigid, all eyes concentrated over the steady spear-points on the opening. Suddenly, with a shattering roar that terrified all for an instant, the tiger leaped from below like a demon unchained. It was grand! He could see his enemies at last, and came on like a thunderbolt. It seemed incredible that men without firearms could stand firm under such a charge, but they knew if the tiger escaped into the open he would kill right and left, and in desperation they sprang before me into the very mouth of danger. The sharp roars of the tiger clashed with the cries of the hunters who, fighting for their lives, drove their tridents with smashing force into his face. It was hand-to-hand work; claws and teeth against iron tines. The glory of the fight was roused in man and the beast; primitive instincts in each lashed to a blind fury. And it was good to be present at this fight which belonged to the caveman's age, when man and beast measured their strength at quarters so close they could feel each other's breath. For a moment the result hung in the balance, but even the tiger's volcanic fury could not withstand the odds. The heavy tines cut his face and broke his teeth; he lost his footing and drew back into the cave. The hunters went wild with excitement. Shouting, and gesticulating with their spears, they showed how they had driven their strokes home and beat the tiger back. When we had cooled off, the men sat about passively and refused absolutely to hunt any more. They said the tiger was mad and the fact admitted of no discussion. All depended on Taikoff. Could his persuasive tongue whip into control the quivering nerves of the men and dam up their energy which was running out like water? Froglike in posture and face, he sat a little apart, as if he had no thought or care in the world. There was a faith about the man that claimed my respect as .1 watched him during the trying moments that followed. He did not fail me. The condition was purely psychical. Taikoff's strong personality, centred on cupidity, drew to itself the shattered forces of the hunters and made him dominant. When the right moment came he talked in an even voice of command. Exactly how he managed it I never knew, but in twenty minutes the men lit their torches and let themselves down into the cave. Mantella alone held back. Better than his comrades in former days, he now lost his nerve, and I could not blame him for refusing to crawl into these tunnels, running aimlessly in all directions," where any turn might hold the infuriated beast. Taikoff and I made down-hill for a big rock stranded by itself, where the debris trailed off into the open country and which commanded an extensive view. Circling the cliffs, we kept a sharp lookout, knowing the tiger, maddened by wounds and defeat, might charge us at When I stood before the beautiful beast the many discouragements were forgotten. any moment. M y eyes, busy elsewhere, did not notice the rough ground ahead, and I slipped on a rolling stone. I could not recover my balance, the ligaments of the ankle snapped, and I came down with a bad sprain. This was the last straw! We had worked hard for a month and never come to shot, and now I would be laid up for ten days. At such a time you find out what is in the back of your head. The accident put me in a frightful rage with fate. I was a mere brute, on a level with the tiger. Then I became cool as ice on the outside and nothing bothered me any more as I crawled upon the boulder. There is no surer weapon to carry death than controlled rage, and I held the destiny of everything in sight within my grasp. M y confidence in the result was absolute, given a fraction of a chance. In the meantime the hunt was going on below ground—the tiger sneaking ahead of his pursuers, who crept slowly after him with their torches blazing the way through the maze. Something moving in a narrow fissure caught my eye. The movement became a flame of color, and for an instant the bright orange coat of the tiger flashed back at me between the black bars on his sides. He was surely on the move and, with rifle nicely balanced in my hands, I waited. A few noiseless seconds followed; then, with a rasping roar, the tiger burst into view near the crest of the hill antl bounded up the slope. I laid on the sights as the length of his body came into line, and fired. The result of the shot was instantaneous. Struck in the back of the head, he fell in a heap and, with one convulsive shudder, lay still. With nerves strung to the breaking-point, I did not realize my success until a hearty handshake from Taikoff brought me to myself. I hobbled up the steep slope, and, when I stood before the beautiful beast, the thousands of miles travelled, the many discouragements, all were forgotten in this moment of victory. Cave hunting can be summed up best in the pidgin English of Taikoff. "When man catchy wifey he no more hunt tiger so fashion.," 363 THE TECHNIOUE OF LYING AWAKE
By Mrs. Winfield Scott Moody
WISE physician once defined insomnia as nothing but sleeplessness plus worry, thus robbing the idea, to begin with, of the worst of its terrors. For once to realize that worry is not only a part of this nightly tragedy, but literally the plus part, is to shake the mischief out of it as readily as the prestidigitator shakes rabbits out of his handkerchief. Perhaps, too, to carry on the figure, we may concede that to do this as readily and successfully as the conjurer does demands a technical skill which, like his, must be learned. It is in the hope of offering to others some suggestions for acquiring the technique of lying awake successfully that I am gathering together in this paper the results of my own extended and most unenviable experience. I believe that the first step is the elimination of the mental distress that almost always attends upon sleeplessness. This is of a peculiarly poignant kind and often amounts to actual despair, rooted in a firm belief that much loss of sleep is bound to result in a mental and physical breakdown. There is no warrant whatever for this fear. One who, I believe, has put the matter to an ultimate test, is able to be quite certain that a nightly average of four hours' sleep, supplemented by four hours of real rest, is sufficient not only for fairly comfortable living but that it will also leave a margin for a slow gain in health. It is, to be sure, not affluence— one might easily wish to have more; but, like a narrow income, it can be made to cover one's needs if one is willing to be prudent. And there are few, if any, sleepless persons, even among the most afflicted, who get less than this amount of sleep in twenty-four hours, though it is common enough to find many who are quite honestly sure they do not. No testimony should be more implicitly distrusted than that of the sleepless. Some of us sleep more than we think we do, and some of us lend ourselves to a loose ex364 aggeration of speech simply because we are too tired to knit up our mental processes into more exact form, or because the sleepless person subconsciously always craves interest and pity for his condition. This is probably more innocent than appears on the surface; because the desire for sleep, like the desire for food and drink, is so primitive, so compelling, that it reduces the victim of it to the most childish emotions and allows him to indulge in a self-concern and self-pity of which he would be heartily ashamed in a normal state. To go back to the matter of a sufficiency of sleep, I believe that nature herself takes a hand in the matter, as if she looks upon the average of four hours as the irreducible minimum and leaves it to us to give her the help she needs for the gain in health of which I have spoken. The secret of this helpfulness lies in acquiring the technique of lying awake, quietly, calmly, restfully, with fear and worry eliminated, realizing deeply that it is these disturbing emotions, and not lack of sleep, which is depleting the "sum of our substance." To do this successfully requires a certain amount of psychic reeducation, in which we shall need to call up all our reserves, not only of mental equipment but of spiritual graces as well. To accomplish it one must have courage, resolution, patience, and faith. We sleepless are the ones in whom these virtues have long been neglected; for those who were happily endowed with them at birth, or who have acquired them in the discipline of early life, are never to be found among the disinherited of the kingdom of sleep. To admonish a sleepless person to hold a serene temper and an exhaustless patience, at four o'clock in the morning of a white night, does indeed seem a counsel of perfection. Men have achieved heaven, no doubt, on less than this. And yet there is no other way. It is like boxing—if one loses the finest edge of his temper, he loses his advantage. Here, then, is a great and gallant game, The Techniquein which we may not only exercise such small virtues as we have, but may also add to the sum of them, if we are so thriftily disposed as to let no opportunity go to waste of getting the most out of a rather bad bargain. The surest method of winning it is the simplest—to turn squarely about on our old conception of sleeplessness as a tragedy of deprivation, and think of it simply as "lying awake," as an adventure unsought and somewhat unpleasant, to be sure, but inescapable; therefore to be taken as philosophically, even as negligently, as possible. Particularly the latter, for there is no method of tolerating sleeplessness, and finally of routing it, so effective as entire indifference. Sleep is like happiness; it comes quickest to those who do not catch anxiously at its skirts. Contrary to the opinion of most doctors, who tell us to go to bed expecting to sleep, I cultivate a nonchalant acceptance of the fact that I shall probably not get enough sleep to satisfy me, because I find that the desire to fulfil a preconceived expectation of sleep arouses too great an interest in the situation, and I therefore lie awake in order to see if I am going to go to sleep ! The preparations for one's physical comfort in lying awake successfully are naturally a matter largely of personal prepossession. But some necessary details may be mentioned—the cool room, the comfortable bed with a reading-lamp at its head, and on an adjacent table within easy reach, some light food such as one prefers, a few books, tobacco, if one is self-indulgently accustomed to this for solace or diversion, and an electric warming-pad, if possible, for sleepless people chill easily. No hypnotics and no timepiece of any kind. No wise and careful physician prescribes hypnotics for those who habitually lie awake, for even the least harmful ones are habit-forming psychically, if not physically, and the mere presence of a means of relief from a difficult situation often proves a temptation too strong to be overcome at a time when one's mental and moral resistance is at its lowest. As for the timepiece, that too has dangers. Nothing is easier than for the subconscious mind to set up habits of waking one at a fixed time, or of postponing sleep until a definitely known hour. Any refer of Lying Awake ence to the passing of time helps to fix this unpleasant habit. To count the hours as they slip by, carrying with them the chances for the sleep one needs against the tasks of the coming day, contributes also to the mental distress one wishes most to avoid. There is an immense restfulness to be gained by voluntarily slipping the leash of time as one seeks one's bed, and sending the mind out to dwell, as it were, in eternity. A final bit of preparation which some persons have found very helpful is to bind the eyelids down lightly with silk pads to prevent the stark staring of open eyes, and to give them the light pressure which often soothes the nerves. If one is troubled by insistent noises, or even with the fear of them, one may take refuge in the classic ingenuity of the crafty Ulysses and put a small bit of wax in the ears, the best for the purpose being the ordinary paraffin used by housewives to cover their jams. It softens readily at the temperature of the closed hand and conforms perfectly to the convolutions of the ear. I am assured that it can in no way injure the hearing; and thus to be able to "go into the silence" at one's will is an inestimable boon to the nervous person, who often finds his sense of hearing acutely sharpened. "An d so," as our friend Pepys has it, " to bed." It were well if we could speak the words as casually as he. The ideal thing, of course, is to throw oneself at night upon the bosom of sleep with a quiet body and a confident, care-free mind, but many of us find that the mere act of inviting repose by lying down seems to beget a restlessness that defies it. Since the first step in the technique of rest is the ease of a relaxed body, one must give early attention to getting it. The only way of doing this is by mental control, treating the restless body as one would an unruly child. Sometimes direct command is effective. To say to one's rebellious body quietly, with authority, over and over, "I forbid you to disturb me," " I will not let you interfere with my comfort," often acts with the magic of an exorcism. It is difficult to believe how effective this can be until one has tried it. Again, filling the mind with pictured suggestions of relaxation and repose will 366 The Techniquebest bring about that state. There are many such pictures in my gallery. I once saw a beautiful painting by Arthur Davies called "Sleep"—figures of women exquisitely resting in a meadow starred with flowers. By recalling each figure and line of this poem of relaxation, filling my mind with its spirit of repose, I have sometimes loosened the tense muscles and nerves and brought deep quiet both to mind and body. A striking bit of physical relaxation which I once saw at a play often comes serviceably back to me. The actress, in an emotional crisis, dropped suddenly, with subtle art, at full length at the top of a long, wide stairway, and rolled slowly, thudding softly down each padded step to the bottom of the flight. This feat I rehearse over and over—the gentle release of the body, the involuntary sidewise sway and the quiet drop from step to step, as the figure moves slowly downward—until I am as relaxed as the actress was. Any vivid picture of relaxa, tion will answer as well as these less commonplace ones. A tired child lying asleep on its mother's shoulder, its head hanging heavily over its resting-place, the limp body adding weight to her arms as she lifts it; the house-cat asleep beside the fire, or even a child's doll thrown carelessly on the nursery floor in a huddled disarray of arms and legs—any of these, vividly recalled, will bring about the desired result. Usually. But there will still be times, particularly at the start, when neither command nor suggestion will suffice to overcome these devils of unease. Then and only then it is well to get up and move slowly, slowly about the room, as heavily as possible, following this with some light gymnastics, again slowly, with deep breathing, and once more lying down to the task of keeping perfectly still. The final attainment of complete bodily rest is not so difficult as it may seem. For one's nerves are more biddable than is commonly believed, and respond with increasing obedience as one learns to command them. As I have said, they behave exactly like naughty children, taking every advantage that is offered them but always obeying the note of authority. Very soon the muscular relaxation will come of itself, with the lying posture, without effort or of Lying A Wake suggestion, if the mind be kept free from disturbing emotions. The mind, ay, there's the rub ! For it is the unquiet mind that has been the real culprit from the start, and this must be brought back to normal methods of functioning. One must learn carefully to shepherd one's thoughts so that all unwelcome visitors may be wholly shut out. M y own experience leads me to believe that the best method of inhibiting nighttime obsessions is to pick up some mildly diverting mental game for the mind to busy itself upon—a game that is simple enough to need little mental exertion and yet has sufficient interest to hold the attention from more exigent matters. To illustrate: for some time one of my favorite diversions was to recount in alphabetical order the names of the cities or towns in my native State, thus: Akron, Bucyrus, Chillicothe. When I had quite completed the list (and I may add that I did complete it, Ohio being blest with Xenia, Youngstown, and Zanesville!) I turned my attention to the names of women and men. The possibilities of this game are many, and occasionally I found more diversion than was helpful to the mental tranquillity I was trying to cultivate. Think of the rapture of discovering such names as Wilhelmina Wiggles-worth and Juanita Jellaby! I began with the simplest method of following the alphabet downward with the names of women; after that, with the names of men. Then I made a point of selecting the longest possible given name, and after I had completed this list, I added a long family name beginning with the same letter. That was how I came to make the joyful acquaintance of WilhelminaWigglesworth and Juanita Jellaby. This game was most helpful during the early stages of my self-discipline, when my mind was a whirl of ungoverned emotions and unwelcome thoughts; because it was pleasantly interesting without being in any way taxing, and moreover it kept the mind constantly moving—a great help when the disturbing force is a special worry or problem to which the mind tenaciously clings, returning over and over to gnaw at it as a dog does a bone. At such times as this, also, I found a book a most friendly refuge. To pull up The Technique of Lying Awake the reading-lamp and pick up a book, to adjust the pillows comfortably, perhaps to nibble at a biscuit and drink a glass of milk, these often bring a vague sense of comfort and thankfulness (as if one had found an escape from a horrible dream) which the diversion of the book sometimes deepens into the desired tranquillity of mind. But the book must be carefully chosen. Clearly this is neither the time nor the place for the new detective story, for the book of a thousand thrills, or even for the newest work of genius if one's interest or admiration is thereby too greatly captured. Rather, the old and well-loved leisurely novel, the thumbed book of poetry, the calm and uplifting counsel of the early philosophers, all these come trippingly to the pen as I write, and I sincerely recommend them—to anybody else. But for myself, for diversion without excitement, for ease of mind without ennui, for downright happiness in the dead of night, give me the huge mailorder catalogues with their beguiling pictures and inexhaustible lists of things offered for sale, from plumbing to playing-cards, from voiles to viaticums; give me the record catalogue of the phonograph-makers, rich in biographic and photographic interest and fruitful in musical recollections, or even let me sit with "those who warm themselves at the Social Register !" Nothing like these to produce in my mind an idle, speculative habit and pry loose the demon's grip of an obsessing thought! There are other quite artless and simple methods of diverting one's mind—what miles of imagined crochet have I not accomplished, choosing the most intricate stitches and following closely each movement of the needle; how many half-forgotten songs of my childhood and youth have I recaptured, both words and music, with no sense of mental effort but only a happy recognition! And then there is the last device of all, and one most magical to relieve the whirling of a hard-pressed and over-active brain—the one that I call "taking the mind apart." If you have ever noticed how, when one is slipping easily and naturally into the outer chambers of sleep, one becomes aware of disjointed fragments of thought, just brushing the understanding as they flit, you will see how it is done—constantly to break up the train of thought into illogical snatches, the more whimsical and insignificant the better. Thus: " I saw a pink hat." "Di d you go to the circus?" "What did he say?" "Peter Piper picked a peck." And so, carried on an irresistible stream of irresponsible nonsense, an anxious and over-tired brain will often drift out sleepward without knowing it. But what if we do not? What if we still find the "dusky hours" unfriendly to sleep and its comforting presence afar off? Believe this: if we have learned these lessons of courage and resolution and patience, we have a right to the faith that no real harm is done to the body. If we can lie quietly and content till sleep does come, that rest will be half as refreshing as sleep itself. And, indeed, if one is resolute to have it so, these hours need not be dreary and barren of rewards. They may even be made to seem occasionally a green oasis in the somewhat arid desert of daily living, a choice space in which to count over one's treasures, and perhaps to find new ones. What precious recollections of things seen and heard at early dawn my mind holds and cherishes ! Such riches of sunrise—such unbelievably beautiful sights have I looked upon, as the panorama of the stars slid slowly away from the rising sun, leaving only the "white fire" of Venus quite undimmed, even though she "flamed in the forehead of the morning sky." And I have listened to the tremulous troubles of the young quails learning to whistle, as they stuttered and stumbled over that last tremendous note. "Bob White," would sound the parents' crisp call. "Bob, bob, bob," the young one would stammer, and then break down; but, in no wise daunted, pick it up again; and surely it was worth a whole night's sleep just to feel the triumph as there came, at last, the fumbled, reedy, childish, but completed call, "Bob bob White." The young roosters, taking their morning lesson in crowing in my neighbor's poultry-yard, were no less worth while. Sometimes they grew very discouraged and cross, and their tones whimpered and Guide-Posts and Camp-Fires snarled like tired children, or broke on their big high note like the voice of a growing boy. And then, as their voices grew stronger, and they finally caught the trick of managing them, how confidently, how superbly, they threw out that last long parabola of sound, exactly as Caruso tosses the final triumphant note of "Celeste A'ida" up to the applauding top gallery, at the opera! "Far away and long ago" I lay awake in Florence—gladly too, I,remember, because I knew that by and by I should hear the beautiful blue-and-gold officers swinging up the Via Montebello on their way to their quarters, their clear tenor voices ringing in the song of youth and love, "Toujours amour, amour toujours." And if, in the early morning I still lay sleepless, I was comforted by the lark-like soprano of the baker's boy bringing the breakfast rolls, and singing his mattinata "Ave Maria, stella maris." But of all the privileges of the sleepless, the one most to be cherished is that of meditation and prayer. Prayer is the most tranquillizing and restful experience the mind can practise or the soul can know. To one who has learned that .sweet surrender of the soul, the still spaces of the night offer an effectual approach to God which no hour of the day can give. It is then that our deepest aspirations stir upward toward him who hath made us, and then, too, comes down, with nothing to turn it aside, the answering happy assurance of the presence of God in fullest measure. When the soul is at rest the body is calmed and refreshed as by an inner fountain of peace, and the nights, though wakeful, can never be so long or so weary as to do the body harm. For one learns at last how true for oneself also is St. Augustine's cry: "Thou hast framed us for Thyself, and unquiet is the heart until it rests in Thee." GUIDE POSTS AND CAM P FIRES BY HENRY VAN DYKE JAPONICA [THE NINTH OF TWELVE PAPERS] tHE plan was to take Paula to Japan, in fulfilment of a promise I made her when she was a little tiny daughter; to have a brief, glorious vacation there, with some collateral trout-fishing; and then to come home and write a luminous, comprehensive, conclusive monograph on the Japanese Problem. This well-laid plan went " a-gley." The first part of the programme rolled off splendidly. But now I come to the second part and find it can't be done. I know too much and too little. Japan is no longer a mere name to me: it is a real country, a wonderful land, a great nation. Its very simplicity makes it hard to comprehend and explain. The Far Eastern Question is too large to be solved by an anthropological dogma, or settled by a snappy phrase. "The Yellow Peril" is an invention worthy of the yellow press. The writers who deal with this nightmare kind of stuff, like Houston Chamberlain and Karl Pearson and the rest, are intellectual neurotics, very jumpy and with a subconscious homicidal tendency. You would not trust them to run a mowing-machine or a trading-schooner. Rudyard Kipling was right in saying, " Oh, East is East, and West is West"; but was he right (except by metrics), in adding, " And never the twain shall meet"? In fact they have met already. The temporal reduction of the spatial globe, the commercial ambition of the West, the overflow of the crowded populations of the East, have already brought them Guide-Posts and Camp-Fires together on a long line of contacts. The question now is how shall they live and work together so as to promote the welfare and true happiness of the world. This is not a question to be decided offhand, even by the youngest and most cocksure of anthropologists. - It must be worked out slowly, with patient goodwill, and careful- application of old, general, well-tried principles of reason and justice. Solvitur ambulando. > • < • So I have joyfully jettisoned the idea of that convincing monograph on the Japanese Problem. Sitting here at the wide window of my little bungalow on the Maine coast, looking out over fir-clad islands, blue sea, and 1 mountain-shores (which remind me vividly of Japan), I shall only try to sketch a few memories of our journey in that delectable island, The title of the rambling paper is Japonica, which means, "things of or pertaining to Japan." TOKYO IN THE RAIN Coming into Yokohama in one of the fine Toyo Kisen ships, on a gray dripping day, we saw little to interest us, except the home-coming joy of our Japanese fellow passengers, children and all. We wondered why they should love such a wet, drab country. Tokyo did not enlighten us. It is big without grandeur: a wide-spread, flat, confused city, with interesting and even picturesque spots in it, art treasures hidden in museums and private, houses, some fifteen hundred Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines a few of which are noteworthy, a hundred and twenty-five Christian churches, and many gardens lovely even in the rain. The warm hospitality of the accomplished American Ambassador, the Japanese Foreign Minister, the cordial missionaries of the great Methodist schools at Aoyama Gakuin, Doctor and Mrs. Corell of the Episcopal Church, and many other friends old and new; the comfort of the Imperial Hotel and the intelligent and informing conversation of its manager Mr . Hayashi, whom I had known years ago as a student in New York; the amusement of an expedition through the crowded, many-colored street called the Ginza; the pathetic interest of a visit to the huge shabby-splendid tem-VOL. LXVIII.—24 pie of Asakusa Kwannon, most popular of city fanes—these were consolations and entertainments for which we were grateful. But they did not quite lift us out of the depression of a rainy week in Tokyo. The air was dead, streets mud, cherry-blossoms fallen. So we determined to cut loose from the capital and go up to Nikko, weather permitting or not. We went in company with a few other Americans, among whom were Mr . Benjamin Strong of the Federal Reserve Bank, and Mr. Thomas W. Lamont, who had come to the Orient to promote the cooperation of Japan in the consortium with Great Britain, France, and the United States for a loan to struggling China. He succeeded. I have an impression that the work of men like these, quiet, friendly, observant, does more for good Americo-Japanese relations, than the official joyrides in which the visitors see what is arranged for them, and spend much time in exchanging compliments through an interpreter at public banquets. RED TEMPLES AND TALL TREES Five hours on a comfortable railway brought us northward through a coastal plain of small square fields of rice and wheat, barley and millet, rape, radishes, onions, and taro, all carefully brought up by hand; then eastward, through a country of rising foot-hills with horizontal villages and farmhouses tucked away among the trees and every inch of valley-bottom cultivated to the limit; and so at last, through copses of cherry and maple and pine, splashed with rose-pink of wild azaleas, to the famous avenue of tall Cryptomeria Japonica leading up to the scarlet shrines of Nikko. It is a small mountain town, whose name means " sunny splendor," but whose glory is nested in coverts of evergreen shade. The red-lacquered bridge that springs with a delicate, effortless curve across the rushing Daiya-gawa at the upper end of the village, is too sacred for common use. Only Imperial Envoys and High Priests and Holy Pilgrimages twice a year may tread it. But they say that bold village boys on dark nights climb the secluding gates and scamper swiftly over the forbidden arch. The temples are all on the north side of Guide-Posts and Camp-Fires the stream; terraced on the steep hillside that rises toward the snow-capped range of Nantai-san: embowered in a sacred grove more majestic than Dodona. The stately sugi, sisters to the giant sequoia of California, are the pillars of the greeD roof. Russet-trunked hinoki, with cypress-like foliage, and plumy retinosporas, are scattered through the forest. In the more open spaces are budding maples and birches. In the court-yards double-cherries are in radiant bloom. Far and wide the ground is spread with soft moss and feathery ferns. Amid all this natural splendor, so tranquil and so rich, the temples stand on their gray stone terraces, adorned with opulence of art and man's device. The prevailing color is a deep Indian red. But there is not a hue of the rainbow that is not lavished somewhere on carved rafter or columned gateway, pierced screen or panelled ceiling, treasure-house, baldachin, drum-tower or bell-tower. The spirit of the grotesque runs riot in the portrayal of unknown animals and supernatural "beings. But realism has its turn in graphic portraits of familiar birds and beasts, like Sakai's twelve hawks, and the "sleeping cat" of Hidari Jingoro, which makes you drowsy to look at it. Nothing " towers " at Nikko, except the trees and the one stately vermeil pagoda. The temples are more broad than lofty. Their green-bronze roofs, curving gently outward, project in wide eaves. Their doors and beams and ridge-poles are adorned with bosses, rosettes, and hinges of gold or gleaming black metal. They have the effect of immense jewel-boxes, covered with decoration and crammed with treasures. God made the forest. Then man said, "Let us see what I can do." So he made the shrines. They are in effect the mausolea of two famous Japanese warriors and rulers. The eastern and more elaborate group is dedicated to Ieyasu, the first Shogun of the Tokugawa clan, a great general, mighty hunter, and patron of the fine arts. He pacified Japan by killing his enemies in 1600, and began that long regime of seclusion and comparative tranquillity which lasted until the downfall of the Shogunate in 1867. The western group belongs to Iemitsu, his grandson, and is considered less important. To us it seemed no less attractive, perhaps because we went there on a sunshine day, when the double-cherries were in glory around the old Futa-ara shrine, and the clear mountain rivulets were sparkling through the temple compound and overflowing the granite water-basins in thin sheets like liquid glass. Three days we spent in roaming up and down these terraces, through rain and shine; and all the time thousands of Japanese men, women, and children, pilgrims or excursionists, were coming and going, gazing and wondering, listening devoutly to the discourse of their guides. The holy of holies of the Ieyasu temples was opened to us by special permit from the Abbot. It was so rich that I can't remember much of it. But I remember that outside the Honden was a little pavilion tenanted by an old-maidenish priestess, very small and dainty in crimson kirtle and snowy cap and surplice. A t the request of. visitors she would rise from her meditative seat on the floor and perform a quaint, decorous, graceful dance "to drive away the evil spirits." She was of an inscrutable age; but a youthful soul smiled through the lattice of her gravity; her steps and motions were sure and supple. She carried a fan in one hand and a softly, silverly tinkling instrument in the other. These she waved toward us thrice at certain turns in the performance. It was fascinating. We came back when no one was looking and persuaded her without words to do it again and again. Each time her smile was a little brighter. "I don't feel any evil spirits coming or going," said [Paula, "but I simply must get the steps of that dance." HIGHLAND WATERS All around Nikko there are fine waterfalls,—a score of them within easy walking distance. In the mountains beyond there are many lakes, two of which have a certain renown. Chusenji, the larger, nearly 4,500 feet above the sea, is a modest summer resort. Yumoto, more than 5,000 feet up, is smaller and hardly frequented at all except for the hot sulphur baths at the head of the lake. To these highland waters we resolved to go. Guide-Posts and Camp-Fires The motor'road for some three miles followed the broad stony bed of the Daiya-gawa. There had been a spate a few days before, which carried away the smaller bridges. Gangs of coolies were deftly rebuilding them with bamboo as we passed. Presently the valley narrowed, the road gave out, and we began to foot it on the 'rickshaw path. Steep cliffs overshadowed us. Cascades on tributary streams trailed their white scarves from shoulders of the hills. The path zigzagged up the mountainside. Three or four rustic tea-houses, perched at convenient distances, commanded gorgeous views down the valley. The main river roared far below. But the memorable beauty of that breath-taking climb was the flood of wild azaleas streaming down every hillside through the lace-leafy woods of early spring. From pale rose to deep flame, from rich mauve to faintest pink, their color shaded and shimmered, now massed along a level ridge, now pouring down a rocky slope—a glory no more wonderful, but more delicate and entrancing than the giant rhododendrons blooming along a Pennsylvania brook, or the high laurels beside a little river of South Jersey. Useless plants, all of them, except to the soul of man. Finally topping the crest, we came through a level wood of birch and maple, to the head of the famous Kegon Cataract where the Daiya-gawa rushes from the lake through a ten-foot rift in the rock, and plunges straight down 250 feet into the churning pool below. The clouds of spray, the ceaseless thunder, the dizzying change of the fall from swift motion to seeming immobility, were bewildering and benumbing. No wonder that hapless Japanese lovers, bent on suicide, have thought this a fitting place to leap out of life into Nirvana. Chusenji is a lovely lake. High hills embrace it. Nantai-san soars above it. Bird-peopled woods encircle it, except at the outlet, where there is a small village with half a dozen big Japanese inns on one bank of the stream and the Lakeside Hotel on the other. It is a comfortable hostelry — Japanese exterior, European furnishing. We were the only staying guests, and well cared for by the landlord and his whole family—including two little Breathless Boys, who did everything on the full run, and made up for their blunders by smiling good-will. Yumoto is a very different lake, more Alpine, more surprising. It lies on the knees of the mountain-gods, like a beautiful fairy child. Primeval pine-trees form a dense grove round the lower part of the lake; steaming sulphur springs issue from the bare slopes at the upper end. At the very foot there is a tiny islet, dividing the clear green water, which drops straight-away over the cliff in a broad, wrinkled, rippling curtain, like white watered-silk, two hundred feet long. In the green dell below, perhaps a hundred yards from the fall, a fine pool has formed, with a large foam-covered backwater on the opposite side of the stream. Arriving there at twilight one evening in mid-May, after a seven-mile tramp, Paula and I could not bear to push on without trying our luck. The three-ounce rod sent the tiny "Queen of the Water" and "Royal Coachman" fifty feet across the stream, to the edge of the brou. The white sheet was broken by the tail of a fish. A quick strike made the hook fast in him. He rushed gamely down the rapids, played hard for a good quarter of an hour, and then came to the net,—a plump, American brook-trout of a pound and a quarter weight. Thrice the performance was repeated before the night fell. Then we climbed the steep ascent, and trudged over snow-drifts in the dark pine-wood, and through the sulphur-scented moorland, to the little Nanma Inn, where we found a warm Japanese welcome and had the whole doll-house at our disposal. Three days we fished that stream between Yumoto and Chusenji, winding along the edge of a wild Alpine plain covered with reeds and bamboo-grass. The fish were plentiful,—rainbows, and fontinalis, and pink-finned native trout; but the water was too high and drumlie for fly-fishing. M y average was fifteen fish a day. Our guide was a cheerful Japanese boatman named Ochiai, or something like that. He knew ten or twelve words of English, and was a passionate bait-fisher and a thorough gentleman.remember the night when we arrived at the hamlet of Shobu-no-hama in a pelting storm. He introduced us to the humble Guide-Posts and Camp-Fires cottage of a friend, where we sheltered beside the family-fire of charcoal while the boat was being prepared to take us down the lake. Hot tea was served, quite simply and of course. When we scrambled down to the skiff, Ochiai brought up a dripping, apologetic peddler with a huge pack, and explained politely,—"Zis gent'man wet,—Chusenji ? " We took him in, and the boatman sculled slowly down to the foot of the lake, while we sang college songs to keep ourselves warm. THE HEART'S CAPITAL OF JAPAN .Kyoto, with its 450,000 inhabitants, lies in the fertile Yamashiro plain, ringed by green and lofty hills. For many centuries it was the seat of the Imperial Court, until Tokyo displaced it in 1868. But it still remains, I think, the chief city in the heart of Japan. Here the ancient arts and ways are more purely preserved; here the old traditions centre; here a visitor does not have to witness, as Lafcadio Hearn said in his last days of Tokyo, " the sorry sight of one civilization trampling the life out of another." Mind you, I don't say that what is taking place in Tokyo and other great seaport towns is wrong or evitable. I only say that if you want the flavor and the tone of the original Japan, you must see Kyoto, and smaller cities of that type, and, above all, the countryside. We spent a fortnight in and around Kyoto, with headquarters at the Miyako Hotel, where the conversation of the man•ager, Mr . Hamaguchi, was delightful and illuminating. He told us the meaning of many things in Japanese life and philosophy, and best of all he advised us what to skip in our sightseeing. All kinds of pictures from that fortnight are stored in memory's "go-down." I can take out one after another and hang it on the wall, as a Japanese would do with his kakemonos. There is the famous Cherry Blossom Dance, in the biggest tea-house on the Kamo-gawa, where forty geishas weave intricate, slow designs of color and movement on the stage, while a double-dozen of women musicians twang samisens, slap drums, and chant weird nasal songs. There is the stately Noh Drama, performed on the century-old stage of the Nishi Hongwanji temple, by actors who have inherited their calling and traditions through generations,—gorgeous costumes, symbolic action, classic dialogue, mostly tragic themes, with some consecrated comic episodes, the chorus intoning a running commentary, the absorbed audience following the play with their books,—it is a highly intellectual and at the same time eye-appealing performance, something like the revival of a Greek play at Oxford or Harvard, yet different as the East differs from the West. There are visits to a few well-chosen temples. The golden splendor of the great Chion-in. The tranquil charm of Kurodani on its shady hill, with its long inner corridors where the "nightingale floors" twitter beneath your stockinged feet, its rooms adorned with rare paintings and silken broideries, and its secluded garden where the iris is in bloom around the pond. The delicate beauty of the Golden Pavilion and the Silver Pavilion in their landscape setting; and one little temple among the trees, whose name I never knew, but which Paula said she loved "because it seemed so lonely, and nobody told us to go there." Certain scenes and incidents are vivid in my mind. Visits to workshops, where deft Japanese fingers are busy with delicate work of tapestry, damascene, lacquer, and carving. Preaching in the little Union Church, and lecturing to a thousand eager students at Doshisha University. Luncheon with Miss Denton of the Girls' School, that wonderful American lady who knows Kyoto better than the Japanese and whom they all love. "Ceremonial tea" at Dr. Saiki's house, where the gentle daughter of Nippon who performs the gracious ritual is the mother of nine and looks no older than one of her own children. Of all Kyoto days none was brighter than that on which we walked with the Shivelys over the sacred mountain of Hiei-san. The long trail up through the steep, stately forest; the ancient temples and monasteries hidden on the heights where the fighting monks of Buddha used to assemble their bands to raid the capital; the basket lunch beside a cold streamlet in a glen below the summit; the rapid descent to Lake Biwa, with rapturous views on the way; the boat-ride home on the swift canal, half through a dark tunnel, half in broad evening sunlight, high on the hillside Guide-Posts and Camp-Fires among wild azaleas,—that was a memorable day. But a single hour in another day stands out as clear. It was when I climbed with a Japanese friend to visit the Christian cemetery on the hillside above Nanzen-ji. The only approach is by a steep footpath. Here, with others of like faith, confessed or secret, is buried Joseph Neesima, the father of Doshisha. From this quiet hillside no doubt he often looked down upon the great city spread out below him, and, like his Master, longed and yearned for its peace. Here he sleeps quietly, while his work goes on. TO THE CITY OF LANTERNS This was a roundabout journey which we made with a Japanese friend and scholar, Dr. Harada, as our genial comrade to guide us in the ways of Japanese inns and explain things seen and heard on the road. First we spent a day and night in Yamada-Ise, visiting the two chief shrines of the Shinto religion. Like almost all sacred places in Japan they have a splendid natural setting. Unlike Buddhist temples, however, the shrines are very simple, even austere. Built of plain wood, completely renewed every twenty years, without painting or ornament (except some brass fastenings with crests), they are distinguished by primitive features of their architecture, such as the crossing of the end-rafters, which project above the roof like the poles of a wigwam. In the centre of the inner shrine hangs a mirror, the symbol of Amaterasu, the sun-goddess, worshipped as the progenitor of the first Mikado and of the pure Japanese race. Shintoism is the old national religion of Japan, though there are many more Buddhists than Shintoists, and the two faiths have been strangely crossed. The core of Shinto is ancestor-worship and patriotism. Mr. Hamaguchi said to me one night: "In China they worship their ancestors dead. In Japan we worship our ancestors through our children. Suppose you want to move a graveyard to make way for needed railroad. Chinese say, ' Never, our ancestors forbid !' Japanese say, 'Yes, move it carefully, with reverence; railroad good for our children.'" You will usually find chickens kept at Shinto shrines, because of the cock that crows to make the sun rise. Next we went to Toba, a picturesque seashore town, known for its shipbuilders, fishermen, and women pearl-divers. We took two of the divers, plump, good-humored little creatures, out to the fishing grounds. They put on white caps and huge water-goggles, stood up and dropped their kimonos, and then slipped quietly overboard in their white cotton shirts and drawers, taking their floating tubs with them. After a little wheezing and many curious noises, they gave a sharp, indrawn whistle, turned over, and went down like small white seals. They brought up no pearls, but many lobsters, star-fish, sea-urchins and other marine curios. The best pearl-fishing is at Miki moto's place, a few miles farther along the coast. In the afternoon we climbed Weather Hill and had a view finer than that from Pemetic on Mt. Desert: eastward, Ise Bay and the swarm of islands and the blue Pacific; westward, a far-rolling sea of wild mountains and forests. Our last point was Gifu, the city of lanterns. Here they make delicious persimmon confitures, delicate silk-crepe, the strongest paper in the world, fans, umbrellas, and paper lanterns fight as soap-bubbles and lovely as campanula bells. We stayed at the "Well of Jewels Inn," and went out at night to see the celebrated cormorant fishing, a craft which has been practised here for more than ten centuries. The moon was rising behind the mountains. The swift, clear river ran half glittering and half dark. Our barge was covered with an awning and lit with lanterns. We poled two or three miles up the river and found five other lanterned barges waiting beside a gravelly bank between two rapids. I began to think it would be a " tourist show," a fake. But a little before ten o'clock we saw moving lights up the river. Six fishing-boats came sweeping down with the current, an iron cresset full of blazing pine-knots projecting from the bow of each. We joined one of them and drifted with it. In front stood the master fisherman, a tall, bronzed youth, naked to the waist, with a long skirt of straw girt about his loins. The ungainly cormorants,—black bodies, white throats, and hooked bills,— stood along the gunwale, six on a side. A ring of fibre around the lower part of Guide-Posts and Camp-Fires the neck prevents the bird from swallowing fish irrecoverably, and a fibre rein twelve feet long serves to guide and retrieve him. The fisherman pushes them off in order, the captain of the team last. Then they dive, swim under water with feet and wings, dart hither and thither ahead of the boat, come up again and again with a six or seven inch trout held crosswise in the bill, gulp it down, dive again, and keep on till their pouches are full. Then the master, clucking and whistling to his team, lifts one bird after another to the gunwale, taps him on the throat to make him give up his catch, and drops him over once more. So we drifted on with splashing, shouting, singing, the torches flaring, the birds eager and skilful, the master deft and imperturbable, until we came to the end of the fishing grounds. Then the birds had their collars taken off and were plentifully fed with the smaller fishes, and we all went home. The catch that night must have run well up in the thousands. We had some the next morning for breakfast,—delicious. Paula said, —well, no matter what she said. They were perfectly good pink fish. TOKYO REVISITED Our second week in Tokyo was more serious and joyful than the first. The sun was shining, the air revived. There were social engagements of a real pleasure. A snug tiffin with Secretary Hofer in his new bachelor house; a fine banquet (with theatrical entertainment), given me by six of my former Japanese students at Princeton, in the Maple Club; an academic luncheon presided over by Baron Yamagawa, President of the Imperial University, in the Botanical Gardens; a delightful, friendly feast made for us by Madame Yukio Ozaki (wife of the eloquent parliamentary leader, and author of those delightful English volumes, "The Japanese Fairy Book" and "Romances of Old Japan"), at the "Inn of Ten Thousand Pines," by the Sumida-gawa; a brilliant dinner with Mrs. Charles Burnett, a gifted American lady who lives very close to the heart of Japan, and whose charm brought to meet us a choice group of scholars and statesmen, men of letters and affairs. In such company one has glimpses of what Japan really desires and seeks. I arri convinced that it is not war, but peaceful, orderly development, and that Japan is a natural leader for this work in the Far East. There were also academic engagements which involved work. A lecture at Waseda University, founded by Japan's "grand old man," the Marquis Okuma; an address at the fortieth anniversary of the Tokyo Y. M . C. A.;-two lectures at the Imperial University, the first to be given on the "House Foundation"; a luncheon and lecture at the Woman's University, where we had a hearty welcome from the president and all the staff and students. The attitude of the Japanese toward education is fine. In the public schools the enrolment and attendance are 95' per cent. You see the well-trained chil-' dren on excursions with their teachers: everywhere, • learning to see and know-Japan first. In the universities the eager-' ness for knowledge is keen,—:so keen that perhaps it sometimes turns its own edge. Know-it-all is a good dog, but Know-it-* well is a better. The Japanese, in fact,' have many of the American virtues,—1 and faults. To think or talk of them as "brown monkeys" is distinctly asinine.' They have an ancient civilization; a wonderful art and literature; a unified' race whose spirit has never been broken' by foreign conquest or domination; a' habit of industry and great gifts of man-' ual skill; endurance, ambition, versatil-' ity, and a sensitive temper. They laugh; much, love their numerous and delightful children, and have a firm and passionate faith in the future of their country. They are almost as political-minded as Americans, and quite as honest as any other commercial people. One word more. What about the Pacific Coast and Japanese Immigration ? Only this! It is a difficult question. Within limits, I think the Pacific Coasters must settle it for themselves. If they do not want Japanese labor they need not have it. If they want it they must treat it on the principle of "the square deal." They should remember that the Pacific has two Coasts. The friendly co-operation of Great Britain, the United States, and Japan is essential to peace and order in the Far East, where our nation has some possessions and many interests. THE POINT OF VIEW
fOR no particular reason, the other day, I was reading in Gibbon's " Memoirs" his account of his college days and his condemnation of the universities of his time. Strange, I reflected, that practically every condition he found fault with has been reformed, universities on Then and No w totally different principles have sprung up in another hemisphere, and yet the poor old colleges are still under fire. Gundelfinger finds as much scandal as did "Terrae Filius" Amhurst, and Henry Adams looks back on his undergraduate days with hardly more satisfaction than did the sceptic of Lausanne. "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose." Except for this dissatisfaction on the part of the graduate, it is hard to recognize much in common between the Oxford of 1752 and the Harvard or Wisconsin of the present day. In Gibbon's time, the English universities were considered much more refined than the Continental, for at the former the students lived like gentlemen in residential halls, on the whole drank less grossly, and carrying no swords, were involved in fewer bloody duels ! Indeed, Oxford in mid-eighteenth century must have been a happy hunting-ground for the gilded youth, when the gentleman-commoner, set apart from ordinary students by his silk gown and velvet cap, shared the common-room with the dons and enjoyed the privileges of residence with the least possible "controul." The professors of that time, in the words of one of them, had nothing to do, and they did it; with honorable exceptions, they neither gave lectures nor wrote books nor thought nor even talked anything but "shop," politics, or gossip. The tutors, even the best of them, were content to let a young gentleman cut his hour a day of reading, provided he paid his annual twenty-guinea fee. So Gibbon could go up to town four times in one winter, no slight jaunt in those days, and pay two substantial visits in the country without endangering his academic standing, and could contract heavy debts without official cognizance. His undergraduate friends who remained in Oxford could fill up their abundant leisure with sports, unlimited carousing, and "schemes" —in modern slang, "parties"—to neighboring towns with ladies more sprightly in their conversation than strict in their conduct, without censure from the faculty. But if there was such wide liberty in these matters of wine, women, and attendance, in which American universities assume so much responsibility, there were other points where our modern freedom was not even thought of. Gibbon's truancy and extravagance might not affect his academic standing, but he only escaped subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles through his youth and the slackness of the authorities; and his conversion to the Roman Church had the same result as Shelley's declaration of atheism—a termination of his university connection so sudden and so much a matter of course as to be automatic. Moreover, he and the priest who confirmed him were by the letter of the law liable to prosecution for high treason, with its well-known gruesome penalty. To be sure, the "humanity of the age" made it likely that only perpetual imprisonment and distrainment of the worldly goods of priest and proselyte would have ensued, if the affair had come to public prosecution. How different (as Gulliver would say) are things in our own dear country ! Catholics, Jews, pagans, infidels, alike are admitted without question into our universities, and only the port and brandy that enlivened the common-rooms and coffee-houses of Gibbon's Oxford are proscribed. It seems probable that we Americans think the eighteenth-century English less mad and topsy-turvy than they would think us, could they know that we prohibit drink, the good creature, and throw wide the door to heresy and atheism. What a man drinks, they would say, is his own affairs; what he thinks and believes is of immediate concern to the State. Thus have our social values danced the Sir Roger de Coverley in the last century and a half. Our universities no longer confine instruction to Latin and Greek and metaphysics, but rather, neglecting those, teach book375 The Point of View 376 keeping, dentistry, and electric insulation. Now we pride ourselves on being democratic, with one law and one degree for gentleman-commoner and poor scholar alike. Now our professors are always lecturing, and leisure for either drinking port or scholarly research is the exception rather than the rule among them. All our instruction is oriented on practicality and efficiency in an attempt, doomed to be futile, to satisfy captious graduates who accuse the universities of failing in their trust. Perhaps the universities, like the man with the boy and the ass, in the fable, can never succeed in pleasing all their critics all the time. Perhaps they are like barometers, recording, with some "lag," it is true, the conscience and social ideals of their average public. If this be so, there is no use in* worrying because that institution which suits the greatest number receives the abuse of malcontents like Nicholas Amhurst and the impatient scorn of exceptional geniuses like Gibbon. The universities must accept the reproach and glory of the middle course. iT may be said without fear of contradiction that a given man's ideal of a woman, and that same woman's ideal of herself, are two absolutely different things. For as regards themselves the sexes vision differently. So general masculine ideals of femininity, and femininity's ideals Changing Feminine of itself, are most unlike. We have Ideals John's John, and Mary's John; Mary's Mary, and John's Mary; and this square is far more difficult even to apprehend, much less resolve, than is the squaring of the circle, or any mental glimpsing of the fourth dimension of space. Yet if the eternal two ever did really understand each other, interest would immediately cease; for what you understand you appropriate, in a sense you become that thing. In creating them male and female, therefore, so like yet unlike, Providence constituted a distinction and difference that should prove a perennial source of interest and joy; with incidental exasperations, it may be, and perpetual wonder. "Just like a man," "just like a woman," are the commonest of phrases— but what it is to be "just like a man," or "just like a woman," who can truly say? That changeless "central core of identity," without which neither manhood nor womanhood can grow, was fixed in the beginning and, on the physical side, like the laws of the Medes and Persians, altereth never. What has grown, does grow, and must grow, are the mental and spiritual possibilities inherent in man and woman, the continuous development of which means civilization, and all that that connotes both for the individual and the race. Man has always had some notion of himself and some ideal for himself, a goal to work toward, an excellence to embody. To be strong and brave, to be capable of the day's work be it chase or battle, to go a breadth beyond the need of the moment, gain headway, save something so that' the next day's work may be eased or lessened—for man always works with the thought of eventual rest—this is the skeleton history of the ages. First enough for to-day, then enough for to-day and tomorrow, so through labor to wealth, which is another name for stored-up labor or assured possession—such is man's, the toiler's, life. And what of man's ideal of woman during all these centuries? Why, as his supreme helper, of course; and as man's helper woman has had to play a very diversified role. She must be at once pleasing and useful—somewhat difficult co-ordinates —must turn her hand swiftly and deftly to any and every need. In primitive times when man was hunter only, woman was everything else. Woman must be elephant for use, and butterfly for charm, as occasion demanded. And to this day, woe betide the woman that cannot be something of both. Meanwhile, the four ideals doubtless reacted favorably upon one another. John's John was agreeably modified by Mary's John; and Mary's Mary was agreeably modified by John's Mary. This constant interaction assured an ever-widening common standing-ground of mutual interest and attraction. In ascending stages, through the patriarchal family, tribe, polis, state, nation—woman often insensibly passed from man's adjunct or helper into the accepted and acceptable delegate. Man found that he could leave to her certain activities while he was more profitably engaged elsewhere. Woman rose to the occasion, and man, according to his convenience, accepted the adaptation, and both profited by it. Owing to the rapid development of the mechanic arts, and man's tremendously increased powers over nature, the changes of the past one hundred years have come with incredible swiftness. Yet these changes differ only in degree, not in kind. From The Point of View 377 earliest times exceptional women are seen in parity with men, doing a "man's job," and often leaders. Deborah, wife of Lapidoth, judged Israel, and went forth to battle with the cautious and gainsaying Barak. Semiramis reigned brilliantly at Babylon. In default of heirs male, daughters inherited possessions, be it castle or crown, and women have shown themselves no mean sovereigns. The conditions of modern life have insensibly forced woman—lovely woman—to become an economic and political factor, but what then? No matter what happens she can never be anything but "just a woman," man's coefficient rather than his equal—even as man along the ages has always been "just a man." Neither may pass the bounds of his and her respective limitations. Then why be afraid? The "central core of identity" can never change, it is the fixed value which alone has made, and will continue to make, all this complex development called civilization possible. Is there a haunting fear at the bottom of man's and woman's hearts that they may grow less mutually interesting and attractive ? How can they ? Does man understand woman any better to-day than he did in the stone age, or woman understand man? Between the two is forever fixed the enchanting bridge—not chasm—• of a perpetual why. The "central core of identity" in each may be trusted to keep its secret—the secret of a delightful and God-given attraction. When Nicolette votes, Aucassin will simply have an added wonder to the perpetual riddle as to why she did just that thing. Why, when John Doe is the regular party candidate, did she waste her perfectly good ballot on Richard Roe the independent, or vice versa. But the mutual attraction is absolutely safe; nature takes care of that. The question "up to" all of us is, how do we individually and collectively use it as part of that'' central core " which is the earnest and secret of all social development and growth. And as woman becomes more and more an economic and political factor, is there any valid reason why the old ideals should change? "She looketh well to the ways of her household, and her hands eat not the bread of idleness." What is to prevent woman from looking "well to the ways" of her political household—they sadly need it—and of helping to institute and execute those methods and that thrift now so vital to us all? And Chaucer's ideal of woman, the Aurora of Anglo-Saxon literature, is truly timeless, and may be set forth to-day as the model upon which all women should fashion themselves. In a somewhat modern guise the lovely lines may run: "I n her is high beauty withouten pride, Youthe without greenhead or folie; To all her works Virtue is her guide, Gentleness hath slain in her tyrannie; She is mirrour of all courtoisie; Her heart is very chamber of holiness; Her hand the minister of freedom for almesse." Let the doubting and timorous take courage. Ideals remain very much the same, while ephemeral circumstances change, and may be changed, into the likeness of noble ideals. H E other night I went to an auction. Among the items on which the bidding was lively was a tiny book— half a dozen yellowed pages of highly illegible writing bound between two boards of ivory—a modest little volume A Poor Man's which, when I held it in my hand, Game seemed quite tempted to slip into my waistcoat pocket. It finally brought $16,250. On its withered brown pages, long ago when they were white and young, Shelley had written a poem. Though I've read at Shelley, I confess I had no memory for this poem, and when the bids rose above ten thousand dollars, I decided my ignorance must be very great indeed. Surely, here was a message of incomparable beauty for mankind—a tale of unequalled splendor which should be told always, gayly up and down the world. Or else, within its lines must lie some tragedy deep enough to break a nation's heart—the twilight of the gods— a second Troy. To-morrow, I thought, the story will be revived. The newspapers will be full of it; barren magazine pages will borrow its eloquence. Once more a careless world will wear this jewel. But no—what the papers said was: "Shelley manuscript brings rare price—'Julian and Maddalo' surprises dealers at sale." And the magazines that noticed it at all had articles on the brisk business book-buyers were doing in association relics. "Julian and Maddalo" found a place only in the dizzy list of prices. So it was not the poem but the man—the lingering, crumbling evidence of his person— they were buying. These last mute witThe Point of View nesses of a too, too mortal flesh are grown monstrously in fashion. No more might Charles Lamb by wearing his brown suit until it was threadbare lug home a folio of Beaumont and Fletcher. (How he would gape to know his own manuscript of " A Dissertation on Roast Pig " recently sold for over twelve thousand dollars.) Doubtful first editions for whose fate the author trembled have taken on a glory from their first adventurous years. No longer dusty, but in state—they stand waiting a king's ransom. Never was there a lover of books but felt tenderly toward these venerable tokens —but felt a thrill at coming into their presence, and that is the trouble. Authors and book-lovers, under their spell, have written too riotously of the delights that lie in finding them on musty shelves of dingy shops or coming upon them in some forgotten attic. We in America have no ancestral castles —no houses respectably old when Shakespeare walked in London, where extraordinary treasures might be lurking. We have not made our home among the sleeping ghosts of the Middle Ages or even the healthy beef and port spectres of the eighteenth century. Fond would be the gentleman of Bangor, Maine, or St. Louis, Missouri, or Dallas, Texas, who fared forth into a neighboring shop with hopes for a discerning eye to be rewarded by the sight of some forgotten volume that had once been pressed in the hands of Coleridge or reeked with the smell of tavern ale from keeping company with Fielding or Kit Marlowe. Even yet the tower of our native literature has not risen, and as for the stray volumes that find their way from older lands to us to-day, their interest and charm is equalled only by the canniness of the dealer who brings them. Surely book-collecting must be a fascinating sport for a Morgan or a Frick, if he have a taste for letters. It is a game that may be played with delight and profit by one of lesser shadow in Bradstreet, if he have hours to meditate catalogues and days of holiday to travel to auctions—but collecting, say what you will, has become a rich man's game. And, somehow, it were ever a convention of the profession of letters to be poor. And those who love it most, even though they cannot practise it themselves, seem to achieve this perquisite with monotonous success. The man who loves literature, but congratulates himself when the four mouths who look to him have had their fill, must feel out of it, indeed, when he reads of auctions. The woman who feels a kinship with Mrs. Browning or Jane Austen, but who lives in Four-Corners-out-of-the-way and for whom a new dress is an event, though she be ever so resolute, must wonder if life has not passed her by when she compares the prices of the items with their provenance. There is a game—writers of late seem to have forgotten it. It needs another Lamb or another Stevenson to make it popular. It might be called a poor man's game, for it is not played with golden pawns and its rewards are as shining as gold ever purchased. You who must look to your pennies to pay the piper, is not Keats's sonnet "Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art" as real a part of him as any unpublished letter he dashed off in the everydayness of his life, carefully laid into some book of his poems ? If you had to choose dramatically between them, would it be to know the contents of the letter? Are the sonnet's lines, there in the book on the second shelf of your bookcase, any less beautiful than in the fading ink that served to give them to the world ? Becky Sharp lived as keenly for you when you read that old "Vanity Fair" you tossed about so carelessly as ever she lived in Thackeray's own copy. If you have a taste for Meredith, Richard and Diana have lost nothing of their subtle complex passions, none of their burning spirit, in the journey from the fierce energy of his autograph to the cool legibility of the printed page. His epigrams do not sparkle less in your humble room than in the little study at Box HiU. I think, perhaps, it is the wise order of Providence that keeps writers (and their brothers in spirit) poor. Their birthright is of other coin. It lies in a true democracy. A dream in a king's head encircled by a golden crown is no more gorgeous, no more real, than a dream beneath some tattered hat. The stuff of dreams—the true boon of writers—is " a fairy gift that cannot be worn out by using." On the hill of literature the miracle of the loaves and fishes happens every day. Have you read of auctions where you could not buy—of old shops whose fragrant dusted air you may never breathe, till your own brown bookcase has become a dull and stolid thing? Look at it again. THE FIELD OF ART
THE ART COLLECTION OF JOHN G. JOHNSON
By Harrison S. Morris
hOW could any one put all there is to say about the John G. Johnson col• lection into a handful of words? It is impossible ! And yet there is much that can be conveyed: facts, theories, fundamentals. About three years ago the celebrated collection, gathered through a long period by the late Mr . Johnson, a noted lawyer of Philadelphia, was bequeathed to the city, with the spacious mansion in which he had installed it, "to be maintained as a museum —a public museum—to stand pretty much as it will be at my decease." He further directs "that it shall be forever kept up and maintained as such museum in which my art objects shall be exhibited." Through the disintegrating political conditions in Philadelphia, which he tried to forestall in his will, the collection has been sleeping in a storehouse, until a new and advancing mayor has caused a part of it— about sixty Italian pictures—to be exhibited at Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park. It is this artistic incident which makes timely these brief notes. The collection consists of one thousand one hundred and eighty-nine catalogued works of art, nearly all of them paintings. There is no excuse for a want of learning in the discussion of its value, as two experienced pundits have set down in three large volumes of text and reproductions all that is known, and much besides. To the Italian paintings Mr . Bernhard Berenson has addressed his knowledge and his grace of statement; to the Flemish, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, and English, Mr. W. R. Valentiner brings abundance of illumination. Quarrelling with their ascriptions would cause only pain to the fatigued reader, and discomfiture, perhaps, to the critic. But there are remarks that may be ventured. It is no sin to hint that traditions exist in, Philadelphia which will have their vent. The echoes linger of visitors who years ago took away many dollars and left behind many "old masters." There is recollection of these episodes in comment on a painting "at one time in the Widener. collection at Elkins Park, Philadelphia." Here is a divergence. Mr . Widener disposed of some seventy examples when he secured his magnificent Van Dycks; Mr. Johnson presumably held much of what he had acquired. Thus his collection is uneven, though rich and brilliant, and a great possession for Philadelphia—or for the Metropolitan Museum of New York, to which it reverts if Philadelphia allows Mr. Johnson's will to be broken or his princely bequest too long to linger unembraced. The conspicuous merit of Mr . Johnson's collection is the immense reach of its inclusiveness in representing the history of Eu-ropean art. It begins with the origins, and in deliberate steps, pausing in one age, hurrying in another, it.marches down to our day. From the pupils of Giotto to Whistler is a span of seven centuries. The mind hardly grasps the riches of endeavor, the expression of the soul in art, the physical effort encompassed by that vast period. And yet, with deviations, here they are, shown in examples more or less perfect, more or less authentic, for the eye to enjoy and the brain to grasp that has learned the deep lesson of beauty. An axiom of criticism which is sound, though not always followed, is, that nothing counts in art that is not beautiful. Beauty may lurk in age, or pathos, or sentiment, or it may lie in the charm of the artist's genius, even in his technic. Without such sources of attraction works of art are rubbish. The Johnson collection wins its excellence, its celebrity, from the possession of much that includes or illustrates these essentials. There are no monumental canvases by the 379 View of Canal.
By Meindert Hobbema. Seventeenth-century Dutch.
greatest masters—no overwhelming Rembrandts, or Hals, or Raphaels, or Rubens, or Van Dycks, or Velasquezs; no Giorgione of immortal beauty, no Mantegna that emulates Florence. And yet examples of all these, resting on proof of more or less convincing attribution, take their place in the historic procession, and mark the points where art has reached an ideal or paused over an enduring name. Nor are there any very large canvases. Mr. Johnson designed his works as household adornments. He filled up the house he had long occupied: there were old masters on both sides of the doors, on the stairways, high on every wall, and even over his bathtub and above the rows of his shoes in his dressing-closet. They overflowed on to the floor, and so many thus accumulated that it became imperative to find more hanging-space. The large mansion next door, long inhabited by Mr. Darley, a descendant of both Sully and F. 0. C. Darley, fell vacant, and Mr . Johnson was quick to buy it. He erected a temporary bridge from the rear of one house to the other, and apparently enjoyed the transfer of the collection. The hanging he directed himself, 380 and the work was done with taste and a large sort of elegance which made the new house, equally overflowing with pictures in every corner, a rich treasury of art, mingled, as is proper, with domestic comforts and a look of use, where the warm shadows from side-lights serve as enhancements to the color and form of the old masters. Costly rugs and furniture, silver and glass, lent their charm to an arrangement that was infinitely luxurious and beautiful. Thus the group of restricted dimensions, not a few of them parts of predellas from under altar-pieces, or other diminutive studies, was installed as its owner wished to have it, as he intended by his will that it should remain. And in this way placed, which he shrewdly knew was the way best for its collective enrichment, it was unique. There was nothing like it in the country, nor elsewhere, so far as I know, except in the larger museums, many of which lack the historic continuity of the Johnson list, and none of which can equal in charm the abundance and elegance, the glow and shadow, that resided in that interior. If there are no distinguishing masterThe Field of Art pieces, such as those of the Altman or the Frick collections, there is, I repeat, a more numerous constellation of lesser stars than in any of the private catalogues. To begin with, the Florentine primitives abound in names of the first order—Giotto, Fra Angelico, Agnolo Gaddi, Masaccio, Domenico Veneziano, Pesellino, Benozzo Gozzoli, Botticelli, Sellajo, Botticini, Cosimo Rosselli, David Domenico and Ridolfo Ghirlandajo, Mainardi, Piero di Cosimo, Fra Bartolommeo, Andrea del Sarto, Correggio, and Pontormo. Were these all originals of warranted authenticity and artistic beauty, they would outrank in value any group in our museums, both as old masters and in the value of the market. But in many instances there is doubt on both these counts, though in beauty of color and design and in the charm of antiquity most of the examples stand as characteristic types of the period and of the masters to whom they are assigned. The same thing is true of the Sienese, Venetian, and other Italian schools. The painters who formed them — Lorenzetti, Barna, Domenico di Bartolo, of the Siena; and Crivelli, the Bellinis, Montagna, Carpaccio, Palma Vecchio, Tintoretto, Lorenzo Lotto, Marco Basiati, of the early Venetian group—are, with many more obscure contemporaries, all in their historic niches. Their works would be priceless treasures could they be substantiated in origin or accepted for impeccable beauty. But there are many gaps in the pedigree; here and there a bar sinister; and the test of beauty often fails. Equally so with specimens of Mantegna, Francesco Benaglio, Brusasorci, Paul Veronese, Moroni, of the school of Padua, of Verona and Brescia; or Cosimo Tura, Lorenzo Costa, Dosso Dossi of Ferrara and Bologna; of Foppa, Bernardino di Conti, Solario, Defendente Ferrari and Sodoma of the Milanese region; and of examples of the late Bolognese school. The learned critic who classed them just before Mr. Johnson's death, who changed many of the existing labels, and who lays down his obiter dicta with winning grace, if perhaps now and then a twinkle in the eye, has to us often confused, rather than Halt at an Inn. By Aelbert Cuyp. Seventeenth-century Dutch. 382 The Field of Art solved, doubtful problems. In truth, the business of attribution is always a sort of inspired guessing, as is shown by the following paragraph from a letter of Mr. Johnson. It relates to a rich canvas assigned Margaret, Duchess of Parma. masters, which number about three hundred. But the larger body of the collection, though perhaps not the richer, is formed of the Flemish and Dutch, French, English, Spanish, and German schools. There are only fifteen American canvases: the valuable "Lange Lijsen" and a Nocturne by Whistler, a "Luxembourg Garden" and a Venetian Interior by Sargent, and a significant Thomas Eakins, "Landscape, Gloucester," as though Mr. Johnson early divined the coming position of that great American painter. There are four Alexander and one Birge Harrisons, a Winslow Homer, and four George Innesses. To attempt in so limited a space anything but a quick survey of the continental schools, numbering well over four hundred pictures, is clearly futile; but it can be premised that their greac value lies in their embracing historic fulness, in which some masterworks of note are included, and many panels and canvases of little cost but of interest as steps in the chronological pathway. Thus it is vain to look for Rembrandts or Hals, or Van Eycks, Rubens, or Van Dycks of the first water. The somewhat notable RemBy Antonis Mor of Utrecht and Antwerp, 1512-82. brandt called the "Finding to David and Domenico Ghirlandajo, which was to serve as illustration to an article I was preparing: " I called your attention to what Mr. Berenson said because I think his remarks were influenced by the fact that it came through Dr. Bode, who had originally bought it for the Kaiser Friederich Museum and gave it up only because of lack of funds. For myself, I have not the slightest doubt that it is entirely by Domenico Ghirlandajo, and that is also the opinion of a great many other very well qualified critics." I have dealt so far only with the Italian of Moses" is a small oval which has been in and out of many collections, yet has its elements of doubtfulness; and there is a little panel which I have heard Chase dilate on, entitled " Slaughtered Ox." The rest are not important. There is no Franz Hals, and the others of that family of painters are not brilliantly represented. The two Van Eycks are small and open to dispute, and Van Dyck is indifferently shown. But there is a Ver Meer of historic value and much beauty, and Van der Heist, Ferdinand Bol, Nicholas Maes are exhibited in portraits of arresting aspect. There are a dozen rather insignificant works attributed to Rubens, with one of The Field of Art which I had an amusing association. Years ago Chase came hurriedly into the Pennsylvania Academy and insisted on carrying me off to see a Rubens sketch in an auction-room. Though very busy, I went with him and saw a small panel of figures high on the wall. Yes, it looked like a Rubens sketch; and Chase was much excited at his discovery. He left me to go to lunch, where he found Mr. John G. Johnson, and sat down at his. table, instantly bubbling over about his "find." Mr. Johnson expressed the most lofty indifference, and pretended to know all about it. The result was that he, and not Chase, bought the slender little sketch, which now forms part of the Johnson collection as a "Rubens." And this marks the method of acquisition which has brought together much of the historically great collection. Other men of taste had the same ability to run over Jan Steen and Van Ostade, with the landscapists, van Goyen, Ruysdael, Porcellis, van der Neer, Camphuysen, Hobbema, Koninck, and their kin the marinists, like Dubbels, Bellevois, Van de Velde, Van de Europe summer after Photograph by the Chappel Studio. Philadelphia. summer; the same chance to pick up the neglected pieces that are here assembled into a survey of continental art. There was no secret about it. Al l it required was knowledge, enthusiasm, taste, and money, and these Mr . Johnson possessed in abundance. It was not so difficult to find the lesser Dutch and Flemish masters. There are, of course, many unassigned works among the primitives of the low countries, with some plausibly attributed to Gerard David, Van der Weyden, Dirk and Albrecht Bouts, Bosch, and Quintin Massys. This holds good with the rollicking school of Pieter Bruegel, elder and younger, Van Cleve, A Portrait. By Ridolfo Ghirlandajo. Capelle, Verschuier, Cuyp, and all that crowd. There are so many more that really cry out for mention that I accuse myself for failing to touch upon them; but the early German, the English, French, and Spanish schools must not be denied. Most of the German group is attributed, and holds only historic value, with much antique beauty. There is a small head on paper assigned to Durer, and a Luther given to Lucas Cranach, the elder; there are two votive panels by Bartholomaeus Bruyn, the elder, that arrest the eye. The French primitives are Portrait of Lord Ashburton
By Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1723-T792.
of the same genre, heads, religious compositions, and altar-pieces, named for Francois Clouet, Poussin, and lastly a group of ten Chardins, one of the clous of the collection. There are also moderns, like Fragonard, Ingres, GeMcault, and an array of the 1830 school which in both beauty and price would make any collector of that period covetous. The Corots alone number about twenty five or six, and add vastly to the market value of the collection. Besides the eight or nine Spaniards of the fifteenth century, there are several E l Grecos of minor quality and two or three doubtful Velasquez portraits, but the Goyas, three of them, are more striking. Beginning with Hogarth and closing with Bonington, the English list is confined to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries— to the older class who lifted British art to the pinnacle. Sir Joshua is seen in a portrait of Lord Ashburton and three others, with a sketch for the larger work in the Hermitage; Gainsborough in two heads and two landscapes; Romney in a slight sketch of Lady Hamilton; Raeburn in a character study; Morland in appropriate works; Constable in six fine canvases, and Old Crome and Nasmyth in landscapes. There are two Turners: an early Savoy mountain scene and a deep handsome courtyard in shadowy browns. From even so slight an outline it will perhaps be possible for the reader to form a just estimate of the claims of the John G. Johnson collection. That he will thus penetrate to the validity of some of the canvases is less certain. There is always a large selvage of doubt in this exciting game, and one of its fascinations is the more or less learned argument it excites. But even the simple layman may wonder, as he views the names now attached to canvases in Memorial Hall, why, if "Portrait Bust of a Venetian Gentleman" is by Basiati, how "Portrait Bust of a Gentleman" or "Madonna with St. Liberale" are by that artist; and also how, for further instance, can "Portrait r" a Gentleman" by Palma Vecchio be by th^ same painter as another portrait of that same title ? And how could " St. Jerome in the Desert" be wished on trie same master who painted "Christ Taking Leave of His Mother"? All this makes for mystery and the exhilaration of the game; but it counts for little in the valuation of pictures as Art, Beauty. A calendar of current art exhibitions will be found on page 7. 384 THE FINANCIAL SITUATION "DEFLATION' BY ALEXANDER DANA NOYES iF, as seems not improbable from the course of events, the process of what is nowadays called "deflation " has begun, there can be no doubt that we are on the threshold of a peculiarly interesting episode in economic history. " Inflation " There has been a good deal of and "Detalk about that question in flation " the past twelve months, but without giving much light to the popular conception of it. During and immediately after the war, the expected fall in prices of commodities was discussed with undoubted misgiving. The high prices and the active production and trade which came along with them were the evidence of our national prosperity. The unprecedentedly rapid expansion of American bank loans was accepted as a proof of that prosperity, equally with the unprecedented increase in the country's export trade. When business activity halted and prices began to decline in the markets for merchandise, two or three months after the armistice, the question which primarily occurred to mind, even with ordinary people, was how the violence of the coming reaction could be checked. One of the executive departments of the government tried to set the machinery in motion for stopping it by ordering the purchasing bureaus at Washington to buy in quantity at a given level and thereby to prevent any further fall in prices. But the point of view has changed rather completely during the year and a half since that proposal of the Department of Commerce. The Washington plan turned out to be altogether superfluous. The whole manufacturing and trading community discovered that it had misjudged the situation. Middlemen, retailers, and consumers, who had been postponing purchases for their everyday trade because of the prospect of the "perpendicular decline" in prices, at once began to place their orders in unprecedented quantity as soon as they found that no such decline was occurring. When they reappeared as purchasers they found the supply of goods to be inadequate for the demand; partly because of the greatly diminished production of ordinary goods while the mills were at work on war material, partly because of the misgivings of producers after the armistice. dEALER S are notoriously willing to buy on a visibly rising market; so, up to a given point, are consumers. The sequel is a matter of recent experience^—expansion of trade and a rise in prices greater than had ocThe Story curred even in war-time; purof 1919 chases by consumers, lavish enough to far more than counterbalance the economies of 1917 and 1918 and the hesitation of the early months of 1919; production and accumulation of goods with borrowed money, on a scale which absorbed the resources of bank credit as they had not been absorbed even in the days of the billion-dollar war loans. The absolute reversal of the general public's attitude towards the high prices, after ten or twelve months of this new and unexpected turn in the situation, hardly needs to be described. Yet it is quite as true at the present moment as it was in the period of apprehension in February and March of 1919, that the process of "deflation" will be a difficult and complicated process, with frequent interruptions, with many unexpected incidents and with some unpleasant aspects. A good deal of the recent talk about "deflation" has appeared to regard the process as a simple matter which could be arranged, through 38s The Financial Situation legislation or common consent, in such a way as to benefit every one concerned. This seemed especially to be the common conception when it was proposed, in economic treatises or in political declarations, to compel an abrupt, immediate, and arbitrary reduction of outstanding credit or currency. But the process is not simple. When prices have been advancing in connection with active business, credit engagements will necessarily have been contracted on an extensive scale to conduct the trade on the new or anticipated basis of values. But if prices fall heavily, some of the merchants whose goods on hand are now worth much less than the face of the indebtedness will incur very formidable losses, at the moment when the plain consumer is getting the benefit of the lower cost of living. iT is never possible to foresee the way in which "deflation," even in its preliminary stages, will operate on prices and cost of living. What has already happened during the present year has unquestionably upset the expecReasoning tations of experienced merfrom chants. It is not easy to get Economic Precedent much light on the matter from the course of events in other similar periods of the past. The phenomena of large overdrafts on the world's accumulated capital or of overstrain on the world's credit facilities are familiar enough; every great war has produced them sooner or later; but the minor incidents, which may really be a determining influence on the character of the period, are not so easily recalled. It long ago became an old story that the European war, in its military and political and economic aspects, was reproducing in our individual experience events and phenomena of which we had read in its text-books of history but which we never expected to witness with our own eyes. With all the far-reaching changes brought about in the scope and methods of war by the railroad, the motor-car, the aeroplane, the submarine, the accumulated wealth and the organized industry of the twentieth century, the impressive fact was the closeness with which the underlying phenomena duplicated those of a hundred years ago. But to draw the parallel with the political and economic aftermath of the great wars of the past was another matter; indeed, we are only beginning reluctantly to admit that the sequel to such a conflict nowadays must follow the general lines laid down in the similar periods of the very distant past. iF this truth is even now imperfectly recognized—if the delusion of a short cut to economic rehabilitation has been abandoned reluctantly—the reason probably is that the histories of those older periods were seldom written from the viewpoint of the The Histories and plain citizen's experiences, and Present were infinitely less interested Experience in such dry details as harvests, foreign trade, or prices of food and clothing than in the intrigues of cabinet ministers or diplomats. The result is very much what it would be if the histories of the present decade, accessible to the reader of a hundred years from now, were to devote their narrative of the period since 1918 entirely to the conferences at San Remo, Brussels, and Spa, the Sinn Fein uprising in Ireland, the dispute over Fiume, and the war between Poland and the Bolsheviki. But we may be sure, human nature being to-day very much what it was in 1865 and 1815 and 1763 and 1648, that the people even in those days found many considerations of far more vital and personal interest in the cost of living and the movement of the markets than they found in the high political negotiations. Two facts become apparent, nevertheless, from even the most superficial survey of any such chapter of past economic history. One, and in all respects the more important, is that whatever may have been the inflation "of currency, credit, and prices during such a period, it was never permanent. Sooner or later— usually after a considerable lapse of years •—the artificial structure built up by the necessities or the extravagances of war was brought down again to normal proportions, and the inflated cost of living came down with it. The second and equally invariable lesson of the past is that arduous and trying experiences stood in the path of markets of every country where deflation was following inflation. (Continued on page 59, following)
THE DANCE OF DEATH
A Merry Ghost Story "Zig-et-^ig-et-zig, la Mor t cn cadence, Frappant un tombe avec son talon; La Mort, a minuit, joue un air de danse, Zig-et-zig-et'Zig, sur son violon." T is MIDNIGHT. Twelve solemn strokes from the old bell tower that keeps watch over the churchyard at its feet proclaim this fact and give signal for a strange scene. Death with his violin tucked snugly beneath his bony chin, beats time with his heel on a mossy tombstone, "zig'a-zig-a-zig", and plays a merry dance tune. One by one the skeletons rise from their resting places and join the dance. Woven in the mazes of the waltz one hears the melancholy sighing of the night wind, the branches of the lindens rubbing against one another, and the rattle and scuffle of bony feet over the lichened stones. Suddenly the cock crows and sends the jocular, grewsome crew scurrying back to their graves, while Death, still fiddling, vanishes over the nearest hill. Saint'Saens' "Dance of Death" is one of the stories in the Estey Musical Library, made available in all its picturesque imagery by the Estey Residence Pipe Organ. It is written with that m'aster's ingenious instrumentation for the orchestra. Saint-Saens gave minute directions how some of its effects were to be produced. In the arrangement made by our musical director for the Estey Organ the weird suggestion of this symphonic poem is given a power and interest that make it an unusual evening's entertainment for a group of friends sitting late around the big fire, telling ghost stories. The Estey Library of Organ Music is like a library of well chosen books, supplying entertainment for each varying mood—entertainment that is rendered by that greatest of musical instruments, the pipe organ. Just let the Estey Organ tell this old tale of Cazalin's, as in' terpreted by Saint-Saens, and you will get some intimation of what an organ in your home would mean, of the never failing delight, wonder, thrill that organ music always yields, of the vast resource found in a well selected library of orchestral music. For the pipe organ is really an orchestra. Al l those effects that delight you so, that are produced by the cunning assembling of wood, string and brass in an orchestra, with the bells, kettledrums, triangles, and other strange devices collected at the right wing of an orchestra, are possible with an Estey Pipe Organ. You need not know how to play it. It plays itself. You need only listen, enjoy. But the creative listener receives the greatest pleasure. As Robert Haven Schauffler has said: "It takes two to make music: one to perform; one to appreciate. And he is wise indeed, who can discern which of the two is the more important." The Estey Organ Company, Brattleboro, Vermont Studios in new york, i i West 49th Street Philadelphia, 1701 Walnut Street Chicago, Lyon & Healy boston, 120 Boylston Street los angeles, 633 South Hill Street london, 12 Rathbone Place, Oxford Street TIFFANY & Co.
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Never before, during the many, many years that we have sold bonds, have we been able to offer such an attractive selection as is enumerated in our present list. These bonds are of exactly the same high type and quality as those we've handled in the past, but they now pay muck higher interest. Yet they are j ust as safe, or even safer than ever. So buy them while the opportunity lasts and before interest rates recede. Invest in these bonds now, and during the years to come you will profit by your foresight. This is just plain, everyday, common sense advice that any well informed banker or investment expert will endorse. Follow it! Write today for our Bond List SB 97, which fully describes these sound, standard securities, yielding from 5 to 7.85 per cent interest and sponsored by the good name of one of the foremost financial institutions of America. Bond Department Mercantile Trust Company ST. LOUIS MISSOURI Capital and Surplus $10,000,000
(Financial Situation, continued from page 386) N the present instance it is well known that the abnormally high prices, although attributable as a whole to the European war, had at least half a dozen separate causes. Primarily a result of the abnormally large purchases by belligerent governments, for military purposes and to safeguard the Economic Causes food supply of their own countries, and Conthe rise in prices was originally sequences emphasized by actual scarcity, itself a consequence of blockades against exporting countries, of invasion and devastation of important producing districts, and of diversion both of labor and of manufacturing facilities from production of ordinary necessities to army service or production of war material. The next in time to develop, among the contributory causes, was the rising cost of labor, brought about partly through the granting of increased wages by employers in recognition of a higher cost of living, and partly through direct operation of a demand by labor itself, based on the war-time scarcity which had made the available supply of workers less than the requirements. Economists observed, more than a century ago, that such a process always affected wages of the worst-paid laboring classes more quickly and more decidedly than it affected earners of a comfortable wage, and that has been the experience of our own community on this occasion. Every one knows that the cost of common, casual, and unskilled labor has increased since 1914 in a much more rapid ratio even than the pay of skilled mechanics. On top of all these visible and undisputed causes for the rise in prices came the huge inflation of the paper currencies—most of which, in their actual depreciation from gold values, pushed up still higher the prices of goods, now measured in the paper currencies. Sometimes connected with the currency inflation and sometimes independent of it, the huge expansion of credit made it possible, especially when the war and the war loans were a matter of the past, for producers, middlemen, merchants, and speculators to accumulate goods and hold them off the market until consumers paid a higher price. That this lavish use of credit, this successful speculation, would also logically result in widespread extravagance of living and personal ex(Financial Situation, continued on page 61) 59
Safety or High Rate
of Interest?
IT is an old investment maxim that safety and a conservative interest rate go together, and that an exorbitant yield is a caution signal. This is particularly a time to remember this fact. A n unduly high rate of interest on an investment often distracts the investor's attention from other qualities not so desirable. With his eyes fixed on yield rather than on security, the investor sometimes fails to notice that there is no convincing evidence offered of sure and prompt payment of principal and interest. The return of your capital unimpaired when due, together with prompt payment of interest, is of more importance than a promise of an unusual net return on your investment. Our current Investment Guide lists a great variety of sound first mortgage serial bonds, safeguarded under the Straus Plan and yielding the safe and conservative interest rate of 6%. In addition to 6%, with 4% Federal Income Tax paid, these bonds yield satisfaction and peace of mind. Their prompt payment in cash on the day due is assured by the rigid provisions of the Straus Plan. Call or write today for our Investment Guide, and specify Circular 1-1010 S.W. STRAUS & CO.
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(Financial Situation, continued from page 50) penditure—with a bearing of their own on efforts to push up prices—every country in the world discovered long before 1919. In some ways the most impressive fact in all post-war experience with markets and prices is the fact that the obstinate profiteer and the reckless spendthrift develop simultaneously. To a considerable extent the one is dependent on the other for the continuance of his career. No one can read the newspapers of the later sixties, or the published memoirs of the second decade of the eighteenth century, or, indeed, the histories of the wars of the two preceding centuries, without finding constant reference to these same two products of war inflation with which the world has of late been again making acquaintance.' tHIS recital of the numerous causes for the present high prices and high cost of living is a more than twice-told tale. The reason for repeating it, under the existing circumstances in the markets, is that return to anything like normal conditions, whenever and What Has wherever effected, must be accomBeen plished through correction or reAccomplished? moval of the influences which have carried us so far away from them. But if this is so, then it is evidently worth while (since the process c£ "deflation" has at least been tentatively begun) to see what has already been accomplished in such directions, what is left to be done, and what is likely to be involved in doing it. A beginning has certainly been made in attacking the reckless inflation of credit. It can hardly be said that the check has been administered chiefly through calculation and design. I have heretofore described the attitude taken in this country, first by the Federal Reserve Board and then by the banking community as a whole, toward putting a stop to further use of credit for what were somewhat vaguely described as "non-essential purposes." This attitude, however, was adopted only when expansion of credit had been carried so far that the danger of an actual crisis forced the hand of the bankers. The Reserve Board itself was late in taking aggressive action. Its public warnings of a year ago were well-meant and in the main correctly reasoned; but they made the unfortunate mistake of assuming that our new banking system made such evil influences negligible. It is only just to say, however, that similar warnings were uttered at almost exactly the same time by the banking authorities in (Financial Situation, continued on page 63)
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(Financial Situation, continued from page 61) countries under such widely divergent post-war conditions as England, Japan, and Germany, and with similar lack of immediate results. Nevertheless, the crumbling of the top-heavy structure of speculative credit has since that time occurred in all of those countries as well as in the United States. It may, in fact, be said to have occurred throughout the world; perhaps eliminating Russia, where banking credit appears to have been replaced by unlimited currency inflation, and southeastern Europe, where the credit system has been a wreck since the armistice. pURCHASE S by governments on the wartime scale, the first and in many ways the most important influence in driving up prices of commodities, terminated with the war. Governmental budgets are still loaded down with huge expenditure which is The First directly a legacy of war. Most of Influence the European governments are still to Go appropriating public funds in order to sell bread to their citizens at less than cost. Some of them (France in particular) are supporting and housing citizens of the devastated districts. In England and the United States, government has still been meeting from public funds a heavy operating deficit in the railway finances. But these requisitions, it will be observed, make for lower rather than higher cost of living; and meantime the outlay for governmental supplies and running expenses has decreased at impressively rapid rate. England reduced such expenditure $4,500,000,000 in the fiscal year ending last March. Public expenditure of the United States in the fiscal year ending with June (notwithstanding addition of $400,000,000 to interest on the public debt) was cut down $8,600,000,000 from the preceding twelvemonth. I have frequently had occasion to emphasize the improbability of a general reduction in the wage scale. Even during the past month or two, when prices of goods and activity of production were decreasing in many industries at a somewhat startling rate, important advances were being made in the wage scale elsewhere. There had been a long-standing dispute between the Railway Administration and the Railway Unions over the pay of railway employees. The new Railroad Law provided (Financial Situation, continued on page 65) 63
After - the - War
Bond Prices
Offer Rare Investment Opportunities Economic conditions following the war have caused abnormally high interest rates. The result is that high grade bonds are now selling at the lowest prices they have reached in more than a generation. The return of interest rates to normal will be accompanied by a marked advance in bond prices. After the Napoleonic War, the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, bdnds also sold at low levels yielding a high return to investors. Within a short period following each of these wars, the prices of bonds recovered substantially. By investing now you will obtain an unusually high return on your capital over a long period of years. A copy of our booklet, "Tomorrows Bond Prices," describing the present opportunity will be mailed upon request. Write our nearest office for Booklet B-o. We shall also be pleased to send our list of Income Tax Free Bonds. William R.Compton Company Investment Bonds NE W YORK ST. LOUIS CHICAGO CINCINNATI NEW ORLEANS 64
(Financial Situation, continued from page 63) the moving up of the pay of labor during the a Labor Board to hear and settle such dispast few months; there are very few industries putes, its verdict to be final in the industry. which have not made similar concessions during Toward the end of July this board announced the same period, either through direct arrangeits decision, in the form of a new scale of wages ment with the unions or through award by affecting two million employees, and providing arbitrators. an average increase of 21 to 25 per cent. On the simple basis of labor cost for production and transportation, therefore, it is impostHE railway wage scale had already been sible to say that this influence in bringing advanced on four or five occasions after prices to their recent height has been abated. 1914—in 1916 and 1917 by the managers themThis decision of the Labor Board was followed selves and in 1918 and 1919 by the governpromptly by the announcement of a 40 per ment's railway management—and the compucent advance in rates for transporting railway tation of The Railway Age after freight; an advance officially granted by the The this year's July award, was that Interstate Commerce Commission as an unRailway Wage Scale the total increase in average pay avoidable step towards complying, in the face per employee, since the war began, of the higher wages, with the provision of the was 115 per cent. The Labor Board itself new Railway Law, that rates should be so fixed stated its belief that cost of living in the as to ensure earnings of 6 per cent on the ascerUnited States had increased approximately 100 tained total value of the railway property. per cent during that period, and it admitted in Transportation cost is an essential factor in its report that "in many instances the inprices; here, then, at a moment of falling prices creases herein fixed, together with prior inelsewhere, was a distinct influence in the oppocreases granted since 1914, exceed this figure." site direction. Nevertheless, what has now Their decision, although the most far-reaching very evidently occurred, and as a quite ineviand spectacular, by no means stood alone in (Financial Situation, continued on page 67)
The Pacific Northwest —Secure in Its Future tHE spirit of constructive enthusiasm—that spirit which conquers all obstacles, and forges ahead to bigger things— noticeably characterizes the Pacific Northwest. Wool production is but one of the many ways in which the Pacific Northwest has established itself! Her wool suitings and blankets are nation-famous. The mill output of Oregon, alone, in 1919 was $9,000,000. Noted for fine livestock; with the greatest stand of soft wood in the United States; her fruits and berries finding ready markets; thousands of barrels of flour, exported annually to foreign ports; paper manuraduring but in its infancy, the Pacific Northwest is facing extensive and well-founded development, secure and untroubled as to the future. If the Ladd SC Tilton Bank, actively concerned for sixty-one years in
upbuilding the Pacific Northwest, can assist prospective investors and
manufacturers, it will gladly do so.
Write for booklet, "Know Portland and the Northwest." Ladd & Tilton Bank Established 1859 Resources, $30,000,000 Portland, Oregon 65 National Bank of Commerce
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JAMES S. ALEXANDER, President tHE National Bank of Commerce in New York is associated with the principal Banks in Foreign countries and through them offers to its clients a world-wide banking service. Capital,Surplus and Undivided Profits Over Fifty-five Million Dollars 60 8 From Farm
Land Bonds
.This issue, already greatly reduced by serial payments, is secured by First Mortgage on selected farm lands, and by well secured farmers' notes, valued at several times the amount of outstanding bonds. The lands are located in an extremely fertile section where values are increasing. The Company's prospects for the present year are excellent. As its net profits for the past year were over five times the interest, charge on these bonds, and as the bonds, in addition to being personally guaranteed, are protected by a liberal sinking fund provision, we consider this issue, offered to net 8%, an unusual purchase. Ask for Circular No. 909-SC Peabody Houghteling&Co. Est. 1865 — Inc. 1918 10 South La Salle Street, Chicago Detroit Cleveland St. Louis Milwaukee
(Financial Situation, continued from page 65) table sequel to the trade reaction, is the abating of the abnormal and excited bidding of industry for labor. sEVERA L months ago the packing industry of Chicago, the demand for whose products had been heavily curtailed by the sudden reduction of Europe's purchases—the decrease in export of such products, during the twelve months ending last June, was one and a quarter billion pounds, or Changes in the nearly 70 per cent—had to reduce Labor its output and cut down its heavily Situation increased war-time pay-roll. This was, perhaps, the first of the great industries to curtail. By the end of spring that enforced reduction of activity was followed by equally large curtailment of output by the textile mills —woolen and silk particularly—the price of whose products was being almost cut in two on the retail maikets at a time when huge quantities of goods were piling up unsold. The shoe and leather trades had to take similar action for similar reasons; it was impossible, in the face of such a situation, to maintain the existing staff of workmen, which had often been doubled or trebled by the exigencies of the war demand. At the motor-car factories a similar change occurred because of decrease in orders for luxurious pleasure cars, which in 1919 had to be placed months ahead of contracted delivery. In July the Pennsylvania Railroad, after calling attention to the fact that under government operation the company's labor forces had become both excessive in number and slack in service, announced an intended reduction of 10 per cent in its employees, notably in the repair shops; a change which, it was calculated, would cut down the force by 12,000 men. These reductions did not mean that so many thousands of laborers were turned out to hopeless unemployment. On the contrary, the released workingmen found other industries awaiting them. The Pennsylvania management made a personal effort to find places elsewhere for the employees whose services it no longer needed. The textile mills moved slowly, fearing to lose touch with their operatives, who might be held by other manufacturers in the event of a new demand for goods. Perhaps, however, the most noteworthy result of this (Financial Situation, continued on page 69) 67
CBadi o(°fomSonds are theSNecesslties for fheyichancement oP &iviliz@tion<**> What record do you keep of your bonds and other securities? Write for our Loose-Leaf Security Record, No. SM II, and a copy will be sent you without cost or obligation. HARNESSED ENERGY
hERETOFOR E running purposeless through the untracked places, but now set to work by man's ingenuity, turning the great wheels of industry or sent humming over miles of wire to brighten the homes of thousands in the distant city. Bonds of Public Utilities deriving their energy in whole or part from Hydro-Electric developments provide exceptional security to conservative investors.' Their source of power is economical and constant; they are relatively free from the effects of high costs and scarcity of labor and coal. Ha/sey, Stuart ts" Co.'s recommendations of Hydro-Electric Bonds are confined to those of established organizations with experienced management and a proven record of earnings— all such bonds having first been found to measure up to exacting standards prior to our own purchase of the issue. Representative of this class of securities we recommend — Pacific Gas & Electric Company "]% Collateral Convertible Gold Notes, 1925. A circular descriptive of this and a wide variety of other safe bonds will be sent upon request for Pamphlet SM lo. HALSEY, STUART & CO. Incorporated—Successors to N. W. Halsey cif Co., Chicago CH IC AGO NEW YORK PHILADELPHIA BOSTON
DETROIT ST. LOUIS MINNEAPOLIS MILWAUKEE
(Financial Situation, continued from page 67) unavoidable shifting of labor forces was that in July, when the winter wheat-crop came to harvest—an occasion to which farmers had been looking with great despondency in the prevailing lack of labor—the Middle West found itself overrun with applicants for harvest work. They found employment and the grain was comfortably harvested; but, as one Kansas correspondent described the situation, workers who came to the wheat-belt " expecting ten or fifteen dollars a day, found the field well filled, and their services in moderate request." OW much has actually been effected in the way of removing actual scarcity it is difficult to say. The appearance of scarcity will sometimes be continued, in the experience of the world's markets, long after the reality has ceased to exist. A very striking As to illustration of this truth has been Actual brought to light in the woolen inScarcity dustry, when reduction of credit facilities brought to light the full amount of wool accumulated in the storehouses of the world. A few months ago still higher prices, on the basis of inadequate supplies, were confidently predicted; but within the past month, bidding for wool at anything like the former prices has absolutely ended, and it became possible for trade journals to say that the world's accumulated stock was not far from the largest ever recorded. The fall of 60 cents per bushel in the price of wheat during the second half of July expressed the grain trade's view that an unexpectedly favorable season had made possible our country's production of a wheat crop large enough to meet both the home and export demand. In June the government's estimate of the cotton crop's condition was so unfavorable as to lead the trade to predict a yield of not much above 10,000,000 bales, or the smallest in a decade. But as against the "June condition" of 62 ^ per cent, the August condition was given as 7434—the most rapid improvement in the records of the cotton trade— and the government's forecast of the probable yield was advanced to 11,450,000 bales in July and 12,519,000 in August. It is possible to over-estimate this factor in the situation. There are some productive industries—fuel oil and print paper are two of them—in which the prospect of inability to (Financial Situation, continued on page 71)
6% Per Annum is Better
than 10% Perhaps!
This is a time for careful, conservative investing—know
exactly what you're going to get on every dollar you
invest. Mitchell-Safeguarded 6% First Mortage Real
Estate Bonds are always worth what you pay for them
—just as good as cash. A National Service for Investors SEND FOR THIS BOOK It tells about the valuable improved Chicago property which secures Mitchell-Safeguarded Bonds. Interesting reading and information of importance to every investor—everywhere. c.c.Mitchell &co. (Established 1894) 69 West Washington Street : Chicago, Illinois 69 Financing the crop that clothes the world H E floodgates of the harvest lift. Millions of bales of cotton pour into the market. Th e steadying influence of sound finance guides the great crop to hundreds of widely-varied cotton consuming industries, without waste or disorder. Mor e money is required to finance cotton than any other crop. A combination of ample resources and 85 years' experience in meeting the complexities of cotton finance enables Th e National Shawmut Bank of Boston to handle cotton business with true economy, promptness and accuracy. The directorate of this institution includes executives actively connected with the leading cotton mills of New England. Transactions . involving a substantial percentage of America's cotton crops are handled here annually. Intimate knowledge of all phases of export, import and domestic cotton marketing is the foundation of the excellent service this bank renders. Special inquiries are cordially invited, THE NATIONAL SHAWMUT BANK of BOSTON Resources over Two Hundred and Fifty Million Dollars 70 The lookout's duty To-day, no less than when the first sailing craft put out to sea, the safe and speedy conduct of voyagers depends largely upon the observations of the lookout. His is the ship's eye and reliance must be placed upon his far-flung vision. To-day, as never before, opportune routes to safe and unusually lucrative investments exist throughout the land. Even the experienced investor knows them only in a general way and so he, too, relies upon a trained and reliable observer. Blyth, Witter & Company proffer the necessary guidance for your investment undertakings — not only in scanning the horizon for investment opportunities but in keeping watch of investments already made. This house is in a strategic position to offer dependable advice concerning investments East or West. If you want such a far-visioned service you will be interested in our informative Bulletin 9-S. We'll gladly send it on request to our office nearest you. Blyth, Witter. &Co. San Francisco New York Merchants Exchange 61 Broadway-Bldg. Los Angeles Seattle Trust & Savings Bldg. 812 Second Avenue Portland, Ore.
Veon Bldg.
(Financial Situation, continued from page 69) meet the world's imperative demands has become a matter of grave public concern. The continued absence of Russia in its old-time role of exporter on an enormous scale of food and raw material marks a very great change from pre-war conditions which the return of peace has left as an influence. This is so, while the requirements of the rest of belligerent Europe, with its productive facilities still largely paralyzed, needs exceptional quantities of these same commodities. 0 an important extent, this situation in Europe is being modified. Quite aside from the possibility of reopening Russia to the trade of the outside world, Western Europe is showing signs of distinct industrial promise. The increase of $1,500,000,000 in England's outward trade in the The Situation first half of 1920 represented 90 in Europe per cent increase over the similar period of 1919, whereas prices did not average more than 30 per cent higher. Exports from France in the same six months increased from 2,600,000,000 francs to 7,700,000,000, an advance of very nearly 200 per cent. They actually compare with 3,390,500,000 in the first half of 1913. The average of French prices since 1913, as reckoned by the statisticians, had been something like 450 per cent, so that the quantity of goods sent out would still be much less than half what it was before the war. But compared with a year ago, the past half-year's prices average hardly 60 per cent higher, as against the 200 per cent increase in total export values. Italy's exports, so far as reported for the early months of 1920, considerably more than doubled in value over 1920; January and February showing increase from 467,000,000 to 966,000,000 lire. With France, this increase is explained in other ways than by return of the soldiers to productive industry. The very recent report of M . Tardieu as chief of the government's Committee on Devastated Regions shows that of 2,712,000 citizens driven from their homes, I, 583,000 have now returned; that of 632,934 houses wholly or partially destroyed, 184,000 have been reconstructed or repaired; that of II, 500 factories demolished, 3,540 are rebuilt and working, and 3,812 under reconstruction; that of 3,200,000 hectares of arable land put out of cultivation by the war, 2,900,000 have been cleared from shells and 1,150,000 ploughed for the crops of 1920. The coming season's wheat harvest in that country has been tentatively estimated at 296,000,000 bushels; the (Financial Situation, continued on page 73) 71
more than a century's intimate :ontact with American business has developed our organization to an unusually thorough degree. Sound banking principles, determination to keep pace with the financial requirements oF the time, and iull co-operation with our clients have successfully guided our eilbrts throughout this period. The benefit of?our long experience is at your service. We invite correspondence or a call. Established- 1810 THE MECHANICS & METALS
NATIONAL BANK
of the City of New "York. Head Office 20 NASSAU STREET Capital ~ Surplus - Profits ~ $0,5,000,000 72 Regarding Prices The investor in Municipal Bonds need not be concerned with the question of safety nor of taxation on his investment, but only with the trend of prices. Regarding prices: In the first place, not for years has the income return from Municipal securities been so high as it is today. In the second place, during the past sixty days wise investors, confident that the bottom has been reached, have been buying long term Municipals, both for anticipated appreciation of principal and to insure present high yields for as long a period as possible. Our current list includes high grade municipals, exempt from all Federal Income Tax at prices yielding up to 6%. Write for current offerings STACY & BRAUN INVESTMENT BONDS Second National Bank Building
New York Toledo Cincinnati
Strikes and the Farmer
Under-Production a Safeguard
Against Business Reaction
These and other topics discussed in recent issues of The Bache Review. Copies sent on request J.S.Bache & Company Members New York Stock Exchange/ 42 Broadway - New York
(Financial Situation continued from page 71) actual yield was 178,000,000 last year, 144,000,000 in 1917, and 322,000,000 in the year before the war. These are deeply interesting facts; they certainly suggest what may be achieved in the next few years. Yet it must not be forgotten that this is only recovery from the worst. Except for Italy, the importation of merchandise into these countries during the past half-year has increased almost as greatly as the exports. England itself imported £316,000,000 more in value than in the similar period of 1919, and £381,000,000 more than the high record of war-time. Furthermore, the evidences of reviving production come from Western Europe. The most experienced observer will hardly hazard a guess as to what is actually happening, or what can soon happen with Germany, in its present state of political confusion, financial paralysis, and ruined credit. Outside of Germany, Central Europe has thus far shown few signs of anything but economic wreckage. Russia, whose immense capacity both as producer and consumer was an essential element in the old European order, and whose exports before the war (chiefly of food and raw material) ran to $750,000,000 per annum, remains as yet a political and economic derelict. F the problem of world-wide scarcity is not yet solved, the far more exacting problem of world-wide inflation of paper currencies has hardly yet been touched. All that has been accomplished with the mass of depreciated paper is the arresting, in a few Europe's European countries, of the progress Paper of inflation. In the first half of Currencies 1919 England's "currency notes" increased $98,000,000; there was practically no net increase during the first half of 1920. The paper currency of France expanded nearly $800,000,000 in 1919, up to the end of July; it decreased $70,000,000 in the same period of 1920. But it was still six times as great as the paper circulation of July, 1914, and meantime Germany's irredeemable paper currency, which at the time of the armistice was already eight times as large as when the war began, is now more than three times as large as it was even in November, 1918. On the old valuation of the mark, it has actually increased $45,000,000,00 0 since the beginning of the present year. What the Russian government's printing offices have been doing since 1918 has to be left to the imagination. It certainly cannot be contended, then, that (Financial Situation, continued on page 75) 73
The World's
Great Timber Supply
From the great forests of the North and Northwest comes timber, which, converted into a diversity of forms, is used in all parts of the world. In this territory tributary to Chicago is one of the greatest of the world's timber supplies. Here every year are felled hundreds of thousands of towering trees to be transported by steam and river, lakes and railroads to the mills and factories of the manufacturing district centering in Chicago, where they are made into building materials, vehicles, implements, furniture and endless other products. tHE Continental & Commercial Banks for many years have assisted this great industry with dependable financial service. Today they are co-operating actively for its further development. The CONTINENTALand
COMMERCIAL
BANKS
CHICAGO Invested capital more than 50 Million Dollars Resources more than 500 Million Dollars 74 Pulp
Paper
and—
Canada
The Eyes of the World—and particularly the world's newspapers— are upon Canada and Its pulp and paper resources. We are pleased to have been associated with the financial development of Canada's pulp and paper industry since its inception. If you would like to know something about the profitable investments still to be made in it — write for a copy of the special American edition of Investment Recommendations. It will certainly interest you. Address: AGENCY OF Royal Securities CORPORATION (CANADA) L 1 H I T B D 165 BROADWAY NEW YORK The Future of Seattle HE FUTURE OF SEATTLE, founded upon a wealth of natural resources —timber, agriculture, dairying, a climate tempered to year-round activity, a world port strategic in its location—destines the city for increasing greatness. Growing in step with its city, The Seattle National Bank is meeting its financial heeds with an adequacy that establishes its leadership in the community. The Seattle National Bank Resources more than $30,000,000 SEATTLE, Washington
(Financial Situation, continued from page 73) reduction of the inflated paper currencies has been a cause of the present season's fall in prices—a decline which has prevailed with almost equal violence on the markets of France, Germany, England, Japan, and the United States. The inference is unavoidable that the real cause has been either sudden world-wide determination by the consuming public to reduce its purchases to the lowest limit, or the unexpected increase of production to a volume greater than immediate requirements, or- collapse of world-wide speculation and disclosure of unexpectedly large supplies, as a result of tightening credit. Undoubtedly all three influences have done their part. But that conclusion leaves three questions open— how long can the decline continue before it is offset through increased consumption and decreased production at the lower level reached by prices; how soon relaxing money markets will bring reviving speculation, and what further influence, if any, will be applied through reduction of the paper currencies? THE two first questions are not likely to be: answered before the end of 1920. N o one can say when the currency question will be taken aggressively in hand. Sometimes a paper currency, whose abnormal increase has resulted chiefly or wholly from abWays of normally increased trade or prices Correcting or pay-rolls, will be reduced autoCurrency matically with falling prices and Inflation diminishing trade activity. Something like this ought to happen with our own Reserve notes, which are retired in any case at frequent intervals, and not reissued except in response to actual needs of trade. But the test in this country will not come immediately, for increased use of currency is always an incident of the autumn season. When the question concerns a paper currency which is not only inflated but depreciated, there are four ways of correcting the evils of the existing situation. The outstanding paper might be finally cancelled as fast as it was paid to the Treasury for taxes or to the bank of issue on deposit. If the paper inflation, as in the case of France and Germany, had represented chiefly issue of notes to meet a deficit in government finances, this expedient would necessitate either a great public revenue or a huge State loan to provide for such retirement. Complete extinction of a paper currency on that plan is never undertaken unless the government is prepared to substitute some other currency. Our own unlucky paper "Treasury notes" of (Financial Situation, continued on page 77) 75
Opportunity Beckons from the Mid-West ST. LOUIS , one of the largest hardware markets in the United States, needs plants for the manufacture of small hardware, fine tools, machine tools and tool machinery. Most of these products to supply the great St. Louis trade territory must now be bought in the East. The sale of hardware and kindred lines in St. Louis last year was approximately $102,000,000. Much of the raw material is shipped from the Mississippi Valley, manufactured in the East, and the finished product again shipped back to St. Louis, r There is no good reason for this take-it-there-and-bring-it-back haul. A Mid-West factory in St. Louis would have an immense local outlet and could economically distribute in all directions to the markets of the Mississippi Valley, South, Southwest, Middle West and Far West. A ready market is assured. Splendid opportunities in this field await enterprising men of practical experience and ample capital. You will be interested in the booklet, "St. Louis as a Manufacturing Center." It goes into detail. A letter will bring it. Address New Industries Bureau St. Louis Chamber of Commerce St. Louis, U . S. A. 76 A Well Balanced
List of Securities
is the aim of all careful businessmen. If you find by analyzing your list of securities that you own conservative bonds, would it not be sound judgment to add a semi-speculative bond which at preser t prices yields over 12%? We recommend a railroad bond of this character and we have set forth in our Circular 153 our reasons for suggesting it. Sendfor Circular K 153 which gives details. Herrick & Bennett Members New York Stock Exchange 66 BROADWAY, NEW YORK Telephone Rector 9060 BRANCH OFFICES 51 East 42nd St. Peekskill New York City New York A Safe Investment For Odd Amounts HE new "W-D" Investment Certificate is an ideal method for putting odd amounts to work safely and profitably. Being secured by assignment of standard "W-D " Farm Mortgages, these certificates are basically as sound as the mortgages themselves. They are issued in denominations of $100, $125, $150, or any other multiple of $25—yield 6J^%—semi-annual interest. Write for descriptive circular FMC " WELLS-DICKEy COMPANY " ESTABLISHED 1878 SURPLUS & CAPITAL $ 1,300,000 MINNEAPOLIS • MINNESOTA
(Financial Situation, continued from page 75) 1S90, which had forced $150,000,000 arbitrarily into the currency, were wholly cancelled under the subsequent Law of 1900; but the cancellation had not been completed until April, 1915, and then only through coining silver dollars from the bullion in the Treasury, and substituting those dollars for the notes received in revenue. N inflated and depreciated currency may ' be reduced through fixing a rule that the paper notes, when once redeemed, shall not be reissued except in some fixed relation to a gold reserve provided by the issuing bank or issuing government. This was the process Bringing of contraction and resumption apBack the plied by the Bank of England when "Gold Par" its notes had been left depreciated, and technically irredeemable, by the Napoleonic wars. A similar process will undoubtedly be used in bringing England's present paper currency to par. But even a heavily depreciated paper cur7 rency may be brought back to parity with gold and yet be left with the same amount outstanding as before. Virtually that result was! achieved in our own Resumption of Speci6 Payments. The United States notes of the Civil War had been reduced from $449,338,006: in 1864 to $356,000,000 at the end of 1867;, that much was done in the first enthusiasm; of return to normal conditions, through sale' of bonds which enabled the Treasury to pay! off the notes and end the use of them as; money. But there was practically no further cancellation, and even to-day there are $346,681,000 United States notes in circulation. Under the Resumption Act of 1875, a gold reserve amounting to something over one-fourth of the notes outstanding was acquired by the government with the proceeds of bond sales, and on January 1, 1879, it was announced that all United States notes presented at the Treasury would thereafter be redeemed at their face in gold. The experiment succeeded; every such note turned in for gold in the forty-one subsequent years has been honored on the spot. But the experiment would almost certainly have failed had not the rapid and permanent expansion of the country's trade and industry found use, on a normal basis, not only for the circulating paper which had far exceeded the country's needs in 1867, but for a very great amount of new gold currency as well. It is not easy to foresee a possible chain of circumstances which would make such solution possible to the (Financial Situation, continued on page 78) 77
Why Electric and Gas Investments Are Safe J R new illustrated booklet on Standard Gas & Electric Company has a very clear and definite message for the investor. The modern properties back of Standard Gas & Electric Company have a remarkable record for stability. More than 15,000 of the people whom they serve are financially interested • (as stockholders) in their success. Ask for Booklet S15 H.M. Byllesby& Co. Incorporated NewVbrk Chicap'o 111 Broadway 208 5.LaSalle St Providence Boston 10 Weybossef St 30 State Street LARGEST MAKER Coal Mining Machinery Established 1850 Sullivan Machinery Co. Agencies in seventeen foreign countries. The company has no bonds, mortgages or preferred stock. Valuable patents, goodwill, etc., carried on the books at no value. Net assets equal present selling price of the stock. Limited amount at $60 per share Earnest E. Smith & Co. Specialists in New England Securities 52 Devonshire St., Boston SALE M SPRINGFIELD
Members New York and Boston
Stock Exchanges
1 (Financial Situation, continued from page 77) European currencies, with the sixfold to thirty-fold increase in some of them since July, IQI^ and this brings the question up as to what will happen with such currencies as those of Russia, Germany, Austria, and the smaller states of central and southeastern Europe. H E answer to that question will provide a new chapter in the political economy of the twentieth century; but, like many other seemingly altogether new phenomena of the war and its aftermath, the course of events will in all probability be a fairly close What Has repetition of history long past. Been Done Starting in 1790 with 800,000,000 Already francs of new paper money, revolutionary France had managed by 1796 to get into circulation about 40,000,000,000 francs of it—an amount which, although worth on its face only 60 per cent of the present paper money of Germany and a much smaller fraction of the probable total Bolshevik currency of Russia, was considered during the hundred and twenty succeeding years something beyond the scope of imagination. Payment of all these revolutionary "assignats" was simply repudiated and the whole performance was ignored when a new government was installed. The same thing will happen in due course with Russia—where, however, even to-day the peasants hoard what they call the "Czarist rubles" while rejecting the "Bolshevik money"; a discrimination, curiously enough, observed in Wall Street also, where Russian exchange can get no bid at all but where actual ruble notes of the pre-Bolshevik period are bought and sold. What will happen with Germany's paper may be another matter. Even the French revolutionists made an effort, towards the close of the experiment with the "assignats," to issue new paper money to exchange for them at the ratio of one to thirty. The plan failed entirely; as it failed with the "Continental currency" of our own Revolution and as it has heretofore always failed. Yet Germany, and perhaps the rest of Central Europe with her, will almost certainly try it again—through what machinery and with what inducements, it would be venturesome to predict. But this is a problem for the longer future; the whole question of European currency reconstruction is a matter not of months but of years, and in some countries probably of decades. Until the problem is measurably solved, the world is not likely to return to the old-time prices for commodities. 7S
American
Thermos Bottle
Among investments of the most substantial character are the stocks of nationally known companies whose products are well advertised, widely distributed and extensively used. Everyone buys nationally advertised, trade-marked products, thus contributing to the profits of the manufacturers. It is frequently possible to share in those profits by an investment in their stocks. As an example, we cite the American Thermos Bottle Company whose stock paid 12% cash dividends in 1918 and 1919, and thus far has paid 6% cash and 30% stock in 1920. We have prepared and will send on request a circular on the American Thermos Bottle Company. This will be accompanied by a new book entitled INVESTMENTS
IN NATIONALLY KNOW N
COMPANIES
We will appreciate your request for both the book and the circular. Tobey & K irk FOUNDED 1BT3 MEMBERS NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE 25 Broad Street, new York UNLISTED SECURITIES—
WHERE DO THEY GO?
B Y WILLIAM W . CRAIG HE primary force in the unlisted-security market is investment. Purchases which result from the circulation of speculative "tips" are in the great minority, and because the stocks and bonds are bought for the income they produce, it stands to reason that the buyers are influenced in the main by good management of issuing corporations, satisfactory earning power, and by a strong asset position. At the same time, however, any study of unlisted securities would be incomplete without reference to the personal side, to the appeal which a great number of issues make to the buyer. Such sentiment may be of a business or merely human order. In considering the ways in which unlisted securities are absorbed, one may start from two points. The first stands at the launching of the project from which stocks or bonds are evolved. It may be said to mark the stage of primary distribution. The second is at the threshold of a broad absorption of a particular issue, perhaps many years after the security became known to the market. In the initial stage the personal element plays a strong part. In investments, no less than in the more ordinary developments of life, there is more or less of a leaning by every one toward the things which have to do with comfort or utility. For instance, the man who drives an automobile and has an active interest in the component parts of the machine would be more inclined to invest his money in a company making some of the parts than in a corporation which manufactures automobile supplies of which he knows little. The person who eats a particular brand of breakfast-food and finds it good is, if at all inclined to examine into corporations, likely to favor the company whose product he uses" instead of another company. Present-day public utility company financing as conducted by a growing list of companies of the United States shows that corporations are capitalizing personal interest in effective fashion. Many millions of preferred stock (Continued on page 80) (Continued from page 79) MORT GAGiftn V E STM EN T S
pf. PERMANENT, "AN D'<P DO PIT A B 1 K " M PnL..O-X K E. tj f 0 F - SUN OS Investing the Earnings of Professions Lawyers, doctors and others whose business is that of service not requiring a large capital investment, must locate satisfactory emyloyment for their surplus earnings. Many such individuals choose s Farm Mortgages because of their safety, liberal income and freedom from the necessity of close personal supervision. Let us submit current offerings, accompanied by our booklet, "The Science of Safe and Profitable Investing." PETTERS and COMPANY S-ERV4NG INVESTORS S AT I S FAC TOB i|_Y. WAN Y . V E A.R S '. CAPITAL OVfR 1 .40 0 OOO Dependable Investment Bankers The Financial Department of Scribner's Magazine exercises every precaution to limit its advertising columns to offerings of sound securities and to investment bankers and brokers with whom our readers may deal with confidence. We believe each financial institution advertising in Scribner's Magazine is worthy of the patronage of investors. Financial Department SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE FORMAN
MORTGAGE INVESTMENTS FARM
No Worry Are you looking for a speculative investment or do you want an investment free from worry and care ? If you are looking for the latter kind, you should know all about Forman Farm Mortgage Investments. Write now for full information and latest circular, using the attached coupon. 35J/ecJrs W,Yhou/--Xoss CfoJ? Customer" George M- Forman 0 £* Companv" FARM MORTGAGE BANKERS (ESTABLISHED 1885) HSoLaSalle Sr. Chicago, 111. and bonds have been sold in the last three years to the patrons of trolley and electric-light concerns on direct solicitation by the companies themselves. Of course corporations which have success in such campaigns must be able to show good profits. Stockholders could not be secured by the bare plea to support a "home" industry; they must have reasonable assurance of steady dividends. The idea is, however, that the primary distribution of securities is furthered by the fact that shareholders or bond owners are familiar with the property, they appreciate the service it renders, and like to feel that they have a part in its development. A similar application may be made to the sales of securities in companies manufacturing razors, producing coal, or oil, or matches, or food-materials. The unlisted-securities market is full of stories of corporations, now grown rich and powerful, which were originally financed by the founder using the money of a half-dozen or more friends. The Ford Motor Company, perhaps, is the shining light in a field of phenomenal growth from a small beginning, although the shares are not on the market. The friends or business associates of a man with an idea, impressed with the prospects of a sizable return on the money put into it, finance the building of a factory and the purchase of raw material. Later, additional capital is needed and a wider circle of security owners results. The original investors hold their stock and subscribe to more, and there results the "closely held" corporation whose securities may not actually pass beyond the stage of primary distribution when the capital has reached up into the millions. During this period a company's securities may, and usually do, have so limited a market that it is hardly a market at all. Quotations are made by a bank or a dealer in the community where most of the stocks or bonds are owned. The company itself may act as practically the only medium between buyer and seller. But with growth of capital there comes naturally a gradual broadening of the list of owners or lenders. Shrewd dealers and brokers in securities in other localities find that profits lie in the bringing of seller and buyer together, and from that time proceeds the secondary distribution. (Continued on pige 81J 80 Are Stocks a
"Buy?"
Is it time to get in on the next broad rise in stocks? How about the money situ.' ation? What about bonds? Babson's Reports
Babson's recent Barometer Letter "What's Coming this Fall?" gives you the plain, unbiased facts on the present situation, and forecasts coming conditions with remarkable accuracy. It contains information of vital importance to every investor. REPORT O N REQUEST This Letter and Booklet, "Getting the Most from Your Money", will be sent to interested Investors, gratis. Clip out the Memo — now — and hand it to your secretary when you dictate the morning's mail. Merely Ask for Bulletin J-31 The Babson Statistical Organization Wellesley Hills, 82, Boston, Mass. The Largest Organization of its Character in the World. MEMO Write Roger W . Babson, president of The Babson Statistical Organization, Wellesley Hills, 82, Boston, Mass.. as follows: Please send me a copy of Bulletin J-31, " What's Coming this Fall" and booklet "Qem'ng the Most from Your Money", gratis. , Learn About This Nation Wide Investment Service STVESTORS" Service has won such wide approval in the Middle West that it has
been extended to a nation-wide scope. In
vestors everywhere can now secure from
us the cream of America's choicest first
mortgage industrial and real estate bonds.
They are issued in denominations of
$100, $500, $1000—do not fluctuate in
value, and pay a liberal interest return.
Write for our booklet explaining these safe investments and showing our responsihility and successful record. Ask for booklet E-ioo INVESTORS
SECURITIES CORPORATION First Mortgage Real Estate and Industrial Bonds 3131 W. MADISON ST., CHICAGO.ILL.
301 Columbia Bldg., Louisville, Ky.
(Continued from page 8o) If a company's success is marked in whatever line it may be, it is certain sooner or later to come to the attention of bankers whose business it is to finance growing corporations. With them the task of raising funds is purely a matter of business for a profit. If the controlling interests consent to the quick enlargement of their working and fixed capital, the product is an increase of stock or the offering of a new bond or note issue, with a consequent rapid enlargement of the number of security owners. This will occur whether the dominant security owners elect to sell or arrange for a reorganization of the company they have built. And as the capital and the business are enlarged, the sponsors of the extension programme are careful to see that the original "good-will" with the public is not lost; on the contrary, these elements are quite likely to be emphasized more and more. In case of companies making trade-marked goods the capitalization both of product and personal interest in the securities is probably carried to a point further than in other concerns. The task is not difficult provided, of course, that the business is sound and conservatively managed, and there is an unbroken record of fair treatment of stock owners. This is not to say that dividends may not be effected by unfavorable periods of business. Neither the most aggressive nor the most conservative management can always be able to produce profits when general conditions are unfavorable to profits. There are many corporations with securities in the unlisted market that have never paid a dividend. More than that, dividend prospects are remote, and that fact might almost necessitate a qualification of the statement that investment is the directing force of the market. The public is wont to insist that a non-dividend paying stock is a speculation and that attitude is sound in the main. However, the buyers of unlisted stocks are usually outside the class which make speculation their chief avocation, and when these shares are accumulated for the sake of expected profits through the rise of prices, they are generally held for a long period, governed, naturally, by the action of quotations. The unlisted-security market has not attained its present great breadth through the (Continued on page 82) 81 (Continued from page 81) 37 YEARS WITHOUT LOSS TO AN INVESTOR For two generations The Georgia Loan & Trust Company has been selling Farm Mortgages, secured by properties in Georgia, Alabama and Florida, paying 614% and 7%. No investor holds a mortgage bought from this Company that is not worth its face value and interest. Follow the rule— SAFET Y first, and buy F_arm Mortgages such as are offered by Th eTitle Guaranty &Trust Co. FIRST BRIDGEPORT NATIONAL BANK B LOG. BRIDGEPORT, CONN". NORTHERN OFFICE OF the georgia loan & trust co Macon. Georgia The Investor's Pocket Library is a series of pamphlets discussing fundamental investment matters in an elementary way. They are sent free to investors. The series includes the following titles: General Investment Subjects How to Invest Bonds and the Investor Investment Position of Municipal Bonds Partial Payment Investments Unlisted Securities—Whence Do They Come? The Machinery of the Unlisted Security Market Investment Stocks Things to Know About Stocks Preferred Stocks—"A Middle Ground Investment " Preferred Stocks, Pro and Con Foreign Bonds Our Foreign Bond Holdings "Internal" Foreign Loans and the Exchanges Foreign Bonds to Suit AH Tastes Real-Estate Mortgages Real-Estate Securities—Strong-Box Investments The Unique Investment—The Mortgage Loan The Mortgage in Retail Packages Mobilizing Mortgage Money Amortization of Mortgages Farm Mortgages The Farm Mortgage as an Investment How Sound Farm Mortgages Are Made The Various Forms of Farm-Mortgage Security Story of the Farm Mortgage Bankers Association New York Stock Exchange What Is the Stock Exchange ? Exchange Members and What They Do The Sinews or the Market Investment and Speculation Dimensions of the Market (Long and Short) The Committee on Business Conduct The Odd Lot The Broker and His Service In writing specify the titles of the booklets you desire to receive. Investor's Service Department SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE 597 Fifth Avenue New York purchases of speculators who buy in large blocks to wait for an advance. The small investor is the backbone of the market. It is the man who buys ten shares of a stock because it has paid 7 per cent dividends for fifteen to twenty years, and the man who buys twenty-five shares of another stock because he is convinced that profits in a few years will be large enough to warrant large disbursements to share owners, who are the real figures in the 'market. These statements may be challenged by the question: "If the market is thus made up of persons who buy to keep, why is it that there is a constant turnover of many seasoned unlisted stocks? How is it that the unlisted market, under such conditions, does not contract and grow smaller instead of expanding?" The answer to one question is that the market is steadily being enlarged by the additions of new securities. The reply to the other could be put in a counter question: "What is the dividing line between investment and speculation?" The owner of a stock may keep his shares for years, content with the income, and then sell because a gradual appreciation of the price has brought a paper profit too tempting to be resisted. It would be poor business not to turn the paper profit into cash, for while unlisted stocks usually are stable and move gradually, they, nevertheless, respond to business conditions through fluctuations up and down. Furthermore, unlisted stocks accumulated as investments come back into the market through the settlement of estates. Bought originally and held for the sake of dividends, they reappear upon the death of the owner, frequently to be taken by another investor who locks them away. Six Percent Farm Mortgages Secured by first liens on productive farms located in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. The character of these investments is indicated by the fact that most of our offerings are taken by banks and insurance companies. Detailed information submitted upon request INVESTORS MORTGAGE COMPANY R. B. Bishop, President NEW ORLEANS, LA. FORT WORTH,TEX. 82 THE PURITANS were not oppressive or cruel. They tried hard to civilize and Christianize the Indians. But when, in 1636, the Pequot tribe committed unprovoked murders and finally burned the quiet settlement of Wethersfield, killed ten people and carried two girls into captivity, justice demanded stern measures. A n expedition of 77 colonists stormed the palisaded fort which sheltered over 700 Pequots, and in an hour's battle broke the Pequot power. This decisive defeat stilled the war whoop for nearly forty years. Justice that protects individual and corporate rights, probity in commercial relations, industry and thrift—these are the solid foundations of New England. This institution subscribes to the old New England standards. It enjoys intimate touch with leading New England enterprises; maintains regular channels for domestic and foreign financial service; possesses resources ample for all purposes. W e cordially invite correspondence. W e shall be glad to send you our il lustrated brochure/'A^w England—Old and Neiu"—issued in commemoration of the Tercentenary of the First Landing in 1620. Address Department E . O l d Colony Trust Company BOSTON PROTECT YOUR INVESTED FUNDS
The Financial .Department of Scribner's Magazine maintains an Investor's Service Bureau, to analyze securities and supply news, statistics, and relevant information on investments and kindred subjects. In order that our service may be sufficiently thorough and personal to be of practical use, a nominal fee is charged. Statistics, facts, and information about one stock or bond arefurnishedfor $3.00. A n additional charge of $2.00 is made for each additional security reported on at same time. Inquiries, accompanied by a remittance, should be addressed to Investor's Service Bureau, Scribner's Magazine, 597 Fifth Avenue, New York. Following are announcements of current booklets and circulars issued by financial institutions, which may be obtained without cost on request addressed to the issuing banker. Investors are asked to mention Scribner's Magazine when writing for literature. CURRENT INVESTMENT OFFERINGS The Mercantile Trust Company, St. Louis, has prepared a list of Municipal Bonds exempt from the Federal Income Tax, yielding 5.50% to 6%. Circular B-650 describing these issues in full will be forwarded upon request. Earnest E. Smith & Company, 52 Devonshire St., Boston, are distributing literature on established New England stock—Sullivan Machinery, Merrimac Chemical, Roberston Paper, Old Colony Woollen Mills, etc. The record of the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway Company since reorganization, and the investment position of its bonds are given in an interesting circular recently issued by Herrick & Bennett, 66 Broadway, New York. It. M. Byllesby & Company, Chicago and New York, are distributing a booklet discussing the mail order business from the investor's standpoint, and an illustrated booklet concerning the Oriental Navigation Company. " INVESTMENT BOOKLETS AND CIRCULARS Peabody, Houghteling & Company, of Chicago are publishing a monthly magazine the purposes of which are to keep their investors informed as to condition of securities they have already purchased, and to announce current and future offerings. Copies on request. Blyth, Witter & Co.. 61 Broadway, New York, and San Francisco, publish a booklet entitled "Elementary Principles of Safe Investment" which in simple language offers a key to investing for people not familiar with stocks and bonds. "Investment Items": A monthly discussion of Canadian financial1 conditions. "Investment Recommendations": A quarterly selection of Canadian investment securities. Published by Royal Securities Corporation, Montreal, Canada; 165 Broadway, New York. How, why, and under what conditions the stocks of nationally known companies are good investments, where the securities of such companies may be located, and how they may be purchased, are described in a short book entitled " Investments in Nationally Known Companies," which is being distributed without charge by To bey & Kirk, 25 Broad Street, New York. In "To-morrow's Bond Prices," a booklet discussing the influence on bond prices of high commodity prices, high interest rates, etc., present low bond prices are compared with the trend of bond prices following every great war. Attention is drawn to the prevailing high bond yields now obtainable. Write for copy to William R. Compton Company, St. Louis, New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, and New Orleans. "War Loans of the United States"—giving a detailed description of the Government bond issues since the beginning of the war, and also giving complete information as to all tax-exempt features, and tables showing yields at different prices—published by Old Colony Trust Company, Department E, Boston, Massachusetts. BOOKLETS ON FINANCIAL SUBJECTS Among the publications which Halsey, Stuart & Company are distributing to interested investors are the following: "Choosing Your Investment Banker," emphasizing the importance of this selection; "Bonds, Questions Answered, Terms Defined," an elementary treatise on bond questions and bond terms, and "Investment Securities," a monthly bulletin of government, municipal, and corporation offerings. "Concerning Trusts and Wills"—suggesting the proper manner of conserving estates, and the attractive possibilities of creating trust funds—published by Old Colony Trust Company, Department E, Boston, Massachusetts. "A B C of Foreign Exchange," makes a simple explanation of an important subject not always understood. Distributed free on request by the Seattle National Bank. Seattle, Wash. The Bankers Trust Company of New York has announced for free distribution two booklets, " Europe's War Problems and Labor," and " State of New York Personal Income Tax Law and Corporation Franchise Tax Law, as Amended by the Laws of 1920." A Quick-Reckoning Income Tax Table, aiding the investor to determine the gross yield he must get on a taxable bond to correspond to the yield of a tax-free municipal, is being distributed by Stacy & Braun, 5 Nassau Street, New York. Among the publications of the Guaranty Trust Company of New York are "American Goods and Foreign Markets," a semi-monthly review of conditions affecting the export trade, with particular reference to opportunities abroad for the sale of American products; and "Financial and Business Conditions in the United States," a concise semi-monthly news summary, with current commodity prices and market values of foreign currencies and securities. These reviews will be sent on request. Booklets published recently by the National City Company, National City Bank Building. New York, are: "Acceptances" — including the Regulations and Rulings of the Federal Reserve Board; "Investment Securities" (monthly)—a list of high-grade investments; "Men and Bonds"—an illustrated story of their investment service; "What You Should Know about Investment"—a help to inexperienced investors; "The Well Frog"—a story of the losses of an unguided investor. The importance of an American trade base as an aid in building up our trade with the Orient is dealt with in a booklet, "The Far East," recently issued by the National Shawmut Bank of Boston. Another of the bank's publications explains the use of "Acceptances" by examples covering domestic and foreign transactions. Other booklets deal with the Webb Law and the Edge Law. Charts of the Fluctuations of Foreign Exchange Rates in iqiq, "Wool and Wool Manufacture," and "The New England Letter," published monthly, will be sent upon application to the First National Bank of Boston, Mass. A series of articles on industrial, commercial, and agricultural activities in the Pacific Northwest is distributed in booklet form under the title "Know Portland and the Northwest," by the Ladd & Tilton Bank, Portland, Oregon. A conservative yet confident survey of the current situation and outlook is given in the latest issue of The Baclte Review. Sent upon application by J. S. Bache & Co., 42 Broadway, New York. Stacy & Braun have compiled a comparative table of Toledo banks which they will send to those interested in Toledo bank stocks. REAL ESTATE MORTGAGE BOOKLETS C. C. Mitchell & Co., 69 West Washington St., Chicago, have just published "The New Chicago," a 24-page, illustrated booklet. This pictures and describes representative types of Chicago pioperties securing Mitchell-Safeguarded First Mortgage Serial Bonds, and also gives a very interesting study of the great advancement of Chicago. The advantages of buying real estate bonds from a bank are outlined in a booklet entitled " Bank-Safeguarded Bonds," distributed to investors by Greenebaum Sons Bank & Trust Company, Chicago. This bank is also distributing an illustrated folder entitled "Are Your Mortgage Bonds Bank-Safeguarded?" The Investment Guide published by S. W. Straus & Co., 150 Broadway, New York, and Straus Building, Chicago, outlines the principles of the Straus Plan and describes various attractive offerings of First Mortgage serial bonds. Investors Securities Corporation, Madison & Kedzie State Bunk Building, Chicago, is distributing literature on First Mortgage real estate and industrial bonds. FARM MORTGAGE. BOOKLETS "The Science of Safe and Profitable Investing," a Farm Mortgage booklet, is being distributed by Potters & Company of Minneapolis, Minn. "Secure Investments," a booklet describing First Mortgages on Southern Farms, sent on request to Investors Mortgage Co., New Orleans National Bank Bldg., New Orleans, La. "The Prarie Provinces—a fruitful field for Conservative Investors" describes opportunities for investments in Canadian Farm Mortgages. Write to Wells-Dickey Company, Minneapolis. ''Mortgages Paid in Gold," a booklet describing Southern Farm Mortgages, is distributed by the Title Guaranty & Trust Company, Bridgeport, Conn. "Forman Farm Mortgages and the Forman Monthly Payment Plan," a booklet recently issued by George M. Forman & Co., 11 So. La Salle St., Chicago, describes their investment offerings and the partial payment facilities they extend to investors. Sent on request. 85 CLEAR. AS A BELL Sonora Highest Class Talking Machine in the World ITS tone—wonderfully pure, natural and expressive — has made Sonora famous. Sonora is also famous for its perfectly made, elegantly designed cabinet and for its important features which distinguish Sonora as the leader of all phonographs. When you buy a Sonora, you and all your friends know you have bought the best and you take pride in possessing the phonograph of unequalled beauty. Superb Upright and Period Models $60 to $2500 Special designs will be made to order. We are also prepared to place Sonora equipments in treasured cabinets which you may now own. Write today for General Catalog 12 or Period Catalog 12x Sonora pijcinogtapJ) Company, Inc. GEORGE E.BRIGHTSON, President
New York City:
Fifth Avenue at 53rd Street 279 Broadway
Canadian Distributors:
I. Montagnes & Co., Toronto DEALERS EVERYWHERE Use Sonora Semi-Permanent Needles on all steel needle lateral cut records. They' sweeten the tone and increase the records' life. Sample free. Write for it. The Nocturne 86 STUTZ
The Car That Made .Good in a Day
87 AS the nights begirt to lengthen, your eyes will appreciate a lamp that softly illumines the room and &ives an ample lig,ht for reading. The MILLER Library Lamp is &ood to look at, and efficient to see by\ 22 inches high, 2 Lights, Price $15.00 O n display at all of the companies listed below, or order it by mail from the nearest. Brooklyn Edison Co. Brooklyn, N. Y. Minneapolis General Electric Co. Minneapolis, Minn. Chattanooga Railway & Lighting Co. Chattanooga, Tenn. Nashville Railway and Light Co. Nashville, Tenn. Commonwealth Edison Co, Chicago, III. Nebraska Power Co. Omaha, Neb. Consolidated Gas, Electric Light & Power Co. Baltimore, Md. N. 0. T. & L. Co. Akron, Ohio Consumers Power Co. In various cities in Michigan Penn. Central Light and Power Co. In various cities Dallas Power & Light Co. Dallas, Texas Philadelphia Electric Co. Philadelphia, Pa. Subsidiaries of Henry L. Doherty & Co. In various cities Portland Railway, Light & Power Co. Portland, Ore. Duquesne Light Co. Pittsburg, Pa. Potomac Electric Power Co. Washington, D. C. Eastern Shore Gas and Electric Co. Id various cities Public Service Electric Co. In various cities in New Jersey Public Service Co. In various cities in Northern Illinois Edison Electric Illuminating Co. of Boston Boston, Mass. Utah Power & Light Co. Salt Lake City The Hartford Electric Light Co. Hartford, Conn. Union Electric Light and Power Co. St. Louis, Mo. Indianapolis Light and Heat Co. Indianapolis, Ind. United Electric Light and Power Co. New'York City Kansas City Power and Light Co. Kansas City, Mo. and electric light companies in other cities in the United States Kansas Gas and Electric Co. Wichita, Kan. CANADIAN DISTRIBUTORS Milwaukee Electric Railway & Liskt Co. Milwaukee, Wis. Canadian General Electric Co., Ltd. Toronto, Ont. The Electric Shop Providence, R. I. EDWARD MILLER & COMPANY Established U4i Meriden, Connecticut 88 EVERY FIGURE IN THIS RUG TELLS A STORY! The above rug is only one of many indescribably beautiful examples W&J.SLOANE recently received by us from the FIFTH AV E &_47tk ST. Orient . . . W e invite you to see them. NEW YORK CITY Asbestos JOHNS-MANVILLE COLORBLENDE ROOFS Serve* in Conirryalton The richness and distinction Manville Asbestos Roofings:—
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costs which typify all Johns-you our Colorblende booklets?
H. W. JOHNS-MANVILLE CO., New York City i.o Factories—Branches in 6j Large Cities. For Canada: Canadian Johns-Manville Co., Ltd., Toronto tyfie aristocrat of fire-safe roofings JOHNS -MANVILLE ASBESTOS SHINGLES THER E is genuine satisfaction in knowing that, when one's trunk is opened after the journey, one's clothes will be found in perfect condition, ready for the appearance in the fashionable restaurant or ballroom. Then, too, the Indestructo bespeaks genuineness, good taste, and a natural preference for the better things. Inside and outside, it is a trunk that truly represents well-bred people en tour. NATIONAL VENEER PRODUCTS COMPANY INDESTRUCTO INSURED TRUNKS; N. V. P. TRUNKS MISHAWAKA INDIANA INDESTRUCTO
Trunk Makers
Beech Nut GingerAle
POU R out a frosty-cold glass of Beech-Nut Ginger Ale. Watch the fizzing, fragrant foam, all but flowing over. Taste the rich mellowness of it — enjoy the fragrant bouquet, the piquant refreshment of this newest Beech-Nut fine flavor. Smooth and satisfying to thirsty throats of all ages—best play-time drink for children. Keep a case on hand. Bottles of generous size—each enough for two. Moderate in price. Beech-Nut Packing Co., Canajoharie, N . Y. "Foods of Finest Flavor" BEECH-NUT "Foods of Finest Flavor' Bacon Cider Vinegar Peanut Butter Prepared Mustard Pork and Jams, Jellies, MarBeans malades and JelTomato Catsup lied Fruits Chili Sauce Mints Oscar's Sauce Chewing Gum American-LaFrance Apparatus
protects cities the world
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Load and Service Capacity of Heavy Duty Commercial Truck Efficiency and Speed of Highest Quality Passenger Car Designed and built to withstand the severe requirements of Fire Duty—the hardest test demanded of any type of automobile—American La France Fire Trucks have the quick "get away" and the speed of racing cars combined with the stamina of the most powerful commercial trucks. AMERICAN LAFRANCE FIRE ENGINE COMPANY, INC ELMIRA, N. Y. STANDARD OF THE WORLD FOUNDED 1845 93 "Yes, that way is a good deal shorter, but it's a pretty rougJi road." "That doesn't worry me; I've got Kelly-Springfield tires on." 94 CHILDREN are in Danger-Protect their Schools American communities have suffered the actual horrors of schoolhouse fires. This costly lesson is unheeded in cities and villages without number. In every community there are school buildings which lack full fire protection. A Pyrene Fire Extinguisher will put out any fire in its early stages, even a gasoline or electric fire. A teacher or pupil can operate it. Pyrene puts out many a blaze while the fire department is "on the way." A Pyrene Extinguisher should be in every school room and a Guardene soda-and-acid extinguisher in every hallway. PYRENE MANUFACTURING CO.. INC.. 17 EAST 49th STREET, NEW YORK ATLANTA CHICAGO KANSAS CITY SAN FRANCISCO Pyrene Manufacturing: Co., of Canada, Ltd., Montreal, P. Q. Write for Pyrene Fire Booklet showing complete line of fire-fighting and tire-prevention appliances for public building's, homes, industrial plants, etc. 93 Sold by hard ware and electrical supply, school supply dealers and gara pes. Hey! Let Me Write that Ad Al l right, my boy, what do you say ? 'Ti l say that AMH O is bully underwear for us kids. It don't scratch and I wouldn't know that I had on heavier underwear. An d yet it's warm enough." That's fine, lad. But do you The garment is made by an old know the reason why ? AMH O Ne w England company, whose No. 737 is made from a combination workers are old-fashioned enough of the finest cotton in the world— to take as much pride and pains long staple Peruvian cotton—and in making your underwear as the softest and best wool in the your own mother would take. Is world—Australian lamb's wool. it any wonder you and your sis-It goes through ten cleaning operater are so comfortable and healthy tions before it's even knit. in AMHO ? AMHO
Means Better Underwear AMERICAN HOSIERY COMPANY NEW BRITAIN (Established 1868) CONNECTICUT Makers of fine knitted underwear for men, women and children 96 Lovely, and the more you look artistic monograms. It will not tarat Ivory Fiberloid the better you nish, break or dent. Look for the like it. It is the most dainty, durname Fiberloid like Sterling on able and sanitary of all material for silver. Sold by the better dealers in the boudoir. Easily engraved with attractively boxed sets, or singly. The booklet, "Beautiful Fairfax," containing facts for the fair sex, by Grace Gardner, will be sent upon request. THE FIBERLOID CORPORATION Advertising Department Dominion Ivory Co., Ltd. Salesrooms 52 Bay Street, Toronto, Canada Indian Orchard. Massachusetts 55 Fifth Ave., New York City —confident that the style of his clothes is faultless, the workmanship unexcelled, and that the all-wool fabrics are of unquestionable integrity. Such is the privilege enjoyed by wearers of SOCIETY BRAND CLOTHES, for young men and men who stay young. WITH THE VARIED GRADES OF CLOTHING FLOODING THE MARKET, LOOK FOR THE LABEL AS YOUR GUIDE ALFRED DECKER & COHN, Makers In Canada: SOCIETY BRAND CLOTHES, Limited Chicago New York Montreal Society Brand Clothes FOR YOUNG MEN AND MEN WHO STAY YOUNG
The Hair and Complexion So Refreshing and Healthful Kirk's JAP ROSE SOAP Golden ^Transparent RY to imagine shampooing your own hair with no wearisome rubbing to raise even a thin lather, and no rinsing over and over till your back is nearly broken and your hair still stringy and sticky from the undissolved soap. You can easily realize such an imagination if you use JA P ROS E soap. Just dip the big, golden, transparent cake in any kind of water—even cold. A few ight rubs on your moistened hair, and like magic come lock upon flock of the prettiest little elfish, pearly )ubbles. How they do go after the dust and oil in the lair, and right down to the skin pores of the scalp. And how easy the rinsing. A dash or two of water or a brief swish of the spray—and all the bubbles are gone, leaving the hair and scalp thoroughlyclean—of soap as well as grime. So pure are the oils in JAP ROSE soap, and so scientifically blended with c. p. glycerine are they, that it not only cleanses, but beautifies, leaving a smooth, tender glow to the complexion, and the hair soft and fluffy. Roses in the cheeks, fluffiness in the hair, fra
grant cleanliness everywhere—that'sJAPROSE.
You'll Like It! An unusual value at two cakes for a quarter JAMES S. KIRK & COMPANY, CHICAGO Makers of fap Rose Talcum Powder —Kirk's Flake White Soap THE FRANKLIN SEDAN
mOR E miles per day, more days per year— that is the simple explanation of the large, economical mileage that Franklins pile up every year. They are comfortable over all roads, free from temperature troubles at all seasons. 20 miles to a gallon of gasoline 12,500 miles to the set of tires FRANKLIN AUTOMOBILE COMPANY JO% slower yearly depreciation (National A verages) Syracuse, N . Y . An alarming condition among American children School authorities say one child in every three — rich and poor alike — is undernourished 1R0 M no less an authority than Dr. lost in modern methods of wheat preparation, Thomas Wood comes the alarming through removal of the six outer layers of the statement that no fewer than 5,000,-wheat grain, commonly called the bran. 000 of America's school children are We lose too many suffering from malnutrition. Dr. Wm. R. P. Emerson says the number undernourished is W e get a considerable part of the protein, the greater than that—one child in every three! starch and the fat; but we lose practically all of the Fathers and mothers who live in mineral elements which our bodies incities may think it's a condition of disputably need — the iron, for inAn official in Chicago's the poor; but statistics show it public school has said : " It stance, which makes red blood to equally prevalent among the children is noticeable that the chilcarry the oxygen upon which all of the dren of special rooms for of the moderately well-to-do and the backward children give evienergy-yielding processes of nutrition children of the rich. dence of malnutrition. The depend—the calcium and phosphorus backward child is usually a
case of malnutrition." which build the bones and the teeth.
In country and city Only in the whole wheat grain can Parents who send their children to Is your child all the needed elements be secured. country schools may lay the blame Run down Frail on city life; but, says Louise Stevens Delicate How Nature tempts us Bryant, "rural school children on the Under-development Nature tempts us to take these elements Pale of energy and health—tempts with dewhole show a higher percentage of Always tired Easily upset lightful tastes and flavors.malnutrition than do city children." Irritable Backward in school As in Pettijohn's a whole wheat breakWherever you live, whatever your Not himself fast food, rich and gratifying to the palate. circumstances, the chances are about Its steaming fragrance awakens sluggish one in three that your child is among These are signs of malnuappetites in old and young alike. trition! The chances are these millions handicapped. For its nut-like sweetness children love your child needs more of the Lack of sufficient food is not necessixteen-vital-elements food. it; for its abundant nourishment grownsarily the cause of this condition. ups prefer it. Most often it comes from lack of food With cream and a bit of sugar, if you of the right kind, from an insufficient supply of wish, it makes a vital energy ration of luscious flavor. If you have a child who shows any of the signs of malcertain food elements. nutrition (see panel)—try Pettijohn's. The 16 vital elements If you yourself have been feeling below your normal Sixteen natural food elements are needed to keep in vigor and vim—try Pettijohn's. Perhaps with you the normal human being strong and well and filled it's simply a matter of relieving congestion of the intestinal tract. Pettijohn's with its natural bran laxative with that abundant vitality which provides for will soon set you right. growth and the warding off of disease. Your grocer has Pettijohn's—or will gladly get it for In the wheat grain Nature provides these sixyou. Make tomorrow's breakfast of this sixteen-vitalteen vital elements in more nearly the proper proelements food. portion than in any other food, save possibly milk. Made by the Quaker Oats Co., 1631-K Railway But many of the most important of these are Exchange Building, Chicago, U. S. A. 101 BEAUTY that is strong and strength that is beautiful—the mark of the masterpiece—inseparably entwined in the master tire— nthe Silvertown Cord. Goodrich Silvertown (Americas First CORD T IRE The Goodrich Adjustment "Basis: Silvertown Cords, 8000 utiles ; FahricTires, 6000 JMiles 102 'Without research no scientific discoveries or inventions have been made" ENCYCLOPAEDIA BK.ITANNICA MOR E than a decade ago MAZD A Service took form in the Research Laboratories of the General Electric Company. Chemists, physicists, metallurgists and engineers, coordinating and cooperating in a steady forward drive for scientific knowledge, have built the fountain-head of experience and technical skill from which MAZD A Service flows. The laboratories that house it are without counterpart in the world. MAZD A Service has made possible many things. Its outstanding achievement is the MAZD A lamp. The modern X-ray tube, powerful, adaptable and reliable, is another result of the search of these men for the perfect incandescent electric lamp, and the study of the thermionic emission of its filament. This is one example of the far-reaching influence of MAZDA Service. What part this influence played in the use of electricity in the war; what it has contributed to wireless communication, through the improved vacuum-tube; to surgery, in X-Tay development; to the art of lighting, with electric lamps as large as melons and as small as peas; to industry and commerce, to the progress and comfort and health of humanity, is a story that has not been told. Because it has entered deeply into everyday life, because the benefits k has brought are universal, the story of MAZD A Service is worth telling and worth hearing. RESEARCH LABORATORIES OF GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY MAZDA 103 E GYPTIAN
DEITIES
"Like Father, Like Son" has a twofold application and meaning Evans'
Beverage FORMERLY KNOWN AS CHECONA EVANS Ali Family traits are inherent in both product and producers. Four generations of Evans' have been brewing popular beverages, covering a span of 134 years. Checona Evans' Beverage is just as true to the great grandfather's type of product as the great grandsons are to family traditions. The only change time has brought to Evans' beverages is in the matter of alcoholic content—everything else is there just the same. "Once Evans', always Evans"' tells the story of Evans' success. Order Case of Checona Evans' Beverage from Dealers. C. H. EVANS ® SONS HUDSON, N. Y. e Utmost in Cigarettes Plain End or (pork ftp People of culture and refinement invariably PREFER Mercies to any other cigarette 30* S. Anagyros Makers of the. Highest Grade Turkish and Egyptian Ogarpttes in the World Can't You F;nd It ? Then write to Virginia Walton, Fifth Avenue Section of Scribner's Magazine, 597 Fifth Avenue, New York. If it can be obtained in the New York shops she will get it. No charge for her services. Maple Grove Candies StJohnflta^Vermont Made from pure maple sugar, fresh cream and nuts. Unique and attractive MAPLE GROVE CREAM A n icing for cakes, a spread for sandwiches, waffles and puddings. FINEST GRADE MAPLE SUGAR AND SYRUP for household use. Maple -Grove Service means the best maple in the best form. Send post-card -with address and receive circulars and price-lists. Get-acquainted box <E1 f\f\ of Maple Candies «Fi..VA/ ORDER BY MAIL 104 he Chalmers Sport Model expresses an ideal which men of discernment will appreciate.CHALMERS It combines striking originality and distinc WITH HOT SPOT AND RAM'S HORN tion without offending good taste. CHALMERS MOTOR CAR CO., DETROIT, MICH. CHALMERS MOTOR CO. OF CAN.. LTD.. WINDSOR. ONT Clicquot Club GINGER ALE
ONE keen-fought set after another— then a sparkling, frosty glass of
Clicquot Club Ginger Ale. And you can
come off the tennis court or golf links and
drink the whole bottle without harm,
since the real ginger content safeguards
the over-heated body from the sudden
shock of an ice-cold drink.
No wonder Clicquot Club is so good—
and so good for you. You drink only pure
Jamaica ginger, delicious juice of lemon
and lime, clean cane sugar, and crystal-
clear spring water, delightfully blended.
Buy it by the case from your grocer or
druggist, and make Clicquot the family
drink at your house.
THE CLICQUOTCLUB COMPANY
Millis, Mass.. U.S. A.
As a matter of fact Your first R-E-A-L cigarette pleasure will come with Camels! UOU'L L swing into the Came! procession as easily and as delightedly as any of the thousands of smokers who have found these cigarettes an absolute revelation in quality, in refreshing flavor, in mellow mildness and in body! Camels are unlike any cigarette you ever puffed. They are a creation—an expert blend of choice Turkish and choice Domestic tobaccos. As sure as you are a foot high you will prefer Camels blend to either kind of tobacco smoked straight! Camels fit in with your cigarette desires just one hundred per cent! The satisfaction they impart to smokers is simply joyous. Camels will not tire your taste! And, Camels leave no unpleasant cigaretty aftertaste nor unpleasant cigaretty odor. You'll prove out our enthusiasm when you compare Camels with any cigarette in the world at any price! Camel CIGARETTES
Camels are sold everywhere in scientifically sealed packagesof 20 cigarettes for 20 cents; or ten packages {200 cigarettes)in a glassine-paper-covered carton. We strongly recommend this carton for the home or office supply or when you travel. YL J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Winston-Salem, N. C Ivory Pyralin You can't help but love these dainty toilet things. And one simply has to have them to make the dressing-table complete. the first glance, one is captivated by chip, nor break. It is easily cleaned. It lasts the beauty of Ivory Pyralin. In design it is indefinitely. flawless. It has the mellow lustre of old ivory Ivory Pyralin is unquestionably the ideal toiletand a delicate grain which is exquisite. ware. It is sold at all leading shops, in complete But only through the life-long service which sets or single pieces. Ivory Pyralin gives can you fully appreciate its Genuine Ivory Pyralin may be identified by the truly remarkable qualities. It cannot tarnish, name stamped on each piece in tiny gold letters. E .I. DU PONT DE NEMOURS fls COMPANY, INC., Sales Dept., Pyralin Division, WILMINGTON, DEL, Dalion The Phonograph Instrumentized
"My Five Tests for Phonograph Buyers" is the most beautiful, interesting and helpful phonograph book published. We will gladly send it to you free, together with the name of your local Dalion Dealer. Write today. mUSIC reanimated; living melody that holds all the color and spirit of the artist's original rendition— such is the gift of the Dalion, the only scientifically instrumentized phonograph. Hear it play—not one particular make of record —but all records. Study the exquisite cabinets and the many valuable features found in no other instrument. Operate the ingenious Auto File and see for yourself how completely it prevents all the confusion due to misfiling records. Milwaukee Mfg. Co.. Milwaukee 109 MILES ON A GALLON OF GAS ARE YOU GETTING ANYWHERE _ NEAR THAT —- FROM YOUR FORD/ Suppose you are getting twenty-two miles on a gallon of gas. Then, suppose you increased that mileage to THIRTY. There is eight miles of added travel—motoring that didn't cost youa red cent more than you are now paying—a reduction of approximately thirty-three and one-third percejtt. The New Stromberg Carburetor for Fords HAS caused just such astounding cost reductions for tens of thousands of Fords. It established the world's official economy record. A mileage feat that has never been equaled—37 4-10 miles on a single gallon of gasoline. Ready for immediate installation. Equipped with new improved easy starting attachment. Call on your local dealer or write us for descriptive matter. Beat the high cost of gas. Make your Ford a far more dependable and a far more economical car than ever befure. STROMBERG MOTOR DEVICES CO. 64 East 25th Street Dept. 952 Chicago, III. STROMBErg CARBURETOR WHITING-ADAMS Established 1810 110 Years of Making Good Brushes BRUSHES Replaced foreign brushes in the U.S. in 1812, and became soon the leading manufacturers of Brushes in the United States. Later, and now, the largest manufacturers of Brushes in the world. Excellent quality; infinite variety of all kinds of Brushes. Send for Illustrated Literature John L. Whiting-J. J. Adams Co., Boston, U.S. A. Brush Manufacturers for Over 110 Years and the Largest in the World Pro-phy-lac-tic Tooth Brush 110 Crane Service is as Broad as the Market
Specifying Crane equipment for a heating or plumbing installation insures high quality and serviceability not only in the visible fittings, but also in the hidden piping, where lack of reliability might soon jeopardize the whole system. This standard of service is equally important whether the builder is interested in a home, hotel, apartment, office building, factory, hospital or other public institution. It is equally easy to obtain, too, for buildings of all sizes and types, because the Crane source of supply is as broad as the market. In addition to providing, through the trade, proper fixtures for every requirement of heating, plumbing and sanitation, Crane Service gives ample choice of design to satisfy individual tastes. SAVANNAH ATLANTA KNOXVILLE BIRMINGHAM MEMPHIS LITTLE ROCK MUSKOGEE TULSA OKLAHOMA CITY WICHITA ST. LOUIS KANSAS CTTY TERRE HAUTE CINCINNATI INDIANAPOLIS DETROIT CHICAGO ROCKPORD OSHKOSH GRAND RAPIDS THERE IS A NEARBY CRANE BRANCH TO GIVE YOU CRANE SERVICE CRANE CO.
836 S. MICHIGAN AVE. CHICAGO VALVES-PIPE FITTINGS-SANITARY FIXTURES CRANE EXHIBIT ROOMS 23 WEST «4T-S ST., AND 22 WEST 45*-5 ST.. NEW YORK CITY
TO WHICH THE PUBLIC IS CORDIALLY rHVITED
BRANCHES: FtFTY-5EVEN LEADING CITIES • WORKS CHICAGO. BRIDGEPORT
ST. PAU L SACRAMENT O DAVENPOR T PORTLAN D MINNEAPOLI S OAKLAN D DE S MOINE S POCATELL O DULUT H SA N FRANCISC O OMAH A SAL T LAK E CIT Y FARG O WATERTOW N SIOUX CIT Y OGDE N LOS ANGELE S BOSTON SPRINGFIELD BRIDGEPORT NEW YORK BROOKLYN PHILADELPHIA NEWARK CAMDEN BALTIMORE WASHINGTON ALBANY SYRACUSEBUFFALO ROCHESTER ABERDEEN GREAT FALLS BILLINGS SPOKANE SEATTLE TACOMA W e are manufacturers of about 20,000 articles, including valves, pipe fittings and steam specialties, made of brass, iron, ferrbsteel, cast steel and forged steel, in all sizes, for all pressures and all purposes and are distributors of pipe, heating and plumbing materials. That the demands oflndustry are a* fully met bv Crane Service as those of the homebutlder is strikingly indicated by the accompany ing photo of Crane steel elbows and manifolds. Compare their size with the figure of the workee Ill SETH
THOMAS
ACCURACY of adjustment TRITENESS of balance PRECISION of movement LONG LIFE.
^The name SETH THOMAS guarantees all this in a clock. To Know Is to Choose Wisely Your doors, window-frames, mantels, sideboard, floors—what wood shall they be made of? Yo u can't, you mustn't make a mistake in the part of the house you live with and see most of. What is more vexatious than a mistake—your own mistake—staring you out of countenance day after day! "Beautiful birch" is indeed beautiful; but so are some other fine woods. Are they as hard, dent resisting, durable as birch? Do they take stains, paints and enamels as well and in as wide a variety as "Beautiful birch"? Are they as economical? Can you get them in handsome panels for interior woodwork? On the whole, probably you had better send for the FREE BIRCH BOOK. It is called "Beautiful Birch for Beautiful Woodwork" and is a regular test book on interior beautification. Shall we send it ? The Birch Manufacturers 215 F. R. A. Bldg. Oshkosh, Wis. birch
112 THERE'S A TOUCH OF TOMORROW IN ALL COLE DOES TODAY
Cole Aero -Eight
CORRECTLY PROPORTIONED - BALANCED TO ZERO 15ooo MILES ON ORIGINAL TIRES COLE MOTOR CAR COMPANY INDIANAPOLIS, U. S.A. Creators of c/(doancecl cfffetor (°ars Reproduction from, a painting in oil of tlie beautiful Lake Forest estate of Harold F. McCormick vERY often trees die of thirst—just was desired, and this was secured by plain thirst. filling. Around the trees in question a Un a certain Long Island country estate foot or more of heavy clay was tamped in several beautiful trees were withering and thick sod laid on top. As a result, and dying. The owner could find no cause water was absolutely shut off from the roots for their rapid decline. There was no eviof the trees, and the air also was excluded. dence of serious decay, no apparent blight Davey Tree Surgeons were not consulted any too or tree disease of any kind. soon — the trees would not have lived through the summer — a few of them were too far gone and died He called in Davey Tree Surgeons to dianyway. A scientific system of root irrigation was agnose the trouble. They made a careful installed and the trees that could be saved are now in a healthy and flourishing condition. examination and discovered that the trees What is the real condition of your trees? Most of were dying of thirst—despite an abunthe enemies of tree life—disease, decay, thirst, insect dant rainfall. Investigation soon disclosed enemies —are not apparent to the untrained eye. Davey Tree Surgeons will examine your trees and the reason — in laying out the site a tell you their condition and their needs. Write us higher elevation on two sides of the house promptly. THE DAVEY TREE EXPERT CO., Inc. 909 Elm Street, Kent, Ohio Branch Offices with telephone connections : New York City, Astor Court Bldg.; Chicago, Westminster Bldg.;
Baltimore, American Bldg,; Philadelphia, Land Title Bldg., and Boston.
Writenearestoffi.ee.
Among prominent persons served Permanent representatives available in by Davey Tree Surgeons are: districts surrounding Boston. SpringA . LINCOL N FILEN E field, Lenox, Newport. Hartford, Stamford. Albany, Poughkeepsie, White Plains, Jamaica, Montclair, New York, MRS. FREDERIC DELANO HITCH CLAUDE MEEKER Philadelphia, Harrisburgh, Baltimore. GEORGIA STATE CAPITOL Washington, Richmond, Buffalo, ToMRS. R. L. IRELAN D ronto, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, SA M A. LEWISOH N Cincinnati, Chicago, Milwaukee and DR. HENRY BARTON JABOBS St. Louis. Canadian address: 252 Laugauchitere West, Montreal. HARRY HARKNESS FLAGLER JOHN DAVEY
Father of Tree Surgery
DAVEY TREE SURGEONS
Every real Davey Tree Surgeon is in the employ of the Davey Tree Expert Co., Inc., and the public is cautioned against those falsely representing themselves. An agreement made with the Davey Company and not with an individual is certain evidence of genuineness Actual Photograph of the S\JL-48 Coupe MOON THE SUCCESS OF THE YEAR The Moon is an embodiment of the highest degree of engineering skill. Each unit is the work of part specialists who have attained outstanding leadership in their particular field. No single organization could embrace all these specialists, but Moon engineers have combined the skill of all in a distinctly individual car that is priced within the realm of reason. Butlt bv MOON MOTOR CAR COMPANY, St. Louis. U. S A. The Hoover lifts the rug from the floor, like this —flutters it upon a cushion of air, gently ctbeats"out its cmbeddedgrit,andsoprolongsitslife For years, in the finest mansions of two continents, The Hoover has been prolonging the beauty of the costliest rugs that have been woven. It steadfastly has beaten out all the harmful embedded grit, swept up all the stubborn litter, brushed straight the velvety nap, revived the rich colorings and suction cleaned the surfaces. Only The Hoover does all this. And it is the largest selling electric cleaner in the world. 9fe HOOVER
It Beats—as it Sweeps—as it Cleans T he H oover S uction S weeper C ompany The oldest makers of electric cleaners North Canton, Ohio Hamilton. Canada DURAND
S teel L ockers
Standardized Safety Deposit Box Units Not only standardized—but regularly carried in stock ready for prompt shipment. A new convenience for the banker. You simply order new units as you need them. They are easily installed. You can expand your Safety Deposit Box Department gradually to meet the growth of your business. The assembly is uniform. A handsome adjunct to any bank interior. 20th Century Safety Deposit Box Units conserve space. There is no waste. Every cubic inch is utilized so that you can get the greatest revenue out of your Safety Deposit Box Department. These units also offer various sized boxes. Whether you need small boxes or large ones, CAR Y Units will supply your needs. Uniform Strength Throughout has been the watchword of the Cary Safe Company for nearly half a century. That high standard is maintained in these 20th Century Safety Deposit Box Units. Send for our folder "20th Century Safety Deposit Box Units." You'll find it instructive in planning your Safety Deposit Box Department. A few of the many thousand banks using cary safety DEPOSIT BOX units are : COMMERCIAL TRUST COMPANY, NEW YORK. N. Y. THE PUBLIC NATIONAL BANK, NEW YORK, N. Y. MARINE TRUST COMPANY, BUFFALO, N. Y. CLEVELAND TRUST COMPANY, CLEVELAND. OHIO OHIO SAVINGS BANK AND TRUST COMPANY, TOLEDO. OHIO PENOBSCOT SAFETY DEPOSIT VAULTS. DETROIT, MICH. BL PASO BANK AND TRUST COMPANY, EL PASO, TEXAS BERKBLEY BANK OF SAVINGS. BERKELEY. CALIF. BANK OF HAMILTON. CANADA LA BANQUE NATION ALE, CANADA BANK OF NOVA SCOTIA, CANADA CARY SAFE COMPANY BUFFALO, V. S. A. THERE are some people still who consider steel lockers a luxury. But it is safe to say that no manager of any progressive institution—be it of an industrial, quasi-public or social nature—considers steel lockers anything but a vital necessity. An d being of such importance, steel lockers should be of enduring quality—as Durand Steel Lockers are. We make also Steel Racks, Bins and Shelving. Catalogues on request. DURAND STEEL LOCKER CO. 1508 Ft. Dearborn Bank Bldg.Chicago 508 Park Row Bldg. New York 117 PYORRHOCIDE Genuine
POWDER ANTISEPTIC for Pyorrhea prevention ASPIRIN Tender, soft, bleeding gums are the first symptoms of pyorrhea. If unchecked, pyorrhea causes loss of teeth and menaces health. Pyorrhocide Powder was scientifically compounded for the specific purpose of restoring and maintaining gum health. It is the only dentifrice whose value in treating and preventing pyorrhea has been demonstrated in clinics devoted exclusively to pyorrhea research and oral prophylaxis. That is why it is so widely prescribed by the dental profession. If your gums show pyorrhetic symptoms, Pyorrhocide Powder will aid iii restoring them to a healthy condition. If your gums are healthy, Pyorrhocide Powder will keep them so. It cleans the teeth most effectively; removes the mucoid deposits and daily accretions. Pyorr h u c i d e Powder is eco' nomical because a dollar package contains six months' supply. Sold by leading druggists and dental supply houses. Free Sample If'riff for free sample and our booklet on Preverifioti and Treatment of Pyorrhea. The Dentinol & Pyorrhocide Co., Inc. Sole Ilkl illinium Dept. P 14K0 Rronrtiray New York SOLD BY
DRUGGISTS
EVERYWHERE
Our research work and our clinical < enable us to disseminate information that is authoritative on pyorrhea treatment and prevention. Name "Bayer" identifies genuine Aspirin introduced to physicians in 1900. Insist on unbroken packages Bayer-Tablets of Aspirin Aspirin Is the trade mark of Bayer Manufacture of
Monoaceticacidester of Salicyllcacid
tO find a certain print or perhaps paintings of a certain type—do not hesitate to call on Miss Walton. No charge for her services. Address her at SCRIBNER'S FIFTH AVENUE SECTION, SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE, 597 Fifth Ave. PURITY CROSS Meniu Style Sausage Whole Sausages—• ZMot Slices-Appetizing for Lunch-Pure fiandyTins-Ml Quality Stores FREE BOOKLET ^ Ihe Daily TtfenuZMaker' PURITY CROSS MODEL KITCHEN
ORANGE, NEW JERSEY
118 LEE Puncture Proof Cord Tire OW—one step farther in tire perfection. Lee Puncture-proof Cords represent the final word in tire desire—a tire built to the particular Lee standards—the best cord construction —and—puncture proof. For years, Lee tires, both cord and fabric, have led in mileage satisfaction, never failing to make good a liberal mileage guarantee. Today our proof of performance is strengthened by an unqualified guarantee against puncture. Here's a mighty advance in tire-comfort-assurance,representing a material saving of time, trouble and expense in motoring. Any Lee dealer—and there are Lee representatives everywhere— will fit your car with the Lee tires best calculated to give you greatest satisfaction. Look for the "Lee" name in your telephone book.LE E tire9 smile at miles LEE TIRE & RUBBER CO. Executive Offices 245 Wesft 55th Street NEW YORK CITY SACTORIE3 CONSHOHOCKEN PA. 119 For the Sportsman's den or club PICTURESo/theWEST which reflect the very spirit of ranch and range life. Photographs remarkable for their natural atmosphere. The soft carbon finish makes a picture admirable for framing. Send for list of subjects and prices. Erwin E. Smith Bonham, Texas Is Your Invalid
Confined to One Floor?
Many invalids have been made happy
by the Sedgwick Hand Power Invalid
Elevator which takes them from floor
to floor and so opens the whole home
to them.
Easily operated—even by a child. Absolutely safe. Write for catalogue and the testimony of many invalids made happy. Sedgwick Machine Works Specialists for tzventy-five years in Hand Pozver Elevators and Dumb Waiters for all purposes. 155 West 15th Street New York Keep the Address In case you want anything from the Fifth Avenue Shops. Virginia W alton Fifth Avenue Section of Scribner's Magazine, 597 Fifth Ave., New York. Use This Chest FREE Moth-Proof Cedar Chest Sent on
Free Trial
Famous Piedmont Red Cedar Chests, choice of many styles and designs sent 011 15 days' free trial. A Piedmont protectsfurs* woolens and plumes from moths, mice, dust and damp. Dis 1 mnilFrom generations. Pays for itself in what it saves. The ideal Xmas. tinctively beautiful. Needed in every home. Lasts for Fnetory wedding or birthday gift. Write to-dayfor our illustrated cata tu Home tog-—all postpaid free to you, also ask for a free box of Red Cedar shavings PIEDMONT HE I) CEIMK CHEST CO. Dept, P SUtesvUle, N. C. 120 "The WoodDoes Cypress Lastf I
Eternal*' Study These Photographs of an i ( Ingrowing Fence''* 'WITHOUT A NAIL OR A PEG IN IT. Below is a glimpse down a country highway ("de big road," as Uncle Remus called it) near Monroe, Louisiana. That fence has no posts. It was built by forcing split Cypress boards between saplings. This occurred so many years ago that nobody knows when it was, nor who was the labor-saving genius who did it. Then the trees grew, and grew, and grew. NOW. PLEASE, study the larger photograph and see in detail how the fence looks today. Note the size of the tree, and how deeply are embedded the ends of those old Cypress rails — no one can tell how deep they extend in. Note, also, how weathered they are. yet they ring: as true and sound under a hammer as though just hewn. Were those old Cypress boards somebody's money's worth I Why should not YOU do as well with your lumber money—whether you are building a beautiful home or just patching up the old place i ( use cypress . > TH E PROOF OF THE FENCING IS IN THE LASTING." "Build of Cypress Lumber and You Build but Once." Let our "ALL-ROUND HELPS DEPARTMENT" help YOU. Our entire resources are at your service with Reliable Counsel. SOUTHERN CYPRESS MANUFACTURERS' ASSOCIATION 1269 Hibernia Bank Building, New Orleans, La., or 1269 Heard National Bank Bldg., Jacksonville, Fla. INSIST ON CYPRESS AT YOUR LOCAL LUMBER DEALER'S. IF HE HASN'T IT. LET US KNOW IMMEDIATELY. 121 This package contains Eno—a very agreeable aperient which has been used for over fifty years as a pleasant yet certain aid to digestion, and corrective for the organs of elimination. FRUIT S A LT" ENO'S (DERIVATIVE COMPOUND) A spoonful of Eno in a glass of water makes a refreshing, bubbling drink. promptly gives tone to the system by removing the cause of lassitude. The entire digestive tract is stimulated into healthful action; and headache, nausea, biliousness and nervousness quickly vanish. A bright eye—an active mind—a vigorous step—and regular habits—so characteristic of buoyant good health, follow the occasional use of Eno. Eno can be taken anytime, anywhere, by child or adult—with perfect safety and most satisfactory results. It is sold by all druggists at $1.25 a large bottle. Prepared only by J. C. ENO, Ltd., London, S. E., England Sales Agents: Harold F. Ritchie & Co., Inc. New York Toronto Sydney 122 Those Pearly Teeth
Learn how people get them All statements approved by high dental authorities Millions of people have adopted a new teeth cleaning method. Wherever you look you see pearly teeth nowadays. Let this ten-day test reveal what this method means to you. End the cloudy film Most teeth are dimmed by film. A viscous film clings to them, enters crevices and stays. Most tooth troubles are now traced to it. It is this film-coat that discolors—not the teeth. It is Pepsodent the basis of tartar. It holds food substance which ferments and forms acid. It holds the acid in contact with the teeth to cause decay. Millions of germs breed in it. They, with tartar, are the chief cause of pyorrhea, and very few people escape it. The ordinary tooth paste does not dissolve it, so the tooth brush does not end it. Thus most people suffer from that film. Now dental science, after years of searching, has found a way to combat it. Able authorities have amply proved its efficiency. Now leading dentists everywhere advise it, and millions of people have come to enjoy it. Everyone is welcome Now this new method is embodied in a dentifrice called Pepsodent. And everyone is welcome to a ten-day test. Pepsodent is based on pepsin, the digestant of albumin. The film is albuminous matter. The object of Pepsodent is to dissolve it, then to day by day combat it. Pepsin long seemed impossible. It must be activated, and the usual agent is an acid harmful to the teeth. But science has found a harmless activating method, and pepsin can be every day applied. Two other new-day requisites are combined in Pepsodent. So this method in three ways brings unique results, and everyone should know them. Send the coupon for a 10Day Tube. Note how clean the teeth feel after using. Mark the absence of the viscous film. See how teeth whiten as the film-coat disappears. It will be a revelation. Do this for your sake and your family's sake. Judge the method by results. Cut out the coupon now, for few things are more important than whiter, safer teeth. 10-Day Tube Free THE PEPSODENT COMPANY, Dept. 756, 1104 S. Wabash Ave., Chicago, 111. Mail 10-Day Tube of Pepsodent to The New-Day Dentifrice A scientific film combatant which, after 5 years' tests, is now advised by leading dentists everywhere Druggists supply the large tubes 123 Columbia
Columbia
Band
French Army
Band
Italian
Grenadiers
Band
Prince's
Band
Records
These Brilliant Bands All Play Exclusively for Columbia From triumphant fanfares to thundering marches, from descriptive music to up-to-date dances, from great operatic to thrilling patriotic selections, these bands which make records for Columbia exclusively give you, with their brass and wood-winds, all the beauty of the best band music. COLUMBIA GRAPHOPHONE CO., New York Canadian Factory: Toronto 124 STANDARD EIGHT
A Powerful Car
tHE joy of motoring, like most joys of life, comes from the use of power T o be conscious that there is no hill you need to avoid, no motor-way where your car cannot, without effort, hold your place on the road, is to realize the top joy of automobiling. Some say that this happiness which lies in the sense of Power is just plain vanity Call it whatever you will, every car owner likes the sensation which comes from the control of Power. Tremendous power, under perfect control, is what every Standard Eight owner always has in his car, Its motor actually levels hills. STANDARD STEEL CAR COMPANY Automotive Dept. Pittsburgh, Pa. Vestibule Sedan, $5000. Sedan, $4800. Sedanette $4500. Coupe, $4500. Touring Car: $3400. Roadster, $3400. Chassis, $3150. Above prices 1. o b. Butler,Pa. DISTEEL
WHEELS
(ISTEE L is the synonym for the Motor Car Wheel Pre-eminent, the Wheel of Steel, Inwardly Curved—the most Beautiful and the most Scientific. Disteel is, also, the special Material, the special Process of manufacture, the infinite Care and Precision of workmanship that go into the Disteel Wheel to make the Motor Car Wheel Pre-eminent. Exclusive Manufacturers DETROIT PRESSED STEEL CO.
DISTEEL WHEE L CORPORATION
DETROIT, US A THE. WHEEL S THAT COA\Pl_ E TE T H E CAR Templar "The Pioneer Builder of Quality Small Cars" The Superfine Small Car Five-Passenger Touring . . Four-Passenger Sportette . . Two-Passenger Touring Roadster . .. . Five-Passenger Sedan Three-Passenger Coupe Prices f. o. b. Cleveland The Templar M otors Company 4000 Halstead Street, Lakewood, Cleveland, Ohio Export Department 116 Broad Street, New York City JNDREDS of little things . . . unseen details of finer, prouder work . merge in the quality of Templar. Each seldom calls attention to itself the Templar owner rarely knows each separate factor of his car's entire fineness. But he does know that by every token of appearance and performance, he drives America's super-fine small car Portage
Tires Built up of many layers of the stoutest cord and fabric—fortified and armoured by a thick, tough and pliant rubber Skidlock tread — Portage tires have been for ten years the first choice of motorists who appreciate rugged merit. PORTAGE TIRE & RUBBER COMPANY AKRON {4 The Storage Battery Put Woman in the Driver's Seat RO M the moment when the storage battery made the automobile self-starting, woman ceased to take a back seat in motoring. It has been the happy lot of Columbia to assist, in a large measure, to obviate the troublesome and dangerous necessity of "cranking up." For motorists everywhere have been quick to appreciate the "reserve power"—that higher voltage characteristic which enables Columbia Storage Batteries to function under unusual strains that inevitably arise now and then. Whatever the make and model of your car, any Columbia Service Dealer or Service Station will supply you with the size Columbia Storage Battery it needs. NATIONAL CARBON COMPANY, Inc. Cleveland, Ohio San Francisco, Calif. Canadian National Carbon Co.. Limited, Toronto 85120 Columbia Storage Batteries
129 Smiles of Satisfaction
What can be more important than good brakes ? Brakes that hold and grip. Brakes that respond to the slightest pressure. Brakes that quickly stop your car. Quick acting brakes are dependent upon good brake lining. Raybestos is good lining and we guarantee it to wea r one year. It is this sturdy, dependable wea r which brings smiles of satisfaction to Raybestos users plus — Miles of Service
Look for the Silver Edge RAybestos Brake Lining TH E RAYBESTO S COMPAN Y Factories: BRIDGEPORT , CONN . PETERBOROUGH,CANAD A Branches : Detroit, 979 Woodward Avenue San Francisco, 1403 Chronicle Building Chicago, 1402 Suuth Michigan Avenue Washington, D. C , 107 Columbian Building
Toronto, Ontario, 131 King Street, West
130 O U will notice that all the collars shown on this page have names ending in "—wood." That is the easiest way to identify an Earl 8C Wilson Collar of popular price and fashionable shape. In fact, people often say: " A collar is good if its name ends in "—wood." Collars o Shirts EAR L & WILSON,TROY, N. Y. 131 Murphy
Varnish
for over fifty years the invisible preserver of beautiful surfaces Murphy Da-cote MOTOR CAR
ENAMELS
Imagine Your Car Freshly Painted! Rather different from its present forlorn, down-at-the-heel appearance? Don't stop at imagining! Paint it! Do the -work yourself in a few hours at the cost of a coat or two of DA-COTE MOTOR CAR ENAMEL
The old boat will look like a new car in a glass case! And not so far out of the way at that. This wonderful enamel protects and beautifies like a coating of tough, glass crystal. Dries overnight. Easy to put on. N o sags or wrinkles or brush marks. Made by the makers of the famous Murphy Automobile Varnishes. Furnished in black, white and ten beautiful colors. For sale by dealers everywhere. Murphy Varnish Company NEWARK CHICAGO The Dougall Varnish Company, Limited, Montreal, Canadian Associate 132 R&V
Kniqht
oAmerica's Exclusive Knieht-Six SMOOTH , silent flexibility in a motor that is positively free from carbon troubles, gives the R& . V Knight predominance among the more powerful six cylinder cars today. There are no valves to be ground, no tappets that stick; the longer you drive it the smoother and more silent it runs. As distinctive in beauty as it is in operation, R & . V Knight possesses that sturdy construction, refinement of design and luxurious comfort which distinguish the car of elegance. Until 1910 the car made by this company was known as the Moline; from 1910to 1913 as the Moline-Dreadnaught; from 1913 to 1919 as the Moline-Knight, and it has now been christened the R &. V Knight. 7 Passenger Touring — 7 Passenger Sedan — 4 Passenger Coupe I 4 Passenger Sport — 2 Passenger Roadster R OOT &V AN D ERVOORT E NGINEERING Co. East Moline, Illinois ; 133 "Where Have I Seen 'OLD BLEACH' Before ? " — in homes where the best is a matter of course. — on tables where beautiful Irish Linen Damasks form a perfect background for fine silver and glass. — in guest rooms where the appointments denote the good taste of the hostess. — on display in linen departments where high quality is the rule. In fact, " OLD BLEACH " pure Irish Linens and Linen Damasks are sold in the better shops and bought by those who appreciate the finer things. 131 Enjoy again the old-time apple butter!
The old-time apple butter! Awake, Oh, sleepy appetites—a rare delight awaits you! It comes to you now from sunlit Libby kitchens, comes to you odorous of the orchards and the autumn — pungent, spicy — sweet with memories of long ago. Spread it thick on crisp, brown toast—see what sparkling zest it gives the morning meal. Eat it at dinner with bread or rolls—note what an edge it puts on appetites. Give it to the kiddies in abundance; it is wholeLibby, McNeill & Libby, 1109Libby, McNeill y Libby of Canada,some, healthful, good for them. Its frequent use, instead of butter, is a real economy. We are anxious that you try this old-time apple butter. It is a product we are proud of, one which more than meets the Libby ideal to have each Libby food the. choicest of its kind. Your grocer has Libby's Apple Butter or will gladly get it for you. Your family always enjoys "something different"—surprise them today with this wholesome food delight. Welfare Building, Chicago Ltd., Chatham, Ont., Canada Apple Butter 13.5 iVOR Y Soap comes out of the boarding school trunk along with the dainty clothes and simple toilet requisites of the carefully reared girl. It is Ivory that always has kept her skin soft and fine and her hair healthy and lustrous, and no other soap will be permitted now to undo the good that Ivory has done. Ivory is the perfect soap for everybody's toilet, shampoo, and daily bath. It is so pure and mild that it cannot irritate nor coarsen the tenderest skin, nor dry out the nourishing oils which keep the hair lovely. Its pure, abundant lather cleanses thoroughly, then rinses completely, accomplishing the absolute cleanliness that is essential for healthy, beautiful hair and skin. IVORY SOAP . .Send for a Free Sample of the new Ivory Soap Flakes — snovlike, instant-melting flakes of genuine Iiory Soap that launder silks, chiffons, flannels, knitted things and all fine fabrics like new, without Tubbing. For generous trial size package, just send your name and address to Depart, mem 26-I, The Procter & Gamble Company, Cincinnati, Ohio. 99»* PURE
135 Are Car Owners too Easily
Satisfied with their Tires
N every community of .inv si:e there are two types ot tire dealers— one who encourages his customers in their search tor the best and one who tries to persuade them to be satisfied with what they have* Th e tirst ma n is selling .1 service] the second, tires. » * * There are scill too niiinv motorists who meeklv kCOSDt the blame to r •> tire thfct h.is worn out betore its time. Thev will listen when the de.iler tells them of -til the varying condition!
th.it
• tire Ins to undergo. Thev will agree when he pictures them as lucky that thev got what thev did out of a tire. Not one motorist in five has vet found out what a tire is really capable ot how much he really has a right to expect HOUk his tires. * • » The great ni.iss ot motorists in this Country are just beginning to wake up to the tact that von can't encourage waste and have economy at the same time. They are beginning to rind out tor themselves what makes tor economy in tires. An d they are going to the dealer who not only sell> good tires to the man who insists Iftkt front tin cf tkt car
at tki lift skoil.l blots' cut
stvrral days aUrr striking
this stem* at sf*tJ. its i'a 't/r
n'.'mU yrvbaply k, at it less
tO 1 " Ii 1JI CJUStJ it.
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ft/i«l c»rj or fakric dr#
rmftmrtj. Itavint tkt tirt
rip* f»r a comfilif knjkJ*wn. if mtt immtJiiltly
upon them, but who refuses to here anything but gooJ tires in his store. From the beginning the whole weight of the United States Rubber Company—the largest rubber manufacturing concern in the world—has been thrown on the side ot the g.-.-J dealer. Backing him rirst and last with all ot its great and varied resources — greater and more t.ir reaching than those ot anv concern in the business. And looking forward with confidence to the time when EnOtOristl etetywhert will insist upon a higher standard of tire service. United States Tires
United States Rubber Company Fi'r\ three The oljest .in.* ;.ir-£v.«r 7':. < hun.l-.\t iinj rjcronej Rut-he-t>k-.iriis.)hon in the Wor U rftirry-.ft\v Branches The Scribner Press There's Nothing Finer than a healthy, happy infant and there's nothing better to keep baby well than MRS. WINSLOWS SYRUP The Infants' and Children's Regulator Purely vegetable, guaranteed non-narcotic and non-alcoholic, it is a simple, highly efficacious remedy for all baby's digestive troubles. The open published formula appears on every bottle. At All Druggists ANGLO-AMERICAN DRUG CO. 215-217 Fulton Street, New York GtmralSelling Agents : Harold F. Ritchi* & Co.. Inc. Ntto York and Toronto Baker's
Breakfast
Cocoa
Has a most delicious flavor.
Is purs-and healthful.
The ideal f bod beverage.
Genuine has this trade mark on every package. , Booklet of Choice Recipes Sent free. Waterman's Ideal
Fountain Pen
Three Types Self-Filling, Regular and Safety $7.50 and up Sold bybest dealers L.E.Waterman Company 191 Broadway New York. Th e pleasure of eating Grape-Nuts lies not alone in its delightful flavor, but also in the knowledge that it is a sturdy, health-building food. Grape-Nuts Needs No Sugar! WALTER BAKER & CO., LTD. "There's a Reason" Established 1780 DORCHESTER, MASS.